BackupAssist vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus comparison

Why PeerSpot?

BackupAssist and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. BackupAssist is ranked #58, while IBM is ranked #46 with an average rating of 6.3. BackupAssist holds a 0.8% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of BackupAssist users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

BackupAssist

Read 5 BackupAssist reviews

2,590 Views
2,512 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Read 33 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus reviews

4,499 Views
4,454 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

BackupAssist

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

BackupAssist and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus are both data backup solutions. BackupAssist leads in pricing and support, while IBM Spectrum Protect Plus shines in features, justifying its higher cost.

Features: BackupAssist users value versatile backup options, ease of use, and reliable disaster recovery. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus users highlight data recovery flexibility, robust scalability, and advanced automation.

Room for Improvement: BackupAssist needs better cloud integration, more automation features, and enhanced user interface design. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus could improve its reporting tools, simplify configuration, and streamline user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BackupAssist is praised for straightforward installation and reliable customer service. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, though comprehensive, requires a longer setup period but offers thorough support.

Pricing and ROI: BackupAssist offers reasonable setup costs and good ROI for small to medium-sized businesses. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, with higher setup costs, provides substantial ROI through enterprise-level features, justifying its higher price for larger organizations with complex needs.

To learn more, read our detailed BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

September 2026

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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

58th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

MSP Backup (12th)

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

46th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of BackupAssist is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus	1.0%
BackupAssist	0.8%
Other	98.2%

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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Christophe LAMAMY

Architecte Solutions at Novahe

Complex deployment has limited adoption but has provided structured backup management

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is very simple to deploy for us, but for more clients or competitors, the solution is hard to deploy and to integrate. For our team, deployment of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus may take a couple of days and longer if you have a complex customer solution. The deployment itself is not very lengthy, but the integration in production is more complicated. I assess the efficiency of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus's Advanced Snapshot Technology as not good because they change a lot of things. During multiple versions, we have experienced many changes in the product, and from the customer's view, it is not a good product because with each evolution, we encounter problems. We do not sell this product or advise this product. For SLA management features with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, I utilize file level. SLA management is a good solution and a good idea, but the product does not work well, and customers do not adopt this product. I cannot assess the integration capability of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus using RESTful API. I cannot determine what benefit IBM Spectrum Protect Plus brings to the organization because we deployed this solution with one customer, and that customer changed the product after one or two years because the product is not stable and it changes with every version. The customer wanted to move away from this solution. The price of the product is good, but the solution does not adapt to the market. The market in France does not adopt IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

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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

"I would definitely recommend this solution to others."

"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."

"What you want is software that can be relied upon at the moment when a server goes down, you can backup simply and reliably, BackupAssist fulfilled this criterion."

"I find BackupAssist very convenient to work on and I really like its user interface."

"We managed to have good backups which were easy to recover, and easy backup of MS Exchange and SQL databases."

"Now that we are using the solution, we get notified online when our backups are done."

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

More BackupAssist pros

"If the system were to go down, we needed to make sure that the system could be recovered and available as soon as possible. Spectrum Protect provides you access to directly bind the backup volume to the server and make the system available instead of restoring it and copying the system."

"If you want to have a strong backup for recovery and restore, you need this solution."

"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the product works and helps with restoration areas whenever there is a need to restore something."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."

"The most valuable feature is how we can easily power speed up the VM even though the VM resides in remote storage."

"What I like about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is its integration, plus it has very good technical support."

"The most valuable features are the API features because it allows you to integrate with your Microsoft SQL, your Oracle, and your IBM Db2."

"This is a modern technology that supports not only data protection, but include HIPAA resources and virtualization."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pros

Cons

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

"Has a few problems working with snapshots time-outs and failed backups."

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

"One issue I had with this program, was that I couldn't get it to back up my Linux virtual machines."

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

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

"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus's software is easy to scale. However, if it is on-premise, you might need to purchase more storage to store more backups."

"I think the graphical reports are a shortcoming of the tool since it fails to provide my company with what we want in terms of reporting. Due to the product's inability to take care of its reporting part, we have to use third-party software."

"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus could be made more lightweight and user-friendly in terms of GUI features to make it closer to a perfect score."

"The software's technical support could improve its response time for different time zones."

"Sometimes you have to try to restore things multiple times. It can sometimes take a whole day just to get a recovery up and running."

"Instead of using the command prompt for troubleshooting and administering the backup, there should be an easy-to-use graphical user interface."

"The user experience is very bad and the interface needs to be improved."

