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Carbonite Server 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

Carbonite Server
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
56th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (48th)
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
14th
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 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 Storage Protect is 2.3%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Dale Dirkes - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable."
"It does not slow down your computer or use a lot of resources as it works."
"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."
"The solution is a free engine to help work with the container."
"It seems reliable and easy to use."
"Technical support handled all our issues quickly and effectively."
"The solution is very stable."
"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 amount of data that it protects with very little storage by doing incremental forever is one of its most valuable features."
"SPIR is Instant Recovery for Spectrum Protect. It sends snapshots using space efficiently and blocking backups to the Spectrum Protect server. It provisions the snapshot from the backup server to the same or new server near instantly."
"It scales from very small to very large. It is easily the most scalable product out there."
"The addition of the retention set feature provides a reduction in storage costs. It also reduces RTO and RPO so that you can respond quickly to your clients and services in case of data loss."
"The components of IBM Spectrum Protect explain how the data is protected. The administration is very easy, and the vertical migration is intuitive."
"The archiving feature is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The ability to do dedupe in the product is nice to have."
"The D2D2T archive of my PACS data improved after I put Spectrum Protect 8.1.4 into production."
 

Cons

"The Hyper-V backup has room for improvement."
"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 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 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."
"In a future release, it would be a benefit to have the ability to add an application as a storage target, as a storage pool. Additionally, they should add more functionality to the administration for the Operation Center."
"This product comes up against other products available that are marketed better but the other products that it's in competition with are a single product and this is one of IBM products. If it could be marketed as more for competitors I think that's where it comes short."
"They need to reduce the complexity and make the learning curve easier."
"Needs more support for non-mainstream databases, in particular PostgreSQL, SQL, and MySQL."
"One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past."
"The administration interface should implement more functionalities that exist only in the command line and needs improvement in how some reports are created."
"The deduplication must be perfect, and thus should be improved."
"There have been scalability issues. The core product does not support scale out. We needed to create a new system and manage resources separate from the existing one."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is between $120 and $150 per year."
"The solution is open source."
"We pay 9,000 dollars per year for our license."
"Its price is reasonable."
"At scale, the consumption license (per TB) is very expensive."
"We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis."
"Spectrum Protect is not expensive, and it is simple to use."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"It's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."
"We chose IBM Spectrum Protect, because they actually have something called MSP pricing, which means managed services provider pricing. The pricing was attractive, and it seems to be a platform that IBM is totally investing on in terms of new functions and new capabilities."
"The solution is expensive."
"We pay for a terabyte license to support our backend usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

Carbonite Recover Backup
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Carbonite Server vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.