- Overview
- Library Service Options
- Library Footprint Creation
- Library Footprint Validation
- Library Footprint 3D Models
- Library Sustainment
- Quote Request
- Library Introduction
- What's Your Structure?
- Why Conformity Matters
- Who's Your Librarian?
- Library Clean Up
- Symbol Style Guide
- DFM Library Example
- Library Resource Videos (18)
- Avoiding Gotchas
- Altium Vault Offerings
- Configuration Setup
- Vault Management Videos (16)
- Overview
- Point of Entry
- L9 Videos (4)
- L9 vs. Vault
- Evaluation
Altium Vault Offerings
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Vault Offerings by Altium: A Guide to Data Management Evolution
Over the years, Altium has developed several products to streamline file and data management. You may be familiar with names like Vault, Concord Pro, Nexus, and Altium 365 (A365). While their names have changed, they all share a common goal: providing a revision-controlled environment for your components, templates, and project files.
As of 2026, Altium primarily offers A365 in three tiers - Standard, Pro, Enterprise, and Gov - to meet varying organizational needs. All A365 tiers are cloud-based and maintained by Altium, though the Enterprise tier remains available as an on-premise solution for specific security requirements.
Legacy products such as Vault, Nexus (in its original form), and Concord Pro have largely been consolidated into the A365 ecosystem. To understand how these tools transitioned, see our detailed breakdown below.
The Evolution of Altium Data Management
Altium has renamed its vault product several times since its official release in 2011.
(Note: we will use the term "vault" to describe any vault product of Altium Inc. and reserve the term "Vault" to describe a specific product.)
Development of the vault started in 2008 and was not released until 2011. It went through numerous beta iterations before it was released. There were three products released: the Personal Vault, the Satellite Vault, and an On-Premise Vault.
Satellite Vault: As the name implies, this was a cloud-based vault. This product was short-lived as the idea of "the cloud" was still coming into public knowledge. Companies were skeptical to host their Intellectual Property (IP) on an outside server, let alone trust it to a company headquartered in China at the time. (Note: Altium relocated its headquarters to the U.S. about three years later.)
It should be noted that Altium never hosted any of these products on its own servers. They have always used Amazon Web Services (AWS) for vault products.
Personal Vault: The Personal Vault was a free single-user vault that was installed onto one's computer. It was created to allow users to try out the tool. It was well received, but it had two unintended consequences. First, the users were perfectly fine with having their own vault and did not see a need for purchasing a company vault. Second, if the company did have a vault, they wanted to use their personal vault and have it integrated with their company's vault. Altium ended the personal vault due to monetary and software support reasons.
Vault (AVS): The On-Premises Vault was what eventually evolved into the products being offered today. It was also referred to as the AVS - Altium Vault Server.
Nexus: With the release of Altium Designer 2018, Altium Inc. decided to rebrand their vault product as "Nexus." Altium also introduced the "Nexus Client" to act as the interface to the Nexus server. The Nexus Client was essentially Altium Designer, consisting of the same code base and GUI interfaces. Several library features were removed from the client's menu to prevent users from creating libraries outside the Nexus environment.
It was designed to be an enterprise solution with the expectation of providing additional services to set up the workflow feature. The workflow feature allowed a company to interface the vault with other databases and customize the workflow of documents. This required coding and an understanding of the target database and the workings of the vault.
Concord Pro: Concord Pro is essentially the re-re-branding of the Vault. It contains all the features of Nexus except for the workflow. Concord Pro was installed on a company's server. Altium Designer was used to interface with Concord Pro. Concord Pro was a WYSIWYG product - What You See Is What You Get.
Moving to the Cloud
The on-premise vault products (AVS, Concord Pro, and Nexus) were very problematic for Altium to support for several reasons:
- Security policies of the company interfered with the user interactions in the vault.
- Lack of visibility into the product. It would require online meetings to see what was going on and if the company security policies would allow for such meetings.
- Support team was not geared to deal with MS OS server issues.
As for the customer, using the on-premises server was problematic for contractors. The work done by the contractor would have to be incorporated into the vault product. We at Nine Dot Connects refer to this as the "Contractor's Loop." Unfortunately, it is not a quick process and usually requires substantial edits to the schematics and layout.
Altium 365
Altium 365 is the cloud-based version of the Concord Pro.
- Standard: Included with a basic subscription; offers cloud storage and sharing features.
- Pro: Adds revisioning, lifecycle management, and MCAD/ECAD collaboration, to name a few of the major features.
- Enterprise: A renaming of Nexus which includes the Workflow feature. Enterprise is the only current on-premise option available.
- Gov: Includes the same features of Pro with additional safety protocol features such as end-to-end encryption to the Altium cloud server. This server is managed under the AWS server specific for government agencies.
This is the current flagship offering, designed for effortless collaboration between remote teams, contractors, and stakeholders.
Master Altium 365 with Expert Guidance
Transitioning your team to a managed environment can be a significant undertaking. If you want to accelerate the learning curve and ensure your configurations and templates are set up correctly from day one, we can help.
