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Veritas Backup Exec 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

Veritas Backup Exec
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Veritas Backup Exec is 1.7%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 3.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Q&A Highlights

MP
Jan 23, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified interface with good performance but needs monitoring
I need to use PowerStore and Veritas Backup Exec. It is a direct backup to types, and it is supported by my backup. It offers good performance and stability, and it works properly. I am happy with this program. It is still working on aligning with security requirements and data encryption for Amazon or ATAC. It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is one of the most stable backup solutions."
"The ease-of-use in general is great."
"It is a good overall suite of products."
"The interface, dashboard, and pricing are all perfect."
"For us, the main two features that we appreciate in this application are backup and restore. They are the main purposes for which we are using this application."
"Synthetic backup is valuable. It gives you the possibility to do a synthesized backup, which means that it combines a full backup and incremental backup data and gives it to you in one stream. So, you don't have to restore the full backup and then later go and restore the incremental backup. You can do that in one go."
"Good open file option feature, SQL agent, and EM agent."
"The solution is very scalable. Whenever we grew, it was just a matter of adding new licenses, so it's easy to grow."
"The most valuable feature is flexibility."
"The simulation engine is highly valuable as it allows us to simulate what a failure would be like and generate reports."
"The troubleshooting is very good."
"It saves time for the backup needs of our organization."
"Its ability to cover a large spectrum of products and operating systems is invaluable. We evaluated other products but always found certain limitations like some products had only intel-based virtualization, while others had power servers."
"The Dedup and file storage is great."
"The client side deduplication reduces the backup window."
"Disaster recovery primarily involves backup usage. We employ it for both backup and recovery purposes. The backup and recovery processes have been executed multiple times, even restoring data from backups created three to four years ago."
 

Cons

"I would like to see this solution improve on faster restoration. Currently, it takes a long time to restore my data."
"I would like to be able to create a restore task that can be scheduled so that the same restore action will be performed automatically."
"It's not too stable for client-server architecture. Center Management is not so interactive, and then there are some issues regarding the complex licensing which needs improvement."
"Veritas Backup Exec's dashboard feature could be enhanced."
"Whenever a job fails, it would be a great improvement to be able to resume the job from that feature. Suppose a job was started this morning and that it is going on while there are interruptions like network issues, server restart issues, server connectivity issues, services stopping, etc. For some reason, let's assume that the job failed or that it was mistakenly canceled by another person. It will be a great improvement if that failed job can be continued."
"At the moment, we have a very complex environment. It would take some time to deploy an environment like ours from scratch."
"The solution lacked local support, which became an issue for us and our customers. They needed to have more presence on the ground."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Support for the solution needs improvement."
"The product could improve the user-friendliness and comfort of its environment, especially for those unfamiliar with it."
"The restoration method and the compression ratio need improvement."
"The user interface could improve, it seems a bit out of date."
"The virtual environment, cloud integration, copy data management features need improvement."
"The restore tool is not friendly to newcomers."
"The licensing costs could be more affordable."
"There could be granular control over metadata components, specifically in the context of JSON data for the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like to see a better licensing model. They changed it and it's just horrendous."
"It has a good price-value ratio. Its price-value ratio is better than Veeam."
"It is a mid-range solution on the pricing scale."
"It is affordable, but I hope that the price will come down a lot because of other competitors. It is a good price for the customer, but sometimes, the competition provides a much lower price. There are two ways to license it. You can license it per instance or per terabytes of data that we are mocking up. It is enough because it is not so complex. It is good when you're working with customers."
"I think it's sold at the right price. It's not expensive. The license is usually for a year."
"I rate the price of Veritas Backup Exec a four out of five."
"The product is affordable."
"Pricing is similar, but they don´t offer the same options/technology."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
"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."
"The licensing fees are expensive."
"We are happy with the pricing that we have, but it's expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Pricing is expensive, so it could be lower."
"The licensing model is cost-prohibitive as you scale out."
"The solution is expensive compared to other alternatives."
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Answers from the Community

MP
Jan 23, 2020
Jan 23, 2020
Both solutions are perfect and great names in data protection. If you have a small or medium setup then go with Backup Exec and if you have a big setup with the latest workload then go with Net Backup. You can get a TB license for all servers which you want to protect.
2 out of 9 answers
it_user762030 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
We have just recently migrated our backups off of Netbackup due to the cost. I do not remember the licensing, but the whole product was getting too expensive for not only the product but for the management of the product. We had 6 different pieces in the environment due to some configuration designs. So we have moved to a product that we pay so much for the hardware and then a license for the amount of data we ingest through that product. It is one environment management that can handle a large amount of Data Protection.
Bckupdataad67 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
The proper question is not Backupexec or Netbackup but what kind of protection you want to have? We had backup exec for more than 4 years and I can assure you, as a backup administrator, that I had some really hard days related to the proper coverage of servers, applications, and data. Netbackup is the proper choice if you want a serious protection infrastructure but you have to consider the following key facts: -What type of environment do you want to protect? Netbackup works perfectly with VMWare and with mixed environments. I'm not saying that it will not work with other providers but the integration with VMware is one of the greatest pros of this product. -Is the backup time window enough to cover all your resources? With Backupexec I was struggling to have all backup jobs complete in a time frame of 13 hours. With Netbackup and especially in conjunction with their Appliances I was able to add more and more jobs for the very same time frame. -What is your frontend volume? With Netbackup the best solution is to have a Frontend Capacity license. With this license type, there's no need to buy extra licenses for SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Oracle, etc. It's an all-inclusive license. Furthermore, with the new version 8.2 you don't even have to install agents on servers! The prices may vary but I guess for i.e 20TB capacity the price will be somewhere between 80000 to 100000 euros (1-year maintenance included and assuming a feasible discount). You don't have to pay for an appliance but if you afford it it's highly recommended in order to achieve the best performance and other technologies (i.e AIR, deduplication ratio, etc). I don't really know what is the current status of Backupexec in terms of version, prices, features etc. As a product it's absolutely not comparable to Netbackup On the other hand we have left it behind for good.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file system backups inside VMs., support for tape library & FC too. But Veritas Netbac...
What do you like most about Veritas Backup Exec?
The most important feature is the variety of backup applications it supports, including ERP systems and most other programs, such as Microsoft.
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?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

Also Known As

Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Beta Offshore
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Veritas Backup Exec vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.