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Bacula Enterprise vs Cohesity DataProtect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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
Ranking in Cloud Backup
16th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cohesity DataProtect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
9th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.2%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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…
Giovanni Golinelli. - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support
The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

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."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"The restores are easy to do and have made it so that we can incorporate restores into our troubleshooting processes."
"Cohesity has very simple reports to help you stay in the know of which servers are being backed up or not."
"Cohesity has simplified backups and has cut our costs tremendously."
"We are saving valuable datacenter rack space, which is critical as we evaluate co-location options."
"No longer does it take several hours to backup a VM or troubleshoot a backup issue."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable. Being a cloud version, it has more flexibility, and it allows me to incorporate different workloads and consolidate all the data in one place. It has good high availability, and it is also easy to maintain."
"We are very satisfied with the product as a whole—all the backup functions, the data protection functions. We are very satisfied with those, and the product is very simple to use."
"The most valuable features of Cohesity DataProtect are SpanFS and the handling of hybrid workloads."
 

Cons

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"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."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"In terms of what could be improved, it just needs some maturity."
"We are highly dissatisfied with the level of support and functionality provided for HANA within the Cohesity product."
"The tool could benefit from further improvements in AI features, particularly in areas such as a generative AI chat interface. This feature could help answer queries about the data being protected. One feature that would greatly improve our experience with the product is the ability to identify data redundancies through a central console. This feature would help us reduce storage costs by managing redundant data."
"Cohesity DataProtect can improve in the area of databases. We have had some challenges with both Cohesity and Rubrik being able to effectively back up in a timely manner the SQL Oracle workloads."
"Better documentation is needed because the lack of information has necessitated having our team depend more heavily on Cohesity support."
"Better support for legacy platforms would be nice, but we should be moving off those anyway."
"A little more documentation on standard faults would help, as new features are being released quite often."
"This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"With respect to pricing, make sure that you look at both Rubrik and Cohesity as they are very similar and are quite competitive."
"We purchased support from Cohesity to ensure that should we face an issue, we don't have to deal with different service providers."
"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."
"From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik."
"Cohesity came in at the best price. Setup was included and done in half a day."
"Pricing, setup costs, etc. are pretty typical. The initial cost for Cohesity was less than other products the we evaluated. Cohesity's pricing does offer benefits as DR target costs are less than other solutions. You are not charged for DataProtect licensing for target DR data consumption."
"I expect the system to probably pay off within the first two years."
"If SQL is in heavy use at your location, I would highly recommend narrowing your PoC testing to Cohesity and Rubrik. They will be competitive on pricing with each other, so really put them through the paces."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Cohesity DataProtect?
Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...
What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?
What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cohesity
 

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.
Tribune Media
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Cohesity DataProtect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.