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Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 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
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (13th)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
47th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus1.0%
Other98.0%
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…
reviewer1656648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Offers reliable recovery and backup but needs better ransomware protection
With ransomware protection and cyber protection, more improvement is possible. IBM provides these through a third party, so enhancement is needed. There's significant room for improvement. They are not yet where I want them to be. It does not offer horizontal and vertical scaling. These are areas IBM can improve.

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."
"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 can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"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 most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The most valuable features are the API features because it allows you to integrate with your Microsoft SQL, your Oracle, and your IBM Db2."
"When we need support, IBM is there."
"Pricing is good; it is reasonable and more reasonable than any other vendors."
"The tool has enough documentation; you don't need to contact the support team."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is its ease of use. Additionally, it does backups of all of the things we need, such as OS, files, and databases."
"The feature I find most valuable is the offload to Spectrum Protect for long-term retention. I think the deduplication and replication are quite nice on Plus."
"The most valuable feature is how we can easily power speed up the VM even though the VM resides in remote storage."
"What I like about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is its integration, plus it has very good technical support."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Instead of using the command prompt for troubleshooting and administering the backup, there should be an easy-to-use graphical user interface."
"Not particularly user friendly."
"The software's technical support could improve its response time for different time zones."
"I think the graphical reports are a shortcoming of the tool since it fails to provide my company with what we want in terms of reporting. Due to the product's inability to take care of its reporting part, we have to use third-party software."
"Rooms for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus are installation and configuration because those were difficult. They should try their best to improve those areas. In the next release of the product, better implementation and administration are what we're expecting."
"The security must be improved."
"It requires much more automation features."
"Their first level of support can be improved. Often they are too junior to understand the issues we are having, and it takes too much time to get from them to the next level of support, which is what we actually need."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"The price offering from IBM is coming down because it is based on number of VM machines. So, IBM is coming to the market to show the added value of the product."
"If you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive."
"There are a few options available for purchasing the solutions. Overall, the price of the is high."
"There is an annual license required to use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. The cost of the license could improve, it is expensive."
"I rate the price of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus a one on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is very cheap."
"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a little expensive."
"The solution is too expensive."
"Depends on the licensing options that you choose."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
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 Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise17
 

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 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
Pricing is good; it is reasonable and more reasonable than any other vendors.
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
Technical support could be improved significantly. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus could be made more lightweight and user-friendly in terms of GUI features to make it closer to a perfect score.
 

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.
PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.