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BDRShield vs Bacula Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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

Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (13th)
BDRShield
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (9th), MSP Backup (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BDRShield is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BDRShield0.8%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other98.2%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Consultant at Xerif
Solid backup tool with good scalability
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…
TA
IT Director at Boom Logic
Can automatically pull the virtual machines that we have in an environment
I like the fact that BDRSuite can connect to VMware ESXi and automatically pull the virtual machines that I have in that environment. I also like that you can choose to back up the compute to the backup server or go straight to the cloud. BDRSuite enables you to recover data instantly. When we need to recover data, I only need to start a backup job or a restore job. Depending on the speed of the server and the Internet, it should be able to download the files from the cloud and split them back up the way they were like nothing ever happened. The restore options BDRSuite provides are crucial because we use it for a lot of healthcare companies that have HIPAA requirements. BDRSuite is HIPAA compliant. We need it to be readily available and accessible in case something goes wrong. It lets you schedule backups to run every 15 minutes. I don't believe you can do it at shorter intervals because there's no way the original backups will finish in 15 minutes. It allows you to adjust the schedules. For example, if you don't want it to go during certain times, you can set that up. You can also choose between a full or incremental backup. There are settings you can adjust to make it work how you want it. Incremental backup is crucial because a full backup would increase fees or affect the local server because it would back up the entire volume every time. Instead, it does one full backup—say 12 terabytes— and adds to it in increments of 100 gigabytes, 200 gigabytes, etc. Whenever you want to add a backup job, there's a wizard that pops up telling you how to make a new backup job. It asks you what you want to name it and what you want to back up. Then, it asks you if you want to schedule it. There's an interactive display on how to do that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"The scalability is good. It can scale. Adding a new server to a foreign location is easy."
"We are now using it 24/7 because it is serving as an online backup, and very soon, the DR will activated on the product."
"Adding and removing backup jobs using BDRSuite is easy and also includes great documentation."
"Because all our servers are hosted on VMware, the VMware backup is the most valuable feature. The integration and backup with VMware are very good."
"The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup."
"I am able to run Vembu on Windows NAS, which is beneficial. It does install on a Windows-based NAS. You can have the server running from the location where you are storing backups. You don't need a separate server for it in this case."
"The main difference I see between Vembu and the other solutions we've tried is that with Vembu, you don't need anybody to tell you what to do. Once you have done the installation you just look at the user interface — it's very friendly — and you can do things yourself without resorting to help from anybody."
"The smooth implementation is the most valuable aspect of BDRSuite."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"I saw that it's not possible to have the last full backup duplicated on our site. Therefore, if I have a lot of information on the main site, I would not want to copy any information to those site servers. It would be nice to be able to make a copy of the last full backup."
"I would like to have a different set of products instead of having a single software which does everything."
"We are still exploring its features, but we want to see more features that we desire over time."
"They need to improve their marketing because not many people are aware of it. People ask me what is Vembu, and I have to explain to them it is a good tool for backup and other things."
"Vembu BDR currently supports backups of O365, although it does not currently have an email archiving function to the O365 backups."
"The API uses a common data image to store the data for the sets, but unfortunately, it's limited to consecutive sets only. That's the only limitation I have observed so far."
"There are bugs. For one month, I encountered a big issue where my storage pool could not be identified. My backups were stopped because they were not able to locate the storage pool. So, I removed the settings and started the backups again. The application is not stable. It needs some debugging and testing on the build side of production."
"I had a small problem integrating VMware and Hyper-V when customers used a free VMware license to create VMs. This is a problem because many customers use the free version of VMware. There are also some issues backing up old systems. They have a little difficulty but can always get strong support from customer service."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"The licensing model is quite complicated; it's not simple. An example: If you have a physical server, you have to pay more for that license than you do for a host. It could be running several VMs and that could be a server VM as well. Then, for web station machines, there is no license for those machines and they have no desktop OS - the free version has all this functionality. Their license model needs to be looked at and simplified."
"I prefer the way Vembu is licensed. When you look at Veeam or any other product, they price per node. Vembu is licensed per host. You just buy a host license and it backs up unlimited VMs within that host. The others charge per VM."
"The return of investment was very fast, within half a year."
"For someone who doesn't want the Application-Aware feature to work, everything else is up to par. The licensing is straightforward. They license it per CPU."
"The pricing structure is in line with other solutions. However, the option to replicate offsite to a unit at another office or at home is a big cost benefit. Instead of paying monthly for cloud storage, you replicate offsite for free."
"This solution helped us deliver an enterprise level data protection solution and reduced our budget by 50 percent. We spent $3,000 on Vembu's licenses where other solutions were almost double."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable."
"Its price is fair, and they still allow perpetual licensing, which is extremely important for us. They also have offline licensing. I am not aware of any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. In terms of the affordability of the solution for businesses with a tight budget, you aren't going to beat it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I really don't know what could be improved about BDRSuite Backup & Replication. I've never had anything that I thought would be nice if that was possible. Every time I thought that, it was alre...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vembu BDRSuite, BDRSuite Backup & Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
Find out what your peers are saying about BDRShield vs. Bacula Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.