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IBM Spectrum Protect vs Unitrends 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

IBM Spectrum Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
149
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Unitrends
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
38th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of IBM Spectrum Protect is 2.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Unitrends is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
Manageable and comprehensive and integrates robust backup features for core banking
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dashboard from Browser Spectrum. This is why I am searching for another solution. The product also lacks any centralized graphical user interface (GUI), such as Jarek Pod, and I am limited to using a console-based text user interface, which my local partner handles completely.
Todd Guthrie - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution can be used to back up servers and Hyper-V cluster nodes, but its support is super expensive
I wouldn't rate Unitrends a ten out of ten because we had some hard drive failures in the appliance. Typically, when you have OneDrive, you can get it replaced. For some particular reason, the situation caused the entire system to crash. We had to reinstall the CentOS operating system on it, and we lost all our backups. They said there was no way to retain it, and it was pretty devastating and concerning that a drive failure would cause the loss of all the data on the appliance. It was extremely disappointing, and we had to start from scratch after three years worth of backup data. I rate Unitrends a nine out of ten for stability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its flexibility is valuable. It is a very flexible solution. There are always more ways than one to do something. It is a software solution, which means you can buy your own hardware and expand it whenever you want. You are not boxed in or locked into something you've bought and outgrown. You can always expand it."
"Support of the IBM X platform and the backup data replication to DR are the most valuable features."
"You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive."
"Since the technology is reliable, it simplifies the backup process significantly. Now, our focus can primarily be on managing full backups and creating some offline copies."
"Incremental forever: This feature helps us reduce backup time and backup storage space."
"We have been using it for several years, and it is quite reliable and predictable. We are quite comfortable with this solution. They're coming up with new features as well. It has good scalability, and it provides good integrations with business-critical applications or databases, such as SAP HANA. It works as expected, and we don't see any issues."
"The technical support for Spectrum Protect is very mature. It is very committed to giving a top-notch support experience."
"It is a really scalable solution. We can scale it up. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"I am impressed with the tool's reporting and UniView features."
"Being an appliance-based solution, we were able to migrate backup solutions without having to purchase a lot of hardware separately."
"It is a quick and easy way to organize my backups and to keep track of them."
"The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback"
"The ability to diversify jobs within the same server helps break down a large chunk of data into more manageable and concentrated chunks."
"They have great support."
"Stability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"What I found most valuable in Unitrends is its simple user interface. It also works reliably."
 

Cons

"Replication services would be nice. If these could be enhanced to be always on so multiple storage backup services could be added as a cluster pool. This would provide a better availability service."
"They are behind on many things, especially security. They are catching up a little bit now, but the competitors are doing better security-wise. There should be malware detection and prevention and higher security."
"This solution does not have good support for virtualization and a hyper-converged environment."
"We have run into some periods where we have found some tape issues which were causing us problems, but we resolved them. For some reason, we had a bunch of drives go offline on our disk storage (our virtual library)."
"Customers have migrated off of it because of its lack of virtual environment functions."
"It needs BMR (bare machine recovery) solutions for both Windows and Linux systems."
"The solution must protect against ransomware attacks better."
"Probably educating the virtual group who are not as used to the product. Most of our expertise is with AIX servers and virtual server backups."
"No appliance update notifications."
"Making the seeding process more accessible and easier to understand. Also, make more of the undocumented best practices easier to find."
"Comparing the features and the working pattern, definitely they have to come down on pricing if they want to compete in the market."
"Probably the biggest issue I've had is actually paying for the unit, and part of that problem is that they use a third party for the billing."
"I would like to see the real-time replication process improved, and a zero RPO feature added."
"It seems like Unitrends moved away from enterprise customer engagement and moved more towards the managed service provider market."
"Network-based storage stability could be improved."
"Techs don't see to be well-versed in troubleshooting issues that arise and tickets stay opened for weeks for resolution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of IBM Spectrum Protect is expensive. However, there are a few packages and it is unclear because, for the entry suite they have both options, which are the back-end storage capacity and the front-end storage capacity."
"The license model that they have at IBM, which is due to volume, from a certain volume onward is not the right license model."
"Some of the new advanced features are definitely more into cost savings, e.g., dedupe compression, so doing more with less."
"IBM Spectrum Protect, cost-wise, has way higher pricing than Veeam. By switching over to Veeam, my company saved over $600,000 in USD. The IBM Spectrum Protect pricing is a two on a scale of one to ten. My company paid additional fees for maintenance, apart from the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution."
"Licensing can be either complicated or simple depending on what type of licensing you wish to use and what works best for your environment."
"It is expensive."
"Spectrum Protect is not a cheap option."
"Their licensing depended on the number of CPUs you had."
"Initial pricing is competitive. Renewal pricing is steep, so make sure to project costs for the lifetime of the appliance(s)."
"Based on a scale of one to ten, with one being low and ten being high, I would rate the pricing of this solution as a three. Also, there are no additional costs involved in the standard licensing of the solution."
"No comment."
"We found that the cost of Unitrends was about the same as the Dell DR6300. We liked the fact that the Unitrends appliance was all-in-one."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The licensing is yearly and it depends on the customers."
"Make sure you do the homework to size the solution properly. Buy the Enterprise Plus licensing if you can afford it."
"Pricing model constantly changes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Spectrum Protect?
It's adequate for my core banking, however, I am looking for another solution for all systems. It is not compatible with other operating systems like Windows or Linux, and lacks a consolidated dash...
What do you like most about Unitrends?
The most valuable feature of Unitrends for me is the automated feedback
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Unitrends?
Unitrends is an expensive solution. We've negotiated deals where they've given us the $ 62,000 to $ 64,000 appliance for free but charged $ 90,000 for three years of support.
What needs improvement with Unitrends?
In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't s...
 

Also Known As

IBM TSM, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CERN, Einstein Healthcare, Nyherji, Allianz Australia, TZM, ABT Online, NCT, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Cobalt Iron, TransGrid, Baptist Health of Northeast Florida, Cash America, Piedmont Healthcare, RWGV, Arkansas Tech University, British Columbia Institute of Technology
NHL Players Association, Salvation Army, Sligro Food Group, Mason General Hospital, Tec Group, Saldab IT, Baker Tilly, Clinton Savings Bank, Ennit Magna Bank, Manukau Institute of Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Spectrum Protect vs. Unitrends and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.