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Actifio vs Zerto 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

Actifio
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
50th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Test Data Management (7th)
Zerto
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
299
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Actifio is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Anil-Sinha - PeerSpot reviewer
Actifio enables quick and efficient data refreshes
The product is scalable. However, to ensure optimal scalability, you need to work on the underlying hardware and resources. For example, if your network has limited bandwidth, you need to identify and address the bottlenecks by increasing resources. The product is designed to be scalable, but it requires attention to the underlying resources to ensure sufficient capacity. For example, they have the appliance on a given server. And that server would work till a certain stage. Then if you see that the resources are low or have reached the capacity, you have to next level of the VM, like, in terms of if there is a memory or CPU or from the appliance to wherever you are hosting, wherever you are presenting that virtual disk, that network traffic, if you see that network traffic is reaching capacity, then you have to add additional. So it's scalable from the design perspective, but you have to work on the underlying resources to make sure they also have that capacity.
Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features
Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Very user-friendly and the QSA is very good."
"They will assist me in achieving whatever budget issue the client may be having."
"The solution helps reduce costs."
"Very user-friendly and the QSA is very good."
"Actifio was very stable. Whenever they identified bugs, they would promptly provide us with patches."
"This product has unique capabilities that lead the product category in test data management, cloning and recovery."
"The simplicity of use is valuable. It is easy. We just click Failover and do it. It is pretty straightforward. If someone wants to do a test failover, they log in to the console and do a test failover"
"The most valuable feature is the customization that allows me to set my protection group myself."
"We have seen ROI. It reduced the time for failover and failback by 90%."
"The mobile application is very useful as a real-time monitoring, reporting tool. When asked the status of our machine backup and recovery ability, an easy answer is to display the status on the real-time application or browser. The Zerto Analytics tool helps predict future storage needs by tracking trends in space, journal size, and I/O rate. These are reportable statistics making quantifiable tracking easy and accurate. Having a web interface simplifies access by other system administrators."
"The most valuable aspect of Zerto is synchronized replication, which is very useful."
"The most valuable feature is Zerto's ability to precopy data to a remote destination prior to the actual live migration period. That saves us a lot of time and has been very helpful. For example, if we had migrations occurring in waves over a period of several weeks with a VPG or VPG setup of approximately 50 VMs, that is multiple gigabytes of data, even terabytes in many cases. Having that data already copied on the evening of the migration saves considerable hours of time. It easily saves us four to six hours a night."
"Zerto is scalable."
"You can set the number of days a VM can be rolled back in case of corruption or virus infection."
 

Cons

"Google has stopped supporting the on-premise version of the tool."
"Lacks the option to price backup costs within the solution itself."
"The solution doesn't support AIX software or in-cloud, and we have a lot of servers running on AIX and Oracle."
"The initial setup is complex."
"Areas that need improvement would be the support for recovery in the physical environment."
"While the product does support various databases, the company needs to make more of an effort to support N-minus-one compatibility."
"One issue we've been having with Zerto lately is the ability to go into maintenance mode during vSphere upgrades. It doesn't have the hook into the lifecycle manager of the bump. During vCenter or ESXi upgrades, it causes VCF to fail its pre-checks because the machine doesn't power off and go into maintenance mode. It's been an issue since version 7.5 and it's impacting a basic automation function in vSphere."
"I want to have an OVF or some local deployment where I can deploy the ZVRA rather than having to push it from the console. Some of our smaller remote sites have relatively poor bandwidth, and they can't keep up with the constant deployment stream from our center console, meaning we have to find some creative hours to get around the bandwidth bottlenecks. If I could push out a small install file, install it locally, and then reach back to the console, that would be excellent."
"Their offsite backup is a bit clunky, but it will probably improve."
"I always get some blowback about the cost. It does not seem too bad to me. We had to upgrade to a premium subscription to get some other features. Maybe a one-size-fits-all option would be better."
"The GUI could be streamlined a bit more to enhance the administrative tasks."
"There are quite a few elements in the long-term retention areas that I wish were better. The bio-level recovery indexing of backups is the area I struggle with the most. That's probably because I desire to do tasks that ordinary users wouldn't do with the solution. The standard medium to large customer would probably never ask for anything like I ask for, so I think it's pretty good the way it is. I'm excited to see some of the new improvements coming in the 9.5 version. Some of the streamlines and how the product presents itself for some of the recovery features could be better."
"I would like to see improvement on the Zerto Virtual Replication appliances, so that they are a little bit more streamlined as opposed to now where they just span multiple ZVR appliances like there were gremlins... as this thing grows it just spawns unlimited numbers of additional ZVR appliances and you end up with a bunch so that you can't really tell which is which."
"When we are trying to upgrade any virtual machines, we have to stop the virtual machines that have been replicated in Zerto and then upgrade or update to the virtual machines onsite. Instead of having to do it manually, there should be some way of automating that particular function."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Actifio is cheaper than other tools."
"Pricing is on a case by case basis."
"Support is very good. They send out a VM link and help you fix any issues."
"The pricing seems reasonable. It's still within what we consider to be value-add."
"I wish it were cheaper, but I would purchase it again at the same price."
"Its price can be better, but it is not bad. Most small-scale organizations can afford it, but they can come up with more customer-friendly packages."
"Price-wise, Zerto is fairly reasonable and I can't complain about it when we compare it against Oracle and SAP licensing."
"The pricing is top tier but offers good value."
"The cost per VM is a bit high."
"Pricing is adequate at the standard of the product, but there could be "always" some improvement. We would like to see a consumption model that would charge in a DR scenario, where you're failing over and consuming those resources, instead of a per-protected-node model."
"It works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
20%
Retailer
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Actifio?
Actifio is cheaper than other tools. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Actifio?
The product must provide AI features. Google has stopped supporting the on-premise version of the tool.
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What do you like most about Zerto?
Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?
Zerto is definitely more costly compared to its competitors, such as VMware Site Recovery Manager. It may not be suitable for small and medium-sized industries.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, Waste Industries, Nasdaq, Verizon, Sharp, Rosetta Stone, Dakine, JBS Australia, Texas Wesleyan University, Cintra, People's Choice Credit Union, Lotto NZ, Electric Insurance, Tyler Technologies, Intility, Corporate One Federal Credit Union, Bryant University, pc/nametag, Isagenix, Sungard Availability Services, Databank, Electrocraft, Lifescript, Westfleisch, Interstate National Corporation, RestorePoint, Net3, Access Community Health Network, Newmarket International, Rezolve Group Inc., Piri Reis University, MC Assembly, Grass-Merkur, dbMotion, Christian Broadcasting Network, Bezeq, Abilene Christian University, CNW Group, Softcat, Migliori, City of South Portland, NaviSite, News-Press & Gazette, Comtec, Equity Insurance, Admirals Bank, Assistra, Dassault, Henry Davis York Lawyers, SAI Global, Audax Group, DSM, Triad Retail Media, Euronet Worldwide, Palm Beach County School District, iGate, Emerald Queen Casino
United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Actifio vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.