Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Bacula Enterprise vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 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
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (12th)
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Storage Protect2.1%
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Other96.9%
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…
Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"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."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"Nothing beats this solution for file backup."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is its ability to verify the recoverability of backups."
"The most valuable features are the stability and also how it's seamlessly integrated with other IBM offerings."
"We work very closely together with IBM using their Support Center, but we have a strong contact in their development teams, and we have dedicated people from IBM working with us."
"We've found the product to be quite stable and the performance is very good."
"The product is always stable and reliable."
"All other products contain the same features, but when I'm backing up an IBM Power server I feel more comfortable with IBM Spectrum Protect because it's the same vendor."
"The scheduled backups ensure we meet the requirements for our business, and we keep backups of certain environments."
 

Cons

"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."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"RTO is a huge gap for us. If we had a disaster scenario and had to recover a bunch of stuff from tape, the RTO would be too long for us."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"IBM Spectrum Protect could be improved by making the installation easier. Once it's implemented, it's okay. IBM started lagging behind when things started moving to storage and cloud-based solutions. Even though they've recently released updates that give cloud-based protection, personally, I still believe they are not up to par with the likes of Rubrik. The entire product is a little bit clumsy because they have co-joined two different products, so it's complex. Even from a sales/explaining to people what it does point of view, it's complex. Whereas, if you take more current products, it's a single box solution. You reel it in, you fire it up, you do a couple of points and clicks, and off you go, whereas the IBM system is seriously complex. There's a lot of training involved and it's a massively difficult product to sell at this point in time."
"There is room for improvement in the service aspect."
"The product’s recovery process in terms of agent installation needs improvement"
"Anytime you are not very current and call in with an issue, it is hard to get it resolved. It will depend on how far back you go though."
"The software is very complicated. You have to do a lot of configurations to build a server, and you would need to backup and restore."
"Although I am not a technical user, I would say the cloud integration features could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"We have found that the pricing is high in our country."
"We worked our licensing into a capacity model, which is nice. Now, everything is much simpler to manage from a licensing perspective.​"
"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"I rate the pricing a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is not cost-effective, and ten is cost-effective."
"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 solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."
"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

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 Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise94
 

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 IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

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.
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.