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Bacula Enterprise vs Unitrends 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

Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
Unitrends
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
38th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Unitrends is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
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

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"Backup/archive to multiple locations."
"Being an appliance-based solution, we were able to migrate backup solutions without having to purchase a lot of hardware separately."
"It is fairly stable."
"Stability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"Replication to Forever Cloud."
"When we talk about a backup point of view, from a backup perspective, it's a good one."
"The ability to back up both physical and virtual appliances under one roof."
"I like the fact that you can recover the VMs inside the appliance. For example, they're basically running this appliance on a Linux-based distribution, and they're spinning off KVM virtual machines inside."
 

Cons

"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"I would like to see more storage options for the free version."
"The solution’s UI can be improved. I am saying this because I have seen solutions with better UIs."
"Techs don't see to be well-versed in troubleshooting issues that arise and tickets stay opened for weeks for resolution."
"Comparing the features and the working pattern, definitely they have to come down on pricing if they want to compete in the market."
"I would like to see the real-time replication process improved, and a zero RPO feature added."
"The ability to run just differentials without pulling the full on your archive."
"It would be great to have the job throttle/limit the max number of backups on a single ESXi host."
"If the interface could be less complex, it is would be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"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."
"The cost of Unitrends definitely draws you in. The licensing is all included in the appliance, which is a great incentive."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing is yearly and it depends on the customers."
"Initial pricing is competitive. Renewal pricing is steep, so make sure to project costs for the lifetime of the appliance(s)."
"Talk with the sales guys. They can work with you on the best package."
"We found that the cost of Unitrends was about the same as the Dell DR6300. We liked the fact that the Unitrends appliance was all-in-one."
"Their licensing depended on the number of CPUs you had."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
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 Bacula Enterprise vs. Unitrends and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.