Cohesity DataProtect vs Synology DSM comparison

Cohesity and Synology are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Cohesity is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while Synology is ranked #22 with an average rating of 9.3. Cohesity holds a 2.7% mindshare in BRS, compared to Synology’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cohesity users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Synology users who would recommend it.

Cohesity DataProtect

Read 74 Cohesity DataProtect reviews

6,852 Views
5,619 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Synology DSM

Read 10 Synology DSM reviews

2,418 Views
2,394 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cohesity DataProtect

Synology DSM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Cohesity DataProtect and Synology DSM both offer robust data management and protection solutions. Users find Cohesity DataProtect superior due to its advanced features and efficient deployment, while Synology DSM is appreciated for its cost-effectiveness and straightforward integration.

Features: Cohesity DataProtect is praised for its comprehensive data protection, scalability, and quick recovery times. Synology DSM users highlight its seamless file sharing, backup solutions, and integration with various platforms. Cohesity stands out with more advanced and scalable features compared to Synology DSM.

Room for Improvement: Users of Cohesity DataProtect suggest enhancements in reporting and analytics functionalities. Synology DSM users indicate that improvements are needed in customer support and initial setup processes. Cohesity users seek better insights, while Synology DSM users desire more accessible support and easier configuration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cohesity DataProtect is noted for its relatively smooth deployment but has mixed reviews regarding customer service quality. Synology DSM enjoys positive feedback for its simple deployment process but falls short in customer service responsiveness. Cohesity offers smoother deployment with some customer service challenges, whereas Synology DSM is easier to deploy but needs better customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Cohesity DataProtect users report higher setup costs but excellent ROI due to its features and performance. Synology DSM is favored for its lower initial costs and satisfactory ROI. Cohesity DataProtect requires a higher investment but promises significant returns, whereas Synology DSM is a more budget-friendly option offering decent ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cohesity DataProtect vs. Synology DSM Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Synology DSM

September 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

Cohesity DataProtect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (9th)

Synology DSM

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

22nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 2.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Synology DSM is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cohesity DataProtect	2.7%
Synology DSM	1.7%
Other	95.6%

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

Read full review

Michael Adejoh

Solutions Manager at Excel Connect Ventures

Reliable and cost-effective

One area where Synology DSM could improve is in enhancing its ability to detect and respond to security threats during backups and replication. Currently, it lacks the capability to automatically stop backups if it detects a virus or suspicious network activity, as some third-party solutions can. Having AI-driven analytics to identify anomalies and halt backups during potential attacks, along with notifications to administrators, would be valuable. Additionally, providing a dashboard for monitoring the backup environment's security would be a beneficial feature. These improvements would help address security concerns and make Synology more competitive in this aspect.

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

"A robust, verifiable backup with a restore solution, which decreases our backup and has a restore window."

"The solution's SQL cloning is great, and its Instant Mount restoration of virtual machines is brilliant."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."

"The spin-up of a VM within a test environment for backup testing along with quick restores."

"It makes our administrators' lives much easier to combine backup, archiving, and services like hosting file shares in one central system with only one user interface."

"The product is easy to put in place. All backups are done very quickly. It's easy to perform restores. What I prefer in the product is its simplicity. There are no useless settings to define, and everything is ready after the initial setup."

"It's completely reliable and easy to restore."

"The four independent node cluster architecture is redundant. It maintains data integrity and load balancing."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"The product performs well. It is easy to use and implement."

"The most valuable features are the basic storage, file management, Btrfs file system, and built-in backups that come with the solution."

"The most valuable aspect is its ability to handle multiple disks."

"Synology DSM is very easy to work and operate."

"The solution's most valuable feature stems from its ease of use, making it the tool's most interesting part."

"Because of its simplicity and the wide array of features it offers, I would recommend DSM for both tech-savvy individuals and those who prefer a straightforward file-serving solution."

"The most valuable features of Synology DSM are its security and connectivity."

"It offers a variety of software options through its package center, allowing users to customize their NAS device to serve multiple purposes."

More Synology DSM pros

Cons

"I would like to see the management of multiple nodes inside a tenant. If you want to manage a Cohesity environment, you either go on a per-node base, and you can hop from one node to the other, or you need to implement their SaaS capability but it always needs an internet connection. We would really like to have some kind of local management entity so that we can see all the Cohesity nodes in a customer environment and manage those nodes centrally. That's something that we would really like, and they are really working on it."

