Dell NetWorker vs Zerto comparison

Read 299 Zerto reviews

9,387 Views
4,447 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Dell NetWorker

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Dell NetWorker and Zerto compete in the data protection and disaster recovery category. Dell NetWorker has an upper hand in support and competitive pricing while Zerto is preferred for its advanced features and real-time capabilities.

Features: Dell NetWorker offers comprehensive data backup and recovery functionality, scalability, and integration with various environments. Zerto provides robust disaster recovery capabilities, real-time replication, and ease of migration across different platforms.

Room for Improvement: Dell NetWorker needs enhancements in initial setup complexity, a more intuitive management console, and detailed customer support documentation. Zerto could improve its reporting features, strengthen customer support documentation, and expand its platform integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell NetWorker's deployment is complex but has strong customer service support. Zerto offers easier deployment and efficient migration functionalities but has mixed reviews on customer service quality.

Pricing and ROI: Dell NetWorker is more cost-effective with competitive setup costs and good ROI. Zerto has higher setup costs but is considered worth the investment due to its advanced features and capabilities, providing significant ROI in complex disaster recovery scenarios.

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

Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto

Download the complete report

Helped 844,944 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

Dell NetWorker

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zerto

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

299

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell NetWorker is 3.1%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

ErmiasGirma

System and Cloud Deployment Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Offers seamless integration and cost-saving benefits with enhanced recovery capabilities

Currently, in my organization, I am using Dell NetWorker for open-source solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and some large VM environments. It also supports the Dell library and is used for the library archiving system Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting…

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 full backup is a great feature. Restoration is also good and very quick."

"Good scalability and virtual environment protection."

"It has the ability to support all kinds of backups. It can be used to back up databases, operating systems, virtual machines, Lotus Notes, and Exchange. It can also do remote image backups for remote sites. It integrates and works with Data Domain. It is an enterprise-class product that can be used for anything and everything across multiple sites and locations. It is also very scalable."

"The compression ratio is very flexible for designing all the required policies for backup."

"It is the best umbrella, serving the best applications."

"The most valuable feature of Dell NetWorker is its quick configuration and handling of large databases."

"The best feature of Dell EMC NetWorker is its wide spectrum of available plugins for each and every software that you can back up, such as SAP HANA, Oracle, AXI-based machines, or Dell-based machines. Whatever you want to back up, you can do it with Dell EMC NetWorker. It is a very solid backup software. It is the oldest backup software from EMC, and it comes from Dell EMC's legacy."

"The most valuable features for us at the moment are NFS, file system backup, and IP backup."

More Dell NetWorker pros

"Continuous protection is Zerto's most valuable aspect."

"The ability to test which virtual machines can be failed over to our DR site without interruption of our production environment."

"Zerto is a flexible and resilient business continuity and disaster recovery solution."

"We have had multiple live disaster recovery events where Zerto saved us a lot of downtime."

"We had a disaster recovery four or five years ago. I can't remember what happened, but I believe something crashed in our data center, like a power outage. We did a failover of our network using Zerto from production to disaster recovery. We successfully completed the failover process in three or four hours without issue. The data was current, and the application owners could access their data and continue working while the issue was resolved."

"The low SLA times are valuable. It is very easy to use with a straightforward user setup."

"The near-synchronous replication is key. That has allowed us to provide the low RPOs that we promise. For key systems, that has been the deciding factor."

"One of the most valuable features, something that I wasn't even anticipating, is the file backups. We weren't even considering Zerto to do restores, but it actually is able to do that. Eventually, we could just use this as our backup solution."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"There could be a possibility of constructing full backups from incremental data intelligently."

"The solution could improve by having more integration."

"The user interface is hard to use, it should be simplified. There are a lot of web-based management interfaces which they should consider."

"The security features need backup and encryption. It would be nice if they added this feature. I would also like to be able to decrypt when restoring the security features. Hackers can sense these vulnerabilities today, and we need to have our enterprise prepared."

"We are able to do direct backups, but analyzing the logs is not straightforward."

"The initial setup is complex."

