Server backup software is vital for digital businesses. It offers data protection and security to your business data in case of a service interruption or cyberattack. You rely on your data in every area of your business. To the best of your ability, you must protect it from hardware or software failures, data violations, and even crashing systems and overloaded parts. We spent hours researching dozens of server backup software available to determine the top five options on the market today.
The Top 5 Best Server Backup Software
Veeam – Best for Fast Setup and Excellent SupportUnitrends Backup Software – Best For Guaranteed RecoveryCarbonite – Best for Independent ProfessionalsDruva Phoenix – Best for Infinite ScalabilityAcronis Cyber Backup – Best for Built-in Security Features
This guide highlights each software’s key features and benefits to help you decide the right solution for your business. Let’s dig in.
#1 – Veeam — Best For Fast Setup and Excellent Support
Try for 30 days free
Veeam is a global leader in data protection and serves more than 400,000 customers worldwide, including top organizations such as Fujitsu, Siemens, Volkswagen, and Deloitte. Veeam offers modern, simplified data management and protection suitable for businesses of any size. It’s user-friendly, easy to set up, and has an excellent customer support team. That’s why Veeam stands out as one of the best server backup software options.
Veeam provides premium backup, recovery, and replication capabilities and allows you to protect your Cloud, SaaS, virtual, and physical workloads, all in one place. It covers workloads such as VMware, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Windows, Linux, and more. It’s a comprehensive, user-friendly solution that can be tailored to businesses of all shapes and sizes.
It’s a true “set it and forget it” software with easy-to-configure automatic disaster recovery, cloud data backup, and instant VM restoration. In a nutshell, Veeam works to minimize data loss and eliminate downtime in the background while you carry on with day-to-day operations.
Veeam also offers reliable ransomware protection. It can help you prepare for, detect, and prevent cyber threats or attacks for the duration of your backup life cycle. Veeam will also automatically test for recoverability and help you avoid reinfection by meeting data compliance requirements on your behalf.
The only thing we don’t like about Veeam is that its pricing is not transparent for easy comparison to competitors.
For enterprises, Veeam offers two packages. The Veeam Availability Suite, which includes backup, recovery, and monitoring, reporting, and analytics. Or the Veeam Backup and Replication plan, which just includes backup and recovery.
You’ll need to contact Veeam for pricing, but we can tell you that Veeam’s plans are future-proof, portable, and offer flexibility to grow alongside your business without a lock-in contract. The quote-based pricing structure allows Veeam to provide the services you need at a price tailored to meet your budget.
For small businesses, Veeam offers a package specifically to suit your needs. The Veeam Backup Essentials plan costs $84 per year per license and is sold in a bundle of five licenses for a maximum of 50 workloads.
Try Veeam’s Backup Essentials plan with a 30-day free trial today!
#2 – Unitrends Backup Software — Best For Guaranteed Recovery
Try for free
If you’re looking for an integrated backup and continuity solution, Unitrends Backup Software is one of the best on the market. Unitrends combines disaster recovery, server backup, and security and compliance, all in one place. With over 30 years of experience, it’s no wonder that it’s trusted by the likes of NASA, Mars, and Westin Hotels.
Unitrends is so confident in its recovery software that it guarantees 100% recovery. In fact, for Windows, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Unified Bare Metal Recovery, Unitrends offers instant recovery. There is currently no other solution on the market that offers this.
Unitrends Backup Software offers fully integrated backup, replication, deduplication, archive, and instant recovery, as an all-in-one prepackaged virtual appliance. It even provides advanced AI-based ransomware detection that warns admins at any sign of an attack.
You can run Unitrends Backup Software on VMware vSphere, XenServer, or Microsoft Hyper-V. Or, if you prefer cloud-based deployment, you can run it virtually within AWS cloud or Microsoft Azure.
You’ll also put time back in your IT department’s pocket with Unitrends centralized management hub, UniView. Automate and customize tasks and manage thousands of backups with just a few clicks. You can even assign role-based access to files to guarantee secure recovery.
Unitrends offers multiple pricing plans to suit just about any budget, including:
Unitrends Free: Free forever for up to 1 TB of storageEssentials: $349 per server for up to 10 resources Standard: $549 per server for any size environment Enterprise: $1,099 per server for any size environmentEnterprise Plus: $1,699 per server for any size environment
The Enterprise and Enterprise Plus plans include software and hardware editions, whereas the lower plans only include software editions. You can request a demo to see the software in action or try it yourself with a 30-day free trial.
Give Unitrends Backup Software a try for 30-days free today!
#3 – Carbonite — Best for Independent Professionals
Try for 30 days free
Carbonite is one of the few options that offer protection for home, professional, and office solutions. It’s designed to protect data living anywhere, from a standalone computer to hundreds of virtual machines. Carbonite is easy to use, cost-effective, and offers great customer support. It also provides unlimited backup for one device. For this reason, we think Carbonite is best for independent professionals such as freelancers, entrepreneurs, and contractors.
Carbonite is incredibly easy to install and operates on Windows or Mac environments and platforms such as Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, or Hyper-V, MySQL, and Oracle. You’ll be able to choose from multiple backup formats, including incremental, continuous, and differential, and schedule the backups to occur automatically in the timeframe of your choosing. Carbonite’s secure web-based dashboard makes monitoring the status of your backups a breeze. Not to mention the added benefit of having access to your files from anywhere at any time.
Carbonite’s advanced encryption ensures that your data is never left unprotected, even while it’s in transit from local storage to its home in long-term storage. If you suffer a ransomware attack, Carbonite makes file recovery a simple task without the need to pay the ransom.
