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Eaton PDUs vs Eaton UPS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Eaton PDUs
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
10th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Eaton UPS
Ranking in Data Center Power Solutions
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Center Power Solutions category, the mindshare of Eaton PDUs is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Eaton UPS is 37.1%, up from 36.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Power Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

GS
Power monitoring alerts us when there is a commercial power issue to help ensure we don't lose equipment
One of the best parts is the number of outlets on the PDU. It allows for excellent wire management so you don't have a spider web of power cords. I also really like the way they lock, so that somebody can't accidentally bump a power cord and it will come out. I, personally, was working on the back of a systems rack and it was a very tight space. As I was moving, my knee bumped across a power cord, not very hard at all, and it took down half of the rack. We were right in the middle of updating some OS files and we lost two servers completely that had to be completely rebuilt. Also, the solution's color chassis options are a benefit. One of our new standards is that we've gone red and yellow with all power cables and PDUs, for primary and redundant. It's very easy for a technician to see that he's not unplugging both the power supplies of one unit. When everything is black and you're trying to trace it, sometimes your finger accidentally comes off the cable and you get on the wrong one. Next thing you know, you've unplugged both power supplies of a system and you have a crash. I've never done that one, but I have seen it done several times. The red and yellow make it almost idiot proof. In addition, it allows you to configure as many outlets as you want, in a length that fits your specific rack size, so you don't have to have multiple PDUs.
JC
Provides more uptime for our Linear Accelerator, resulting in better patient care
The battery life seems to be pretty good. I don't have a lot of experience with other units of its size, but it does a good job of keeping our unit up. There is no active power management. It just keeps the power up. We haven't had any power failures that are long enough to completely drain the battery. It's been good for small power failures. In addition, I can access the built-in webpage on the UPS and use that to look at the status. It's on all the time and monitoring. It gives us an email once a month telling us that our device is working properly. It will also list the power events that happened in that month.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What's most valuable about this is that Eaton built for us the exact model that I needed. We went through the customization options, everything from the cable length and electrical specifications to the color of the PDU. It showed different color PDUs to keep my company's data center that much more organized."
"The solution's color chassis options are a benefit. One of our new standards is that we've gone red and yellow with all power cables and PDUs, for primary and redundant. It's very easy for a technician to see that he's not unplugging both the power supplies of one unit. When everything is black and you're trying to trace it, sometimes your finger accidentally comes off the cable and you get on the wrong one. Next thing you know, you've unplugged both power supplies of a system and you have a crash... The red and yellow make it almost idiot proof."
"Scalability has been pretty good. We were able to increase the battery. We only installed one battery cabinet, then we added a second one for additional capacity later on. That was a nice feature that others haven't been able to do."
"In our data center, we have redundancy in all of our racks. When UPS feeds one half of the rack, the other feeds the other half of the rack. We have dual power supplies to everything. We have a lot of redundancies because of that. Luckily, with Eaton dual Battery Cabinets, we can maintain the systems at all times (short of a transformer issue), even while we're doing the maintenance on them. Our IT department loves this, because we don't shut them down at all."
"The most valuable feature is that they work. They've been really reliable for us. They come as advertised. There is also a nice network feature that allows us to monitor them."
"VMMS is a good feature. There are multiple charging units inside each UPS. For example, on my 9395 I have three to four charging units and the unit will scale down. Let's say I've got a megawatt of power. If I'm only running 200 Kw I can drop the charging units down and rotate through the charging units to reduce energy. They do all that."
"The fact that they're reliable and that they notify us whenever the line power drops are the only things we really need. All of our UPS's have been available and up whenever power outages have happened."
"We have utilized the building-block nature of the solution as we have grown. We can add modules, which helps from a cost standpoint and protects the initial capital investment in the system, rather than having to completely replace the system. We can start small scale and incrementally fund additional capacity as needed rather than purchasing a system, having to pull it out, and buying a brand new one."
"The technology is reliable."
"The most valuable feature is that they don't go down. We haven't had any other UPSs in this location, but we've had Chloride UPSs at other places and they didn't do so well."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was slightly complicated due to the mounting incompatibility with the competitor's server cabinets, the one that I described to you earlier."
