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BDRShield vs Bacula Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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

Bacula Enterprise
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (13th)
BDRShield
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (8th), MSP Backup (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BDRShield is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
BDRSuite Backup & Replication0.6%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other98.4%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Solid backup tool with good scalability
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…
Thomas Roes - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of backup and restore improves data management with reliable support
The interface of BDRSuite Backup & Replication is pretty intuitive. Regarding their marketing strategy, I'm very bad at marketing. I always get a little edgy when people try to shove their product in my face. There are two sides to the story. If you don't know something exists, you might not even start to look for it unless you really know that you need it. If you are explicitly looking for a solution, then you'll find it. People that don't know that they should do backup don't have a place in IT. I rate BDRSuite Backup & Replication 8.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"I can choose a point in time and issue the command to back up and I don't need to go in and restore the last full backup and then apply iteratively, sequentially, all the incrementals... I can pick a point in time and tell it I want to go to that state and it's transparent to me. It happens in the background for me."
"We only use BDRSuite to back up two VMs in our current environment. It helps us with maintenance, monitoring, etc. We are satisfied with BDRSuite so far and plan to add a few more VMs in the future, including Citrix VMs and XenServer."
"The most important features are the backup and the availability of the Universal Explorer. The in-transit compression is great."
"BDRSuite can help organizations save time and money by automating backup and recovery processes and reducing the need for manual intervention."
"The product is very reliable and works well out of the box; many of our customers are buying it."
"BDRSuite is better than competing solutions because it can protect, back up, and recover data. A feature called live migration allows you to recover the same data in different environments. For example, I can back up the data from a VMware machine and restore it to a Hyper-V."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to copy quickly. We have about 12 terabytes, and trying to copy that volume size through the file structure would take a week. BDRSuite has a different approach to copying and is much faster."
"The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup."
 

Cons

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"The only place where I would really want to see improvement, out the gate, is more granular scheduling... If I want to do an offset or to only do two backups on Friday and Saturday - versus whole hourly incrementals during the week - I don't have that granularity right now."
"Vembu software runs on a Windows Server. The Windows Server has to be connected to the internet so it can connect with Vembu’s servers. It has to connect with Vembu. For some reason, if it doesn't connect, it stops working, and I don't know why on earth they do that. They require it to connect to the internet and connect with Vembu for it to continue to function. If the internet is down or if the server can't reach the internet, it stops working after a few days. That's not great because there are some people who want to do backups but they don't want to have their server accessible on the internet."
"The deduplication could be better. It doesn't give the level of deduplication that I would get with a product that's stored in a more standard file format. I would prefer to be able to use a non-deduplicated store on a third-party deduplicated medium."
"The reporting can use some improvement. I still use the old StoreGrid Cloud while I'm migrating the rest of my clients over. I am able to export all of my clients' usage for the month, which I then import into my billing program. It helps me speed up the billing process. Also, I can generate a report that gives me statuses of everyone's backup, which I don't get from Vembu Backup Online either. I would like to have something similar where I can export everyone's usage at any time for all their backups, so I can use that to import them to my billing program."
"The solution's UI and integrations could be better."
"We have not been able to move our backups from one drive to another one. We can only create a storage pool. However, if we want to change a drive, it is not possible to delete one drive as long there is data on it. For this, we have to call the support. While they can solve this, it is not out-of-the-box."
"We had a lot of problems getting it configured in the first place. They also wanted us to allow them remote access to our machines without us watching what they're doing, which is a huge security risk for us. We said we couldn't do that, and they said they don't offer any phone support whatsoever."
"I would like to have a different set of products instead of having a single software which does everything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"The pricing is pretty reasonable."
"At the moment, I am doing Vembu for one host. My costs are about $25 USD a month for a single host up to 100 VMs."
"The license is per unit and is expensive."
"This solution provides much more value than other products that provide similar functionality. If price is a consideration for anyone who is looking to improve their backup processes, they owe it to themselves to look at the Vembu BDRSuite."
"For our needs, the price of the backup system is not too much... We checked out Veeam and Acronis but both were very expensive compared to Vembu."
"The high availability is too expensive for our customers."
"Vembu is too expensive because they don't really have small-business pricing. This is a matter of personal opinion. They're going to tell you that they have competitive pricing because there are more expensive solutions in the marketplace, but there are better solutions in the marketplace that are more expensive. Their product is a better fit for small businesses, but they don't price it that way."
"We are saving $6,000 every three years versus having another product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
88%
Educational Organization
3%
Performing Arts
1%
Manufacturing Company
1%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
What do you like most about BDRSuite?
The best part of BDRSuite is how user-friendly it is and how it does not require any maintenance after the initial setup.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BDRSuite?
BDRSuite is cost-effective because you can purchase a perpetual license that covers multiple environments. You only renew the support costs annually. It offers advanced features at roughly 75 perce...
What needs improvement with BDRSuite?
I really don't know what could be improved about BDRSuite Backup & Replication. I've never had anything that I thought would be nice if that was possible. Every time I thought that, it was alre...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vembu BDRSuite, BDRSuite Backup & Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
NASA, Intel, CISCO, PHILIPS, Atos, HEXAWARE, Motorola
Find out what your peers are saying about BDRShield vs. Bacula Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
872,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.