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Bacula Enterprise vs N-able Cove Data Protection 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
25th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N-able Cove Data Protection
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
31st
Ranking in Cloud Backup
21st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (10th), MSP Backup (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.3%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able Cove Data Protection is 2.1%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.3%
N-able Cove Data Protection2.1%
Other96.6%
Cloud Backup
 

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.
Per MøllerJacobsen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at Azend A/S
Delivers cost-effective data backup with room for search improvements
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for something—you need to know where it was and when it was there to restore it, plus it would be nice to take out data from Microsoft 365 in some portable format, which is currently not an option. I would like to extract the data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format, something like a database or maybe just to take out a PST file or SharePoint and Teams files to the file system. Especially in these times, where we discuss potential risks with the Microsoft cloud for European companies, companies would want to know how to access their data from the backup if they suddenly don't have a tenant. I believe there should be the ability to take out data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format. I know that Cohesity is working on making such a thing. It's not there yet; I asked last week for something for forensics, and the support team said it's not possible yet, but I know from our technical account manager they are working on some solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"Technical support is excellent in my opinion."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Linux 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 its ease of use; it works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"Because the package includes cloud storage, we don't need to worry about hosting it inside. That was very important to us. And because the vendor has data centers worldwide, our reps in Europe and other places can get to what they need quickly and easily."
"With the monitoring it enables us to keep track, and it's more efficient, so it enables us to spend less time fixing backup issues for our customers."
"Overall, our team is much more satisfied, I don't have to bite my fingernails every morning wondering "What happened here?" and pretty much when things don't back up, it's usually either a machine failure or their network went down or something else is screwed up."
"For servers, first and foremost, it's just a rock-solid solution."
"What I like the most about it's the ease of use and the reliability that it has when copying information to the cloud."
"Cove Data Protection has streamlined how we handle data protection, as an MSP, saving me time with a single console to administer all client backups and dramatically improving the service levels I can offer customers while giving me confidence in reselling a trustworthy service and company."
"N-Able, as a whole, has given me the RMM solution that I desire and the backup solutions that I desire."
"One of the bigger features and advantages of the solution is that it is easy to integrate with my RMM which is also N-able."
 

Cons

"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."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"N-able Cove Data Protection for Microsoft 365 is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"N-able Cove Data Protection does not provide a lot of SaaS backup products, which is an area they can improve. Additionally, there are some limitations on the storage side, where I cannot have a lot of employees backing up their data."
"An area for improvement that would really work out well would be if there were a little bit more of an elegant handshake relationship between SolarWinds RMM and the PCs that are being backed up, to advise regarding "up" status... Since RMM is an agent that feeds back that a machine is alive and on, I don't see any reason why they can't either tap into that one feature or build the same exact polling within the backup agent, to update right away and say the system is online or offline."
"The recovery side, the restore side, could be a little more optimized."
"There aren’t any challenges. Regarding the additional features, Cove is limited to disaster recovery with Azure. It would be great to make disaster recovery compatible with AWS."
"This solution is not very good for image restores, but really excellent for files, databases and System State restores."
"We don't use the solution’s automated recovery testing because SolarWinds made me cross."
"A better default view on my dashboard would be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"The pricing of SolarWinds seems to be fair compared to the rest of the industry."
"The pricing is very competitive and it's well worth the price."
"The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data."
"There is no per node cost, at least not the way I am doing it. I am on bulk. New customers can be set up on a trial, where they can get things all squared away, then they can switch over to being a billed customer."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is an averagely-priced product."
"The pricing is affordable. N-able Cove Data Protection has a direct-to-cloud architecture, but it also allows saving backups locally without extra storage costs."
"The only option I would like to see is an adjustable scale. Right now we have 250 seats and we're not using all of them. It would be nice to be able to save that little bit of money by being able to buy just what we need."
"The price isn't extreme, but I'd love to pay less."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business19
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
 

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 N-able Backup?
In terms of pricing, N-able Cove Data Protection is neither cheap nor expensive compared to other competitors.
What needs improvement with N-able Backup?
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for s...
What is your primary use case for N-able Backup?
Our main use cases for enabling N-able Cove Data Protection include backing up our customers' data on servers hosted in data centers and servers hosted in our own data center, as well as a few onsi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
N-able Backup, SolarWinds Backup, SolarWinds MSP Backup & Recovery, SolarWinds MSP Backup
 

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.
Computer Depot, Leading Edge Computers, IT Logic Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. N-able Cove Data Protection and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.