AOMEI Cyber Backup: Free VM Limits vs $99/VM/Year

Verdict

AOMEI Cyber Backup is worth testing free before you price a commercial VM rollout. The Free edition can cover up to three Hyper-V VMs and three regular VMware ESXi VMs, while VMware Free ESXi VMs are listed as unlimited. If you outgrow those limits, the current yearly Customized VM plan is listed at $99 per VM per year with a minimum order of five, which implies a nominal starting commitment of $495 per year before any dynamic volume discount, coupon, tax, or quote adjustment.

Free is more generous in some workloads than others

The current comparison table is workload-specific rather than a single device cap. Free allows up to three Hyper-V VMs, three regular VMware ESXi VMs, three Microsoft SQL databases, three Windows PCs, and one Windows Server. The unusual carve-out is VMware Free ESXi: AOMEI lists unlimited Free-ESXi VMs even in the Free edition.

That means a small lab or micro-business can be a good fit for Free, but the answer depends on the exact workload. Do not summarize the plan as simply “three devices free.” Count Hyper-V VMs, paid/commercial ESXi VMs, free-ESXi VMs, SQL databases, PCs, and servers separately.

AOMEI's manual also describes a 30-day Trial with unlimited devices and no functional restrictions during the trial. When the trial expires, backup/restore becomes limited and scheduled tasks can stop until the environment is licensed and re-authorized. Use the trial for an evaluation project, not as a permanent production tier.

What the paid VM license changes

**Scale beyond the Free VM count.** The paid yearly Customized VM plan licenses VMware or Hyper-V VMs individually. AOMEI says licenses can be unassigned from one VM and assigned to another, which is useful when VM inventories change.

**Get round-the-clock support.** The current comparison lists Free support on workdays versus expert 24×7×365 support for Advanced. In a production recovery workflow, support availability can matter as much as the raw VM count.

**Use advanced recovery and management features.** Current paid materials include restore-to-new-location, VM migration/clone workflows, Amazon S3 archiving, centralized monitoring, and broader recovery controls. Treat these as documented features to validate in your environment rather than as Toolnavia-tested recovery guarantees.

**Choose subscription or perpetual licensing deliberately.** AOMEI also sells perpetual Cyber Backup licenses, but this article registers only the yearly Customized VM offer. Do not compare a yearly VM license against a perpetual plan without checking the workload type, quantity, support/upgrade terms, and final quote.

The current paid starting point is five VM licenses

The current public page lists $99 per VM per year and says the Customized VM plan is sold in a minimum quantity of five. At the displayed unit rate, 5 × $99 equals a nominal $495 per year. The same page advertises volume pricing and promotional discounts, so $495 is a list-rate calculation—not a guaranteed checkout total.

The yearly Unlimited VM plan is currently displayed at $999 per year. Ten Customized VM units at the raw $99 list rate would be $990 before discounts, but the volume-discount language means there is no safe public “break-even VM count.” Once you approach that scale, request both quotes instead of assuming the Unlimited plan is automatically cheaper.

AOMEI advertises a 90-day money-back guarantee on the current upgrade page. Keep the order terms and support correspondence; cancellation of future billing and a refund request are separate purchase-management actions.

Important current documentation conflict: Hyper-V is no longer agentless

The Free-vs-Advanced comparison page still contains an “Agentless Backup” row under Hyper-V capabilities. However, AOMEI's newer release notes state that version 4.2.0 changed Hyper-V backup and restore from agentless to agent-based mode and that agentless Hyper-V backups are no longer supported. The current release is v4.6.2, dated September 28, 2026. For current deployment planning, the newer release notes should control.

This matters operationally: do not design a Hyper-V rollout on the assumption that the current product is agentless just because an older comparison row still says so. Test installation, credentials, network access, backup target, and a disposable restore before putting a production VM into the schedule.

Alternatives show why the Free boundary matters

Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition is free for up to 10 workloads. Hornetsecurity VM Backup Free Edition protects up to two VMs per host for free. Vinchin Free Edition protects three VMs permanently. NAKIVO offers a 15-day full-featured trial and licenses subscription workloads per VM with minimum-order rules. Synology Active Backup for Business has no separate software license charge on supported Synology NAS hardware. These are licensing and architecture comparisons, not backup-speed or recovery-quality rankings.

Next step

Use AOMEI Free on the exact workload type you plan to protect, run a scheduled backup, and perform a disposable restore. If your VM count exceeds Free, ask for a quote for the five-VM Customized plan and the Unlimited VM plan at the same time. Verify that the current Hyper-V deployment is agent-based. AOMEI's public cash affiliate program is open, but Toolnavia approval is unverified, so tracking remains disabled.