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Carbonite Server vs N-able Cove Data Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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
55th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
45th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
N-able Cove Data Protection
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
34th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (9th), MSP Backup (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of Carbonite Server is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able Cove Data Protection is 1.9%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
N-able Cove Data Protection1.9%
Carbonite Server1.3%
Other96.8%
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

CP
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.
Per MøllerJacobsen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior consultant at Azend A/S
Delivers cost-effective data backup with room for search improvements
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for something—you need to know where it was and when it was there to restore it, plus it would be nice to take out data from Microsoft 365 in some portable format, which is currently not an option. I would like to extract the data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format, something like a database or maybe just to take out a PST file or SharePoint and Teams files to the file system. Especially in these times, where we discuss potential risks with the Microsoft cloud for European companies, companies would want to know how to access their data from the backup if they suddenly don't have a tenant. I believe there should be the ability to take out data from Microsoft 365 in a portable format. I know that Cohesity is working on making such a thing. It's not there yet; I asked last week for something for forensics, and the support team said it's not possible yet, but I know from our technical account manager they are working on some solutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is a free engine to help work with the container."
"This solution is very simple to use and I will recommend it to anybody."
"Technical support handled all our issues quickly and effectively."
"The Granular Restore of SQL feature has been a lifesaver more times than I can count."
"Easy verification of things is the most valuable feature."
"Easy verification of things is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is very stable."
"I find the BMR/image and the recovery pieces are valuable."
"The most valuables feature is the alerts and monitoring that catches the failed backups."
"For us, this product works well."
"I know I won't have an issue if the data is there. The reliability and the confidence that we have is amazing. It doesn't matter. We've had customers have ransomware. We've had customers that have had corruption. We've had customers that have had employees destroy their data. As long as it's been backed up, I know that I can get it back and I know I have nothing to worry about. Our confidence level is very high."
"The most valuable aspect is the added protection of having a cloud-based backup service. It provides redundancy in case of data loss."
"We've got twenty-seven different clients right now using Cove and our success rate on backups, taking out all the variables like computers being offline or crashing, is about a 95% to 99% success rate at all times."
"The initial setup of N-able Cove Data Protection was very easy."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is user-friendly and straightforward, and the dashboard is clear."
"The ease of use and the console are great."
 

Cons

"The stability has room for improvement."
"The Hyper-V backup has room for improvement."
"When you have to restore it, Carbonite takes a lot of time."
"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."
"It could be a little bit easier or faster to be able to access data files without having to download anything."
"In the next release I would like to see an improvement in the auto failover option."
"A better default view on my dashboard would be great."
"The recovery side, the restore side, could be a little more optimized."
"There aren’t any challenges. Regarding the additional features, Cove is limited to disaster recovery with Azure. It would be great to make disaster recovery compatible with AWS."
"N-able Cove Data Protection does not provide a lot of SaaS backup products, which is an area they can improve. Additionally, there are some limitations on the storage side, where I cannot have a lot of employees backing up their data."
"For the MSP side, they could have more of a "security user" that can go in and only see certain clients. If you give somebody access as a technician, they can see all the clients."
"We don't use the solution’s automated recovery testing because SolarWinds made me cross. When they released it, I went, "Oh, well, that's quite good." Because if you use the system, then it supposedly spins up, and on the portal, it gives you a screenshot of the booted device. So, I phoned up, and I said, "Oh, that's really quite cool. How much is that?" They said, "No, no, no. It's all included in your license." I went, "Okay then," and went and deployed it on about half the fleet. One of the options that our customers have is they can pay us a small amount every month for us to test the recovery just to prove that it's viable, and I thought, "Well, this will do that for us. Nice." Then, in the next invoice, we got a charge for it. While It was not a huge amount, I took offense at the fact that we were told that it would be a no extra cost option that was part of our license, but it turns out that it's chargeable. Therefore, we haven't used it since."
"The reporting feature and functionality need improvement. We would like to see a little bit more detailed reporting that offers more CEO or C-level focused reporting options."
"We would like to have better reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 is open source."
"The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is an averagely-priced product."
"I believe that the price is very reasonable in comparison to other options. It is cheaper than both Redstor and Acronis and, since we are now using our own on-premise cloud, there is absolutely no comparison since we have unlimited storage rather than paying per gigabyte used for their onsite storage. We are currently able to backup fifty computers for the same price that we use to backup five computers."
"The only option I would like to see is an adjustable scale. Right now we have 250 seats and we're not using all of them. It would be nice to be able to save that little bit of money by being able to buy just what we need."
"The pricing is very competitive and it's well worth the price."
"Cove only takes the data you have on the physical server. I can back that up for long periods of time, and I don't accrue high charges to have the data in the cloud. It stays at one rate. This allows me to forecast payment for the next one or two years and show clients their estimated growth."
"The pricing of SolarWinds seems to be fair compared to the rest of the industry."
"The pricing is affordable. N-able Cove Data Protection has a direct-to-cloud architecture, but it also allows saving backups locally without extra storage costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N-able Backup?
In terms of pricing, N-able Cove Data Protection is neither cheap nor expensive compared to other competitors.
What needs improvement with N-able Backup?
The challenges I face especially are those I've mentioned, that finding some specific data in N-able Cove Data Protection is not as easy as it is in some other systems. You cannot just search for s...
What is your primary use case for N-able Backup?
Our main use cases for enabling N-able Cove Data Protection include backing up our customers' data on servers hosted in data centers and servers hosted in our own data center, as well as a few onsi...
 

Also Known As

Carbonite Recover Backup
N-able Backup, SolarWinds Backup, SolarWinds MSP Backup & Recovery, SolarWinds MSP Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

INLINE Commercial Construction, Hamilton County
Computer Depot, Leading Edge Computers, IT Logic Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Carbonite Server vs. N-able Cove Data Protection and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.