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Altaro VM Backup for MSPs vs Unitrends comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Altaro VM Backup for MSPs
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
MSP Backup (5th)
Unitrends
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (38th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Altaro VM Backup for MSPs and Unitrends aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Altaro VM Backup for MSPs is designed for MSP Backup and holds a mindshare of 5.3%, up 4.5% compared to last year.
Unitrends, on the other hand, focuses on Backup and Recovery, holds 0.5% mindshare, down 0.5% since last year.
MSP Backup
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Anthony Linder - PeerSpot reviewer
An incredibly stable product with a great user interface
Improvements are needed in the solution since it might get difficult if you just drop a technical person who doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs. A technical person who hasn't received any dedicated training or hasn't gone through the documentation part of the solution may find the product to be a little non-intuitive at times. In Altaro VM Backup for MSPs, if you expect something to be somewhere else or when you expect a certain part of the user interface to function in a specific way, it doesn't happen so since the functionality that you expect to be there in the product isn't present on that screen and you need to go somewhere else for that piece. I think that is the case with the most complex tech products. I would like to be able to store a full cluster environment inside of Altaro VM and make sure that the cluster communicates inside of the product, presuming that we have the necessary backup drive in our company. Altaro VM already can test individual VM restores, but one can't really go beyond that scope, at least with the version of the solution that we have in our company right now.
Todd Guthrie - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution can be used to back up servers and Hyper-V cluster nodes, but its support is super expensive
I wouldn't rate Unitrends a ten out of ten because we had some hard drive failures in the appliance. Typically, when you have OneDrive, you can get it replaced. For some particular reason, the situation caused the entire system to crash. We had to reinstall the CentOS operating system on it, and we lost all our backups. They said there was no way to retain it, and it was pretty devastating and concerning that a drive failure would cause the loss of all the data on the appliance. It was extremely disappointing, and we had to start from scratch after three years worth of backup data. I rate Unitrends a nine out of ten for stability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Granular restoration is extremely useful in Altaro VM Backup for MSPs since it is something that we make use of the most in our company."
"They have great support."
"I am impressed with the tool's reporting and UniView features."
"The ability to backup both physical and virtual machines, along with having an appliance store the backups locally instead of on a file server, NAS, or SAN."
"It is fairly stable."
"Being an appliance-based solution, we were able to migrate backup solutions without having to purchase a lot of hardware separately."
"I really like the reporting options you get for various email reports."
"Backup/archive to multiple locations."
"The predictive analytics are great and the reporting is awesome."
 

Cons

"A technical person who hasn't received any dedicated training or hasn't gone through the documentation part of the solution may find the product to be a little non-intuitive at times."
"Network-based storage stability could be improved."
"There are a few quirks where the GUI, agent, and back-end are not precisely meshed."
"It seems like Unitrends moved away from enterprise customer engagement and moved more towards the managed service provider market."
"Support is great for small simple issues, but anything more difficult, it is hard to get good resolutions without having to badger them and their management."
"There's a lot that can be made better. For example, it could be more scalable."
"Probably the biggest issue I've had is actually paying for the unit, and part of that problem is that they use a third party for the billing."
"The solution's base operating system needs to be improved."
"It would be great to have the job throttle/limit the max number of backups on a single ESXi host."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"When you purchase initially, get into the program which gives replacement hardware for free when you renew your support agreement."
"Based on a scale of one to ten, with one being low and ten being high, I would rate the pricing of this solution as a three. Also, there are no additional costs involved in the standard licensing of the solution."
"Pricing model constantly changes."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing is yearly and it depends on the customers."
"You should be aware how much the monthly costs are to use, what the initial costs for hardware are, and what the options to expand are, if needed."
"Talk with the sales guys. They can work with you on the best package."
"Unitrends is an expensive solution."
"When we renew the Unitrends maintenance contract and update it to the latest version, the cost would be $5,000 per year. There are no hidden costs. They've been transparent with the costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
Granular restoration is extremely useful in Altaro VM Backup for MSPs since it is something that we make use of the most in our company.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
To be honest, I don't get to see the bill for Altaro VM Backup for MSPs.
What needs improvement with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
Improvements are needed in the solution since it might get difficult if you just drop a technical person who doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs. A technical...
What do you like most about Unitrends?
The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Unitrends?
Unitrends is an expensive solution. We've negotiated deals where they've given us the $ 62,000 to $ 64,000 appliance for free but charged $ 90,000 for three years of support.
What needs improvement with Unitrends?
In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't s...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alpha & Omega Computer Consultants, Chorus
NHL Players Association, Salvation Army, Sligro Food Group, Mason General Hospital, Tec Group, Saldab IT, Baker Tilly, Clinton Savings Bank, Ennit Magna Bank, Manukau Institute of Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about Vembu Technologies, N-able, MSP360 and others in MSP Backup. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.