A key drawback of Carbonite is that the speed of downloads is relatively slow. This means that if you’re ever likely to be in a hurry to access backup files in cloud storage, Carbonite isn’t the best solution for you.
Carbonite offers three pricing plans available. The lead-in plan starts from just $6 per month and is most suitable for home use. The next step starts from $24 per month and is most suitable for small businesses with up to 25 computers. Larger companies looking to protect both computers and servers are likely to opt for the highest plan, starting from $50 per month.
Try Carbonite business free for 30-days!
#4 – Druva Phoenix — Best for Infinite Scalability
Try for 30 days free
If you’re looking for an infinitely scalable solution that can reduce infrastructure management and operates purely from the cloud, Druva Phoenix is the one for you. Druva Phoenix is a unique cloud-native platform powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It’s delivered as-a-service, allowing you to kiss goodbye on-premise infrastructure, hardware, and software maintenance.
Because Druva Phoenix is built in the cloud, you can add new capacity to your data protection plan at any time. There is no need to purchase new software or install new appliances. That’s why we believe Druva Phoenix is the best solution for its scalability.
Druva Phoenix also offers an incremental forever backup model, global source-side, inline deduplication, and unlimited restores. Administrators can manage backup, archival, and disaster recovery from one centralized control panel.
Since the interface is incredibly easy to use and deployed remotely, you’ll be up and running your first backup within 15 minutes. Druva Phoenix also automates many processes, giving your IT team time to focus on other tasks.
With Druva Phoenix, you’ll only ever pay for what you use after your data has been deduplicated and compressed. It offers three pricing plans including:
Phoenix Business: $210 per terabyte, per monthPhoenix Enterprise: $240 per terabyte, per monthPhoenix Elite: $300 per terabyte, per month
It’s important to note that none of the plans include ransomware recovery, but you do have the option to add it on for an additional monthly fee.
Start your 30-day free trial of Druva Phoenix today.
#5 – Acronis Cyber Backup — Best for Built-In Security Features
Try for 30 days free
If you have dozens of physical and virtual setups and company users spread out across various platforms and want to combine backup with anti-ransomware capabilities, Acronis Cyber Backup is the solution for you.
Acronis Cyber Backup is an industry-leading recovery solution that supports more than 20 platforms. It’s a comprehensive, cloud-based solution that protects any workload and provides flexible options for creating, storing, and using backup data.
You’ll be able to back up your data as often as you like without impacting system performance. When creating a backup, you can choose to backup your data in multiple places, allowing for added security and quicker recovery in the case of service interruptions. With just a few clicks, you can also restore your data to entirely new hardware–physical or virtual.
But where Acronis Cyber Backup really shines is its built-in ransomware security features. With Acronis Cyber Backup’s built-in AI-based protection against malware, crypto mining, and ransomware, your data will be more secure than ever. You’ll also have access to endpoint protection management features such as vulnerability assessments and patch management.
Acronis Cyber Backup is not the cheapest solution on the market, and its pricing is not necessarily straightforward either.
To protect a single workstation, pricing starts at $59 per year for the Essentials plan. Ideally, we’d recommend the Acronis Cyber Protect Standard plan for $79 per year, as this plan encompasses complete data backup, protection, and cybersecurity features.
To protect a single server, pricing starts at $319 per year for the Essentials plan or $539 per year for the Standard plan. For detailed pricing information, you should contact Acronis directly.
If you’re not sure which plan will suit your business needs, don’t fret. Acronis Cyber Backup offers a 30-day free trial, so you can try it before you buy.
How to Find The Best Server Backup For You
With so many server backup software out there, it can be hard to determine which is the best for your business needs. Some backup solutions prioritize security, while others focus on minimizing downtime with fast recovery features. To help you make a decision, here are some important things to consider when choosing the best server backup software for you.
Backup Options
It seems ridiculous to mention backup options when we’ve focused on server backup software, but not all backup software offers a choice of how to backup your work. We’re talking about the opportunity to run continuous, incremental, differential, or VMware backups.
For example, if you work in a fast-paced industry and make high-stakes changes to your data multiple times throughout the day, a continuous backup is going to offer the most protection to you. Alternatively, if the updates you’re making to your files are less significant and occur less often, an incremental or differential backup will likely do the trick.
Understanding the best backup option for your business and ensuring the software provider can accommodate that is an essential consideration for buyers to make.
Reporting Tools
All of the top server backup software can run reports on the quality of the backups taking place. This reporting helps to highlight any potential issues, allowing users the opportunity to address issues before they become full-blown problems. Even better if these reports offer diagnostics detailing what needs to be addressed for your backup software to get back to optimum performance and quickly.
Security and Encryption
One of the key reasons to use server backup software is to keep your data safe and secure. Sourcing a solution that offers end-to-end encryption and malware, crypto mining, and ransomware protection is the best way to ensure your stored data has an extra layer of protection against cyberattacks.
Most of the best software in the market offers features to stop ransomware attacks in its tracks. But at the very least, the software you choose should provide ransomware recovery to help you get back up and running quickly following an inevitable cyberattack.
Summary
Server backup software can be a lifesaver for your business data. It can protect your all-important data, recover lost files, and help you get back to business faster in the case of cyberattacks.
Most people will find Veeam to be the best solution out there. If security from cyberattacks is most important to you, Acronis Cyber Backup has your back. Anyone looking for an integrated backup and continuity solution will find Unitrends Backup Software to be an excellent choice. If you’re an independent professional, Carbonite has some excellent and affordable plans available. At the same time, Druva Phoenix can offer growing businesses infinite scalability.
