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Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs HPE Zerto Software comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 11, 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

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (7th)
HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
340
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (2nd), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is 4.4%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

MinaMagdy1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive integration and user-friendly dashboard enhance data protection workflows
PowerProtect Data Manager lacks the tape-out functionality, which is important for organizations relying on it for offsite backup. While PowerProtect Data Manager offers a workaround, it's not always accepted, notably by sectors like banking. Additionally, I would like PowerProtect Data Manager to provide microservices and container backup for modern applications.
Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverage disaster recovery with reliable support and cost-effective future-proof features
Zerto is straightforward to implement because it only requires the installation of an agent on the VMs designated for migration. A service, typically a VM, must also be deployed at the disaster recovery location. This entire process is simple and can be completed within three days. Zerto's near-synchronous replication occurs every minute, allowing for highly granular recovery points. This means that even if interruptions or malware disruptions occur within that minute, Zerto can restore to the last known good state, effectively recovering the entire setup to the latest backup. This capability ensures high data security and minimizes potential data loss. One of the main benefits of implementing Zerto is its data compression, which significantly reduces the load on our IPsec VPN. Zerto compresses data by 80 percent before transmitting it across the VPN, minimizing the data transferred between geographically dispersed locations. This compression and subsequent decompression at the destination alleviate the strain on the VPN, preventing overload and ensuring efficient data synchronization. Zerto simplifies malware protection by integrating it into its disaster recovery and synchronization features. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for separate antivirus setups in virtual machines and applications. It streamlines our security measures and removes the need for additional software or solutions, resulting in an excellent return on investment. Zerto's single-click recovery solution offers exceptional recovery speed. Through the user interface, a single click allows for a complete restoration from the most recent backup within two to three minutes, enabling rapid recovery and minimal downtime. Zerto's Recovery Time Objective is excellent. In the past, if a virtual machine crashed, we would recover it from a snapshot, which could take one to two hours. With Zerto, the recovery process takes only five minutes, and users are typically unaware of any disruption. This allows us to restore everything quickly and efficiently. Zerto has significantly reduced our downtime. When malware affects our data, Zerto immediately notifies us and helps us protect other applications, even those not yet implemented with Zerto. By monitoring these applications, we can quickly identify and address any potential malware spread, minimizing downtime across our systems. Zerto significantly reduces downtime and associated costs during disruptions. Our services are unified, so in the event of a disruption without Zerto, even a half-day disruption would necessitate offline procedures. This would lead to increased manpower, service delays, and substantial financial losses due to interrupted admissions and other critical processes. By unifying service processes, Zerto minimizes the impact of outages. Zerto streamlines our disaster recovery testing across multiple locations by enabling efficient failover testing without disrupting live services. Traditionally, DR testing required downtime of critical systems, but Zerto's replication and failover capabilities allow us to test in parallel with live operations. This non-disruptive approach ensures continuous service availability while validating our DR plan, even in scenarios like malware attacks, by creating a separate testing environment that mirrors the live setup. This comprehensive testing provides confidence in our ability to handle real-world incidents effectively. This saves us over 60 percent of the time. Zerto streamlines system administration tasks by automating many processes, thereby reducing the workload for multiple administrators. This allows them to focus on other university services that require attention and effectively reallocate support resources from automated tasks to those requiring more dedicated management. Zerto is used exclusively for our critical services, providing up to a 70 percent improvement in our IT resilience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The solution adequately handles data storage."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integrated approach."
"The management part of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has improved significantly."
"The solution's initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of the solution are flexibility and data protection."
"It satisfies my customers' scalability needs and provides interactive features, allowing efficient integration."
"The deduplication is the most valuable feature because it helps to control the overhead."
"The most valuable feature is Zerto's ability to precopy data to a remote destination prior to the actual live migration period. That saves us a lot of time and has been very helpful. For example, if we had migrations occurring in waves over a period of several weeks with a VPG or VPG setup of approximately 50 VMs, that is multiple gigabytes of data, even terabytes in many cases. Having that data already copied on the evening of the migration saves considerable hours of time. It easily saves us four to six hours a night."
"Zerto's continuous data protection is unmatched. It's phenomenal. It's also very easy to use. The menus are self-explanatory. Once you understand the terminology of the product, what the VPGs (Virtual Protected Groups) are, you're able to pretty much do what you want in the product. It's very easy to use."
"Moving the VPGs from one location to another is a valuable feature. You just click on it and move it and it's done."
"The features of HPE Zerto Software that I enjoy the most are the ease of setting up the protection groups and the ease of doing testing, such as failover tests."
"The biggest benefit is the application-consistent disaster recovery functionality."
"The mobile application is very useful as a real-time monitoring, reporting tool. When asked the status of our machine backup and recovery ability, an easy answer is to display the status on the real-time application or browser. The Zerto Analytics tool helps predict future storage needs by tracking trends in space, journal size, and I/O rate. These are reportable statistics making quantifiable tracking easy and accurate. Having a web interface simplifies access by other system administrators."
"The most important feature is that the recovery point (RPO) is less than one minute. The is really good for our customers, as they can keep their data loss to a minimum."
"The continuous data protection is great. We love it because I can see exactly how many seconds behind real-time we are, which is usually under 10 seconds. It keeps things up to date. We love the product."
 

