Carbonite Server vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus comparison

OpenText and IBM are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. OpenText is ranked #56, while IBM is ranked #46 with an average rating of 7.3. OpenText holds a 0.7% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Carbonite Server

Read 7 Carbonite Server reviews

1,252 Views
939 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Read 31 IBM Spectrum Protect Plus reviews

1,482 Views
1,438 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Carbonite Server

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus and Carbonite Server are prominent data protection solutions. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus has the upper hand with advanced features and robust support, while Carbonite Server stands out for cost-effectiveness and ease of deployment.

Features: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus users value comprehensive backup and recovery capabilities, integration with virtual environments, and a robust feature set. Carbonite Server users find simplicity, quick recovery times, and straightforward deployment beneficial.

Room for Improvement: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus users highlight complexity, occasional performance issues, and a steep learning curve. Carbonite Server users seek enhanced scalability, versatile data recovery options, and broader functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus has a more involved deployment process but offers strong customer service. Carbonite Server provides easier deployment and adequate customer support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus has higher initial setup costs but delivers substantial ROI through extensive capabilities. Carbonite Server is cost-effective, offering reasonable ROI given its feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

July 2025

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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

56th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (48th)

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

46th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Carbonite Server is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

Atif Najam

Chief Information Officer and Program Lead at Gatron Industries Ltd

Enables organizations to make large-scale recoveries easily, but the security must be improved

The security must be improved. We face a lot of cyber threats like ransomware. It impacts data availability and protection. The tool must provide a mechanism to make resilient backups. The tool must ensure that the recent backups have no ransomware. The backup must be immutable. They must be cyber-resilient backups. Finding a good resource person for IBM Spectrum in Pakistan is difficult. We have to rely on the support team. Resource availability is a challenge.

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

"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."

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

"It seems reliable and easy to use."

"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 very stable."

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

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

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

More Carbonite Server pros

"The solution is scalable and can be fitted for any customer."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."

"Some of the features we find very valuable and use a lot, are retention sets."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is the deduplication functionality. The clients moved to this solution originally because of this feature."

"The initial setup of IBM Protect Plus is simple and not complex."

"This is a multi-platform backup solution where you can take a backup from AIX, Windows, or Linux servers and restore from CD, disk, or tape."

"Virtual snapshots that offer incremental backups."

"The most valuable feature is how we can easily power speed up the VM even though the VM resides in remote storage."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"The stability has room for improvement."

"Their first level of support can be improved. Often they are too junior to understand the issues we are having, and it takes too much time to get from them to the next level of support, which is what we actually need."

"I think the graphical reports are a shortcoming of the tool since it fails to provide my company with what we want in terms of reporting. Due to the product's inability to take care of its reporting part, we have to use third-party software."

"An area that needs improvement is data validation. We currently use another product that gives us immediate validation, information about when the last backup was, and no risk of corruption happening. TSM in IBM Spectrum is not mature so that you can validate on the spot."

"Not particularly user friendly."

"You end up needing to do a lot of troubleshooting to get things to work effectively."

"The solution only supports HyperV and VMware but doesn't support Nutanix."

"IBM Spectrum Protect Plus could improve by adding SAP Rena."

"With ransomware protection and cyber protection, more improvement is possible."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source."

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

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

"Its price is reasonable."

"There are a few options available for purchasing the solutions. Overall, the price of the is high."

"We have a perpetual license for the tool since it is deployed on-premise."

"The licensing model of Spectrum Protect Plus is more efficient and cheaper compared to the original."

"The solution is too expensive."

"I rate the price of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus a one on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is very cheap."

"In addition to the standard licensing fees, we paid for implementation and training."

"The price is perpetual, but the maintenance cost is annual. That is, we pay once for the product and pay annually for the maintenance and support. The price was much cheaper than what we would have had to pay for EMC or Veritas. The pricing is competitive, and I would rate it at four out of five."

"If you need to extend it, it can be extended acting like a normal Spectrum Protect with a long archive."

More IBM Spectrum Protect Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

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What do you like most about IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that the product works and helps with restoration areas whenever there is a need to restore something.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

It is probably based on the number of CPUs. They are fairly expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus?

I used IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, but IBM is now replacing it with IBM Data Protect, which is a giant product now in common development with a well-known company in backup solutions.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 vs Carbonite Server

Compared 10% of the time

AvePoint Cloud Backup vs Carbonite Server

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 50% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Rubrik vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Atempo Live Navigator vs IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Backup

August 2025

Download Carbonite Server product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

August 2025

Download IBM Spectrum Protect Plus product report

Also Known As

Carbonite Recover Backup

No data available

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 Spectrum Protect Plus is a data protection and availability solution for virtual environments that can be deployed in minutes and protect your environment within an hour. It simplifies data protection, whether data is hosted in physical, virtual, software-defined or cloud environments. It can be implemented as a stand-alone solution or integrate with your IBM Spectrum Protect environment to off-load copies for long term storage and data governance with scale and efficiency.

IBM

Sample Customers

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County

PT Wings Surya, Tectrade, State of Ohio

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

July 2025

Free Report: Carbonite Server vs. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

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