No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (19th)
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
9th
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 June 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 1.5%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Veritas NetBackup1.5%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other97.5%
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

"The most valuable feature is the support for Linux servers."
"Technical support is excellent in my opinion."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"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."
"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."
"Bacula Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"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."
"It supports multiple, heterogeneous platforms."
"If you are running on a legacy tape environment NetBackup is best."
"For functionality in protecting the data, it has all of the requirements to protect any workload on the virtual machines."
"The solution is easy and very good."
"I think the support is fine. We haven't had issues with it."
"Veritas NetBackup is very good and stable."
"It is easy to use, and you can run it with all kinds of client software environments. It works well with the most popular software, file systems, and operating systems. It is very useful to us."
"The solution has many great features, particularly the feature they provide for deduplication."
 

Cons

"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Endpoint backup capability is needed."
"Improvements can be made to the service by providing better and more competitive ratios on data backups. The functionality for backups is there with Veritas, but I would like to see them optimize and enhance this feature more."
"Lacks a reporting feature."
"Our primary complaint about this product is that it is too expensive."
"Our real issue is the pricing and it's a recurring cost, so it's not something that will go away any time soon."
"It gets a lot of new features, but improvements in basic functionality are often sacrificed for a shiny new bullet point to put on sales presentations."
"It would be helpful, in future releases, if the solution could add WORM (Write Once Read Many) support right within the product."
"It was very complicated, and it required a lot of work in terms of management. We have moved to Rubrik. One of the reasons for getting rid of Veritas NetBackup was the fact that at one point, we had the support staff with 12 to 15 people to manage Veritas NetBackup, whereas, with Rubrik, I'm the only one managing Rubrik. There is one more person who works with me mostly due to the fact that in case I'm not around, someone else knows what to do, but I'm the only one who is a full-time manager of Rubrik. The complexity of Veritas required a large staff to manage it. We had daily issues that had to be looked into and resolved. A lot of these issues revolved around Veritas' handling of VMware, which is why first we moved VMware off Veritas. After we did that, we were also able to reduce our staff count. Their licensing is a disaster. It is extremely complicated. In most cases, Veritas themselves can't understand their own licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"The price of NetBackup is okay. I think it's a little bit expensive but manageable. It has a lot of features, and the backup is better than most applications, so I think the price is competitive."
"Smaller virtualized environments will want to stick to a traditional licensing model if possible. It will likely be cheaper, but it is a pain to manage all the individual licenses for each client."
"The solution is expensive compared to other products."
"If you have a complex environment with dozens of different servers and apps, I recommend you look for TB licensing."
"When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
"If you want to have more scalability you have to purchase more licenses. The license is annually and there are a lot of different licensing depending on the number of terabytes needed. It is not based on per-user, core, or servers. You can backup anything you want using the purchased terabyte space."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing 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 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.
What needs improvement with Veritas NetBackup?
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 failov...
 

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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.