AWS Backup vs Zerto comparison

Read 299 Zerto reviews

8,092 Views
3,849 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

AWS Backup

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Zerto and AWS Backup compete in the disaster recovery and data protection market. Zerto seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced capabilities and customer support.

Features: Zerto offers real-time replication, hardware-independent disaster recovery, and supports replication across multiple hypervisors, allowing for failover testing without impacting production environments. AWS Backup automates backups for AWS services, relying on periodic snapshots and integrates seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem, supporting regular backups and data protection.

Room for Improvement: Zerto needs enhancements in documentation and reporting. There are demands for support for more hypervisors and automated load balancing. AWS Backup could improve by offering file and database-level backups, refining restore processes, and enhancing hybrid cloud capabilities, along with providing customizable backup schedules.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zerto, deployed on-premises or hybrid clouds, is praised for excellent technical support and customer service. AWS Backup, designed for cloud-based deployment, follows a pay-as-you-go model and is perceived as less customer service-focused, with room for improvement in integrating hybrid environments.

Pricing and ROI: Zerto's premium pricing, based on VM licensing, reflects its extensive disaster recovery features and justifies ROI through downtime reduction. AWS Backup, using a pay-as-you-go model without licensing costs, offers competitive pricing aligned with ease within AWS ecosystems, though potentially more expensive for broader environments.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Backup vs. Zerto Report (Updated: March 2025).

AWS Backup vs. Zerto

Download the complete report

Helped 842,767 peers since 2012

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

AWS Backup

Ranking in Cloud Backup

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

SaaS Backup (4th)

Zerto

Ranking in Cloud Backup

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

299

Ranking in other categories

Backup and Recovery (2nd), Cloud Migration (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of AWS Backup is 3.5%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 4.1%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Backup

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Simplify compliance and management of multiple backups with centralized cloud solutions

AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services. Also, it would be helpful if AWS Backup could integrate logs more thoroughly. This would allow not only new users but also experienced users to more easily check logs directly from AWS Backup.

Read full review

Sachin Vinay

Assistant Manager-Networks at Amrita

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features of AWS Backup are very service-oriented and user-friendly."

"The customer service is top-notch, rated ten out of ten."

"It is highly scalable for both SMEs and large enterprises."

"AWS Backup's most valuable feature is that you can configure it remotely to create backups."

"It is an easy-to-use solution."

"The most valuable feature is the daily incremental site backup."

"The advantage that AWS Backup has over competitors is that it's very simple."

"We can directly back up EC2 instances in AWS without using any third-party applications."

More AWS Backup pros

"It is convenient to use because the API allows for seamless integration when performing our day-to-day operations."

"With Zerto CDP, we can pull to our recovery objective in six seconds."

"Journaling allows us to leverage Zerto's journal for sub-minute recoveries, instead of having to wait for the storage array to replicate."

"The most valuable feature for us is accelerating cloud adoption, as it helps provide greater speed for disaster recovery. Ultimately, this saves us time, as well as resources."

"The Move feature is the most valuable feature because it allows us to move the VM from our old environment to our new environment with minimal disruption."

"It's way better than anything else on the market."

"Zerto's most valuable features include its user-friendly interface, multi-tenancy capabilities, and near-zero downtime recovery."

"It's very stable. It doesn't require a lot of intervention."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"Only the price could be improved."

"To create a plan and for all the configuration, one has to do multiple steps, which could be organized in a much simpler way, making the user experience better."

"One improvement I would like to see in AWS Backup is the implementation of incremental backups."

"There could be a centralized dashboard with a reporting feature notifying us of daily backup status."

"AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services."

"They should work on their visual capabilities."

"The AWS Backup backend reporting is a major area that needs improvement. We would be very excited if we can see some reporting, such as trends. We do understand that there are reports available for S3 Bucket, in which the AWS backend stores the data. However, if we can receive holistic reporting, then it would be very helpful for us."

"The notifications on the backup and on the mobile app could be more useful. If they could arrange notes or notifications properly and offer services for managing it in our region, it would be helpful for us."

More AWS Backup cons

"There needs to be more flexibility in the licensing."

"The long-term recovery is a little bit weak in its granularity."

"The biggest pain points we have experienced are related to some of the SQL-intensive workloads just because the VPGs struggle a little bit to keep up. That might be because we are pushing too many transactions."

"It needs more documentation and automation features. I would like more documentation on designing an environment and network operations. On the automation side, I would like automation to clean up the environment in cases of a failed DR effort. An API interface to perform the DR exercise would also be nice."

"If we have multiple VMs in a VPG (Virtual Protected Group) and one VM is hung for DR, it holds things up. The only alternative is to create multiple VPGs. It would be nice to have one VPG where, if one VM is failing, it does not impact the overall process."

