By Zoha Ahmed · Nov 1, 2026
Ask Reddit what to back up with and one name arrives first every time. We read all 710 replies in 74 of those threads from the past year, mostly in r/sysadmin and r/msp, counted one vote per person, and removed vendors posting about their own products.
Veeam wins on volume and also collects the most complaints in absolute terms, which is what happens to a default. The tools with almost no complaints are the cheap on-premise ones: Synology Active Backup, N-able Cove and the free Proxmox Backup Server. Every quote below links back to the comment it came from.
The ranking
| Tool | Recommend | Complain | Threads | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 122 | 37 | 47 | |
| 2 | 35 | 12 | 13 | |
| 3 | 25 | 1 | 16 | |
| 4 | 24 | 1 | 9 | |
| 5 | 23 | 19 | 16 | |
| 6 | 21 | 3 | 10 | |
| 7 | 21 | 7 | 14 | |
| 8 | 16 | 3 | 16 | |
| 9 | 11 | 10 | 12 | |
| 10 | 8 | 1 | 7 | |
| 11 | 7 | 3 | 3 |
"Recommend" and "Complain" count different people, not comments. Also recommended, with too few opinions to rank: Macrium Reflect, Altaro and Hornetsecurity VM Backup, Axcient, MSP360, Keepit, BackupAssist, Redstor, Comet Backup and Storagecraft, plus the object storage people pair with these tools rather than use instead of them, Backblaze B2 and Wasabi.
1. Veeam
Veeam
Best overall
The default answer in almost every thread, recommended by more people than the next four tools combined.
Why people recommend it
- Restores are the thing people praise most, including instant recovery and booting a backup in a sandbox
- Handles VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers, Microsoft 365 and tape from one console
- Cheap for what it covers, and a free agent exists for single machines
Common complaints
- Version 13 is called a step backwards, and one team could not restore MSSQL backups for over a month
- Support quality has dropped, and small customers say they get ignored
- Licensing and renewals are opaque, with no public pricing
What Redditors said
Veeam is arguably the industry standard for a cheap, reliable backup
Veeam is the reason we could get 30+ machines migrated from VMware to Hyper-V this month.
Version 13 of Backup & Replication has been a disaster.
I hate that Veeam can’t be transparent with their pricing.
2. Rubrik
Rubrik
Best enterprise, if you can pay
The enterprise pick people are happiest with, and the one they warn you about on price.
Why people recommend it
- Day-to-day interface is the best in the category by consensus
- Live mount lets a DBA restore a database without waiting for a copy
- Support is called top notch, including by teams that moved from Cohesity
Common complaints
- Priced well above Veeam, and one renewal quote quadrupled
- Sales promised features the product does not have
- No Proxmox support, which killed it for at least one team
- Hard to justify below enterprise scale
What Redditors said
Rubrik is the best backup system i have used
rubrik definitely wins on the day to day ux
Turns out the Rubrik offer had quadrupled.
Rubrik's pricing is brutal if you're not enterprise scale.
3. Synology Active Backup for Business
Synology Active Backup for Business
Best cheap on-premise
The cheapest way out of a licensing bill, and almost complaint-free in our sample.
Why people recommend it
- Included free with the NAS, with no per-agent licensing
- Does full VM images, Windows server images and Microsoft 365 in one package
- Handles VMware to Hyper-V conversion on hardware teams already own
Common complaints
- One user has to recreate a backup job roughly once a month
What Redditors said
Synology Active Backup has displaced it for most of my customers.
There's no licensing required for the on-site backup
at least once a month I have to setup the job again
4. N-able Cove
N-able Cove
Best for MSPs
The MSP favourite, recommended for 365 and server backup at a price that works per client.
Why people recommend it
- Direct to cloud, so there is no local appliance to maintain
- One daily status email covers every client, which MSPs single out
- Cheap enough to put on every server and every 365 tenant
Common complaints
- One MSP calls it a dumpster fire, against 24 people who recommend it
What Redditors said
Cove is best in class and reliable.
