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Carbonite Server vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 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

Carbonite Server
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
56th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (46th)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
51st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Carbonite Server is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus1.1%
Carbonite Server1.0%
Other97.9%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

CP
Backup, storage and disaster recovery technical specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
A reliable backup product which needs little management
For most technical users the setup and initial deployment are fairly straightforward and once deployed it 99% of the time looks after itself. Installation of the agents is similar to most other products in that it has an install wizard to guide you, the accompanying documentation is also very useful to assist wherever you are in the agent install and policy setup process. Normally our customers' IT team does the deployment of agents, however, this isn't a daunting task unless you are dealing with multiple servers to protect the product. On a server-by-server basis, the deployment doesn't take long. From the MSP side of things, the infrastructure sitting behind the scenes doesn't take too much to install, configure and maintain.
AS
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
Has provided straightforward backup and rapid deployment for diverse environments
There is reporting in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, but I'm not very familiar with this area. I always concentrated on getting the customer to do the backup, restore, and related tasks, but there is reporting. IBM has made a decision to withdraw the product and replace it with IBM Data Protect. The correct direction is Data Protect, which includes ransomware detection. With IBM Data Protect, you can add more servers for backup. It's scalable, which is a key feature over Storage Protect and Storage Protect Plus, even more capable than Veritas, because Veritas has an option to make different media servers. You can scale the backup process regardless of the load of the customer. This speeds up the backup and restore process for a complete data center, which cannot be done with any other product. I rate IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 9 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Easy verification of things is the most valuable feature."
"The Granular Restore of SQL feature has been a lifesaver more times than I can count. One of the main reasons for looking at Carbonite was their support for platforms like AIX and AS/400 Series."
"Technical support handled all our issues quickly and effectively."
"The solution is a free engine to help work with the container."
"It does not slow down your computer or use a lot of resources as it works."
"I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable."
"It seems reliable and easy to use."
"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The solution is scalable."
"This solution is very stable and has good support available online."
"The API is very good."
"The feature I find most valuable is the offload to Spectrum Protect for long-term retention. I think the deduplication and replication are quite nice on Plus."
"The solution's stability is high because it is derived from Spectrum Protect."
"The support from IBM is very good."
"A full-featured data protection solution that is reliable and stable."
 

Cons

"It could be a little bit easier or faster to be able to access data files without having to download anything."
"The Hyper-V backup has room for improvement."
"They do not yet have USB recovery but they are adding it in coming releases."
"The support for object storage isn't quite there yet. Its public cloud support can be improved. I would love to see the public cloud support for object storage, and it would be great, but what I always hear from the folks at Carbonite is that in a lot of cases, it directly competes with their cloud offering. So, I don't know when or where that will go or if that will go anywhere, but we are hopeful to see something. The dashboard is a little outdated. If they gave it a facelift and put some better design around their dashboard, that would be tremendous. I generally care less about the visual aesthetics of an application as long as it does what it needed to do, which is true in the case of this solution. We also have the Microsoft 365 platform. Because they're two separate platforms, I have to log in to my Microsoft platform to manage it, and I have to log into my Carbonite server backup platform to manage it. Having these two coexist together in one management console is really what we're looking for, but we went for it knowing this. We also knew that there would be some integration coming down the road. So, we're again hoping to see some of that coming in 2021."
"In the next release I would like to see an improvement in the auto failover option."
"The stability has room for improvement."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is related to marketing. Currently, it is very difficult to find the right paper and stuff for me. Their marketing department should provide better information because currently, it is very difficult to find information on the internet. It was bought over by OpenText, and you won't be able to find a lot of information about this solution on their site. They should also provide training facilities for commercial purposes. Some of my colleagues recently went for pilot training, and they were technical. If I want to get trained, the training has to be more commercial. Currently, there is no such training for users like me."
"The software's technical support could improve its response time for different time zones."
"There could be better integration with Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus, it should be one solution."
"It requires much more automation features."
"An area that needs improvement is data validation. We currently use another product that gives us immediate validation, information about when the last backup was, and no risk of corruption happening. TSM in IBM Spectrum is not mature so that you can validate on the spot."
"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus could be made more lightweight and user-friendly in terms of GUI features to make it closer to a perfect score."
"I would like to see continuous data protection (CDP). If there is machine failure, you don't have to go to the backup copy that you took 12 hours ago. You can actually go back to the backup copy made half an hour ago. That is, it would be good to have certain-point-in-time recovery."
"The solution should allow for backup of iOS snapshots."
"The security must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay 9,000 dollars per year for our license."
"The solution is open source."
"Its price is reasonable."
"The pricing is between $120 and $150 per year."
"If you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive."
"Clients prefer to buy a perpetual license, but the majority opt for a yearly subscription."
"The initial cost of the product is perpetual but the support fees are billed annually."
"There is an annual license required to use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. The cost of the license could improve, it is expensive."
"The price is perpetual, but the maintenance cost is annual. That is, we pay once for the product and pay annually for the maintenance and support. The price was much cheaper than what we would have had to pay for EMC or Veritas. The pricing is competitive, and I would rate it at four out of five."
"Depends on the licensing options that you choose."
"There are a few options available for purchasing the solutions. Overall, the price of the is high."
"The price offering from IBM is coming down because it is based on number of VM machines. So, IBM is coming to the market to show the added value of the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
Pricing is good; it is reasonable and more reasonable than any other vendors.
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is very simple to deploy for us, but for more clients or competitors, the solution is hard to deploy and to integrate. For our team, deployment of IBM Spectrum Protect Plu...
What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?
We are an IT integrator and we need to have a good vision of all recovery and backup recovery solutions. Most frequently, we use Veeam Backup. We use Cohesity. For some old workloads, we use IBM TS...
 

Also Known As

Carbonite Recover Backup
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County
PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio
Find out what your peers are saying about Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.