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Bacula Enterprise vs Retrospect Backup comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in Cloud Backup
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Retrospect Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
78th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
66th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retrospect Backup is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Retrospect Backup0.5%
Other98.5%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista Tecnologia Banco de Dados at Centro de Gestão da Tecnologia da Informação
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
Sujeet Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Lighthouse Solutions
Can be used to back up servers and desktops, but needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model
Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops. The solution supports tape and cloud since certain customers are still on tape. The solution provides a dissimilar hardware restore feature. If you have a complete machine burnout, you can restore it on new dissimilar hardware. Retrospect Backup is used to protect file data and SQL databases. Streamlining data backup processes with Retrospect Backup is automated and does not need any human intervention. The solution doesn't take up much time and does the backups automatically. Policy creation is very easy with Retrospect Backup. Once it's done, you don't have to bother about it because it keeps working on its own. A disaster recovery (DR) solution has been built into Retrospect Backup. You can restore the whole machine on a fresh setup with ISO images. Retrospect Backup is very easy to use and not very complicated. Creating policies and adding clients is very easy in the solution. The solution doesn't take up much LAN bandwidth except for the first full backup. The solution is efficient and does the backups really fast. It takes backups in batches of 14 machines at a time.

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 had a tremendous impact on our public company, as we are now cost-effective and even better on performance with our restorations."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The most valuable feature is its ease of use; it works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"Bacula Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"We have been using it for several years and we are very satisfied with how easy it is to configure and set up and run backups."
"Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops."
 

Cons

"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"The interface needs to be easier for adding new devices to be managed."
"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."
"Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive."
"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."
"Retrospect Backup needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"We have a perpetual license."
"Retrospect Backup is more cost-effective compared to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Construction Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
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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.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Rubrik and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: June 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.