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BackupAssist vs HPE Zerto Software 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

BackupAssist
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
70th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
MSP Backup (12th)
HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
339
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BackupAssist is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

RM
Provides ransomware protection, does good reporting, and is close to perfect for our use case
The main challenge that I have had with it was no line of support, but I've anyway taken away the Linux machine that I was using. So, I don't need that anymore. I'm migrating my Exchange to the cloud. So, I probably will stop using the exchange backup side of it sometime next year, but the rest of the virtual machines that I have on-premises are very well covered by it. To be able to back up my online Exchange, I know there is a backup in the cloud, but I prefer to have something physical with something on my premises as well. It stopped doing my backups after I did the last update on it.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I get my reports. It is generally very reliable. Unless there is a major change, it doesn't stop backing up. I've got my server room set up with everything connected to the same power, and I never have power issues or failures of backups because a sub-site has gone off."
"I have found that the backups are usually very successful."
"We can configure the notifications themselves so that the right people get the notifications. This is very helpful. It allows key stakeholders to know if backups have happened and to remind each other to check the backups if something is not right."
"The most valuable features of BackupAssist are ease of use, configure is simple, and more importantly, ease of recovery. If you needed to do a complete system recovery or another recovery it is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Zerto is its overall flexibility, where it can be used for standard DR or you can also use it for server migrations, data center consolidations, etc."
"Zerto is essential for protecting critical workloads. We don't protect all of our VMs, but some need to be recovered in a timely manner. The recovery time is almost immediate."
"I like the granularity of the checkpoints."
"For most use cases, the failover time is a handful of minutes, if that. A single user can run the system."
"The biggest benefit is the application-consistent disaster recovery functionality."
"I've used backup solutions like Veeam in the past, but Zerto seemed like a better, faster solution. We adopted Zerto because of the speed, and because we wanted to do everything in-house."
"Since we are at a bank, there are certain protocols in place where we need to have RPO and RTO times of two hours or less. Zerto does a great job of setting those times and alerting us if those can't be met. We have our help desk actively monitoring that. It is extremely helpful that Zerto lists what is falling out of compliance in regards to RPO and RTO. It has been great in that regard."
"It protect and provide DR."
 

Cons

"It stopped doing my backups after I did the last update on it."
"In the future I would like to see more support for Linux."
"The solution needs a dashboard or some form of central control from which you can manage all backups."
"Many solutions become stagnant over time. However, BackupAssist has been consistent in updates but they must continue to innovate and improve to avoid stagnation."
"Many solutions become stagnant over time. However, BackupAssist has been consistent in updates but they must continue to innovate and improve to avoid stagnation."
"In future releases, doing backups of the environment we need to be able to do hot backups of the database."
"The version 10 update 4 took really long to deploy, and we had to back off and do update 2 because that seems to deploy much quicker."
"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 technical support is hit or miss."
"I would rate them an eight out of ten because not every response is as we expect. They do resolve the issue, but sometimes customers have unusual questions, and they are not able to say how exactly to fix that or how to do something,."
"One issue we've been having with Zerto lately is the ability to go into maintenance mode during vSphere upgrades. It doesn't have the hook into the lifecycle manager of the bump. During vCenter or ESXi upgrades, it causes VCF to fail its pre-checks because the machine doesn't power off and go into maintenance mode. It's been an issue since version 7.5 and it's impacting a basic automation function in vSphere."
"Compared to other products, I would praise the intuitiveness of the product. But I think that can always be improved. The intuitiveness of the graphical user interface, while it is very solid and I don't have issues navigating it. I would say that it can always be improved."
"Over my eight years working with HPE Zerto Software, I have experienced some downtime and crashes during upgrades."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's on a yearly basis, but I'm not the one who does the licensing on that. I don't have any figures, but it's on a yearly basis, and I believe it's reasonable."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable and there are add-on options that can be purchased. I have used other solutions that are a lot more expensive that are not as good. The ability to get support is very simple and very reasonable from a cost standpoint."
"There's a yearly licensing cost. The costs might be around $2000 USD annually."
"The product pricing here in Zimbabwe is good, I cannot complain."
"We have seen ROI. Several times, we needed to recover, and we were able to go to Zerto."
"Zerto does a per-workload licensing model, per-server. It is simple and straightforward, but it is not super flexible. It is kind of a one size fits all. They charge the same price for those workloads. I feel like they could have some flexible licensing option possibly based on criticality, just so we could protect less important work. I would love to protect every workload in my environment with Zerto, whether I really need it or not, but the cost is such that I really have to justify that protection. So, if we had some more flexibility, e.g., you could protect servers with a two-, three-, or four-hour RPO at a certain price point versus mission-critical every five minutes, then I would be interested in that."
"Get the Enterprise Cloud license because it's the most flexible, and the pricing should come in around $1,000 per VM."
"There is a lot of confusion with Zerto licensing. They have a migration license and a replication license. They should simplify the licensing process. The migration license costs a lot of money, and it is only on a one-time basis. If you use that license, it ties to that VM. I might re-migrate that VM in the next five to ten years. It is another environment, but my license is stuck there. The replication license is fine, and I have no issue with its pricing model, but they should simplify the migration license."
"It is cost-effective."
"Zerto is more expensive than competitors, making the price difference pretty high. While it is very expensive, it's very powerful and good at what it does. The cost is why we are not leveraging it for everything in the organization. If it was dirt cheap, we would have LTR and DR on everything because it would just make sense to use it."
"The last time I looked at pricing, it was very good. It's much cheaper by far than VMware."
"I'd like to see better tiering for Zerto's pricing. We do multi-tier VMs. I don't think I should be paying a penalty and price for a tier-three VM where I don't need a really tight SLA like I do for a tier-one."
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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
No data available
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Monash University, NASA, NYU, Pfizer, RAF Association, Rockwell Colins, University of Arizona, US Department of State, Volvo
United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about BackupAssist vs. HPE Zerto Software and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.