AWS Backup vs Zerto comparison

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AWS Backup

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Zerto and AWS Backup compete in the disaster recovery and data protection market. Zerto seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced capabilities and customer support.

Features: Zerto offers real-time replication, hardware-independent disaster recovery, and supports replication across multiple hypervisors, allowing for failover testing without impacting production environments. AWS Backup automates backups for AWS services, relying on periodic snapshots and integrates seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem, supporting regular backups and data protection.

Room for Improvement: Zerto needs enhancements in documentation and reporting. There are demands for support for more hypervisors and automated load balancing. AWS Backup could improve by offering file and database-level backups, refining restore processes, and enhancing hybrid cloud capabilities, along with providing customizable backup schedules.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zerto, deployed on-premises or hybrid clouds, is praised for excellent technical support and customer service. AWS Backup, designed for cloud-based deployment, follows a pay-as-you-go model and is perceived as less customer service-focused, with room for improvement in integrating hybrid environments.

Pricing and ROI: Zerto's premium pricing, based on VM licensing, reflects its extensive disaster recovery features and justifies ROI through downtime reduction. AWS Backup, using a pay-as-you-go model without licensing costs, offers competitive pricing aligned with ease within AWS ecosystems, though potentially more expensive for broader environments.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Backup vs. Zerto Report (Updated: April 2025).

AWS Backup vs. Zerto

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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

AWS Backup

Ranking in Cloud Backup

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

SaaS Backup (4th)

Zerto

Ranking in Cloud Backup

2nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

306

Ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of AWS Backup is 3.5%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zerto is 4.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Backup

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Simplify compliance and management of multiple backups with centralized cloud solutions

AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services. Also, it would be helpful if AWS Backup could integrate logs more thoroughly. This would allow not only new users but also experienced users to more easily check logs directly from AWS Backup.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It works well as a backup and as a service."

"The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services."

"I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten."

"Reporting is one of the key elements that are valuable for C-suite executives. In terms of monitoring, the solution provides comprehensive details into ongoing processes, flagging issues and warnings as necessary."

"The auto-scaling feature and the time efficiency of setting up AWS Backup are the most valuable aspects for us."

"The advantage that AWS Backup has over competitors is that it's very simple."

"RDS backup is one of the most crucial components of any client's cloud environment, so we generally use that. Additionally, we store EBS snapshots in S3."

"We can directly back up EC2 instances in AWS without using any third-party applications."

More AWS Backup pros

"I found VM level replication and being able to group the VM levels to be valuable. I like not having to worry about whether a particular VM is in the right storage group; some of those sorts of things would trip us up previously."

"The initial setup was very straightforward and easy. We were able to start replication within minutes of the initial setup."

"What I appreciate most about Zerto is that we can implement it via cloud now and on-premise."

"Zerto has enabled the team to focus on engineering and spend less time developing APIs to work with custom solutions and security applications, positively impacting our IT resiliency strategy."

"I appreciate the real-time nature of Zerto. It continuously copies data, maintains synchronization, and allows rapid recovery of key systems."

"We work a lot with customers that need disaster recovery and the best possible migration approaches, and Zerto helps them minimize the amount of effort it takes to finish their upgrades or migrations."

"Our RPOs and RTOs are now more in line with our other critical systems."

"Zerto is 400 times better."

More Zerto pros

Cons

"AWS Backup could benefit from including more services. Currently, it only includes around ten services, while AWS offers over three hundred plus services."

"If AWS Backup were a hybrid solution that also supported on-premises backups then it would be very helpful, especially if you are doing a migration to the cloud."

"If AWS could also add some hybrid cloud features to AWS Backup, that would be a significant improvement. For example, currently, AWS Backup only backs up to the S3 and Amazon Cloud, and you can only restore from the Amazon Cloud only. However, some people have hybrid environments. They have some workloads on-premises and some workloads in the cloud."

"Only the price could be improved."

"Its cost could be better than a few of its competitors."

"When it comes to encrypting data, it is not so convenient."

"The solution's reporting features and restore features can be improved."

"To create a plan and for all the configuration, one has to do multiple steps, which could be organized in a much simpler way, making the user experience better."

More AWS Backup cons

"We experienced a database crash and logged a case with Zerto about a year ago. They said that they do not support Always On."