Cons

"As a new product, there are some things that still need to improve a bit as it matures."
"The marketing strategy is lagging behind competitors such as CommVault. Dell needs to improve its market presence and communication with customers and solution providers."
"The main issue that needs improvement is the support system. When I raise a ticket, it sometimes takes a while to get a response."
"PowerProtect Data Manager is missing a feature for takeout, which means I cannot store backup data off-site within the software. This is a limitation for organizations that require off-site solutions."
"The solution should enhance its user interface and make it more flexible."
"The tool's scalability has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
"A lot of improvement is required in Dell's first level of support."
"The Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager reports could improve. There should be different kinds of reports on failures, such as dashboards that we can submit to top management or auditors."
"Zerto's current reporting capabilities are insufficient for our needs."
"I definitely would like to see the continuation of the migration capability to Hyper-V included in the next release of HPE Zerto Software, as well as adding migration capabilities to other hypervisors, such as Nutanix Acropolis."
"When we migrated to new virtual infrastructure, we had to set up Zerto all over again. And that took a long time. It would be nice if Zerto had some sort of migration tool where you could migrate all of your virtual machines to a new infrastructure without having to set up Zerto all over again."
"I would like to see a couple of details regarding awareness of VM events coming outside of ZVR."
"As a user who used Zerto for eight years, there are specific issues that it cannot address. For instance, recovering physical servers is directly connected to the virtualized solution in use, meaning your infrastructure needs a VMware or Hyper-V solution."
"I have experienced some issues sometimes during upgrades."
"They should not make it so expensive so that I can buy more of it."
"The improvement that I would like to see is a little bit easier product knowledge, things like that. It's getting a lot better than it was before because it's not as old of a product as Cisco, but if you look for something like Cisco routing and networking, you'll find millions of articles out there and it's everywhere."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not less expensive than competitors but pricing deals are available."
"The product is offered at a very competitive price in the market."
"The solution is more affordable than other vendors."
"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not an expensive solution."
"We offer monthly or yearly subscriptions. The price could be cheaper."
"The licensing costs and pricing model are based on capacity and the license is easy to upgrade."
"The price of Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is reasonable."
"The licensing model is good. The price is a little bit expensive, but for what customers get on it, it tends to pay for itself. However, if more and more companies start to improve, then Zerto may need to look at their pricing and make it a little better."
"It was a little bit expensive. It took a long time for us to get DR for our workstations. It's one thing when you have 15 servers, but when we needed to bring on almost another 200 users, and each was the same price as the servers, it was too expensive. But Zerto worked with us and gave us a solution that was pretty decent in terms of price."
"It's not the cheapest tool, it's expensive. But it's doing a good job."
"The pricing is pretty competitive to that of other options out there. When we shopped around, it was in line with the price of other solutions."
"Zerto is pretty reasonable. I haven't checked to see how much Rubrik is going to quote us for their solution. At least for us, the price doesn't play a big factor in the decision-making because it is a pretty small deployment for our use case."
"It's a little bit expensive."
"I have heard that it is expensive, but that is not my world."
"I would suggest getting a dedicated, well-informed rep."
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Comparison Review

it_user159711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 9, 2014
VMware SRM vs. Veeam vs. Zerto
Disaster recovery planning is something that seems challenging for all businesses. Virtualization in addition to its operational flexibility, and cost reduction benefits, has helped companies improve their DR posture. Virtualization has made it easier to move machines from production to…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
One notable feature is its robust backup support for Kubernetes and container environments. Additionally, PPDM stands out for its ease of deployment and management compared to other backup solution...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
Overall, pricing does not significantly impact our decision. The main concern is the solution itself, presales activities, and positioning it in the right place. Commercial aspects are secondary to...
What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
The marketing strategy is lagging behind competitors such as CommVault. Dell needs to improve its market presence and communication with customers and solution providers.
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What do you like most about Zerto?
Its ability to roll back if the VM or the server that you are recovering does not come up right is also valuable. You have the ability to roll back a few seconds or a few minutes. The rollback feat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zerto?
I ballpark Zerto's pricing at about $1,000 per VM, which I find fair for what it does, but the cost of entry was tough initially due to the minimum number needed to start. I really needed to prove ...
 

Also Known As

PowerProtect, Dell EMC PowerProtect
Zerto Virtual Replication
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Bank of Greece, USC Australia, PCS Publishing, Dell Digital IT, Rushmore Electric, Melanson Health, Arrow Electronics
United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs. HPE Zerto Software and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.