Compare
Local Vault vs. a National Records Vendor
The national vendors are competent and enormous, and for a multi-state footprint they are usually the right call. For a South Florida business the trade is different.
Bring your retention schedule. We will tell you what it actually costs to meet it.
Side by side
| Category | Intervault Media | A National Records Vendor |
|---|---|---|
| Building | 9R vault, waterproof and airtight, Category 5 rated | Typically conventional warehouse construction |
| Multi-state footprint | Florida only | Nationwide. They win clearly here |
| Who answers the phone | The facility holding your media | A national service desk |
| Retrieval time | Scheduled, plus 24/7 emergency locally | Varies by facility and service tier |
| Contract terms | Annual, negotiated directly | Long-term contracts with permanent-removal fees are common |
| Cost to leave | Collect your media | Permanent withdrawal fees are a well-known industry complaint |
| Flood-zone exposure | Hardened vault by design | Depends entirely on the specific warehouse |
The fair case
What A National Records Vendor genuinely does better
A national vendor brings genuine advantages and it is worth naming them. Multiple facilities and real geographic redundancy across regions. Established audit programs and documentation that large clients' procurement teams already recognize. Document-level indexing, scanning and retrieval services that a custody vault does not provide. Scale that supports thousands of boxes and a formal retention schedule. If you need records management rather than custody, that is the category you want and we are not it.
The limit
Where the gap is
The trade is that you are one account in a very large book. The recurring complaints are structural rather than about competence: retrieval and handling charges that make an active archive cost more than expected, permanent-withdrawal terms that make leaving expensive, and service that is excellent at contract scale but impersonal at yours. For a small firm with a modest amount of material that must simply be somewhere safe, documented and reachable, a large records contract can be more machinery than the problem needs.
Our view
The honest verdict
If you have facilities in six states, use a national vendor — the logistics alone justify it. If your risk is concentrated in South Florida, ask two questions of any vendor: what is the building rated for, and what does it cost to take the media back. Those two answers usually decide it.
Other comparisons
Air-Gapped Vault vs. Cloud-Only Backup
Cloud backup is faster, cheaper per terabyte, and easier to test. It is also reachable, and that is the whole argument.
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Vaulted Tape vs. Tape Kept On Site
You already own the tapes. The question is only where they sleep, and whether the same event can take both the systems and the backups.
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Media Vault vs. a Self-Storage Unit
It happens more than you would think — a unit down the road, a padlock, and a box of tapes. It fails on three separate grounds.
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See the vault before you decide.
Tours are private and by appointment. You will see the vault door, the man-trap entry, and the box sizes in person. No account relationship is required to visit.