Vela Alternatives for Victim Service Providers: Vela vs. StriveDB

What are Vela and StriveDB?

Vela is a cloud-based case management system for domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking programs, built by Element 74, Inc. of Cape Girardeau, Missouri and developed with the Missouri coalition. According to Element 74, more than 300 programs use it across 38 states and sovereign nations. Their site is veladirect.com, so you'll see both Vela and Vela Direct.

StriveDB is a cloud-based case management system used by domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and family justice centers. It covers client and case files, service logs, shelter enrollments, protective orders, legal proceedings, forensic exams, counseling notes with supervision workflow, volunteer call logging, and grant reports. It was developed with the Rape Crisis Center of Central New Mexico.

What is Vela good at?

Centers that use Vela consistently praise its support. An independent evaluation by Ubuntu Research & Evaluation, conducted for the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence and funded through the Ohio Attorney General's Office, found support to be the most consistent theme across its pilot. Element 74 describes its support and implementation team as carrying more than 100 years of combined advocacy experience, and reports client retention in the high 90s.

Centers in that pilot moving off spreadsheets and paper reported funder reports got easier, and staff called the interface modern and easy to move around in.

Vela's pricing is based on your operating budget rather than your number of users, meaning you don't pay more when you add an advocate, a volunteer, or your whole hotline roster.

What does the Banyan Software acquisition mean for Vela customers?

Banyan Software announced on October 20, 2026 that it had acquired Element 74, Inc., covering both Vela and Coalition Manager. Founder and CEO Chris Edmonds is quoted describing Banyan as a permanent home. Banyan says it buys software companies to hold for life and has acquired more than 130 since 2016 without selling one.

Will the price of Vela increase?

Banyan hasn't publicly announced any price increase. It is, however, recruiting a Director of Sales and Marketing for Element 74 (backup).

The listing, posted on October 9, 2026, describes Element 74 as part of Banyan Software and names among its preferred qualifications experience "introducing price increases, packaging tiers, or annual and multi-year prepay into a price-sensitive base."

Vela's existing agreement already provides for an annual review of each center's operating budget, with a 3% increase when a center's tier hasn't changed.

Apricot, another familiar name to victim services organizations, went through an ownership change in 2021 as well. Apax Partners acquired Social Solutions, the company behind it, and folded it into Bonterra. Reviewers on Capterra, TrustRadius, and Software Advice have independently reported annual price increases since. Vela's own data migration handbook lists Apricot among the platforms it helps centers leave.

We don't know whether Banyan plans to raise Vela's prices. If your renewal is coming up, it's worth asking what to expect, and what else may be changing under new ownership.

NNEDV's vendor contract checklist

NNEDV's Safety Net Project publishes a vendor contract checklist for survivor-serving databases. One item: a vendor should clearly explain what happens if it changes ownership or goes out of business. Worth reading before you talk to anyone.

Before you renew, here's what I'd ask:

1. Is our agreement still with the same legal entity, and who's our counterparty now?
2. Will our rate hold, is there a cap on increases, and how much notice before a price change?
3. Who are our support contacts, and are changes planned?
4. Can we export a full backup, in what format, and at what cost?

Vela's published FAQ answers part of this. If Vela is sold, the center keeps ownership of its data and receives a full database backup, and servers keep running for the length of the contract, though without further technical support or software updates.

StriveDB's terms of service put our answers in writing. Our terms guarantee your ownership of the data and your right to receive a copy. Our policy is to provide full exports free of charge. We give at least 30 days notice before any update to these terms, and if an update materially reduces your rights or materially increases your obligations you can terminate before it takes effect, without penalty, and we refund prepaid fees for the unused part of your term. That right covers terms updates rather than price changes; otherwise the way out is to decline renewal, with 30 days notice before your term ends. If StriveDB ever ceases business, we convert the source code to open source under a customary license, and we've already retained successor counsel to handle that transition.

Vela and StriveDB, side by side

Rows describe what each vendor documents publicly. Where a capability isn't described in a vendor's published materials, the cell says so rather than claiming the capability is absent.

What the legal advocacy module does in practice: an advocate logs a protective order with its hearing date, outcome, and expiration, links the related criminal case, and her hours at court post to the right grant for the VOCA report without anyone re-entering them.

