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AWS Backup vs Zerto comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

AWS Backup
Ranking in Cloud Backup
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (4th)
Zerto
Ranking in Cloud Backup
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (2nd), Cloud Migration (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of AWS Backup is 3.5%, up from 2.6% 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services."
"I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable features we have found are the flexibility in the services offered."
"The solution has an effective overwrite feature."
"We can directly back up EC2 instances in AWS without using any third-party applications."
"The snapshots we take through AWS Backup are very effective."
"The advantage that AWS Backup has over competitors is that it's very simple."
"The auto-scaling feature and the time efficiency of setting up AWS Backup are the most valuable aspects for us."
"I've used backup solutions like Veeam in the past, but Zerto seemed like a better, faster solution. We adopted Zerto because of the speed, and because we wanted to do everything in-house."
"Four years ago when we did a PoC between two other vendors and Zerto, there were two features of Zerto that sold it, hands-down. One was the ease of creating protection groups, the ease with which our engineers could create protection, add virtual machines into the Zerto product, and get them under DR protection."
"It's easy to install."
"We have kept renewing Zerto because it seems to get better."
"It is way faster than just manually moving VMDKs, etc. It saves hours of time and a significant amount of money."
"I like the fact that Zerto is target agnostic. It doesn't care what type of storage it writes to. The journaling is also excellent. You can easily and quickly restore to seconds before an event. The immutable data copies feature is one reason we adopted Zerto. That's one of its selling points."
"What I like most about Zerto is that it makes my job much easier."
"Using Zerto for the migration was incredibly valuable, enabling us to save tremendous amounts of time."
 

Cons

"One of the limitations of AWS Backup is that it only does file-based copying."
"When it comes to encrypting data, it is not so convenient."
"There could be a centralized dashboard with a reporting feature notifying us of daily backup status."
"There are multiple enhancements needed in terms of compatibility with all database services, as AWS Backup is currently limited to specific ones."
"This backup tool does the full backup of the entire snapshot server. I would like to have the option to not do the full server backup."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"They should work on their visual capabilities."
"AWS Backup could benefit from including more services."
"Zerto's documentation is outdated. I'm finding it hard to find documents related to my questions. Their documentation is bad."
"I would like to see a couple of details regarding awareness of VM events coming outside of ZVR."
"It is a little expensive."
"I would like for them to support additional hypervisor options. They support VMware but if they supported Hyper-V or Nutanix, it would be beneficial."
"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."
"If I were to nitpick, I would say that I wish I had a better account manager. Our sales guy has changed a couple of times. I would like a little more responsiveness from our account manager. I've had a couple of issues where getting in touch with him has been a little difficult, and I end up just going around him and dealing with support and support has handled it right away."
"They just came out with improvements for ransomware protection last week. I haven't used them yet but, overall, security and preventing ransomware is really a hot topic these days. I would like to see it detect when the ransomware occurs and provide more information on it."
"Zerto could improve by offering more flexible pricing models, especially for startups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is decent."
"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."
"The pricing is okay."
"Its price is much cheaper than some vendors but more expensive than others."
"AWS Backup is free of cost, but we need to pay for the backup storage being used."
"We don't use a lot of space, only approximately 900 GB, so the price is reasonable. For standing, it's okay. We normally do a payment to SSML, and they are the ones who pay over there. It is around $100 monthly."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"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."
"It is cost-effective."
"License-wise, we budgeted $1,000 per VM. The minimum spend on it, in the beginning, can sometimes be a little bit of a headache for people, and they might have to budget creatively to get there, but once you're there, the renewals are worth it."
"It is expensive."
"Zerto is expensive but offers many features that make it competitive."
"I think everything can be cheaper. Pricing limited our ability to use Zerto as much as we'd like, but that's not why we haven't adopted it as our primary backup solution."
"It's not the cheapest tool, it's expensive. But it's doing a good job."
"The cost is not dirt cheap but also is not terrible."
"Zerto's price seems fair. It's competitive."
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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
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

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?
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TransferWise
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 AWS Backup vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.