"Zerto could be considered as a backup product but this is not true. So if we could consolidate and use Zerto for disaster recovery as well as everyday backup and restore for situations where we need to recover something, that would be helpful. Anyway, we think that Zerto will win with no competition in the Disaster Recovery process, so we stay focused on this. Now we are testing version 10 which include real-time ransomware detection, a new Cyber Resilience Vault and enhanced cloud capabilities and security: we expect more from these features for superior hybrid cloud security."

"From the relationship standpoint, we have never had a local rep in South Bend, Indiana. It has always been somebody in Boston, and there is not a lot of communication. That is one of the big things. We would like help driving the business and talking to our sales people as well as more involvement from them. We could really utilize it more, drawing more customers in, but we need help with that."

"We would like some of the real fine or granular things. We've submitted a few minor things for enhancements such as being able to control bandwidth utilization for each facility you replicate to versus overall. We just need a little bit more granularity on some of the things, but there is not a whole bunch that is in need of tweaking."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is much cheaper than some vendors but more expensive than others."

"It's a myth that Cloud is cheap. Cloud is cheap initially, but the cost over time can be equal to your own infrastructure if you consume a lot."

"AWS is more expensive than some competitors like Azure."

"The product is inexpensive."

"There is a lot of flexibility with the services and pricing. The price is reasonable when compared to other products. This is very good for us."

"There are no licensing costs for AWS Backup. You pay only for the amount of backup storage you use and then the data transferred between regions. Overall AWS Backup is priced reasonably."

"Price-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten. One only has to pay for the storage cost of AWS solutions, which is the standard cost provided by AWS."

"AWS Backup is a very cheap solution."

More AWS Backup pricing and cost advice

"They should adjust the pricing because I feel its price is too much. If they reduce the price, there will be more users and customers."

"The licensing costs are not cheap. It is kind of an expensive product. However, I am a get-what-you-pay-for kind of person. After using this product, I can understand why the licensing costs are high."

"It is not the cheapest product; it is not the most expensive product, but it works. It is a mid-range product, and it is justified in terms of being pretty quick and easy."

"Zerto is more expensive than competitors, making the price difference pretty high. While it is very expensive, it's very powerful and good at what it does. The cost is why we are not leveraging it for everything in the organization. If it was dirt cheap, we would have LTR and DR on everything because it would just make sense to use it."

"I do not like the current pricing model because the product has been divided into different components and they are charging for them individually."

"The solution is very cost-effective and very easy to set-up but does not compromise on features."

"You need to figure out how many critical servers and applications you have in your environment so you will know how many Zerto licenses to buy."

"Zerto is a little bit on the higher side in terms of pricing. It would be better if they had a pay-as-you-go package."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Backup solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user159711

Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Backup?

The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Backup?

AWS Backup operates on a pay-as-you-go model without requiring a license.

What needs improvement with AWS Backup?

There are multiple enhancements needed in terms of compatibility with all database services, as AWS Backup is currently limited to specific ones.

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.

Commvault Cloud vs AWS Backup

Comparisons

Compared 24% of the time

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery vs AWS Backup

Compared 22% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs AWS Backup

Compared 14% of the time

Rubrik Go vs AWS Backup

Compared 8% of the time

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud vs AWS Backup

Compared 6% of the time

More AWS Backup Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 13% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Zerto

Compared 10% of the time

Rubrik vs Zerto

Compared 8% of the time

Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines vs Zerto

Compared 6% of the time

More Zerto Competitors

Product Reports

AWS Backup

Download AWS Backup product report

Download Zerto product report

Also Known As

No data available

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate the backup of data across AWS services. With AWS Backup, you can create backup policies, define backup schedules, and manage backups across multiple AWS accounts and regions from a single console. It supports a wide range of AWS services, including Amazon EBS volumes, Amazon RDS databases, Amazon DynamoDB tables, Amazon EFS file systems, and more.

AWS Backup provides a simple and cost-effective solution for protecting your data and ensuring business continuity. It offers features like cross-region replication, incremental backups, and point-in-time recovery. With AWS Backup, you can easily restore your data to any point in time and recover from accidental deletions or data corruption.

It also provides a centralized view of your backup activity, allowing you to monitor and manage backups across your entire AWS infrastructure. AWS Backup is designed to be highly durable and secure, with data encrypted at rest and in transit. It integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained access control and supports compliance with various industry standards and regulations.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Zerto is used for disaster recovery, business continuity, data migration, and ransomware recovery, providing continuous data protection and near real-time replication. Valued for ease of use, efficient failover processes, and versatile integration, it enhances organizational efficiency, reduces errors, and boosts productivity.

Sample Customers

TransferWise

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies

AWS Backup vs. Zerto