Summer 2015 rankings of the best backup tools, based on user reviews

Two platforms earn Leader status while CrashPlan tops overall satisfaction rankings in G2 Crowd report

CHICAGO – July 28, 2015 – The first Grid℠ report for backup tools, published today by business software review site G2 Crowd, ranks 11 products to help purchasers in their selections.

NetApp Backup and Recovery and EMC Avamar were named Leaders in the report, receiving strong customer satisfaction scores with a large market presence. CrashPlan, Veeam, Druva inSync, CommVault Simpana and Asigra Cloud Backup were named High Performers, earning strong customer satisfaction scores with a smaller market presence than Leaders. CrashPlan received the highest overall customer satisfaction score.

The Grid℠, created from G2 Crowd’s software review platform, compiles customer satisfaction as reported by users, along with vendor market presence as determined from public and social data, to rank products. The Summer 2015 report is based on more than 200 reviews written by business and IT professionals.

Backup software is used as a failsafe to protect business data. Data from servers, databases, desktops, laptops, and other devices are copied in case user error or a disaster render business critical data inaccessible. Several factors differentiate products, including the ability to backup virtual machines or databases, ability to backup remote devices like laptops, and cloud versus on-premise deployment. Some suite products attempt to do all of the above, while others specialize in being a solution to just one business backup problem.

Of the more than 130 software vendors listed in G2 Crowd’s Backup Software category, the ranked products each received 10 or more reviews to qualify for inclusion on the Grid℠.

Across all backup products, reviewers reported the product they use meets their requirements at an average rate of 87 percent, and on average reviewers said they were 84 percent likely to recommend the product they use. Ease of Setup received the lowest average satisfaction score across all products (78 percent); many reviewers noted setup as a main reason for their overall product satisfaction. Veeam scored the highest in this category, with 92 percent satisfaction.

Some highlights from the backup software reviews on G2 Crowd:

“NetApp’s [technology] not only [protects] customer data and accelerate recovery, but also [integrates] with leading backup applications for easier management. The FAS8000 Series…[enables] enterprise customers to flexibly and efficiently manage and control their data through a single storage and data management platform.”

– Kevin Storm, Owner at BoatButler

“Moving to [EMC] Avamar… we decreased our backup times from…sometimes more than a week, to…a couple of days [or] hours…Coupled with a Data Domain storage target this solution can ingest an unbelievable amount of data in a short period of time.”

– Eric Parsons, IT Project Manager at Proto Labs

“CrashPlan…provides one of the best user interface experiences from end to end. The admin console provides brilliant access for managing users and devices. The degree of control on the admin side is matched only by the simplicity and ease of use on the client side. Deployment of the service is well thought out and extremely robust.”

– Jim Rispin, Assistant Director of ITS and Senior Systems Administrator at Fuller Theological Seminary

“Based off of 10+ years in IT and in college…nothing has come close to the reliability and robustness of [CommVault Simpana]. Over the years I have used other products and loath not using [it] sooner. [it is] truly the best in the market.”

– Luke Andert, System Administrator at Cambria

“Veeam was very easy to integrate with our existing…environment. Creating backup jobs and setting up basic retention periods was very easy. Setting up secondary destinations and the WAN accelerator was also very simple, allowing us to quickly institute a robust backup strategy with [off-site] duplication. The deduplication and integrated CBT makes the backup footprint very small and causes a much smaller amount of network overhead compared to the other…tools we’ve used.”

– Pierce Fortin, Sr. Technical Support Engineer/ Systems Administrator at OneShield

“Druva is a very simple system for users to use, very intuitive and has a great user interface. That our users find it easy to use makes them more likely to self-serve than raise a request for assistance in restoring files. The Central administration web-portal gives us a quick and simple status overview of the system, and the central logs and reports allow us to identify and troubleshoot any issues quickly and easily.”

– Martin Millward, IT systems professional at MoneySuperMarket.com

“[Asigra Cloud Backup] has exceptional logging and fine-grained detail into what’s happening at any given moment. IP addresses, software version numbers, machine hostnames, dates, times and pretty much any other detail you can think of is logged in the software. This greatly assists in troubleshooting efforts across the board.”

– Johnathan Tracz, IT Technician at ABELSoft

Satisfaction rankings are generated from the user reviews, and market presence is calculated from vendor size, market share, and social impact. Based on a combination of these scores, each software solution is categorized as a Leader, High Performer, Contender, or Niche.

Premium backup product research access can be purchased on G2 Crowd’s website for $599. The report offers the original data for filtering and weighting, as well as individual profiles of each platform, detailed company information, user satisfaction ratings, feature scores and customer metrics. Future refreshes of the Grid℠ will provide updated rankings based on the latest reviews and social data.

Be sure to check out the new Grid℠ for the best backup software and subscribe to the premium research.

About G2 Crowd, Inc.

G2 Crowd, the world’s leading business software review platform,  leverages its 35,000-plus user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. Technology buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. Co-founded by the founder and former executives from SaaS leader BigMachines and backed by more than $4.5 million in capital, G2 Crowd aims to bring authenticity and transparency to business technology research. For more information, go to G2Crowd.com.