Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

AWS Backup vs HPE Zerto Software comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 11, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Backup
Ranking in Cloud Backup
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (4th)
HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Cloud Backup
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
341
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (2nd), Cloud Migration (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of AWS Backup is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 3.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Zerto Software3.7%
AWS Backup3.4%
Other92.9%
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplify compliance and management of multiple backups with centralized cloud solutions
AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services. Also, it would be helpful if AWS Backup could integrate logs more thoroughly. This would allow not only new users but also experienced users to more easily check logs directly from AWS Backup.
Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features
Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is its ease of use."
"When I was using an on-premises backup, there was an external hard drive or something like that. I had a backup server, but I had a few problems related to transfer when I had to restore something that I have deleted. I had to wait for after-office hours to do something like that, but now I just have to send a mail. Within one hour, I have my restored file."
"The most valuable feature is the daily incremental site backup."
"The most valuable features of AWS Backup are point-in-time recovery and support resources."
"The customer service is top-notch, rated ten out of ten."
"It's very easy to configure. Since it's a managed service, it's very straightforward to set up and use. And my customers get on with it very fast."
"It also saves costs and is quick."
"The time it takes to fail a server over to DR has been great."
"Real-time replication is a valuable feature, ensuring that changes made to the production site are immediately reflected at the recovery site."
"Zerto's scalability has been good."
"The features I appreciate the most about HPE Zerto Software are the automated failover and orchestration, and then the journal for point-in-time recovery."
"Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed."
"The recovery was pretty seamless. It took about a minute for it to kick over when we did our testing. So, it wasn't a long downtime."
"The live test failover is the most valuable feature because it allows me to validate that my data is protected in the event of a failure."
"I find it easy to use, and the UI is really easy to navigate. We reduced our time with backups from days to less than half an hour for the same data service."
 

Cons

"AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services."
"To create a plan and for all the configuration, one has to do multiple steps, which could be organized in a much simpler way, making the user experience better."
"Its cost could be better than a few of its competitors."
"The notifications on the backup and on the mobile app could be more useful. If they could arrange notes or notifications properly and offer services for managing it in our region, it would be helpful for us."
"One of the limitations of AWS Backup is that it only does file-based copying."
"It could be less expensive."
"The service disconnects a lot."
"For additional functionalities, it should be more intelligent, like more AI-capabilities."
"I would like to see Zerto implement a pay-as-you-go model."
"There is a need to allow the source vCenter Inventory to be imported with a single click."
"The version 10 update 4 took really long to deploy, and we had to back off and do update 2 because that seems to deploy much quicker."
"Over my eight years working with HPE Zerto Software, I have experienced some downtime and crashes during upgrades."
"If there's any way to validate that data on the recovery site without having to manually go in and do failover testing and try to validate, that would be a feature that would be really nice."
"Zerto should add the capability to replicate the same VM to multiple sites."
"We've also found that certain situations will not work for us since we haven't finalized the air gap vault in place, and we know that using some simulated ransomware attacks would cause problems, so we wouldn't be able to recover."
"Zerto's pricing model is cost-prohibitive for small—to medium-sized businesses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers pay a monthly AWS fee that includes the AWS Backup service."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"AWS Backup is free of cost, but we need to pay for the backup storage being used."
"AWS is more expensive than some competitors like Azure."
"The clients pay for the whole AWS bundle. It is an affordable solution."
"AWS Backup is a very cheap solution."
"The pricing is decent."
"Its price is much cheaper than some vendors but more expensive than others."
"The only negative part that I have seen so far has been the cost. It is kind of pricey, but you get what you pay for. Zerto is a lot faster than other solutions and you get enhanced performance."
"There is a lot of confusion with Zerto licensing. They have a migration license and a replication license. They should simplify the licensing process. The migration license costs a lot of money, and it is only on a one-time basis. If you use that license, it ties to that VM. I might re-migrate that VM in the next five to ten years. It is another environment, but my license is stuck there. The replication license is fine, and I have no issue with its pricing model, but they should simplify the migration license."
"There is a one-time cost for maintenance and support. We have a three-year contract that we will have to renew when those three years come up. There is also licensing on top of that for whatever product you are using it for."
"Zerto is expensive but offers many features that make it competitive."
"The cost is not dirt cheap but also is not terrible."
"Its licensing is yearly. You can do multi-year contracts, which is what we did. You pay per VM, and you replicate a license per VM. So, we bought about 20 licenses. We paid somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000. There is an initial upfront cost. Basically, you buy the license, and then you have a maintenance cost on top of that. So, the upfront cost is somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000. The maintenance is $5,000 to $10,000 over a three-year period."
"The pricing is a little more expensive in comparison to other tools."
"It is economical as compared to other brands."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Backup solutions are best for your needs.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise193
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Backup?
The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Backup?
AWS Backup operates on a pay-as-you-go model without requiring a license.
What needs improvement with AWS Backup?
Regarding disadvantages of AWS Backup, it can be expensive and not particularly user-friendly. To perform backups, we need to follow specific steps and queries. When refreshing, if we want to do da...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What do you like most about Zerto?
Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I think on the pricing side, I don't generally deal with it, but from what I hear from my finance team, it's somewhat on the higher...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransferWise
United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Backup vs. HPE Zerto Software and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.