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Bacula Enterprise vs Veritas NetBackup 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
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (16th)
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 1.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Veritas NetBackup1.7%
Bacula Enterprise1.1%
Other97.2%
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.
SunilPanigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Unified backups have protected virtual machines and applications and optimize storage efficiency
Regarding automated disaster recovery, we have not used Veritas NetBackup automated disaster recovery because according to the RFP terms and conditions, we are not supposed to have automated failover or failback, as we are a government entity and cannot violate the rules of the RFP. My feedback about granular recovery in Veritas NetBackup is that we have been doing verifications of the backed-up data to restore from point to point and time to time, focusing on file level or database level. When it comes to integration with cloud services, we have not started because we are a government entity and are not allowed to store any data in the cloud at this time. From security concerns regarding what I would improve about Veritas NetBackup, I think you need to look into this because we found only one encryption option available, which is not that very strong. When I initiate a backup from my laptop or server to the appliance or the tape media using Veritas NetBackup, the encryption channels are not strong, and there are not many options available. Whatever is there is by default and not changeable. We cannot modify any encryption facilities, and security is a big concern nowadays, so you need to look into that. Regarding the functionality part of Veritas NetBackup, I think this encryption feature should be stronger and integrated from point to point, not just at specific levels. When I initiate a backup, all the communication channels involved should be encrypted until it reaches the endpoint, meaning from client to server, server to client, and client device.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"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."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"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."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"Stability, easy troubleshooting"
"It provides us with the versatility to back up everything we require which eliminates the need for a secondary backup solution."
"The deduplication feature is useful. Deduplication and compression features are what I like about NetBackup."
"The VM portal and the CloudCatalyst are two of the solution's most valuable features."
"The Replication Director, Auto Image Replication, Accelerator, Oracle Intelligent Policy, synthetic and VADP backups are the most valuable features."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is easy to learn."
"I am comfortable with using this product."
 

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."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"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."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"GUI needs to be more user-friendly."
"Setup implementation."
"The restoration method and the compression ratio need improvement."
"The restore tool is not friendly to newcomers."
"The ability to use different disk appliance brands as Pure Disk (not OST), such as EMC Data Domain."
"The most common problem is the backup failures over the weekend. We have to troubleshoot and sometimes do restores and then we have trouble doing some of the restores."
"The cost is expensive."
"Some of the hardware is out of support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"A better price would make this product more competitive."
"It was on a yearly basis. During the annual review, when we asked them about our licensing, they couldn't explain it. For example, we had reduced by a factor of 40%, but our license only dropped by 5%. We would then ask Veritas people if we've reduced this much and shut down these servers, why has our license changed so less? They were never able to give us a straight answer. They weren't able to say, "Well, you're using this, and this is more expensive." In many cases, as we reduced our capacity and what we were using with Veritas NetBackup, our licensing actually went up, and they were often unable to explain why."
"It is very expensive. The licensing cost for this solution is on a yearly basis. It is approximately 50k. We will continue using it at least for the next year, but we are currently doing an analysis to switch to some other solution."
"The licensing model for this solution is very powerful."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
"This is an affordable solution"
"Veritas NetBackup's pricing is a bit steep when compared to other tools. It is very costly, but service-wise and overall, the Veritas NetBackup is a good product."
"My licensing model is based on capacity so as we grow, the price we pay increases and it becomes too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise66
 

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 the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
I would rate pricing for Veritas NetBackup around six, as it is neither high nor low.
 

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.
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.