Your AI-Powered IT Strategy Partner
Frankly's AI automates IT procurement complexity—analyzing industry standards, comparing vendors head-to-head, mapping compliance requirements, calculating ROI, and guiding implementation. From architecture recommendations to strategic justification, we eliminate guesswork and accelerate confident decisions.
IT Strategy & Pricing Assistant
5-15%
Average Savings
Clear Roadmaps
Phased guides for every maturity level
6+ Standards
PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO27001 & more
AI-powered analysis across 100+ vendors & platforms
What Frankly's AI Does
From architecture design to investment justification, our AI handles the complexity so you can focus on decisions.
Use Case Playbooks
Discover proven architectures and product stacks tailored to your industry and use case.
Competitive Comparisons
AI-powered head-to-head vendor analysis revealing which solutions excel where.
Compliance Mapping
Automatically identify which solutions address PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO27001, and more.
ROI Benchmarks
See payback period, annual savings, and 3-year value by organization size and industry.
Implementation Roadmaps
Phased deployment guidance scaled to your organization's maturity level.
Pick your starting point
Whether you have a quote in hand or need a strategy from scratch — Frankly has you covered.
Sanity Check
Drop in your vendor quote. Frankly AI goes line by line — flagging overpriced SKUs, wrong-sized products, and compliance gaps. You'll know exactly where you stand before you sign anything.
How It Works
Sanity-check your IT spend in 3 steps
No commitment, no pressure. Just honest pricing.
Submit Your Quote
Tell us what you're buying — product names, quantities, and the price you've been quoted by another reseller.
We Price It Out
Our team checks our distributor pricing and comes back with a competitive offer — usually within 24 hours.
Compare & Save
See a side-by-side comparison. If we beat the price, you save. If not, you've confirmed you're getting a fair deal.
Your mission is too important to overpay for technology.
Non-profits, charities, and community organizations deserve the same enterprise-grade IT and cybersecurity — without the enterprise price tag. Frankly has a dedicated program to help mission-driven organizations spend less on technology and more on what truly matters.
We believe the communities you serve deserve an organization that's fully funded, fully protected, and fully focused — not one stretched thin by overpriced vendor quotes.
Lowest Possible Pricing
We go the extra mile to get non-profits the absolute best pricing from our distributor network — so every dollar stretches further.
Full IT & Cybersecurity Coverage
From firewalls to cloud security to networking — we help non-profits build secure, reliable infrastructure on a tight budget.
Dedicated Support
Non-profit clients get hands-on help from our team. We understand your constraints and work around them.
For IT Professionals
Earn commissions on IT deals you refer
Join the Frankly Independent IT Advisor Program and get paid 25–40% of gross margin on every closed deal.
Our Partner ProgramWhat We Cover
Products across every IT category
Firewalls
Palo Alto, Fortinet, Check Point
Endpoint Security
CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Carbon Black
Networking
Cisco, Aruba, Arista
Cloud Security
Zscaler, Prisma, Cloudflare
Backup & Recovery
Veeam, Datto, Acronis
Servers & Storage
Dell, HPE, Lenovo
Collaboration
Microsoft 365, Zoom, Teams
Licensing
Microsoft, VMware, Adobe
Enterprise Storage Comparison:
Pure Storage vs NetApp vs Dell EMC vs HPE Alletra
Frankly is a vendor-neutral IT reseller with direct access to real distributor pricing across all four platforms. This comparison is built from 2026 distributor-tier data — not vendor marketing sheets — so you can see what organizations like yours are actually paying.
TCO Comparison — 50 TB Reference Config, 3 Years
| Platform | HW list price / TB | Annual support % | 3-yr all-in (50 TB) | Common discount off list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pure FlashArray //X | $4,000–$7,000 | 15–18% | $325,000–$550,000 | 30–45% |
| NetApp AFF A800 | $5,000–$9,000 | 18–22% | $370,000–$650,000 | 35–50% |
| Dell PowerStore | $3,500–$6,500 | 12–18% | $280,000–$490,000 | 40–55% |
| HPE Alletra 9000 | $4,000–$7,500 | 15–20% | $310,000–$560,000 | 35–50% |
Pricing reflects typical 2026 distributor-tier ranges. Get exact numbers for your config via our Sanity Check tool.
Pricing Transparency + Discount Practices
Enterprise storage list prices are rarely what anyone pays. All four vendors operate through distribution tiers — national distributors (TD Synnex, Ingram Micro, Arrow) receive product at one margin, then sell to VARs at another. The VAR marks up from there. A buyer receiving quotes from two different VARs for the same Pure FlashArray //X50 can see a 20–30% price difference for identical hardware, simply because of where each partner sits in the tier structure.
