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HPE Zerto Software vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 11, 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

HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
340
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features of HPE Zerto Software that I appreciate most are that it's straightforward, and the console is clear, allowing me to assign it to my staff members who can generally tell the health of the Zerto implementation."
"Continuous replication is the primary feature we use now because we originally purchased Zerto. I'm starting to utilize the long-term retention and instantaneous file restoration features, which have been introduced since the original purchase in 2015. Initially, we deployed Zerto as a second data storage point, but ultimately it will probably facilitate some of the migration of my workloads up to the cloud. It's evolving with the network and how we deliver computation."
"What I appreciate the most about HPE Zerto Software is that it works."
"I would rate Zerto a nine out of ten."
"The Zerto university for training staff is very useful."
"There are several valuable features because of the way we use it. The backup and restore features are definitely indispensable."
"The pricing and licensing are excellent. It's very straightforward."
"Continuous protection is Zerto's most valuable aspect."
"High availability (HA): It is one of the best features."
"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."
"It's a very stable product, and we've never had any downtime with it."
"One of the features which is most interesting in Spectrum Protect is the ability to scale out to great environments. This is something that not many vendors have on the market."
"We are talking about a stable solution which boasts good performance and security."
"I find the whole product useful. The backup archive client, snapshot, spectrum for virtual environments are beneficial features."
"The feature we have found most valuable is when you want to integrate it with a Tape Library and then do the DRM life cycle. That is when it works the best."
"It is a very good and mature enterprise product. Once it is set up and everything is put in, you don't have to manage it. It actually runs automatically by itself."
 

Cons

"Certain areas were designed and work fine for VMware but are under development for Hyper-V. Eventually, all features will work for both platforms."
"Maybe the reporting for the failover test could be a little better."
"The post-configuration part could be improved. For example, it would be super helpful to have the ability to modify DNS. Once the migration is done, we want to do some more modifications to the endpoint."
"A slight disadvantage of Zerto is that it requires the Windows Server operating system as the base OS. Over time, I would like to see more offerings in that regard. There should be more deployment options other than just the Windows operating system."
"The ease of use of the restoration utility could be challenging initially."
"Their offsite backup is a bit clunky, but it will probably improve."
"The improvement that I would like to see is a little bit easier product knowledge, things like that. It's getting a lot better than it was before because it's not as old of a product as Cisco, but if you look for something like Cisco routing and networking, you'll find millions of articles out there and it's everywhere."
"I don't have any recommendations regarding how HPE Zerto Software can be improved."
"We have had some problems about using storage agents on the X6 environment. It is not quite stable, but it is also not supported in a virtualized environment."
"There have been some sizing issues now, and we are dealing with those."
"There could be various client systems and process integration included in the product."
"The solution must protect against ransomware attacks better."
"The reporting could be better."
"The solution's ability to integrate with a cloud solution is one area that needs improvement."
"The features should be a little bit closer together."
"The solution is evolving, so it has to be evolved to fit all new types of software requirements too."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective."
"I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove to the business that it was worth the investment."
"The cost per VM is a bit high."
"It works very well as a backup and recovery solution, with frequent recovery points. It's very good. But it's too pricey for us to use it as a backup solution for all of our clients. Not every customer needs recovery points every five seconds."
"If it were easier to license, and to scale it out a little bit more economically, that'd be a godsend. At the end of the day, my druthers would be to have all 200 of our servers protected by this platform. But for a company our size, that stretches our IT budget and it just doesn't make economic sense."
"We paid a big investment upfront with renewal fees each year."
"Zerto's pricing is competitive, given the benefits and ease of setting it up. It may seem more expensive upfront, but you're going to save that over the long term by spending less engineering time configuring, reconfiguring, etc."
"To ensure proper data protection, we require a separate backup solution alongside Zerto for disaster recovery therefore the price for Zerto is high."
"IBM provides an open license policy, which is more like a gentlemen's agreement."
"The solution is not cheap."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"It is expensive."
"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."
"The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated."
"Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable."
"Use capacity licensing. It's easier and cheaper."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove ...
What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

Zerto Virtual Replication
IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Zerto Software vs. IBM Spectrum Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.