"My only complaint with it is that we use Panduit wire management and Eaton's PDUs will not lock into Panduit. There are two little knobs on the back where you can just slip it in and it'll lock right into the wire management, but it does not work on Panduit. It only works on their proprietary wire management. It needs to be able to integrate with other wire managers."
"I want to monitor remotely and that is a complaint I have... The remote monitoring software they have does not provide the same information that the touch screen provides and neither provide me the same information that the field techs can draw out of the unit when they directly connect to them."
"The battery life of the older batteries is the only thing that has been our issue up to this point. Luckily, the Cellwatch system that is on there identifies it and notifies us ahead of time when we should get them changed pretty quickly. This may be addressed with the lithium-ion batteries, but it is too early in our ownership of a UPS with a lithium-ion battery to know."
"When it comes to the power management software portion, that's the part that I haven't really seen or heard a lot about. The dashboards of the UPS's, or the management software, are one area that they could probably improve a little."
"I would like to see there is a little more clarity on what the issue is on the notifications that we receive. This would make it easier for us. What we have to do now is sometimes go to the UPS to figure out exactly what the issue is, because it's not always clear."
"The industry is going to a smaller footprint, but that does come at a cost, specifically for battery reserve time, size and density of the system, and BTU generation. Those three areas contribute to the heat generation factor. I think that they've done a really good job. But, when you look across our infrastructure, it's the UPS system that takes up the most space of any of our products."
"If they could reduce the footprint even more, that would be great. And they could always make heat dissipation better."
"One time, a feedback breaker in a system-bypass module, or something like that, was tripped. We brought them in to see what caused it. They figured it out and we haven't had an issue like that again, since."
"I think the batteries are based on lead-acid technology so they have to be replaced every five years, but with the new lithium-ion battery technology that is available, it might be good if, at some point, they updated their battery technology."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is higher, but you're also buying from a company that's been around for decades. It has the staff to support you so that when you call at 2 o'clock in the morning, somebody is going to help you out. You're not going to have to wait until 8:00 AM the next day. It's more pricey, but I definitely think it's worth the money."
"The UPSs are saving us approximately $50,000 a year."
"The cost per unit, as a rough estimate, is $300,000 per UPS 750-block."
"For our used case, 12kW is good. It has worked very well for us. They can be a lot bigger and they can be smaller, but the 12kW seems to be just about right for us. It has a good price point."
"When you bid them out, they're all within a single-digit percentage point of each other... The cost of Eaton's service is competitive because we bid it out. I bid the service for all my units on campus: APCs, Lieberts, Eatons, because we've got a big hodgepodge of everything. Eaton won on price."
"The pricing is far more competitive than APC or Liebert, the other two big players. And Eaton's service is phenomenal."
"We use their service plan, which includes parts so we don't do the maintenance on it ourselves. We have a service plan that we use, then they do all the maintenance and periodical maintenance (PM) work. If there are any hardware failures, then they also do the work. Therefore, it's a hardware/software support contract that includes labor."
"It is an expensive technology. The maintenance is expensive. The batteries are expensive. Replacing those batteries is expensive as a capital cost. You have to plan for it every four to five years, but it's the cost of doing business. The cost of not having a good reliable system in place is even higher when you have catastrophic failures. I would recommend the product, but you do have to be prepared to spend some money, both on the product as well as all the environmental preparations for powering the system and cooling system."
"I have mixed feelings about the pricing and licensing. I believe that when you sell a UPS, and considering the UPS is a lifeline to a lot of the major corporations, the monitoring solution should be part of the package automatically, out-the-door. If you have to raise that price on the UPS an extra $5,000, then do so at that moment. Don't have that as an extra offer after the UPS has been sold. I believe that all UPSs need to have high availability, all the latest software installed, and be ready to go out-the-door."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Also Known As

Eaton Power Distribution Units
Eaton Powerware, Powerware 9300 Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Gamatronic
Find out what your peers are saying about Eaton PDUs vs. Eaton UPS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.