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Bacula Enterprise vs Commvault Cloud 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
Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Backup
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (2nd), File Archiving (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (3rd), SaaS Backup (1st), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 7.5%, up from 5.9% 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…
Matt Reller - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extremely fast backup, is easy to manage, and is flexible
Commvault Cloud's automated policies provide the notification we need to ensure our data is secure and managed correctly. Commvault Cloud provides excellent visibility across all of our organization's data. It is extremely important to our organization that Commvault has a unified platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads. It has helped our organization improve by simplifying the way we manage our environment. We could not manage the same environment with only half of our current staff. We have yet to find anything in our environment that Commvault does not support. Commvault Cloud's Risk Analysis helps us identify, categorize, and classify sensitive data enabling us to take the appropriate actions to protect it. Commvault does a good job helping us limit our exposure and ensure compliance. Commvault has helped us reduce our data management costs significantly. Compared to Dell Avamar, the costs are vastly different. Commvault is much more cost-effective. We are licensed by capacity, so we don't have to worry about licensing different features. We have all the features that are licensed by capacity. And as far as ongoing support costs and other expenses, they are much lower than what they were with Dell Avamar. Commvault also gives us the flexibility to use any storage we want, while Avamar is tied to the Data Domain, which is not cheap to support. It has helped us reduce our backup time unless we are using Data Domain. This is because we can perform deduplication and compression on the client layer, which reduces the load on the network. We cannot do this with Data Domain. In fact, if we even attempt to perform a quick progress check before sending data to the Data Domain, the system fails completely. We learned this the hard way. We are using many more advanced features in Commvault Cloud than we ever did in Dell Avamar, simply because we had to license each feature separately in Avamar. As a result, we did not perform many backups in Avamar, such as all database backups (DB2, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL). These backups were performed outside of Avamar. We are now using Direct Connect agents for all of our databases. This allows us to perform incremental backups, which we could not do with the previous method. As a result, we have reduced our backup times by two-thirds, or even more in some cases. Compared to when we were backing up directly to Data Domain, Commvault is now running our backups ten times faster. This has resulted in a significant reduction in our backup times. Commvault has helped us reduce the RPO. Even in Data Domain, it has reduced our storage times by about half. It has also helped us reduce the threat detection time. We reduced the RTO significantly with Commvault. Commvault has helped us reduce downtime primarily due to the increase in the performance of resources.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"The Commvault Complete Data Protection interface is straightforward to use."
"It runs all the tests and emails us the reports. We take daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and I integrate the storage snapshot scripts with the Commvault workflow. The Commvault workflow runs all the scripts and sends us the reports. It also features cloud-side reports and workflows. Commvault has many tools for backing up, restoring, and archiving things, but we use another service for our archives."
"It is just about as flexible as you can get; simple. You can put it anywhere you want. You can put it on-prem or in your cloud. I could see where a team that's looking for more of a follow the bouncy ball type of solution might get a little confused. "Oh, no. What do you mean I might have to do it this way or I can't do it that way?" Sometimes, people just want to be told what to do. For an enterprise environment, like we are at NDOT, everything we do is not standard. It is not industry standard; it is not normal. We have all kinds of one-offs. We do need flexibility in the solutions that we get. I will say that Metallic has been extremely flexible in that sense, where we are able to follow the bouncy ball if we wanted to. Obviously, we didn't. We did it our way and Metallic, as a whole solution, provided that to us with no issues."
"It's very easy to set up the storage across all platforms. This allows us to be dynamic and change on-the-fly."
"The most valuable feature is the deduplication ratio. It saves most of our space and reduces the network traffic."
"The most valuable features of Commvault Hyperscale X are the full responsibilities inclined in conversion with high responsibility rates."
"It's very user-friendly. It supports a wide range of workloads. It's quite easy to use, it's very powerful and it's scalable."
"One valuable feature is unlimited backup. You can back up existing users and folders."
 

Cons

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"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."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"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 product could be more convenient in terms of working with different solutions and having more integration between the different products in the market."
"We are using a production environment with customer-sensitive data on it. As per our central bank rules and regulations, we can't keep our customer's sensitive data in the cloud."
"The price of Commvault HyperScale X could improve."
"We had some small issues with the reporting, but that was just a matter of fine-tuning the kinds of messages we receive by email. It was a little overwhelming in the initial configuration. So we reviewed our configuration with our partner and customized the reports so that we only get the important reports. I haven't seen any big issues or things that the solution is missing."
"I think the one thing that could be improved is the customer experience. The interface should be more user friendly."
"They need to improve when it comes to large, video file archiving. They're good, but they have not met my expectations as a customer in this area."
"It would be nice to have just one email report come in, then we can filter out failures. If everything is backed up, we really don't need to see the report. If it is in a single report. A simpler customised report would be good."
"Endpoint backup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Licensing fees are billed on a yearly basis."
"Commvault is more expensive than Veeam, which is the reason that we are changing to Veeam for cloud environments."
"Originally, it was really attractive when we were deployed on-prem. They have since built and moved it to the cloud, which I am a big fan of. I have all my security tools in the cloud, but it came with a significant increase in pricing. We ended up negotiating a better price because we have been a long-term customer, and I have also spoken on their behalf quite a few times, but if I have to buy it at its current rate, I am not sure if I would be a customer. It is expensive."
"It is not the cheapest solution. I think the pricing is fair for mid-side customers. It is between all the other options."
"If budget allows using the per socket license and not the agent based with per GB counter for Dedup is the way to go."
"The product is very competitive for pricing in some countries because it is possible to set up Commvault hardware with other vendors using its certification."
"The licensing costs are determined on a yearly basis. It might be around $40,000 or $50,000. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"You have to pay for the licenses and the hardware you need for the Commvault environment. If you don't have all the hardware, you have to buy it, which can cost a few million. In the end, it's vital to protect our data, so the price isn't an issue."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
 

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.
Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Commvault Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.