BackupAssist vs IBM Spectrum Protect comparison

BackupAssist and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. BackupAssist is ranked #70, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.4. BackupAssist holds a 0.2% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of BackupAssist users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

BackupAssist

Read 5 BackupAssist reviews

404 Views
169 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect

Read 150 IBM Spectrum Protect reviews

3,616 Views
2,660 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

BackupAssist

IBM Spectrum Protect

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect and BackupAssist compete in the data protection and backup category. IBM Spectrum Protect has an advantage due to its advanced scalability and comprehensive features, although BackupAssist is noted for its ease of use and suitability for smaller businesses.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect is valued for its scalability, reliability, and integration capabilities. BackupAssist is recognized for its straightforward configuration, effective backup solutions, and tailoring to small and medium enterprises.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect could enhance its performance and simplify management tasks. Users suggest that BackupAssist improve technical support and expand advanced features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect deployment can be complex and requires significant IT resources. Customer service is knowledgeable but sometimes slow. BackupAssist offers a quick and easy deployment process, making it suitable for environments with limited IT staff, although users desire more prompt and effective support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect has higher setup costs but provides good ROI through its robust capabilities. BackupAssist is more affordable and offers quicker ROI, making it cost-effective for smaller organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

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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

BackupAssist

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

70th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

MSP Backup (12th)

IBM Spectrum Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

150

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BackupAssist is 0.2%, up from 0.2% 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

RichardMukarakate

Director at Gemini Systems

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.

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Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"I have found that the backups are usually very successful."

"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."

"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."

"We can use it with any storage for the back-end to save data."

"It provides our customers with the comfort of having reliable enterprise data protection."

"It is a very mature product."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment. They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution."

"The deduplication and compression features are the most valuable features."

"The solution offers very good flexibility."

"It scales from very small to very large. It is easily the most scalable product out there."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pros

Cons

"In the future I would like to see more support for Linux."

"Many solutions become stagnant over time. However, BackupAssist has been consistent in updates but they must continue to innovate and improve to avoid stagnation."

"The solution needs a dashboard or some form of central control from which you can manage all backups."

"It stopped doing my backups after I did the last update on it."

"It does what we need it to do, but it could be better with VM backups. It could be better integrated with virtual machines or VM backups, but that's why they have their Plus out now. Plus version is more geared toward VM backups. The regular version is more for endpoint clients."

"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."

"We would like to see bare-metal restorers."

"We need everything cloud. Strong support for cloud services. S3 connectivity, which is mandatory for us in the future along with this integration of Spectrum Copy Data Management or Spectrum Protect services together with these Spectrum Protect Plus functionalities, e.g., hardware, snapshots, and Copy Data Management. They should come together in one solution."

"Our new leadership has pushed us to go more toward the cloud, so we are definitely going to leverage anything we can in that direction."

"The previous GUI that they had was slow, and it did not have enough information on it."

"Perhaps some better documentation, which I believe was better in the past."

"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."

More IBM Spectrum Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product pricing here in Zimbabwe is good, I cannot complain."

"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."

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The most important feature which I wish to be added involves the GUI, the user interface."

"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."

"When compared to the cost of other enterprise products, it seems to be in the same range. However, compared to the cost of non-enterprise products, it is really high."

"The product is not cheap."

"There may be an advantage to going with IBM in terms of pricing. They have a pay-as-you-grow policy, so there is no need to take one license for the entire datacenter. You can start with small licenses and then grow, and pay, as you use more."

"It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use."

More IBM Spectrum Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect?

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect?

It's expensive. I acknowledge the cost associated with it.

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?

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Comparisons

Veeam Data Platform vs BackupAssist

Compared 63% of the time

Acronis Cyber Protect vs BackupAssist

Compared 37% of the time

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IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 11% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Storage Protect vs IBM Spectrum Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Spectrum Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist

June 2025

Download BackupAssist product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Overview

BackupAssist is a comprehensive backup and recovery software designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers a wide range of features to ensure data protection and minimize downtime in case of system failures or disasters. With BackupAssist, users can easily create and manage backups for their critical data, applications, and systems.

One of the key features of BackupAssist is its support for multiple backup types, including full, incremental, and differential backups. This flexibility allows users to choose the backup strategy that best suits their needs and optimize storage space and backup time. Additionally, BackupAssist supports both local and remote backups, enabling users to store their backups on external drives, network shares, or cloud storage services.

BackupAssist also provides advanced features for application-specific backups, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Hyper-V. These features ensure that critical business applications are backed up correctly and can be quickly restored in case of data loss or system failures. Moreover, BackupAssist offers granular recovery options, allowing users to restore individual files, folders, or even specific application items.

To further enhance data protection, BackupAssist includes features like encryption, compression, and verification. Encryption ensures that backups are securely stored and can only be accessed by authorized users. Compression reduces the backup size, optimizing storage space and reducing backup time. Verification checks the integrity of backups, ensuring that they can be successfully restored when needed.

BackupAssist also offers a range of disaster recovery options, including bare-metal recovery and virtual machine backups. Bare-metal recovery allows users to restore their entire system to new or existing hardware, minimizing downtime in case of hardware failures or system crashes. Virtual machine backups enable users to protect their virtualized environments, ensuring business continuity in virtualized infrastructures.

BackupAssist

IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) family. It enables reliable, cost effective backups and fast recovery for virtual, physical and cloud environments of all sizes.

IBM

Sample Customers

Monash University, NASA, NYU, Pfizer, RAF Association, Rockwell Colins, University of Arizona, US Department of State, Volvo

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

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

June 2025

Free Report: BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect

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