I like seeing one email a day I can glance at and know the status of everything.
It has been nothing but a dumpster fire.
5. Commvault
Commvault
Most capable, hardest to run
The most capable tool in these threads and the hardest to live with. Opinion is almost evenly split.
Why people recommend it
- Backs up more workload types than anything else here, including large S3 estates
- Restores do not depend on the deduplication database, which saved one team
- Treated as the enterprise and FIPS compliance standard
Common complaints
- Needs dedicated backup staff, including week-long training to get started
- Called the most expensive backup product on the market
- The interface draws some of the harshest language in our whole sample
What Redditors said
Commvault is the enterprise standard
Commvault doesn’t require the DDB for restores so it saved you there!
by far, the most expensive backup solution on the market
With CommVault, we’ve opened over 90 cases in two years, and over 50% of these have dragged on for more than two months.
6. NAKIVO
NAKIVO
Best Veeam alternative on price
The alternative people name when the Veeam renewal arrives, chosen on price and licensing terms.
Why people recommend it
- Perpetual licensing is available, and the pricing is predictable
- Strong tape and LTO support, which several Veeam users wanted
- Covers the features people actually used in Veeam, for less
Common complaints
- The main interface is called sluggish, and support could not fix it
- The company needed a bailout, which came up as a stability worry
What Redditors said
Nakivo in particular has strong tape/LTO support and the licensing is way more predictable.
It cuts our costs significantly versus the old guard
the main GUI was always sluggish even after a few attempts with support to make it go faster
7. Cohesity
Cohesity
Best Rubrik alternative
The Rubrik alternative, usually chosen because it quotes lower. Support is the recurring complaint.
Why people recommend it
- Quoted at roughly half of Rubrik in at least one head-to-head
- File and full VM restores work without drama, and searching for a deleted path takes seconds
- Scales up as an estate grows, so teams do not replatform later
Common complaints
- Support is the single biggest complaint, including on a P0 incident
- Appliance-based, so a hardware fault leaves you dependent on the vendor
- Less advanced cyber-resilience than Rubrik, by its own users' account
What Redditors said
It is insane how much easier and reliable cohesity is.
Cohesity was close enough at about half the cost.
Cohesity support is dog water.
getting the runaround from Cohesity support on a P0 issue
8. Proxmox Backup Server
Proxmox Backup Server
Best free and self-hosted
The free, self-hosted option that technical teams keep pushing, with only three complaints against sixteen recommendations.
Why people recommend it
- Free in its community version, which changes the maths on a whole estate
- Several users prefer it to Veeam outright for VM backups
- Syncs to a second PBS instance for off-site disaster recovery
Common complaints
- No object lock on backups yet, which rules it out where immutability is required
- Hardware requirements are heavier than people expect
- No application-aware processing
What Redditors said
Proxmox Backup Server is the best backup software I have ever used bar none.
changing to proxmox and proxmox backup is absolutely feasible and gazillions cheaper
PBS doesn’t do object locks on backups yet.
Proxmox backup server has insane hardware requirements.
9. Acronis
Acronis
Divisive
The most divided mid-market tool here: 11 people recommend it, 10 complain, and both sides are emphatic.
Why people recommend it
- The backups themselves are reliable, which its defenders lead with
- Some prefer its interface to Veeam's
- Covers compliance requirements that pickier auditors ask about
Common complaints
- The move to cloud bloated the product, by repeated account
- The current interface is called convoluted and awkward
- Several MSPs migrated off it to Cove and say they will not return
What Redditors said
its excellent backups mitigate that
I prefer the interface to Veeam's
they switched to the cloud and bloated it to death
I hate Acronis with the heat of a thousand suns
10. Druva
Druva
Best SaaS-only backup
The SaaS-only option, recommended by long-term users who like not running a backup server.
