Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE Zerto Software vs IBM Storage Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 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

HPE Zerto Software
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
342
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (1st), Cloud Backup (3rd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (1st)
IBM Storage Protect
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of HPE Zerto Software is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Storage Protect is 2.0%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Zerto Software2.3%
IBM Storage Protect2.0%
Other95.7%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zerto enables us to do sandboxing failovers. You can run tests on a production environment in a sandbox and spin up a copy of your actual production environment in a few hours. When you're done with it, you can click a couple of buttons, and it's all blown away. You don't need to worry about reverting changes or interfering with your on-prem production environments."
"The most valuable features are the single pane of glass and the reduction in time it takes for our systems engineering team to manage the platform."
"It has enabled DR protection for virtual appliances with minimal administrator time."
"Zerto has improved our restoration time and made it easier to test software upgrades. It has simplified tasks like decommissioning a site and replicating virtual machines from one location to another."
"In terms of RTO and RPO, Zerto improves them to seconds."
"We used Zerto to protect VMs in our environment. It depends on the network and environment, but the RTO takes around 7-8 seconds. When you compare Zerto to other solutions in the market, it's very powerful."
"The ability to quickly bring up VMs within a test environment allows us to test our disaster recovery functions and ensures that they would function just as well in an actual disaster scenario."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to re-IP on the fly, because it makes the migration a lot smoother on the system end."
"It integrates well with Spectrum Scale."
"A robust tool which allows us to backup pretty much any environment, virtual or physical."
"We have a very good team of administrators who know the product perfectly and are able to manage it on a day-to-day basis."
"It is more efficient than most traditional backup solutions."
"The best part of this solution is that it just works."
"What I found most valuable in IBM Spectrum Protect is that it allows you to back up physical machines, and its proxy feature lets you back up virtual machines."
"Nothing beats this solution for file backup."
"Data reduction definitely reduces costs, not only software costs, but from the infrastructure needed."
 

Cons

"I would like to be able to replicate one to multiple without having to recreate every VPG. That would save us a lot of time. When we add a site or move our DR to a different site, I have to recreate everything from scratch. So, it'd be cool to be able to just repoint an existing VPG to a new site without having to recreate everything."
"If the log was more detailed and more user-friendly, we wouldn't have to make the calls to the support to try and figure out where the problem lies."
"The alerting has room for improvement as it is the biggest pain point with the software. It is so bad. It is just general alerting on or off. There are so many emails all the time. You have no control over it, which is terrible. It is the worst part of the entire application. I have voiced this to Zerto hundreds of times for things like feature changes. Apparently, it's coming, but there is nothing concrete as to when you can do it."
"Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."
"The replication appliances tend to have issues when they recover from being powered off when a host is in maintenance mode. Sometimes you have to do a manual task where you go in and detach hard disks that are no longer in use, to get the replication appliances to power back on. There are some improvements to be made around the way those recover."
"I don't have any input for improvement or a critical feature request at this moment. If anything, a lower price is always better."
"I would like to see a couple of details regarding awareness of VM events coming outside of ZVR."
"Its price is a little bit on the higher side."
"I would like to see a way to have "always on" implemented."
"The licensing isn't very clear. They should work to simply or clarify the cost structure."
"The main admin console from the UI cannot do anything in the product. It just allows us to maintain, maybe, 30% to 40%. For the rest, we have to use the command line."
"Customers have migrated off of it because of its lack of virtual environment functions."
"Software-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect didn't handle virtual machines that well. The license cost is mainly the area for improvement in IBM Spectrum Protect."
"For Spectrum Protect Plus, I would like to see more enhanced reporting features and integration with Spectrum Protect."
"Replication of data could be more user friendly."
"It needs some software upgrades to fix some of its current bugs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is reasonable. I have not worked with other tools, but as compared to its competitors such as VMware, its price is lower. So, in my opinion, its price is good."
"Zerto is expensive but offers many features that make it competitive."
"We found that in an event that was massive enough to cause an entire cluster to go offline we would be happy with our core services up and running."
"The pricing is a little more expensive in comparison to other tools."
"It's very reasonably priced. It's a little more than $3,000 annually. That works out to about $20 per server per month."
"Obviously, it would be nice to have it for free. Nevertheless, a lot of effort has gone into making it a top-notch product. An excellent product with expert support is never going to be cheap. I think it's fairly priced for what it does and the benefit it brings to our business."
"The solution is very cost-effective and very easy to set-up but does not compromise on features."
"It is less expensive than the full solution that we had previously, but at the same time, it's not an inexpensive product either."
"Its licensing is complicated. It goes by CPUs, and it is pretty expensive as well."
"The solution is expensive."
"That's a hard estimate. It depends on the licensing, the hardware, and other stuff, but it is fairly expensive. It is generally more expensive than other solutions."
"The license model that they have at IBM, which is due to volume, from a certain volume onward is not the right license model."
"The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD)."
"The solution's pricing is fair. Price-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market."
"The platform is neither highly priced nor inexpensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
873,209 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
23%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business92
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise193
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business53
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise94
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about IBM Storage Protect?
The best point about IBM Storage Protect is that it can use IBM tape environments, which we still use and will continue to use in the future.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Storage Protect?
IBM Storage Protect is generally an expensive tool. However, with good contracts with IBM or its partners, the cost might not be so high. New customers can expect very high prices.
What needs improvement with IBM Storage Protect?
One point for improvement for IBM Spectrum Protect is security, as IBM has not been investing as much as in the past. There is a need for additional layers of security to fill the gaps, which is wh...
 

Also Known As

Zerto Virtual Replication
IBM Spectrum Discover
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
CEMEX
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE Zerto Software vs. IBM Storage Protect and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,209 professionals have used our research since 2012.