"Rooms for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus are installation and configuration because those were difficult. They should try their best to improve those areas. In the next release of the product, better implementation and administration are what we're expecting."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cons

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."

"The price is lower than that of some competing products."

"The licensing model of Spectrum Protect Plus is more efficient and cheaper compared to the original."

"Clients prefer to buy a perpetual license, but the majority opt for a yearly subscription."

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, we paid for implementation and training."

"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a little expensive."

"Unlike some other solutions, such as Veritas NetBackup where you have to pay for different licenses to use different features, there is a single license that allows you to use all of the features."

"The solution is too expensive."

"The price is perpetual, but the maintenance cost is annual. That is, we pay once for the product and pay annually for the maintenance and support. The price was much cheaper than what we would have had to pay for EMC or Veritas. The pricing is competitive, and I would rate it at four out of five."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

28%

Comms Service Provider

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

14%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	17

Questions from the Community

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

Pricing is good; it is reasonable and more reasonable than any other vendors.

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What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

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What is your primary use case for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

We are an IT integrator and we need to have a good vision of all recovery and backup recovery solutions. Most frequently, we use Veeam Backup. We use Cohesity. For some old workloads, we use IBM TS...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist

September 2026

Download BackupAssist product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

September 2026

Download IBM Spectrum Protect Plus product report

Overview

BackupAssist is a versatile backup software offering tape and drive backups, customizable alerts, Exchange and SQL backups with options for network and cloud data storage, including AWS and Wasabi, ensuring data safety and ease of recovery.

BackupAssist provides reliable backup solutions for businesses with its intuitive interface and straightforward recovery process. It supports a range of storage media and offers cloud storage solutions. While consistently updated, it faces compatibility issues with Linux virtual machines and iSCSI connectivity. There's room for improvement in its marketing and a centralized dashboard is needed. Its Exchange backup processes require attention, and it lacks a dedicated support line, impacting user experience. Deployment covers a variety of servers including file and active directory, demonstrating flexibility in server management and backup processes.

What are the important features of BackupAssist?

Versatile Backup Options: Supports tape, drive, and cloud storage solutions including AWS and Wasabi.
Customizable Alerts: Keeps stakeholders informed with adjustable notifications.
Exchange and SQL Support: Provides dedicated support for critical applications.
Ransomware Protection: Incorporates ransomware checks to enhance security.
User-Friendly: Features an easy-to-navigate interface simplifying backup management.

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Easy Recovery: Ensures straightforward data restoration processes.
Comprehensive Support: Knowledgebase resources aid in troubleshooting and feature evolution.
Reliable Updates: Regular updates promise continuous improvement.
Flexible Cloud Integration: Options for AWS and Wasabi cater to diverse requirements.
Stability During Power Outages: Maintains data integrity when power issues occur.

In industries, BackupAssist is implemented extensively for server backups, particularly in managing Hyper-V hosts to iSCSI devices, covering vast data volumes and supporting numerous virtual machines. It plays a crucial role in backing up essentials like Exchange, databases, payroll systems, and active directory across multiple sectors by providing on-premise and offsite data retention solutions.

BackupAssist

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus offers seamless integration with major databases and platforms, effective data deduplication, and agentless operation, providing reliable backup and restoration solutions to cater to diverse enterprise needs.

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus delivers expansive compatibility with Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM Db2, AIX, and Linux. It supports virtual snapshots and cloud backups, ensuring storage optimization and quick deployment. Despite needing enhancements in administration and integration, it effectively manages virtual machine backups for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Its functionality includes data protection, backup validation, disaster recovery, and cost-effective storage capabilities, specifically tailored for different departments in an organization.

What are the most important features of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

Seamless Integration: Works well with Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM Db2
Multi-Platform Support: Compatible with AIX and Linux
Virtual Snapshots: Facilitates easy restoration
Data Deduplication: Optimizes storage costs efficiently
Cloud Backup Support: Expands data protection reach
Agentless Operation: Simplifies deployment and management

What benefits or ROI should be looked for in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

Quick Deployment: Saves time and resources in setup
Data Security: Enhances protection against data loss
Storage Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces expenses with deduplication
Robust API Functionality: Flexibility for custom integrations
Ease of Use: Streamlines user experience across departments

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is widely used to secure virtual machines and databases across industries, supporting offline backups and rapid processes. Its adaptability in specific sectors like finance and healthcare aids in maintaining data reliability and meeting compliance standards.

IBM

Sample Customers

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

PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio

Buyer's Guide

BackupAssist vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

September 2026

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