Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Bacula Enterprise vs Veritas NetBackup 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
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (13th)
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 1.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Veritas NetBackup1.9%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other97.1%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Consultant at Xerif
Solid backup tool with good scalability
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 it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…
SunilPanigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Unified backups have protected virtual machines and applications and optimize storage efficiency
Regarding automated disaster recovery, we have not used Veritas NetBackup automated disaster recovery because according to the RFP terms and conditions, we are not supposed to have automated failover or failback, as we are a government entity and cannot violate the rules of the RFP. My feedback about granular recovery in Veritas NetBackup is that we have been doing verifications of the backed-up data to restore from point to point and time to time, focusing on file level or database level. When it comes to integration with cloud services, we have not started because we are a government entity and are not allowed to store any data in the cloud at this time. From security concerns regarding what I would improve about Veritas NetBackup, I think you need to look into this because we found only one encryption option available, which is not that very strong. When I initiate a backup from my laptop or server to the appliance or the tape media using Veritas NetBackup, the encryption channels are not strong, and there are not many options available. Whatever is there is by default and not changeable. We cannot modify any encryption facilities, and security is a big concern nowadays, so you need to look into that. Regarding the functionality part of Veritas NetBackup, I think this encryption feature should be stronger and integrated from point to point, not just at specific levels. When I initiate a backup, all the communication channels involved should be encrypted until it reaches the endpoint, meaning from client to server, server to client, and client device.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It saves time for the backup needs of our organization."
"The Replication Director, Auto Image Replication, Accelerator, Oracle Intelligent Policy, synthetic and VADP backups are the most valuable features."
"Deduplication is quite efficient. It is not a complex product. It is quite simple."
"The solution offers a lot of really great features that organizations can utilize and take advantage of."
"The features are good."
"The reporting is very good, with all of the details highlighted and very clear."
"The solution offers very good storage efficiency, so there's excellent compression and deduplication within the product that our clients really appreciate."
"We have an issue with the last version on the latest backup of the solution as it is not compatible with Sybase 16.5."
 

Cons

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Extra features come with additional costs."
"The pricing could be improved, and the interface could be more intuitive."
"Veritas NetBackup is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"They need to improve their support. In the beginning, their engineers had trouble understanding the issue we were presenting. It took a lot of conversations for them to start troubleshooting the problem."
"It would be better if it had a cloud integration feature. I would like to use a single product for the cloud instances and the on-premise instances. The price could also be better."
"Setup implementation."
"The product could improve the user-friendliness and comfort of its environment, especially for those unfamiliar with it."
"We want a solution that can be scaled-out because our data is growing very quickly, and we aren't able to back it up quickly. It takes one or two days, which is a problem. It is very slow. We just use one backup server. We want another solution with maybe a backup server cluster to back up more data in one day. We want a solution that can be scaled-out to back up our data quickly and efficiently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same."
"The licensing model is cost-prohibitive as you scale out."
"Veritas NetBackup's price could be a problem for small businesses."
"Veritas NetBackup's pricing is a bit steep when compared to other tools. It is very costly, but service-wise and overall, the Veritas NetBackup is a good product."
"It is slightly more expensive than Commvault, but it is pretty much the same. It is an enterprise solution, so it scales quite well. It has a lot of features. So, you pay for what you get. It is not cheap, but it is fit for the purpose."
"The software and license are very expensive."
"Licensing was very expensive and did not scale well if needed to move between license models."
"Veritas NetBackup is considerably cheaper than that of Druva, the former being quite affordable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
881,078 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise66
 

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 is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
Veritas NetBackup is quite expensive, and sometimes vendors do not suggest it and always recommend different other options, especially after certain points, which is a concern. As far as our core o...
 

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.
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,078 professionals have used our research since 2012.