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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs N2W comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is valued for integration, compatibility, and competitive pricing, with some users seeing quick ROI.
Sentiment score
2.2
<p>N2WS Backup &amp; Recovery users saved time and money, improved efficiency, reduced downtime, and achieved better data protection and ROI.</p>
In my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I have seen a return on investment as there are definitely fewer employees required to manage the backups, and there is definitely a major time save due to the single pane of glass.
Sr. Manager Data Protection at Epsilon
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.6
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus support is generally praised for responsiveness, despite concerns about initial delays and technical complexity issues.
Sentiment score
4.1
N2W's customer service is praised for promptness, expertise, and proactive problem-solving, making them a valued partner for users.
Their documentation, runbooks, troubleshooting articles, and support people are good.
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
We do not have a good experience with this product.
Architecte Solutions at Novahe
Their support is amazing. They get back to you in a timely manner and work with you.
Sr. Manager Data Protection at Epsilon
We would rate the customer support of N2W a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, as they are very easily accessible, friendly, and absolutely knowledgeable.
Director of Information Technology & Customer Success at Maplewave
Customer support for N2W is excellent, as they are able to answer quickly.
Director, Cloud Infrastructure and Systems Operations at d1g1t Inc.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.7
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus scales efficiently from small to large enterprises, though optimal planning enhances its scalability potential.
Sentiment score
3.8
N2W effectively manages AWS accounts and instances, ensuring seamless scaling and reliable backup without performance issues for growing needs.
The solution does not provide horizontal and vertical scaling.
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
IBM Data Protect is the scalable solution, not IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is praised for stability and reliability, though some report recovery issues and version-related instability.
Sentiment score
5.4
N2W is highly stable, with no downtime, exceptional cloud resource use, and consistent nine out of ten ratings.
I cannot determine what benefit IBM Spectrum Protect Plus brings to the organization because we deployed this solution with one customer, and that customer changed the product after one or two years because the product is not stable and it changes with every version.
Architecte Solutions at Novahe
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus needs a user-friendly interface, improved security, better integration, efficient backup, and enhanced technical support.
N2W requires UI, documentation, and functionality upgrades with enhanced automation, multicloud support, and comprehensive AWS integration.
It does not offer horizontal and vertical scaling.
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I used IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, but IBM is now replacing it with IBM Data Protect, which is a giant product now in common development with a well-known company in backup solutions.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
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.
Manager - Storage & Backup at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Adding an 'auto-delete after X days' option to manual backups, similar to scheduled policies, would be a fantastic addition for cost management and general housekeeping.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
An automated account enrollment or bulk import feature integrated with AWS Organizations or Control Tower would save significant time and reduce administrative overhead.
VP, Solutions Architecture at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Improved disaster recovery options and expanded multicloud support are two areas where N2WS has already made significant advancements in the latest version.
Cloud Manager at St. John's University
 

Setup Cost

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is costly but offers flexible licensing and is valued for scalability and automation benefits.
Enterprise buyers appreciate N2W's competitive pricing, flexibility, and ROI, with easy AWS Marketplace purchases and praised usability.
They are fairly expensive.
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is good; it is reasonable and more reasonable than any other vendors.
Manager - Storage & Backup at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing can increase as backup volumes grow, so it is important to balance the level of protection with cost-optimization strategies such as tiering snapshots to S3 or Glacier.
Platform Engineer at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
While N2W is a paid product, the cost is easily justified by the significant reduction in engineering hours spent on managing and troubleshooting custom backup scripts.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I believe N2WS offers a highly competitive pricing model, delivering excellent value.
Cloud Manager at St. John's University
 

Valuable Features

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus offers seamless integration, user-friendly features, and comprehensive data protection across multiple platforms and applications.
Users value ease of use, speed, cost efficiency, centralized management, and intuitive interfaces in backup and recovery features.
The biggest benefit of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is that it's an agentless backup product which is very easy to configure and use.
IT Specialist at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is the software we work with, and the new name is IBM Storage Protect.
Architecte Solutions at Novahe
Lifecycle management and automated transitions to lower-cost storage tiers have been instrumental in optimizing costs while meeting compliance and retention requirements.
Cloud Manager at St. John's University
We had a ransomware event in 2023, and we were able to recover every machine with minimal effort.
IT Operations Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The ability to define backup schedules, retention periods, and disaster recovery policies and have them apply automatically based on resource tags scales perfectly with our environment and enforces a consistent data protection strategy across the organization.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
47th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N2W
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
8th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (6th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N2W is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
N2W0.6%
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus1.0%
Other98.4%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1656648 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Offers reliable recovery and backup but needs better ransomware protection
With ransomware protection and cyber protection, more improvement is possible. IBM provides these through a third party, so enhancement is needed. There's significant room for improvement. They are not yet where I want them to be. It does not offer horizontal and vertical scaling. These are areas IBM can improve.
reviewer2757345 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Automation has transformed our backup process and validated our disaster recovery strategy
While the product is excellent, there are a couple of areas for potential improvement. The process for version upgrades, which sometimes requires deploying a new instance, could be streamlined to allow for a more seamless in-place update. It would be extremely useful to have the ability to set a retention period on manual backups. Occasionally, we take a manual snapshot before a major deployment, and currently, these can be forgotten, leading to unnecessary storage costs. Adding an 'auto-delete after X days' option to manual backups, similar to scheduled policies, would be a fantastic addition for cost management and general housekeeping. The EKS backup module should be a great feature, and it would have been a useful functionality to have for cluster backup management.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
8%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Technical support could be improved significantly. 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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N2WS Backup & Recovery?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is smooth, as I have not faced any issues while spinning up the instance from the marketplace, and the documentation is very comprehensive.
What needs improvement with N2WS Backup & Recovery?
The EKS environment solution could be improved.
What is your primary use case for N2WS Backup & Recovery?
Backup and snapshots. Before implementing a dedicated cloud-native solution, our primary pain point was the fragmented and manual nature of our data protection strategy. We were relying on a patchw...
 

Also Known As

No data available
N2WS Backup & Recovery, N2WS Cloud Protection Manager, N2W Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio
Deloitte, NASA, Johnson & Johnson, Dyson, Deuthsche Bahn, Skechers, Allan Gray, Hewlett Packard, St. John's University, City of Oakland
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs. N2W and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.