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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
28th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (19th)
Unitrends
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
29th
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 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 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 Enterprise1.0%
Unitrends0.7%
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.
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

"The solution has had a tremendous impact on our public company, as we are now cost-effective and even better on performance with our restorations."
"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 features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"Overall I really like the solution."
"I like the fact that you can recover the VMs inside the appliance. For example, they're basically running this appliance on a Linux-based distribution, and they're spinning off KVM virtual machines inside."
"Customer Service: Awesome support. Technical Support: Awesome support."
"The predictive analytics are great and the reporting is awesome."
"It was the first time I had ever seen a very good reporting system that provided a daily report that I call a traffic light report."
"The nice thing with this appliance is you do not have to worry about server licencing, and it's separate from the SAN."
"When I have had to use tech support, they've been very good."
"When we talk about a backup point of view, from a backup perspective, it's a good one."
 

Cons

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"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."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"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."
"If the interface could be less complex, it would be great. It's not the easiest to get around and to work with."
"We have a huge VMware infrastructure with multiple hosts that use local storage. Backup jobs of VMs seem to target one host at a time, so if there are 10 VMs on that host getting backed up, it hammers that ESXi host until sometimes the jobs hang and nothing more occurs."
"Having issues backing up systems with tons of small files."
"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."
"It seems like Unitrends moved away from enterprise customer engagement and moved more towards the managed service provider market."
"For smaller K12 schools, I wish they offered a beefier free version with more storage and options."
"I would like to see the improve High availability features like switchover and switchback process. also unitrends boomerang compatibilities."
"The only area that I would say needs some improvements is the initial setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"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."
"You should be aware how much the monthly costs are to use, what the initial costs for hardware are, and what the options to expand are, if needed."
"Pricing model constantly changes."
"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."
"No comment."
"The cost of Unitrends definitely draws you in. The licensing is all included in the appliance, which is a great incentive."
"Talk with the sales guys. They can work with you on the best package."
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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
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Outsourcing 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 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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.