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 #14 with an average rating of 7.0. OpenText holds a 0.8% mindshare in BRS, compared to IBM’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenText users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Carbonite Server

Read 7 Carbonite Server reviews

1,596 Views
1,149 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Storage Protect

Read 4 IBM Storage Protect reviews

4,852 Views
4,027 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Carbonite Server

IBM Storage Protect

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

Carbonite Server and IBM Storage Protect compete in the data backup and recovery space. IBM Storage Protect stands out due to its comprehensive features, even at a higher cost.

Features: Carbonite Server provides automatic cloud backup, centralized management, and local backup options, catering to small to medium businesses. IBM Storage Protect offers enterprise-grade features, including advanced data recovery, security protocols, and impressive scalability.

Room for Improvement: Carbonite Server could enhance its scalability and data protection capabilities to better serve larger organizations. IBM Storage Protect might improve ease of deployment and simplify user interfaces to aid smaller businesses without dedicated IT resources. Both products could benefit from further price optimization and efficiency enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Carbonite Server offers an easy setup process with responsive support, ideal for small businesses with minimal IT staff. IBM Storage Protect is more complex to deploy but offers robust support services, suiting larger organizations with dedicated IT teams.

Pricing and ROI: Carbonite Server is competitively priced with substantial ROI for cost-conscious businesses. IBM Storage Protect, despite a higher upfront cost, delivers a strong ROI through its advanced feature set and scalability, appealing to enterprises seeking extensive data management capabilities.

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

Buyer's Guide

Carbonite Server vs. IBM Storage Protect

December 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

58th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (44th)

IBM Storage Protect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, 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 1.8%, 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	1.8%
Carbonite Server	0.8%
Other	97.4%

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Chris Puddy

Backup, storage and disaster recovery technical specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

A reliable backup product which needs little management

For most technical users the setup and initial deployment are fairly straightforward and once deployed it 99% of the time looks after itself. Installation of the agents is similar to most other products in that it has an install wizard to guide you, the accompanying documentation is also very useful to assist wherever you are in the agent install and policy setup process. Normally our customers' IT team does the deployment of agents, however, this isn't a daunting task unless you are dealing with multiple servers to protect the product. On a server-by-server basis, the deployment doesn't take long. From the MSP side of things, the infrastructure sitting behind the scenes doesn't take too much to install, configure and maintain.

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reviewer2787573

Interim Head of Infrastructure at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Backup coverage has supported immutable protection and now needs a more modern, intuitive interface

IBM Storage Protect is from a previous generation of backup software. In those days, backup software was complex in setting up and complex to manage. The new software, such as Rubrik, is very easy to use and more relatable to younger engineers because its interface design is more similar to Office 365 and the newer controls and labels that we are accustomed to. The difficulty that we now have with IBM Storage Protect is that for this day and age, compared to other products that are out there, it seems complex. If we look back 15 years ago, all enterprise class backup software was complex, so IBM was not any different. However, many of these older systems, such as Commvault, still have the same complaint that they are very complex because they have tried to keep that same interface and the same way it works. This suits them, but it probably needed a complete overhaul to bring it into the ease of use that we have with modern software. However, that upgrade has not been done. IBM Storage Protect has not been upgraded into a modern platform. It still looks a legacy platform.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

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

"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."

"It seems reliable and easy to use."

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

"The efficiency and convenience are excellent."

More Carbonite Server pros

"The customization and the ability to backup across all platforms are the most valuable features."

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

"The product is very stable."

"Because of the flexible parameters, everything can be fine-tuned to the customers’ needs in their environment."

"IBM support is friendly, knowledgeable, and they always respond quickly. They've always been able to find the cause of my problem."

"The solution can back up every kind of workload in the environment."

"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."

"Some of the people in our group, like our DBAs and non-technical people, can restore some stuff themselves via Spectrum Protect. That is how simple it is."

More IBM Storage Protect pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."

"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."

"It can be improved for large file systems with many files. Spectrum Protect can restore large files very well, but if you're restoring millions of little files, it is not as great. At one point, we tried to implement the VMware module with it, and it was awful and terrible. I don't know if that has improved. If it hasn't, this would be one big improvement."

"An area for improvement would be the ease of use - the GUI is not up to the mark compared to other products in the market."

"We did not see any drawbacks to IBM Spectrum Protect before assisting a customer using Windows that wanted to migrate to using UNIX. IBM Spectrum Protect does not offer an option to migrate from other operating systems."

"It does not do too well in our virtual environment."

"The previous GUI that they had was slow, and it did not have enough information on it."

"It has a lot of areas for improvement. Its reporting for job completion or incompletion can be improved. It should also provide a granular recovery, ease of operation, data life cycle management, and media management. It should support a backup in such a format that in case of a disaster, one can start the virtual machine out of the backup itself. Its reliability can also be better. It is also expensive, and their support is also poor."

More IBM Storage Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source."

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

"Its price is reasonable."

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

"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

"I don't have an idea about the pricing. They send that over to someone else, but I know that one of the issues they had was the licensing costs. I don't think they were happy with how they were charged."

"One can go with either a PVU licensing model or a capacity based licensing model. Either solution does not block the usage, if over used."

"The solution has a capacity based licensing, front and back-end license."

"Regarding retro-compatibility of the product between versions, your data is always available and the ROI is unquestionable."

"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."

"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's very complicated. Licensing is a pain."

More IBM Storage Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

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	95

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.

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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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus vs Carbonite Server

Compared 6% of the time

Datto Cloud Continuity vs Carbonite Server

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs IBM Storage Protect

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Storage Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Backup

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Storage Protect

December 2025

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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

December 2025

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