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

Veritas Backup Exec vs Veritas NetBackup 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

Veritas Backup Exec
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Veritas Backup Exec is 1.7%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 3.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Q&A Highlights

MP
Jan 23, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified interface with good performance but needs monitoring
I need to use PowerStore and Veritas Backup Exec. It is a direct backup to types, and it is supported by my backup. It offers good performance and stability, and it works properly. I am happy with this program. It is still working on aligning with security requirements and data encryption for Amazon or ATAC. It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good open file option feature, SQL agent, and EM agent."
"Synthetic backup is valuable. It gives you the possibility to do a synthesized backup, which means that it combines a full backup and incremental backup data and gives it to you in one stream. So, you don't have to restore the full backup and then later go and restore the incremental backup. You can do that in one go."
"The interface easy to use and it is compatible with most backup devices."
"The most valuable feature is the user-friendly interface."
"The solution is stable."
"It's quite stable, and so far, we have had no technical issues with Veritas Backup Exec."
"Veritas Backup Exec is fully compatible with different tape libraries."
"Backup Exec 2012 R2 is a very good product for the Windows file system and SQL backups. It is very user-friendly, but the next version Backup Exec 2014 that is released and the other next versions of Backup Exec product is not so friendly."
"The most valuable feature is flexibility."
"Veritas NetBackup is very user-friendly and has some good quick recovery features."
"NetBackup is highly stable. We have more than 1,800 policies that run every day."
"The tool provides recovery. The support for their legacy software is very good."
"We were evaluating other products and getting confused between Commvault and Veritas NetBackup. The one reason that we started with Veritas NetBackup is the pricing of the license. There's no other reason from a technical perspective or even operation or capability of the two software. The main reason we chose Veritas NetBackup was that in our use case it is more cost-effective."
"The main features of this solution are deduplication, compression, ease of use, simplistic user interface, and compatibility with all the backup service systems."
"The solution offers very good storage efficiency, so there's excellent compression and deduplication within the product that our clients really appreciate."
"Great deduplication feature."
 

Cons

"The backup is not robust enough when you have a lot of technology."
"Veritas Backup Exec should improve by having a user portal that customers can use."
"They can improve the reporting component. The reports aren't user-friendly at all. You have to download them to Excel to get statistics."
"I probably need to monitor the infrastructure and check the logs to be notified about anomalies."
"Maybe they could improve reporting capabilities and predictions."
"Currently, the solution does not have the capability to restore a single mailbox, so you lose a lot of time having to restore for example ten mailboxes just to recover one."
"The solution is too heavy and complex with 1,000 menus and options that make it messy rather than lightweight."
"The cost is quite high. Along with the general costs, the supposed agents that you have to buy for the various options that you want to use ends up driving the costs higher as well."
"DDBoost."
"I also think they could improve the reporting. They use a web-based software application OpsCenter for the reporting and I see that they haven't made any changes in years."
"We have issues reaching them during some hours, and we need to escalate through several levels to get a resolution. Sometimes tickets stay open for days."
"I would like to have support enabled for cloud backups."
"Extra features come with additional costs."
"Updates were not always consistent."
"The product needs to improve its GUI. It needs to make use of a web interface."
"The solution must provide a different way to schedule backups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is inexpensive compared to enterprise software."
"Regarding expense, Backup Exec is generally suitable for small and medium businesses. However, we can customize them based on the workload."
"Depending on the scenario, it can cost less than half of the price of other methods."
"The price of Veritas Backup Exec could be reduced and we pay annually for the license. However, compared to other solutions, such as Veeam, it is less expensive."
"It is cheap compared to the other backup technologies. It all depends on the requirements."
"The pricing of Veritas Backup's license is comparable to Veeam."
"It is affordable, but I hope that the price will come down a lot because of other competitors. It is a good price for the customer, but sometimes, the competition provides a much lower price. There are two ways to license it. You can license it per instance or per terabytes of data that we are mocking up. It is enough because it is not so complex. It is good when you're working with customers."
"If your company can afford it, go for it."
"Our primary complaint about this product is that it is too expensive."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Pricing is expensive, so it could be lower."
"The price of Veritas NetBackup is high, it should be reduced."
"If you want to have more scalability you have to purchase more licenses. The license is annually and there are a lot of different licensing depending on the number of terabytes needed. It is not based on per-user, core, or servers. You can backup anything you want using the purchased terabyte space."
"The pricing, of course, can always be better."
"Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same."
"Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

MP
Jan 23, 2020
Jan 23, 2020
Both solutions are perfect and great names in data protection. If you have a small or medium setup then go with Backup Exec and if you have a big setup with the latest workload then go with Net Backup. You can get a TB license for all servers which you want to protect.
2 out of 9 answers
it_user762030 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
We have just recently migrated our backups off of Netbackup due to the cost. I do not remember the licensing, but the whole product was getting too expensive for not only the product but for the management of the product. We had 6 different pieces in the environment due to some configuration designs. So we have moved to a product that we pay so much for the hardware and then a license for the amount of data we ingest through that product. It is one environment management that can handle a large amount of Data Protection.
Bckupdataad67 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2020
The proper question is not Backupexec or Netbackup but what kind of protection you want to have? We had backup exec for more than 4 years and I can assure you, as a backup administrator, that I had some really hard days related to the proper coverage of servers, applications, and data. Netbackup is the proper choice if you want a serious protection infrastructure but you have to consider the following key facts: -What type of environment do you want to protect? Netbackup works perfectly with VMWare and with mixed environments. I'm not saying that it will not work with other providers but the integration with VMware is one of the greatest pros of this product. -Is the backup time window enough to cover all your resources? With Backupexec I was struggling to have all backup jobs complete in a time frame of 13 hours. With Netbackup and especially in conjunction with their Appliances I was able to add more and more jobs for the very same time frame. -What is your frontend volume? With Netbackup the best solution is to have a Frontend Capacity license. With this license type, there's no need to buy extra licenses for SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Oracle, etc. It's an all-inclusive license. Furthermore, with the new version 8.2 you don't even have to install agents on servers! The prices may vary but I guess for i.e 20TB capacity the price will be somewhere between 80000 to 100000 euros (1-year maintenance included and assuming a feasible discount). You don't have to pay for an appliance but if you afford it it's highly recommended in order to achieve the best performance and other technologies (i.e AIR, deduplication ratio, etc). I don't really know what is the current status of Backupexec in terms of version, prices, features etc. As a product it's absolutely not comparable to Netbackup On the other hand we have left it behind for good.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file system backups inside VMs., support for tape library & FC too. But Veritas Netbac...
What do you like most about Veritas Backup Exec?
The most important feature is the variety of backup applications it supports, including ERP systems and most other programs, such as Microsoft.
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

Also Known As

Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Beta Offshore
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Veritas Backup Exec vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.