"NetWorker sometimes has issues with the backup not starting and with connecting to the Oracle servers."

"The stability of the NMC could use some attention, as it tends to be a bit shaky during jobs and other operations."

More Dell NetWorker cons

"The syncing of the replication needs improvement. My experience has been that, every once in a while, when you go to do a failover, it tells you it's not syncing. Then you have to troubleshoot and figure out why it's not fully synced up."

"The ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially."

"We had a situation where we had to relicense VMs once they were moved over. We later found out that that feature is built-in, but it's not easy to find. The way it's done is that you have to go to the target site to turn it on. If that were explained a little bit better up front, that would be helpful."

"When it comes to a solution, one of the things the management wants is to standardize platforms. That's why when Rubrik came out with their solution, they wanted to look at it. For instance, if you have multiple technologies, you're going to need admins to manage all those different ones. I would like Zerto to be something that fits all our needs, including the backup that Rubrik provides, but I understand that not all solutions can be that way."

"Zerto's current reporting capabilities are insufficient for our needs."

"There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions."

"For what we got it for, it does it great. I use a different solution for my disk-to-disk local backups to where I can have a local backup of files. I don't think Zerto does that well to where it keeps a memory of the files that are there. Basically, when something is deleted on Zerto, it gets deleted on the replicated version. So, some sort of snapshotting or something where I could have backups at different points in time of files would be a really helpful tool."

"Customer service is five out of ten. There is room for improvement. We need more local support."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay."

"The price is a little on the high side, but it's reliable and provides a good service."

"It is inexpensive compared to new products."

"Dell NetWorker is an expensive solution. None of the backup products are cheap. The licensing model offered is usually a five-year one."

"Licensing is based on the number of terabytes, so you need to purchase packages."

"The price of the license could be cheaper and it would be a benefit if they came up with a new pricing model. The competitors here in Oman sell universal licensing where a number of virtual machines are hosted at the customer place which can be licensed, or you can license the CPU sockets in those servers. However, NetWorker offers only CPU sockets or overall storage capacity to backup, but there is no universal licensing where you can provide a number of VMs. They should offer more options to stay competitive with other solutions, such as Veeam."

"There is a licensing fee."

"I have a capacity-based license, but I don't know the exact cost of that license."

More Dell NetWorker pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for this solution could be cheaper. They have two licensing tiers. When we purchased it, they didn't have a license for the cloud model. Certain things that I used to get with the basic licensing are no longer available. They are only available in the Cloud. Overall, the licensing model could be simplified."

"The only negative part that I have seen so far has been the cost. It is kind of pricey, but you get what you pay for. Zerto is a lot faster than other solutions and you get enhanced performance."

"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was straightforward."

"Pricing is one area where there could be some improvement. We would like to see a consumption model that would charge in a DR scenario, where you're failing over and consuming those resources, instead of a per-protected-node model. Or it could be a model based on the amount of storage space you're protecting."

"Zerto's pricing structure could be more competitive to better suit the needs of a wider range of businesses."

"We paid a big investment upfront with renewal fees each year."

"If you are an IT person and you think that DR is too expensive then the cloud option from Zerto is good because anyone can afford to use it, as far as getting one or two of their criticals protected."

"From a customer perspective, the price is okay. From an investor's perspective, however, it is a little bit high."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

844,944 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

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?

From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...

What do you like most about Dell NetWorker?

The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell NetWorker?

NetWorker has a high price compared to other solutions. Pricing is a major concern.

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.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell NetWorker

Comparisons

Compared 31% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 14% of the time

Dell Avamar vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 12% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell NetWorker

Compared 8% of the time

More Dell NetWorker 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

Dell NetWorker

Download Dell NetWorker product report

Download Zerto product report

Also Known As

NetWorker

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

Built on a reputation of efficiency and reliability, thousands of customers trust Dell NetWorker to protect their data and applications across multiple environments, from core to edge to cloud.

Inherently flexible, NetWorker helps you deploy and leverage the data protection that fits your needs. NetWorker protects both physical and virtual environments, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as cloud workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

NetWorker is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. NetWorker is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

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

Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport

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

Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto