Carbonite Server vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

OpenText and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. OpenText is ranked #58, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.3. OpenText holds a 0.8% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Carbonite Server

Read 7 Carbonite Server reviews

1,426 Views
1,055 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Storage Protect

Read 3 IBM Storage Protect reviews

4,671 Views
3,924 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Carbonite Server

IBM Storage Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2025

Carbonite Server and IBM Storage Protect are backup solutions in the data protection space. IBM Storage Protect often has the upper hand with advanced features, while Carbonite Server is noted for favorable pricing and support.

Features: Carbonite Server includes continuous data protection, easy recovery options, and is suitable for small to medium businesses. IBM Storage Protect offers robust scalability, integrated security features, and comprehensive data protection for larger enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Carbonite Server is known for straightforward deployment and responsive customer support. IBM Storage Protect's deployment might be more complex, but comprehensive customer support helps manage any issues.

Pricing and ROI: Carbonite Server offers lower upfront costs and significant ROI for smaller installations. IBM Storage Protect requires higher initial investments but provides superior long-term ROI for large-scale implementations.

To learn more, read our detailed Carbonite Server vs. IBM Storage Protect Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Storage Protect

November 2025

Download the complete report

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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

Carbonite Server

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

58th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (46th)

IBM Storage Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Carbonite Server is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.0%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Storage Protect	2.0%
Carbonite Server	0.8%
Other	97.2%

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Dale Dirkes

President at DIAD Consulting, Inc.

A simple, efficient, reliable product

The efficiency and convenience are excellent. The pricing is very good. It shows you what has been updated via little green dots. The solution is very automatic. I don't have to worry about it. It was easy to set up. Technical support has been helpful in the past. The solution has been problem-free.

Read full review

Syed Habib

Head of Infrastructure Security (S.A.V.P) at EXIM Bank Ltd

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Easy verification of things is the most valuable feature."

"It does not slow down your computer or use a lot of resources as it works."

"Technical support handled all our issues quickly and effectively."

"I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable."

"The Granular Restore of SQL feature has been a lifesaver more times than I can count. One of the main reasons for looking at Carbonite was their support for platforms like AIX and AS/400 Series."

"The solution is a free engine to help work with the container."

"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."

"The solution is very stable."

More Carbonite Server pros

"The most valuable features of the product are data deduplication and disaster recovery."

"You can scale the product."

"Once setup, you do not need to touch it again. You just need to do a formal check on possibly batch updates."

"Instead of taking three different backups of your systems, you're taking only one. You're able to crack that open and get what you need. The incident recovery, where it creates the VM and then you're running it, technically you're running it on Spectrum Protect. But then in the background, it's doing the storage motion and moving it off the Spectrum Protect back to your VMware environment. The users don't know the difference."

"It's very robust and has been on the market for a long time."

"For initial setup, we started with the blueprints, which were great. The blueprints allowed us to be able to decide if we needed to use small, medium,k or large. Because we are a large environment, we used a large blueprint. Once we followed everything in the blueprint, it was a smooth transition from there."

"by backing up only the changed data, we average around 75TB per night. If we had to do full backups, even occasionally, we would not be able to complete the backup within 12 hours, or we would have to make a large investment to fit a full backup within the 12 hour window."

"The ability to migrate between media over a long period of time. My customers are long-time users, and they have benefited from being able to move between tiers. They have been able to do this within the product."

More IBM Storage Protect pros

Cons

"The Hyper-V backup has room for improvement."

"They do not yet have USB recovery but they are adding it in coming releases."

"In the next release I would like to see an improvement in the auto failover option."

"The only thing that I would like to see improved is related to marketing. Currently, it is very difficult to find the right paper and stuff for me. Their marketing department should provide better information because currently, it is very difficult to find information on the internet. It was bought over by OpenText, and you won't be able to find a lot of information about this solution on their site. They should also provide training facilities for commercial purposes. Some of my colleagues recently went for pilot training, and they were technical. If I want to get trained, the training has to be more commercial. Currently, there is no such training for users like me."

"The stability has room for improvement."

"It could be a little bit easier or faster to be able to access data files without having to download anything."

"The support for object storage isn't quite there yet. Its public cloud support can be improved. I would love to see the public cloud support for object storage, and it would be great, but what I always hear from the folks at Carbonite is that in a lot of cases, it directly competes with their cloud offering. So, I don't know when or where that will go or if that will go anywhere, but we are hopeful to see something. The dashboard is a little outdated. If they gave it a facelift and put some better design around their dashboard, that would be tremendous. I generally care less about the visual aesthetics of an application as long as it does what it needed to do, which is true in the case of this solution. We also have the Microsoft 365 platform. Because they're two separate platforms, I have to log in to my Microsoft platform to manage it, and I have to log into my Carbonite server backup platform to manage it. Having these two coexist together in one management console is really what we're looking for, but we went for it knowing this. We also knew that there would be some integration coming down the road. So, we're again hoping to see some of that coming in 2021."

"One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past."

"Technical support could be improved."

"Needs more support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL."

"I would like to see monitoring within the platform: monitoring for storage pools and monitoring for the server's health (e.g., CPU and memory)."

"We should be talking about the capacity of the tape drives. That's the only problem."

"I would like to see more technical training online. Sometimes, it is a little bit difficult to find, or that I do not really know what I am looking for as somebody who is starting off finding their learning curve."

"I need two separate solutions for virtual and physical systems. I need IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for virtual systems and Spectrum Protect for physical systems and that's a pain. It would be an improvement if they were combined."

"The interface could be more user-friendly."

More IBM Storage Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is reasonable."

"We pay 9,000 dollars per year for our license."

"The solution is open source."

"The pricing is between $120 and $150 per year."

"IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD. The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten. My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees."

"That's no longer my department, but I have some past experience with licensing. It is not cheap. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of licensing. In terms of additional costs, there is management overhead. It is a complex solution and a lot of work goes into managing clients. It has gotten better over the years, but compared to its competitor, it is still heavy on management overhead."

"It is expensive."

"The product is low cost. It is very cool when we design it to using licensing based on post capacity."

"We have been at our size for a few years. We are not really looking to battle the licensing costs, as this is our primary system."

"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."

"License-wise regarding IBM, it's licensed per terabyte. And that is after compression and deduplication."

"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."

More IBM Storage Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	1

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	53
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	94

Questions from the Community

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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.

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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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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October 2025

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IBM Storage Protect

October 2025

Download IBM Storage Protect product report

Also Known As

Carbonite Recover Backup

IBM Spectrum Discover

Overview

Carbonite Server securely replicates data to the local backup server while securing a second copy in the cloud. Granular restore and local failover options ensure rapid recovery and minimal data loss. With integrated hardware and cloud failover for critical systems, Carbonite Server provides reliable data protection.

OpenText

IBM Storage Protect offers data protection and management to secure critical business information efficiently. It's designed to be a scalable and flexible solution for data backup, recovery, and archive needs in complex IT environments.

IBM Storage Protect delivers comprehensive data protection by integrating backup, recovery, and archiving functionalities. It supports a range of workloads and infrastructures, from on-premises to cloud environments, facilitating efficient data management. Its platform provides seamless scalability to meet evolving business needs, underpinned by reliable security measures. Organizations leverage its capabilities to ensure business continuity and minimize data loss risks, making it vital in a data-driven world.

What are the key features of IBM Storage Protect?

Advanced Data Protection: Offers robust encryption and data integrity for secure backup processes.
Scalability: Grows with your data demands, supporting large data volumes without compromising performance.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrates with cloud platforms, enhancing backup strategies with hybrid options.
Automated Operations: Simplifies management tasks with automation, reducing manual intervention and errors.

What benefits should users expect when evaluating IBM Storage Protect?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces storage costs by optimizing backup processes and data retention strategies.
Data Safety: Ensures data accessibility and integrity during recovery efforts, building trust in data protection strategies.
Operational Efficiency: Boosts productivity through streamlined and automated backup management workflows.
Compliance Readiness: Helps maintain compliance with data protection regulations by providing thorough reporting and audit trails.

Industries like finance and healthcare implement IBM Storage Protect to safeguard sensitive information against threats. In financial services, it's crucial for maintaining client data confidentiality, while healthcare institutions use it to protect patient records, ensuring both accessibility and compliance with regulations.

IBM

Sample Customers

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County

CEMEX

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Storage Protect

November 2025

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