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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
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (14th)
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 February 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 1.8%, 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 NetBackup1.8%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other97.2%
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 pretty stable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The most valuable feature is its stability."
"Ease of installing, configuring, upgrading, and troubleshooting."
"The simulation engine is highly valuable as it allows us to simulate what a failure would be like and generate reports."
"Deduplication is the most valuable feature as it reduces the backup time and provides backup of a single copy of data"
"Includes snapshots and multiple database agents."
"The tool's most valuable feature is backups."
"The backup speed is extremely high and the simplicity of NetBackup is commendable."
"I can rely on this product if I need a restore."
 

Cons

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"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."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"The restore tool is not friendly to newcomers."
"It needs support for Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVMs)."
"The most common problem is the backup failures over the weekend. We have to troubleshoot and sometimes do restores and then we have trouble doing some of the restores."
"It would be extremely helpful if the solution offered near-zero recovery time for SQL."
"What needs to be improved in Veritas NetBackup is its interface, e.g. they should make it more user friendly. Scalability for this product could still be improved, particularly its hardware appliance scalability."
"The restoration method and the compression ratio need improvement."
"It is a very expensive solution. They should have a different scheme for selling it. They should also make it easy for us to switch from Solaris to Linux. We are having some trouble in migrating our actual catalog from Solaris to Linux."
"We are looking forward to testing a feature that promises to allow us to host a workload directly from the backup appliance without rehydrating any items."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"So far I can only say that the license structure could be looked at to be aligned as either capacity-based or traditional."
"Pricing is good, under our budget, and flexible."
"The solution is expensive compared to other products."
"Most people have felt this solution was somewhat expensive."
"Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same."
"It was on a yearly basis. During the annual review, when we asked them about our licensing, they couldn't explain it. For example, we had reduced by a factor of 40%, but our license only dropped by 5%. We would then ask Veritas people if we've reduced this much and shut down these servers, why has our license changed so less? They were never able to give us a straight answer. They weren't able to say, "Well, you're using this, and this is more expensive." In many cases, as we reduced our capacity and what we were using with Veritas NetBackup, our licensing actually went up, and they were often unable to explain why."
"When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option."
"If you have a source size of one terabyte then they will charge for a one terabyte license, although what is actually being stored is much less."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
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?
I would rate pricing for Veritas NetBackup around six, as it is neither high nor low.
 

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: February 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.