Features and reporting

Security and reliability

Pricing and contract

Does StriveDB support the same reports as Vela?

Both systems include built-in grant reports, though they don't cover exactly the same ones. Vela's published list includes VOCA, STOP VAWA, FVPSA, SASP, HUD ESG CAPER and CoC APR, and the Missouri Monthly Services Report. Comparable database status is determined by your local Continuum of Care's HMIS Lead rather than by any vendor, and Vela's HUD page offers to connect programs with their CoC lead to work through that approval. StriveDB ships a catalog of roughly 27 pre-built reports, including VOCA, VAWA, FVPSA, CalOES, housing, and state and local reports. StriveDB does not provide HMIS-comparable reporting today, though it's on the roadmap for the coming year. If you're required to produce those reports, our guide to HMIS-comparable reporting explains how centers handle it, and we're glad to talk it through.

Vela offers FLEX reports your own staff can build, plus vendor-built reports that may carry extra cost.

StriveDB has a custom tabulation report that can be used for most one-off queries, and also builds custom one-click funder reports. The Team plan includes three custom reports, and the Premium plan includes ten custom reports. Custom reports beyond that typically have a one-time implementation fee of between $200 and $500, depending upon complexity, but no recurring cost. Our typical turnaround for report implementation is about a week.

How secure and reliable are Vela and StriveDB?

Between August 1, 2025 and October 27, 2026, StriveDB's measured uptime was 99.98%, with zero unplanned outages.

Three times in that period the application took suspicious traffic spikes, the largest at 57 times normal volume. Between 91% and 98% of those requests were rejected and every system stayed operational. The database runs across two AWS availability zones with automatic failover, backups allow point-in-time recovery to any second in the retention window, and Cloudflare sits in front of the application.

If we ever do have a prolonged outage, our terms commit to a minimum 99.0% monthly uptime and pay service credits against the monthly fee below that threshold. Vela's published agreement doesn't specify an uptime guarantee or corresponding service credits. That isn't unusual in this category.

You can view our current status, and real-time historical data for the last 30 days, on our status page. The 99.98% above covers a longer window that includes the April maintenance.

Vela encrypts at rest and in transit, hosts on AWS with restricted database access, and uses Armor Anywhere for cloud security and audit reporting. Backups run hourly in business hours and overnight, kept 30 days then 180, and Element 74 commits to breach notification within 24 hours. On subpoenas, their position is that the center's data isn't theirs to produce, that they notify the center within 24 hours, and that they produce only under a valid court order.

StriveDB requires two-factor authentication for every user on every plan, including the $199 tier. Each center's data sits in its own tenant and every record change is logged. We've completed a third-party security audit with Accorian and publish a full security statement.

Neither Vela nor StriveDB reports having a SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 today.

How much does Vela cost compared to StriveDB?

Vela doesn't publish its prices. It's priced on each center's annual operating budget, with a one-time deployment and training fee plus a monthly license and support fee, and no charge per user.

Their published deployment and hosting agreement sets out the rest. One-year contract, auto-renewing unless you give 60 days notice. At the start of year two you verify your operating budget: if it moved you into a different tier your fee adjusts, and if it didn't you get a 3% increase. Migration beyond basic client demographics bills at $150 per hour, and Vela estimates that migration could take 35 to 60 hours, depending on complexity. Vela's onboarding page confirms historical service data carries an added fee.

StriveDB publishes its rates. Basic is $199 per month for up to 2 staff, Team is $520 for up to 20 staff plus 100 volunteers, Premium is $1,250 for up to 100 staff. Most centers with more than two paid staff land on Team. Support is included at every tier, and for most centers so are implementation, setup, and migration. A complex migration, meaning years of paper records or several legacy systems, may carry a one-time fee, typically $2,000 to $10,000, quoted before you sign.

Support: Standard support is included on every plan, with no per-incident charges, no hourly overage fees, and no ticket limits. Consulting hours (Team: 10/yr; Premium and Multi-Site: 20/yr) are separate from standard support and are used for larger custom work such as new reports, workflows, or integrations.

Two of our strongest capabilities are add-on modules. Legal advocacy is $100 per month and counseling services is $100 per month, both available on Team and above, with Premium including one module of your choice. A center that needs both on Team is at $720 per month, not $520. That's the number to compare against a Vela quote.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Vela?