"The tool could benefit from further improvements in AI features, particularly in areas such as a generative AI chat interface. This feature could help answer queries about the data being protected. One feature that would greatly improve our experience with the product is the ability to identify data redundancies through a central console. This feature would help us reduce storage costs by managing redundant data."

"We have Oracle databases running on Linux servers in our environment and we have found the Oracle backups were quite complex to setup."

"The GUI is in need of improvement."

"Many of the reports are basic, at most, and at times we had to open a support ticket to help find or develop a report for our needs."

"I would like to see Microsoft Exchange DAG supported as soon as possible."

"The product is still young and is continually improving. There have been a couple of buggy releases in the software that have caused us minor issues, so possibly some better QA before releasing would prove to be useful. We have also been inquiring about new app and functionality via the Marketplace that was teased months back but has yet to come to fruition."

"Reporting is one area that isn't as robust as it could be."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"The platform could be much more cost-effective and flexible for integrating third-party products."

"Synology DSM is a good enough solution for small and medium companies, but I have not seen a big configuration of the solution for a big organization."

"Synology DSM's user interface is not quite intuitive."

"The product's only shortcoming is pricing, as it is an expensive solution."

"Even though Synology provides a backup solution, it does not recognize the VM movement across cluster hosts."

"Users may lose their data if they don't configure the solution properly."

"One area where Synology DSM could improve is in enhancing its ability to detect and respond to security threats during backups and replication."

"The only bothersome aspect is that the device is aging."

More Synology DSM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik."

"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."

"Cohesity came in at the best price."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"Cohesity came in at the best price. Setup was included and done in half a day."

"The solution's pricing is quite high, more so than that of its competitors, Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik."

"Licensing is per node and per protected terabyte. You will also pay 10-15% annually for support."

"The tool's pricing is average."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"It is quite an affordable solution."

"The pricing varies widely, catering to a broad range of needs."

"The price of the solution is very good."

"The solution’s pricing is neither cheap nor expensive."

"Synology DSM is a free tool."

"The licensing part of the solution is free. The hardware is more expensive than the other solutions in the market, but it's okay in the long run."

"Synology DSM is a cheap solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	42

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	1

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

See all answers

What do you like most about Synology DSM?

The most valuable features of Synology DSM are its security and connectivity.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Synology DSM?

The solution’s pricing is neither cheap nor expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Synology DSM?

Users may lose their data if they don't configure the solution properly.

See all answers

Comparisons

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 23% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 15% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 5% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

Veeam Data Platform vs Synology DSM

Compared 10% of the time

UrBackup vs Synology DSM

Compared 9% of the time

GoodSync For Business vs Synology DSM

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp SnapCenter vs Synology DSM

Compared 7% of the time

Acronis Cyber Protect vs Synology DSM

Compared 5% of the time

More Synology DSM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect

October 2025

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Buyer's Guide

Synology DSM

September 2025

Download Synology DSM product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM)

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

Cohesity

Synology DSM (DiskStation Manager) is a comprehensive software platform designed for Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices. It serves as the operating system for these devices, providing a wide range of features and functionalities.

The primary use case of Synology DSM is to centralize and manage data storage for organizations. It allows businesses to store, access, and share files securely across multiple devices and platforms. With its intuitive user interface, DSM simplifies the management of data, making it easy to create shared folders, set access permissions, and monitor storage usage.

One of the most valuable functionalities of Synology DSM is its robust data protection capabilities. It offers various RAID configurations, including SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID), which ensures data redundancy and safeguards against drive failures. DSM also supports advanced backup and disaster recovery solutions, such as Snapshot Replication and Hyper Backup, enabling organizations to protect their critical data effectively.

Furthermore, Synology DSM provides a wide range of productivity and collaboration tools. It offers applications like Synology Drive, which allows seamless file synchronization across devices, and Synology Office, a web-based suite for document editing and collaboration. DSM also supports various third-party applications, including popular cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive, enabling organizations to integrate their existing workflows seamlessly.

Synology

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Synology DSM

September 2025

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