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Bacula Enterprise vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) 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
28th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (19th)
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)0.7%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other98.3%
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.
NimitPuvar - PeerSpot reviewer
A VP Enterprise Sales at Ashtech Infotech (India) Pvt.Ltd.
Centralized backup has improved data protection and simplifies secure, compliant restores
The biggest advantage of the product is that it is basically a single appliance which comes with a bundle of backup software and the appliance, as we have a single console to manage it. It also provides other features such as data encryption at rest, along with data deduplication and compression in backup which is very useful. From the centralized dashboard, we can manage the backup job and determine if the backup job is happening appropriately or not. If any backup job fails, we can find out the root cause for the failures. Because it is a hardware-based appliance, we can restore the data immediately, and it provides genuine restore capabilities. In terms of data availability compliance, we are looking for data availability and data security in terms of encryption, data deduplication and compression. It provides data availability as each appliance comes with RAID. If one or two disks fail, then our data appliance is still available for backup. It also provides encryption, so our data is also ransomware protected.

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 extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Linux servers."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The product is easy to troubleshoot and store data."
"In summary, this product is very stable, has the best of Avamar Data Domain, and has good reporting."
"Dell PowerProtect is stable and scalable."
"What I appreciate most about Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is the ability to adjust your type of bandwidth, because some of our nodes sit in remote areas in the mining industry, so we have wireless links running, and especially with wireless, we sometimes have intermittent connectivity."
"The solution's most valuable features are networker and continuous data protection."
"The most valuable feature is the deduplication rate."
"If someone is looking for a very tightly-coupled solution for backup storage and does not want to deal with complicated upgrade processes, and desires easy reporting and a homogeneous solution rather than heterogeneous backup solutions where backup software and storage are different, I believe Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is one of the best options for such customers."
"The features I appreciate the most about Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) are that it's self-service, simple to use, and has some immutability to protect the data from any tampering."
 

Cons

"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive."
"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."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We would like to see the pricing drop a bit."
"After resizing and compression, the system continuously runs out of space. Dell EMC doesn't do automatic cleanup or other things, so we constantly have to manually go in there or work with Dell support on this. The solution has not been working as advertised."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) requires more updates and innovations in AI-powered cyber resilience."
"However, I would say the bare-metal restores need improvement because if you have a failure on a certain piece of hardware, you have to replace it with the same hardware, which is the only thing I can mention."
"The price could be lowered slightly, to make it more competitive."
"Each and every Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) appliance comes with a fixed size, which means if our data has grown, we have to upgrade to another appliance."
"The solution's implementation was very complicated and could be improved."
"The negative aspect I can mention regarding Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is that when it was built on VMware, it had some flaws, and the system was not built properly, necessitating access to individual VMs for configuration and troubleshooting, which has been resolved in the DM version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"We have a perpetual license. It is a capacity-based license."
"The licensing is billed on a monthly basis. Dell is bundled so that when you order IDPA, you get everything together with the license."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) has a yearly subscription fee."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise9
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
It is competitive; it is not expensive, but it is competitive with the other similarly available solutions.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
Each and every Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) appliance comes with a fixed size, which means if our data has grown, we have to upgrade to another appliance. Some appliances provide in-place data upgra...
What is your primary use case for Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is used centrally for backup purposes, as we use it for backup purposes only with our critical applications.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dell EMC IDPA, Dell IDPA, EMC IDPA
 

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.
Under Armour, Christian Brothers University, Presidio
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.