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Bacula Enterprise vs Dell NetWorker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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
22nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
Dell NetWorker
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 1.3%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell NetWorker1.3%
Bacula Enterprise1.1%
Other97.6%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista Tecnologia Banco de Dados at Centro de Gestão da Tecnologia da Informação
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
RaedHassan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Specialist Backup/Storage at National Bank of Kuwait
Has supported flexible multi-platform backups and improved over time
Regarding the effectiveness of Dell NetWorker in terms of role-based access controls, I have experience with it, but I find it somewhat lacking in flexibility as it offers limited features, and I would rate it around seven out of ten. It is not that there is something wrong with the role-based access controls in Dell NetWorker, but it lacks many permissions or roles to assign, providing options only for administrator or user. To improve Dell NetWorker for the next release, I recommend enhancing flexibility in the policy, allowing selection of multiple options within the same policy, and addressing issues like the DNS lookup dependency to make it more controllable from Dell NetWorker itself rather than relying on other applications. Looking forward, I would like to see improved policy features and a more enhanced GUI, as it is still slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has had a tremendous impact on our public company, as we are now cost-effective and even better on performance with our restorations."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"Technical support is excellent in my opinion."
"Bacula Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"We have been using it for several years and we are very satisfied with how easy it is to configure and set up and run backups."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The most valuable feature is its ease of use; 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."
"Dell EMC NetWorker is scalable."
"Dell EMC NetWorker integrates well with our domain and the performance is quite good on-premise."
"It has the ability to support all kinds of backups. It can be used to back up databases, operating systems, virtual machines, Lotus Notes, and Exchange. It can also do remote image backups for remote sites. It integrates and works with Data Domain. It is an enterprise-class product that can be used for anything and everything across multiple sites and locations. It is also very scalable."
"The initial setup is completely easy, not hard at all."
"The best feature is the DR replication for us."
"The support of Dell EMC NetWorker is very good."
"Storage-wise, EMC is user-friendly."
"It has lots of great features, and we don't find anything lacking."
 

Cons

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"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 would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"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."
"I would not recommend Dell EMC NetWorker, as the product will end in a few years."
"The implementation was difficult and, due to some reason, it was not done properly and we had to suffer a lot."
"Support is definitely an area of concern because of the time it takes to resolve our issues."
"The interface is the same, so when we are trying to troubleshoot the logs, it doesn't display properly."
"Support is definitely an area of concern because of the time it takes to resolve our issues."
"The end-user experience is not good."
"Dell NetWorker could improve the GUI to include rack recovery."
"The process of upgrading versions should be improved because as it is now, you have to completely uninstall the old version first, and then install the new version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The tool is pricey."
"The pricing of this solution is very good."
"The licensing model can be traditional licensing or capacity-based licensing."
"It is not very expensive and not very cheap."
"The pricing for the telecom, government, and banking sectors is relatively affordable."
"The price is a little on the high side, but it's reliable and provides a good service."
"It's approximate, but I believe we pay around $20-30,000 a month in licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

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 Business24
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise38
 

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's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?
From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell NetWorker?
Regarding the pricing of Dell NetWorker, it depends on the deal or negotiation we have with the vendor, making it reasonable, although I cannot make a definitive decision without knowing the specif...
What needs improvement with Dell NetWorker?
Regarding the effectiveness of Dell NetWorker in terms of role-based access controls, I have experience with it, but I find it somewhat lacking in flexibility as it offers limited features, and I w...
 

Also Known As

No data available
NetWorker
 

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.
Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Dell NetWorker and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.