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Eaton UPS vs Schneider Electric-APC Smart-UPS VT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

Eaton UPS
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Schneider Electric-APC Smar...
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Data Center Power Solutions category, the mindshare of Eaton UPS is 37.3%, up from 35.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Schneider Electric-APC Smart-UPS VT is 30.3%, down from 30.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Power Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

RP
Company value is more than the product. It is their people Eaton's great product and people keep bringing me back
The biggest improvement I would like to see is the remote monitoring and management. All the interfaces should match. The unit touch screen, Web interface, and other remote options should provide the same information and it can never be enough! Presently the touch screens and web based interfaces look and function differently. I want to know what this unit is doing. I want to be able to track and trend the data. . The only other features I would like to see are technology improvements, which they're doing anyway. At what point do you go to transformerless? At what point do you have better caps? UPS operate in a simple matter. improvements in software, contactors, coupled with transformerless and Lithium-Ion are disruptive technologies. All the vendors are doing it and making it available. From an improvement perspective, they're on the right path. There isn't anything major that I can jump up and say, "I wish you would do this better." On the single-phase units, I'd like to see ESS and Lithium-Ion through the produce line down to the 50k units. These are coming!
MS
Easy to manage, reliable, and worth the price
As long as we have electricity, we don't use it as it's transparent. However, I have other APC Smart systems and find that all of them are working perfectly. We like that we can manage it via the network. The product is very easy. The product has been very reliable. You can scale it by adding batteries.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In our data center, we have redundancy in all of our racks. When UPS feeds one half of the rack, the other feeds the other half of the rack. We have dual power supplies to everything. We have a lot of redundancies because of that. Luckily, with Eaton dual Battery Cabinets, we can maintain the systems at all times (short of a transformer issue), even while we're doing the maintenance on them. Our IT department loves this, because we don't shut them down at all."
"The most valuable feature is that they don't go down. We haven't had any other UPSs in this location, but we've had Chloride UPSs at other places and they didn't do so well."
"VMMS is a good feature. There are multiple charging units inside each UPS. For example, on my 9395 I have three to four charging units and the unit will scale down. Let's say I've got a megawatt of power. If I'm only running 200 Kw I can drop the charging units down and rotate through the charging units to reduce energy. They do all that."
"The visibility the PredictPulse service provides into our UPS equipment through the reporting is very good. It gives us very high visibility. We can go into the card and look at every parameter, all the settings, all the values. There are several tabs we can look at. We get a very good understanding of what the unit is doing, all remotely. It's very good."
"The technology is reliable."
"The fact that they're reliable and that they notify us whenever the line power drops are the only things we really need. All of our UPS's have been available and up whenever power outages have happened."
"We have utilized the building-block nature of the solution as we have grown. We can add modules, which helps from a cost standpoint and protects the initial capital investment in the system, rather than having to completely replace the system. We can start small scale and incrementally fund additional capacity as needed rather than purchasing a system, having to pull it out, and buying a brand new one."
"The most valuable feature is the control... we couldn't live life without [PredictPulse]. It does add a level of comfort knowing that PredictPulse is telling us about potential errors before they happen. My preference is to keep it in ESS mode. It saves me a good amount of money."
"Stability is one of the key points. The durability and lifetime of the product are also notable."
"We have not had a lot of issues over the many years we have been using the solution."
"You can scale it by adding batteries."
"I like it because we don't have any problems."
 

Cons

"We do not use Eaton's remote monitoring, we use StruxureWare. We do use all of Eaton's web interface cards and their SNMP polling, but it's actually going to a Schneider product. Eaton makes something similar, it just wasn't as intuitive."
"Outside of a full-service contract, my only concern is technician availability for repairs. Where we don't have a full-service contract with them, which unfortunately is the larger portion of our equipment from them, we're just like anybody else, waiting for a slot for a technician to arrive."
"One time, a feedback breaker in a system-bypass module, or something like that, was tripped. We brought them in to see what caused it. They figured it out and we haven't had an issue like that again, since."
"They could enhance their software, but overall, it's a good solution."
"The industry is going to a smaller footprint, but that does come at a cost, specifically for battery reserve time, size and density of the system, and BTU generation. Those three areas contribute to the heat generation factor. I think that they've done a really good job. But, when you look across our infrastructure, it's the UPS system that takes up the most space of any of our products."
"When it comes to the power management software portion, that's the part that I haven't really seen or heard a lot about. The dashboards of the UPS's, or the management software, are one area that they could probably improve a little."
"The battery life of the older batteries is the only thing that has been our issue up to this point. Luckily, the Cellwatch system that is on there identifies it and notifies us ahead of time when we should get them changed pretty quickly. This may be addressed with the lithium-ion batteries, but it is too early in our ownership of a UPS with a lithium-ion battery to know."
"I would like to see there is a little more clarity on what the issue is on the notifications that we receive. This would make it easier for us. What we have to do now is sometimes go to the UPS to figure out exactly what the issue is, because it's not always clear."
"Schneider's vendor, I believe, needs to be more involved with the customer. We have to constantly look for them because they don't come to me. I have to go there, and I don't want to. I don't want to waste time looking for a vendor. We require immediate attention."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"We have been having some issues with the solutions controller and we are having problems finding spare parts."
"The duration of the batteries could be much better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It saves our company money. Because if there is an outage, it is approximately $1 million a minute for an outage. Since we are a very large credit union, outages would be very expensive for us."
"I have a maintenance contract with Eaton, which has been very good. The notifications that we receive, we use email to my team, and they work well."
"They are around $50,000 to $70,000 depending on the options and the modules that we get."
"For our used case, 12kW is good. It has worked very well for us. They can be a lot bigger and they can be smaller, but the 12kW seems to be just about right for us. It has a good price point."
"We use their service plan, which includes parts so we don't do the maintenance on it ourselves. We have a service plan that we use, then they do all the maintenance and periodical maintenance (PM) work. If there are any hardware failures, then they also do the work. Therefore, it's a hardware/software support contract that includes labor."
"I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should be part of the package automatically, out-the-door. If you have to raise that price on the UPS an extra $5,000, then do so at that moment. Don't have that as an extra offer after the UPS has been sold. I believe that all UPSs need to have high availability, all the latest software installed, and be ready to go out-the-door."
"The cost per unit, as a rough estimate, is $300,000 per UPS 750-block."
"When you bid them out, they're all within a single-digit percentage point of each other... The cost of Eaton's service is competitive because we bid it out. I bid the service for all my units on campus: APCs, Lieberts, Eatons, because we've got a big hodgepodge of everything. Eaton won on price."
"It is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
9%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Eaton UPS?
I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should b...
What do you like most about Schneider Electric-APC Smart-UPS VT?
Stability is one of the key points. The durability and lifetime of the product are also notable.
What is your primary use case for Schneider Electric-APC Smart-UPS VT?
It is one of the power protection solutions provided by the company. We use the solution to protect the IT infrastructure of the banking, hospitality, healthcare sectors, etc. Schneider is one of t...
 

Also Known As

Eaton Powerware, Powerware 9300 Series
Smart-UPS VT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gamatronic
The Boston Red Sox
Find out what your peers are saying about Eaton UPS vs. Schneider Electric-APC Smart-UPS VT and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.