Why people recommend it
- Nothing to host, so there is no backup infrastructure to patch
- Reasonably priced and quick to learn
- Users going back to 2020 are still recommending it
Common complaints
- Failing proxies came up as the one recurring operational problem
What Redditors said
Been using Druva since 2020 and absolutely love it.
their forever failing proxies
11. AvePoint
AvePoint
Best for Microsoft 365
The Microsoft 365 specialist, named by admins running large tenants.
Why people recommend it
- Built for 365 and SharePoint rather than adapted to it
- Scales past the point where general tools get awkward
- One admin renewed for three more years at larger scale
Common complaints
- The 365 restore interface is called unintuitive
- Runs on Azure at the back end, which some treat as a concentration risk
- Several demonstrated features turn out to cost extra
What Redditors said
I'm using AvePoint, at larger scale than your environment and have just renewed for 3 more years.
The current state of restore functionality for 365 isn’t super intuitive, I’d suggest other solutions that will fit the bill.
Many of the items they like to show on are additional costs
The ones Reddit complains about
These two draw more complaints than recommendations. Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec are discussed mainly as products being wound down, and Datto is the tool MSPs say they left after the Kaseya acquisition.
Commvault nearly joined them. It is the legacy enterprise pair's other half, and at 23 recommendations against 19 complaints it is the most divided tool in the ranking.
Veritas NetBackup / Backup Exec
Veritas NetBackup / Backup Exec
The one being phased out
Three times as many people complain as recommend. Most of the discussion is about end of life rather than features.
Why people recommend it
- Still an active product, and one install has run two years without maintenance
- Backup Exec handled tape addressing better than some replacements
Common complaints
- Backup Exec is end of sale in March and fully end of life in 2029
- Obscure backup problems are hard to troubleshoot and support-intensive
- Hyper-V backup is called temperamental
What Redditors said
has held up without maintenance for 2 years, and crazy cheap
it's end of sale in march and EOL completely in 2029
but is more support intensive and obscure backup problems can be really difficult to troubleshoot
Datto
Datto
The one people left after Kaseya
The MSP tool people name as something they used to run. The Kaseya acquisition is the dividing line.
Why people recommend it
- The appliance delivers more than a software-only setup for business continuity
- Easy to configure, and the SaaS protection product works for some teams
Common complaints
- Pricing after the Kaseya acquisition is the most common complaint
- Jobs reported green while no backups existed, which more than one team found the hard way
- No way to export backups if you want to leave
What Redditors said
look at a Datto appliance. You get a lot more from it than Veeam.
It's easy to configure and works very well.
what we were paying for Datto was obscene
Often times status would be green, but we'd log in and there would be no backups.
How we built this ranking
We pulled every Reddit thread from the past 12 months in IT, MSP and sysadmin subreddits, then kept the threads about backup, disaster recovery and off-site storage. An AI model read each comment that named a tool and labelled it as a recommendation, a complaint or a neutral mention, and we checked that every quote appears word for word in the original comment. Vendors posting about their own products were removed, as was any opinion copy-pasted across different accounts. We refresh the data regularly.
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What is the best backup software according to Reddit?
Veeam, by a wide margin. 122 people recommended it against 35 for Rubrik, its nearest rival. Veeam wins on coverage and restore speed at a price mid-market teams can pay; Rubrik wins on day-to-day usability if the budget is there.
Why do people complain about Veeam if it is the top pick?
Because it is in every thread. Veeam drew 37 complaints, more than any other tool in absolute terms, but still more than three recommendations for every complaint. The complaints cluster on version 13, support quality for smaller customers, and renewal pricing, not on whether backups restore.
What is the cheapest backup that sysadmins actually recommend?
Synology Active Backup for Business, included free with the NAS, had 25 recommendations and 1 complaint. Proxmox Backup Server is the other near-free option people push, with the caveat that it does not yet support object locks.
Is Commvault or Rubrik better for an enterprise?
Both are recommended, but Commvault is the one people complain about: 23 recommendations against 19 complaints, almost all about complexity, cost and support cases. Rubrik's complaints are almost entirely about price.