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Altaro VM Backup for MSPs vs N-able Cove Data Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Altaro VM Backup for MSPs
Ranking in MSP Backup
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N-able Cove Data Protection
Ranking in MSP Backup
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (30th), Cloud Backup (17th), SaaS Backup (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the MSP Backup category, the mindshare of Altaro VM Backup for MSPs is 4.4%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able Cove Data Protection is 23.7%, up from 22.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
MSP Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Anthony Linder - PeerSpot reviewer
An incredibly stable product with a great user interface
Improvements are needed in the solution since it might get difficult if you just drop a technical person who doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs. A technical person who hasn't received any dedicated training or hasn't gone through the documentation part of the solution may find the product to be a little non-intuitive at times. In Altaro VM Backup for MSPs, if you expect something to be somewhere else or when you expect a certain part of the user interface to function in a specific way, it doesn't happen so since the functionality that you expect to be there in the product isn't present on that screen and you need to go somewhere else for that piece. I think that is the case with the most complex tech products. I would like to be able to store a full cluster environment inside of Altaro VM and make sure that the cluster communicates inside of the product, presuming that we have the necessary backup drive in our company. Altaro VM already can test individual VM restores, but one can't really go beyond that scope, at least with the version of the solution that we have in our company right now.
Per MøllerJacobsen - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivers cost-effective data backup with room for search improvements
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for something—you need to know where it was and when it was there to restore it, plus it would be nice to take out data from Microsoft 365 in some portable format, which is currently not an option. I would like to extract the data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format, something like a database or maybe just to take out a PST file or SharePoint and Teams files to the file system. Especially in these times, where we discuss potential risks with the Microsoft cloud for European companies, companies would want to know how to access their data from the backup if they suddenly don't have a tenant. I believe there should be the ability to take out data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format. I know that Cohesity is working on making such a thing. It's not there yet; I asked last week for something for forensics, and the support team said it's not possible yet, but I know from our technical account manager they are working on some solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Granular restoration is extremely useful in Altaro VM Backup for MSPs since it is something that we make use of the most in our company."
"It's extremely important that Cove provides cloud-based data protection with backup, disaster recovery, and archiving. That is a necessity for my insurance. As an IT company, my insurance would cost more if my backups were not offsite and off-network."
"The ability to back up, restore, and do different types of testing for the preventative maintenance has really increased our importance to these clients because they see the value in how fast we can get them back up and running. We're saving them money in that way."
"Because the package includes cloud storage, we don't need to worry about hosting it inside. That was very important to us. And because the vendor has data centers worldwide, our reps in Europe and other places can get to what they need quickly and easily."
"One of the bigger features and advantages of the solution is that it is easy to integrate with my RMM which is also N-able."
"What I like the most about it's the ease of use and the reliability that it has when copying information to the cloud."
"The solution has reduced backup times by an immeasurable amount. Its backups are incremental, so you are only backing up data changes based on the last 24 hours or so. If you are also maintaining the stored images, the restores are also only incremental, happening in minutes. Whereas, with a lot of the other solutions that we have looked at, each time it goes to refresh the restore, then it has to build a completely new image. That takes forever. This solution also improves recovery time."
"I know I won't have an issue if the data is there. The reliability and the confidence that we have is amazing. It doesn't matter. We've had customers have ransomware. We've had customers that have had corruption. We've had customers that have had employees destroy their data. As long as it's been backed up, I know that I can get it back and I know I have nothing to worry about. Our confidence level is very high."
"We use a neat feature called VDR status, Virtual Disaster Recovery status. It only works on servers... It's automated. Once or twice a month it will virtually mount the backup and provide a screenshot and advise whether or not there have been any errors."
 

Cons

"A technical person who hasn't received any dedicated training or hasn't gone through the documentation part of the solution may find the product to be a little non-intuitive at times."
"A better default view on my dashboard would be great. There is a lot of useless information there that it pulls up. They could present the dashboard slightly better, in terms of the extra information after the first five columns. The first five columns are awesome. After that, I don't care about the rest, and there are another seven things after that."
"This solution is not very good for image restores, mainly just files. The solution also does not allow you to enable or disable backups. Sometimes, our users will connect via mobile device and it will use their data to perform the backup. If they were able to enable and disable the backup, they would not have this issue."
"The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems."
"I have some issues with the agent failing on workstations. I've had to completely uninstall several of them, delete everything, and start over to get them to work."
"A feature I'd like to see would be a more customizable admin console."
"The recovery side, the restore side, could be a little more optimized."
"An area for improvement that would really work out well would be if there were a little bit more of an elegant handshake relationship between SolarWinds RMM and the PCs that are being backed up, to advise regarding "up" status... Since RMM is an agent that feeds back that a machine is alive and on, I don't see any reason why they can't either tap into that one feature or build the same exact polling within the backup agent, to update right away and say the system is online or offline."
"For small amounts of data, recovery is easy, but when it's large amounts of data, it takes forever. So, if they can have a service where they put our data on a hard drive and ship it to us as fast as possible, it would be great. Even if there's a fee associated with it, it's fine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"When you have a device/appliance on the site quite a lot of the other enterprise class backup people insist that you have their appliance, which is frankly offensively expensive. Because when you pry the top off, it's just a standard 19-inch tin box with a standard Intel I5 in it, some RAM, and a hard drive. Then, you go, "Why have they just charged me 5,500 quid for a box, which I could have probably build for under 500." Whereas, with the SolarWinds product, they don't have that. The backup appliances that we have onsite are just plain cooking PCs. We can build our own machines, which is reflected in the price that we can offer a customer."
"The pricing, for now, is good. The package that they gave us recently is pretty good. It depends on how many clients you have, and you pay for certain terabytes per license. These terabytes, if not used, are pooled together."
"The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data."
"I believe that the price is very reasonable in comparison to other options. It is cheaper than both Redstor and Acronis and, since we are now using our own on-premise cloud, there is absolutely no comparison since we have unlimited storage rather than paying per gigabyte used for their onsite storage. We are currently able to backup fifty computers for the same price that we use to backup five computers."
"The only option I would like to see is an adjustable scale. Right now we have 250 seats and we're not using all of them. It would be nice to be able to save that little bit of money by being able to buy just what we need."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is an averagely-priced product."
"The price isn't extreme, but I'd love to pay less."
"The pricing is very competitive and it's well worth the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
Granular restoration is extremely useful in Altaro VM Backup for MSPs since it is something that we make use of the most in our company.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
To be honest, I don't get to see the bill for Altaro VM Backup for MSPs.
What needs improvement with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs?
Improvements are needed in the solution since it might get difficult if you just drop a technical person who doesn't necessarily have a lot of experience with Altaro VM Backup for MSPs. A technical...
What do you like most about N-able Backup?
The initial setup of N-able Cove Data Protection was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N-able Backup?
In terms of pricing, N-able Cove Data Protection is neither cheap nor expensive compared to other competitors.
What needs improvement with N-able Backup?
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for s...
 

Also Known As

No data available
N-able Backup, SolarWinds Backup, SolarWinds MSP Backup & Recovery, SolarWinds MSP Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alpha & Omega Computer Consultants, Chorus
Computer Depot, Leading Edge Computers, IT Logic Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Vembu Technologies, N-able, NinjaOne and others in MSP Backup. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.