Bacula Enterprise vs Unitrends comparison

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Bacula Enterprise

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Bacula Enterprise and Unitrends compete in data backup and recovery solutions. Unitrends has the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and smoother deployment.

Features: Bacula Enterprise is known for its flexibility, scalability, and customization options across different environments. Unitrends offers an all-in-one approach with a wide array of built-in features, convenience, and a more comprehensive feature set. This makes Unitrends suitable for users seeking a ready-to-use solution with diverse capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Bacula Enterprise needs better documentation, increased user-friendliness, and a more manageable learning curve. Unitrends could improve by addressing system sluggishness and enhancing agility in complex environments. Bacula's complexity and flexibility challenge user experience, while Unitrends' performance issues are less significant.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Bacula Enterprise's deployment requires significant expertise and time, although its customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and helpfulness. Unitrends provides a smoother and quicker deployment process with dependable customer service, making it advantageous for businesses seeking rapid deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Bacula Enterprise is often seen as more cost-effective, with lower initial setup costs and better ROI. Unitrends has higher upfront costs, but users believe the investment is justified because of its robust features and overall performance. Bacula attracts budget-conscious users, while Unitrends appeals to those focused on long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Bacula Enterprise vs. Unitrends Report (Updated: April 2025).

Bacula Enterprise vs. Unitrends

April 2025

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Helped 848,989 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (18th)

Unitrends

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

38th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Unitrends is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Davilson Aguiar

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.

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Todd Guthrie

Director Of Information Technology at Creation Technologies

The solution can be used to back up servers and Hyper-V cluster nodes, but its support is super expensive

I wouldn't rate Unitrends a ten out of ten because we had some hard drive failures in the appliance. Typically, when you have OneDrive, you can get it replaced. For some particular reason, the situation caused the entire system to crash. We had to reinstall the CentOS operating system on it, and we lost all our backups. They said there was no way to retain it, and it was pretty devastating and concerning that a drive failure would cause the loss of all the data on the appliance. It was extremely disappointing, and we had to start from scratch after three years worth of backup data. I rate Unitrends a nine out of ten for stability.

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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 solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."

"The ability to diversify jobs within the same server helps break down a large chunk of data into more manageable and concentrated chunks."

"It is very easy to set up and get started. Almost too easy. We racked this device and had it up and running in less than 15 minutes."

"I am impressed with the tool's reporting and UniView features."

"If you are a large organization, this is a product for you."

"The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback"

"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."

"VM backup is much faster and more reliable, as I can test my backups with Data Copy Access jobs."

"The predictive analytics are great and the reporting is awesome."

More Unitrends pros

Cons

"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."

"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."

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."

"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."

"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."

"If the interface could be less complex, it is would be great."

"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."

"Comparing the features and the working pattern, definitely they have to come down on pricing if they want to compete in the market."

"In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses."

"The solution’s UI can be improved. I am saying this because I have seen solutions with better UIs."

"Support is great for small simple issues, but anything more difficult, it is hard to get good resolutions without having to badger them and their management."

"The solution’s support and onboarding process needs to be improved."

"I would like to see the real-time replication process improved, and a zero RPO feature added."

More Unitrends cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."

"This is an open-source solution."

"With respect to cost, my advice is to get what you need."

"The cost of Unitrends definitely draws you in. The licensing is all included in the appliance, which is a great incentive."

"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."

"Unitrends is an expensive solution."

"When we renew the Unitrends maintenance contract and update it to the latest version, the cost would be $5,000 per year. There are no hidden costs. They've been transparent with the costs."

"I would rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing is yearly and it depends on the customers."

"Talk with the sales guys. They can work with you on the best package."

"Make sure you do the homework to size the solution properly. Buy the Enterprise Plus licensing if you can afford it."

More Unitrends pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

University

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 do you like most about Unitrends?

The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Unitrends?

Unitrends is an expensive solution. We've negotiated deals where they've given us the $ 62,000 to $ 64,000 appliance for free but charged $ 90,000 for three years of support.

What needs improvement with Unitrends?

In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't s...

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Product Reports

Download Bacula Enterprise product report

Backup and Recovery

April 2025

Download Unitrends product report

March 2025

Overview

Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

Bacula Systems

Organizations rely on Unitrends to back up and protect both physical and virtual servers with compatibility for legacy systems and an appliance model.

Unitrends supports Microsoft Hyper-V clusters, VMware ESXi clusters, SQL databases, and Exchange DAGs. Valuable for K-12 schools for continuous monitoring via a graphical interface, it also offers real-time synchronization, file restoration, report generation, email status updates, redundancy, and ransomware protection. Features include effective technical support, instant recovery, detailed reporting, real-time synchronization, global deduplication, cross-compatibility for OS backups, and frequent updates. Easy to install for Hyper-V appliances, the platform benefits users with its dashboard insights, saving time and ensuring reliability. While improvements are needed in high availability features, customer engagement, cloud capabilities, storage options, and the free version, the UI, configuration complexity, pricing, and support costs also demand attention. Users find scaling challenging and desire better feature parity with competitors, clearer recovery information, improved scripting, and flexible retention settings based on repository.

What are the most important features?

Effective technical support
Instant recovery
Detailed daily and email reporting
User-friendly interface
Real-time synchronization
Global deduplication
Cross-compatibility for diverse OS backups
Frequent updates
Ease of installation for Hyper-V appliances
Automated feedback
UniView features
Instant power-on
Cost-effective pricing
Time-saving dashboard insights

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Time-saving features
Efficient data synchronization
Enhanced data recovery and protection
Accurate reporting and insights
Cost-effective and reliable solution

K-12 schools use Unitrends for continuous monitoring and verification via a graphical interface. Its real-time synchronization, file restoration, and report generation features support educational institutions' needs, ensuring data protection and operational efficiency.

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