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BDRShield vs Bacula Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (14th)
BDRShield
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
21st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (10th), MSP Backup (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 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 0.6% 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…
Thomas Roes - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Switact
Ease of backup and restore improves data management with reliable support
The interface of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is pretty intuitive. Regarding their marketing strategy, I'm very bad at marketing. I always get a little edgy when people try to shove their product in my face. There are two sides to the story. If you don't know something exists, you might not even start to look for it unless you really know that you need it. If you are explicitly looking for a solution, then you'll find it. People that don't know that they should do backup don't have a place in IT. I rate BDRSuite Backup & Replication 8.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The most valuable features for me are that I can back up the entire virtual machine, but when restoring I can restore at the file level."
"It makes it possible for us to back up our Unix machines without installing a host, client, or any client software. It gives us some peace of mind in regards to those servers getting backed up."
"We use it to maintain critical data and save it."
"The most important features are the backup and the availability of the Universal Explorer. The in-transit compression is great."
"While BDRSuite offers a variety of functionalities, our primary focus is its disaster recovery capabilities, which we find to be the most valuable aspect of the software."
"Adding and removing backup jobs using BDRSuite is easy and also includes great documentation."
"Vembu provides us with a way to instantly recover data. It offers instant data recovery through a local backup server deployed at the customer's site. We can quickly recover data either by copying it back to the main server or if the backup server is powerful enough, we can also directly start a virtual machine from the backup."
"We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer."
 

Cons

"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"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."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"The system died twice and it was apparently the result of corrupted disk sectors. I tried to work with tech support to fix it, but they essentially gave up. So twice, I had to rebuild our server."
"The dashboard should more interactive."
"I suggest that the dump of the database have the option to either be backed up to Vembu Cloud or be backed up to all backup sites and not only to default storage."
"We have not been able to move our backups from one drive to another one. We can only create a storage pool. However, if we want to change a drive, it is not possible to delete one drive as long there is data on it. For this, we have to call the support. While they can solve this, it is not out-of-the-box."
"We do a lot of internal automation, so the Vembu API definitely has some gaps. The Vembu API could definitely use some improvement. We do rely a lot on automation outside of just the regular interface. We've noticed that the Vembu GUI is good, but we do leverage the APIs for a lot of stuff, and there's definitely some room for improvement there."
"The solution's UI and integrations could be better."
"Vembu will tell you the next scheduled backup, but it doesn't show you the last successful backup. I would have them include a column under "List of Backup Jobs" and have two other columns which say, "Last Successful Backup" and "Next Scheduled Backup", because you don't know now if it's backed up successfully. It just says, "The next scheduled time is this." You don't know from looking at that pane of glass when the last time it actually happened without digging further into reports."
"It is not a well-known software. People do not know about Vembu."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Price-wise, it is much cheaper than its counterparts. I like its pricing, and its price is okay. The lesser they take, the more profit we can make, but we are happy with its price. It is very affordable. We were working with a client, and they were looking for backup software and had a very tight budget. When I told them that Vembu is only going to cost around $400 to $500, they were shocked. They didn't believe me, so I showed them the website so that they can check the price themselves. Of course, if they agree to that price, we get a 15% rebate as a managed service provider."
"We were able to take advantage of a promotional pricing campaign."
"It is very cost efficient, effective. I’d say it's one-third the cost of Veritas when compared to the server backups. I even tried image backups on Acronis, but Acronis is very expensive. So these are some of the key reasons why I opted for it."
"We are saving $6,000 every three years versus having another product."
"The pricing is good. The tough part is estimating storage needs."
"The product's pricing is a good value. Vembu is cost-effective versus using VMware Essentials. Regarding licensing, make sure you find the right workstation or server that you're going to install it on, and know the number of sockets it has, since the price depends on that."
"The subscription model that we're signed up for is very good. The only thing that is something of a sticking point is the fact that you can't do PO-based licensing. It's all just credit card."
"The pricing could have been cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
19%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
7%
Marketing Services Firm
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: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.