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Bacula Enterprise vs Unitrends 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)
Unitrends
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
35
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 Unitrends is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.1%
Unitrends0.7%
Other98.2%
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.
Derek Schneider - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Information Technology at a hospitality company with 201-500 employees
Daily recovery tests have validated restore readiness and ensured consistent data protection
The best features of Unitrends include the daily reporting functionality. When backups fail, it is obvious in the logs what caused the issue. Most times it is a credential problem, which is relatively easy to resolve. Though I have experienced a few more challenging issues, nothing has affected critical backup restore functionality. Every time I have needed to restore something, it has worked successfully. The support team is readily available when I need assistance, and they help walk me through issues, solving them within a reasonable timeframe. The automated backup scheduling feature has helped our organization in managing backup timelines and consistency by handling all the work automatically. We set the schedule, breaking things into smaller chunks since our main common area for files is large. I have staggered the backups so some areas receive more attention than others, particularly for less active data. Adding, removing, excluding, and inputting elements is straightforward. The system makes it simple to schedule portions and generate reports on their functionality. The impact of Unitrends' instant recovery features on strengthening data security measures is significant. I generally use instant recovery when restoring specific files or instances where we need data that has changed. The process involves loading the backup, selecting the desired version, waiting for it to unpack, and retrieving the file. Every restore attempt has been successful. I run instant recovery daily in test mode on two virtual machines. I use it to test my domain controller and file server to ensure they communicate properly in the test environment. This ensures that in case of failure, I can activate the recovery and restore server functionality.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Linux servers."
"Technical support is excellent in my opinion."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"Iinstant recovery (allows a spin-up of your image as a VM on the appliance)."
"The ability to backup both physical and virtual machines, along with having an appliance store the backups locally instead of on a file server, NAS, or SAN."
"The ability to diversify jobs within the same server helps break down a large chunk of data into more manageable and concentrated chunks."
"Unitrends product paid for itself in one year."
"It has reduced recovery time, from recovering VMs to just simple file-level recovery, and it's all fast and easy."
"Customer Service: Awesome support. Technical Support: Awesome support."
"They have great support."
"Every time I have needed to restore something, it has worked successfully."
 

Cons

"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."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive."
"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"The amount of updates which are being released. Updates should be limited to two or three a year, focusing more on quality instead of a rushed bug release."
"Scalability is where I'm running into more of an issue right now. To upgrade is pretty expensive; it's not like you can just buy a smaller appliance and put it with the one you already have, you need to buy a larger appliance and that can get fairly pricey."
"There are some questions as to how safely they are storing backup data."
"For smaller K12 schools, I wish they offered a beefier free version with more storage and options."
"All I can tell you is my friends made fun of me because of how often I had to call technical support."
"I would like to see the improve High availability features like switchover and switchback process. also unitrends boomerang compatibilities."
"It needs both a better interface and a more solid support structure for when issues arise."
"The ability to run just differentials without pulling the full on your archive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"Pricing model constantly changes."
"When you purchase initially, get into the program which gives replacement hardware for free when you renew your support agreement."
"Initial pricing is competitive. Renewal pricing is steep, so make sure to project costs for the lifetime of the appliance(s)."
"Unitrends is an expensive solution."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing is yearly and it depends on the customers."
"Their licensing depended on the number of CPUs you had."
"We found that the cost of Unitrends was about the same as the Dell DR6300. We liked the fact that the Unitrends appliance was all-in-one."
"The cost of Unitrends definitely draws you in. The licensing is all included in the appliance, which is a great incentive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Retailer
11%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
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 Business12
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise8
 

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 needs improvement with Unitrends?
I would evaluate the impact of Unitrends' ransomware detection for strengthening our data security measures as somewhat misleading. The ransomware detection from the appliance incorrectly identifie...
What is your primary use case for Unitrends?
Our main use case for Unitrends is taking our on-premise virtual machines or bulk data store and backing it up on a daily basis, or more frequently depending on requirements, and testing the virtua...
What advice do you have for others considering Unitrends?
Regarding Unitrends' integration with leading cloud services, I utilize Spanning, which handles Microsoft 365 environment backup for a location without direct file server access. Their SharePoint d...
 

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.
NHL Players Association, Salvation Army, Sligro Food Group, Mason General Hospital, Tec Group, Saldab IT, Baker Tilly, Clinton Savings Bank, Ennit Magna Bank, Manukau Institute of Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Unitrends and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.