"The setup process is time-consuming."

"The limitation with Zerto is that you're required to have one Zerto Manager per virtual center, and this means that you're only able to replicate one way. Technical support for this product was fantastic, before they were acquired by HP. You're now able to tell that the company is becoming too big, in terms of the support they provide."

"Another thing that would help would be a recommender, or some type of tool that says, 'Hey, you're not conforming to best practices.' It would do a conformance or compliance check to tell you if your VPGs are set up according to best practices and whether your Zerto clusters are set up optimally. It would see if you have HA enabled and whether your alerting is turned on."

"The interface is the only thing that we've ever really had an issue with. It's gone through some revisions. The UI, it's not clunky, but it's not as streamlined as it could be. Some of the workflow things are not as nice as they could be."

"I would like for them to support additional hypervisor options. They support VMware but if they supported Hyper-V or Nutanix, it would be beneficial."

"It would be nice to have the option to do automatic failover, but right now the only option is manual."

"When I have a technical question, it sometimes takes a while for tech support to respond."

More Zerto cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is decent."

"Price-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten. One only has to pay for the storage cost of AWS solutions, which is the standard cost provided by AWS."

"AWS Backup is free of cost, but we need to pay for the backup storage being used."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"AWS Backup is a very cheap solution."

"The pricing is okay."

"Its price is much cheaper than some vendors but more expensive than others."

"The clients pay for the whole AWS bundle. It is an affordable solution."

More AWS Backup pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a little more expensive in comparison to other tools."

"As far as I know, the pricing is around $1,000 per VM, but Zerto is changing the pricing model to more of an enterprise-class license. I don't know if there are any additional costs or fees."

"Staffing may be a little thin at times, but as far as budgeting what we buy, the price for this solution has not been so outrageous that we don't buy it."

"The pricing is fair."

"The pricing is pretty competitive to that of other options out there. When we shopped around, it was in line with the price of other solutions."

"When we purchased Zerto, we felt it was worth the cost as it would protect us from any potential problems and give us peace of mind knowing that any critical items could be recovered quickly."

"Zerto is more cost-effective than Azure."

"In general, it's pretty fair because it is software. In our case, we built our own colo. So, the cost of the colo was very expensive, and that's where a lot of the equipment is. The same thing is there if we were going to spin up in the cloud, but as a solution, in general, it's pretty fair for what you get out of it and how it works. It's not cheap, but at the same time, you get what you pay for, and it's definitely worth the cost. You just have to understand that the cost of the software alone is not the total cost of the project of doing ransomware protection or disaster recovery. It's a piece of the pie, not the entire pie."

More Zerto pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Backup?

The solution's most valuable features are its backup capability and tight integration with other AWS services.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Backup?

AWS Backup operates on a pay-as-you-go model without requiring a license.

What needs improvement with AWS Backup?

There are multiple enhancements needed in terms of compatibility with all database services, as AWS Backup is currently limited to specific ones.

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?

The setup is somewhat expensive. I'd rate the pricing seven out of ten.

Commvault Cloud vs AWS Backup

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs AWS Backup

Compared 14% of the time

Rubrik Go vs AWS Backup

Compared 7% of the time

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud vs AWS Backup

Compared 6% of the time

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Veeam Data Platform vs Zerto

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Live Recovery vs Zerto

Compared 12% 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

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Product Reports

AWS Backup

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Also Known As

No data available

Zerto Virtual Replication

Overview

AWS Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate the backup of data across AWS services. With AWS Backup, you can create backup policies, define backup schedules, and manage backups across multiple AWS accounts and regions from a single console. It supports a wide range of AWS services, including Amazon EBS volumes, Amazon RDS databases, Amazon DynamoDB tables, Amazon EFS file systems, and more.

AWS Backup provides a simple and cost-effective solution for protecting your data and ensuring business continuity. It offers features like cross-region replication, incremental backups, and point-in-time recovery. With AWS Backup, you can easily restore your data to any point in time and recover from accidental deletions or data corruption.

It also provides a centralized view of your backup activity, allowing you to monitor and manage backups across your entire AWS infrastructure. AWS Backup is designed to be highly durable and secure, with data encrypted at rest and in transit. It integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained access control and supports compliance with various industry standards and regulations.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

TransferWise

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

AWS Backup vs. Zerto