Dell typically offers the deepest street discounts off list — sometimes 50–60% for competitive displacement situations. NetApp and Pure historically hold margin tighter but routinely approve project registration discounts in the 40–50% range when a deal is registered through distribution. HPE's GreenLake push has shifted more of their business to OpEx, which can obscure the true cost if you don't model the full term.
The takeaway: list price is a ceiling, not a benchmark. If your reseller is quoting you within 10–20% of list on any of these platforms, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table.
Uptime SLAs and Reliability
| Vendor | Marketed SLA | Real-world MTBF source | Failure-mode commitments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure Storage | 99.9999% (six nines) | Pure publishes annual failure rates via Evergreen//One metrics | Pure Evergreen: controller and shelf upgrades included; no data migration required |
| NetApp | 99.999% (five nines) on AFF with MetroCluster | NetApp Active IQ telemetry; third-party validated by Gartner Peer Insights | Non-Disruptive Upgrades (NDU): controller upgrades without downtime on ONTAP |
| Dell PowerStore | 99.9999% with PowerStore Metro Node active-active | Dell ProSupport telemetry; CloudIQ predictive analytics | Non-disruptive expansion and upgrades within the same generation; cross-gen requires migration |
| HPE Alletra 9000 | 100% data availability guarantee (HPE Timeless Storage) | InfoSight AI predictive analytics; HPE claims 86% of failures predicted before impact | HPE Timeless Storage: controller refresh and capacity expansion without data migration |
Epic EHR + Healthcare Workloads
Both Pure Storage FlashArray and NetApp AFF are Epic-validated platforms, meaning they meet Epic's published storage performance requirements for production EHR environments. Pure is particularly dominant in large health systems running Epic — its sub-millisecond latency profile and predictable IOPS delivery map well to Epic's Chronicles and Hyperspace workloads. NetApp holds significant share in organizations that already run ONTAP for other clinical data management, leveraging SnapMirror for HIPAA-compliant replication.
For Cogito analytics (Epic's data warehouse layer) and Caboodle ETL workloads, both platforms perform well, though Pure's //X90 and NetApp AFF A900 are the most common choices at large academic medical centers processing hundreds of millions of records nightly. Dell PowerStore is increasingly certified for Epic test and development environments; HPE Alletra is gaining traction in health systems already committed to the HPE portfolio. When sizing Epic storage, always confirm the current Epic Hardware Configuration Guide for your Epic version — requirements change quarterly.
As-a-Service Comparison
| Offering | Commitment term | Scaling model | Exit clause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dell APEX | 1, 3, or 5 years | Burst up to 20% above committed capacity; right-size annually | Early termination fee; hardware removal by Dell |
| HPE GreenLake | 3 or 5 years (min) | Consumed capacity model; buffer capacity pre-staged on-site | Penalty-based exit; contractual lock-in tighter than peers |
| Pure-as-a-Service (Evergreen//One) | 1 or 3 years | On-demand capacity upgrades; Pure ships hardware within days | Most flexible; month-to-month available on certain tiers |
| NetApp Keystone | 1–3 years | Burst capacity billed monthly; predictable base commit | Standard contract exit; equipment return required |
Refresh Cycles + Vendor Lock-in
Pure Storage's Evergreen program and HPE's Timeless Storage commitment are the standout differentiation points on refresh. Both allow controller replacements — moving to a newer generation — without requiring a data migration. Your data stays in place while the front-end controller is swapped, avoiding the 60–120 day migration projects that traditionally accompany storage refreshes. This isn't just an operational convenience; over a 10-year period, eliminating two or three data migrations can save hundreds of hours of engineering time and significantly reduce risk windows.
Dell PowerStore and NetApp generally require more traditional refresh projects every 5–7 years. PowerStore's architecture allows some in-place expansion within the same generation, but cross-generation upgrades typically involve a new system purchase and a migration event. NetApp's ONTAP Data Fabric does ease migration within the NetApp ecosystem (SnapMirror to a new array), but it still represents a planned project. Organizations evaluating long-term TCO should factor in refresh labor costs — typically $50,000–$150,000 in professional services for a mid-market migration — when comparing Evergreen/Timeless models against traditional capex purchases.
Ready to cut through the noise?
Get real distributor pricing, validate your current quote, or talk to an architect — no sales pitch, no commitment.