Sometimes, and it depends more on your budget band than on your size.

One publicly available reference is Element 74's March 2023 proposal to Alaska's Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Current pricing isn't published, so treat these as 2023 tiers.

2023 Vela proposal versus 2026 StriveDB pricing. Illustrative, not a current quote.

In Vela's 2023 proposal, the gap was widest for centers with budgets between $850,000 and $1.5 million. At those 2023 rates, a center that size with twenty or fewer staff would have paid roughly $16,800 in year one, against $6,240 at StriveDB's 2026 Team rate. Those two figures are three years apart, so read the comparison as an illustration of how budget-band pricing scales, not as a saving available today.

At the smallest tier the 2023 figures were close to a wash: $6,240 against $6,300 in year one. Beyond that, Vela's $400 per month ran below our Team tier, and the 3% annual increase takes years to close the gap. A one or two person program on our $199 Basic plan was the exception, at $2,388 against $6,300.

Add our module fees where they apply, and compare against a current Vela quote rather than a 2023 one. Budget-based pricing is also fairer on headcount, so a center with many staff and a modest budget may pay less at Vela.

The Ohio evaluation found cost to be the primary barrier keeping survivor-serving organizations from adopting a database at all, and named setup and transition costs specifically.

What are the best alternatives to Vela?

StriveDB. Closest match on purpose-built modules for legal advocacy, counseling, and forensic exam documentation, with rates published on our pricing page. Best for centers whose shelter funding runs through VOCA, FVPSA, and state sources rather than HUD.

Bonterra Apricot. Holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, with FedRAMP Ready status for Apricot for Government. If a funder requires a named certification, Apricot clears that bar and we don't. On cost, Bonterra doesn't publish Apricot pricing, and reviewers report annual increases since Apax took ownership in 2021. More in our Bonterra Apricot comparison.

Osnium. Long-standing coalition relationships and a large installed base. Worth a look if your coalition already uses it. More in our Osnium comparison.

FAMCare. Global Vision Technologies' platform for human services broadly, spanning child welfare, aging, housing, behavioral health, and victim services. It publishes SOC 2 Type II and TX-RAMP Level 2, so it's another option when a contract requires named credentials. The tradeoff is breadth rather than DV and SA focus.

VSTracking. Built for victim advocates under VOCA and VAWA grants, including advocates based inside sheriff's offices and prosecutors' offices. Reviewers describe it as a fit for solo advocates on small budgets. More in our VSTracking comparison.

Who should switch from Vela, and who should stay?

If legal advocacy or counseling is where your current system falls short, StriveDB is worth a closer look. The same goes for shelters funded through VOCA, FVPSA, and state sources.

If Vela already handles your Missouri reporting correctly, make sure any replacement can do the same before you consider a switch.

Centers with large staff counts and modest budgets may find Vela cheaper over time. Run your own numbers.

I'd avoid switching databases in the middle of a grant reporting period.

Switching from Vela: what to expect

Vela says customers own their data and can request a copy. Confirm export formats, attachments, and historical records before migrating.

Vela's migration handbook, which covers moving data into Vela rather than out, is candid that a full migration won't be perfectly accurate and that centers may need to explain data gaps to funders. The same constraints apply moving out, and they apply to us.

Moving to us, you export from Vela and we handle the mapping, cleaning, and import. We build your funder reports and stand up a test instance so your team can work with your own data before go-live. One recent VSTracking migration of ten years of records ran about two weeks from first request to completed import. Cleaner data or fewer years takes less.

The Ohio evaluators found centers did best starting onboarding at the end of a quarter and going live at the start of the next, so no reporting period straddles two systems. Running both side by side for a stretch is expected.

Ask your advocates to log a hotline call, walk a client through intake, record a service against a grant, and find notes from three months ago. Start with the hotline call and anything shelter-related, since those were the two areas the Ohio evaluators found centers struggled with during implementation. That's most of their day, and an hour of it will tell you more than a feature list.

Vela's agreement renews automatically unless you give 60 days written notice. Work backward from your renewal date and your reporting calendar together.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Why the largest rape crisis center in New Mexico uses StriveDB
• Osnium Alternatives for Victim Service Providers
• Bonterra Apricot comparison