Otherwise known as Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, Acronis is an online backup and cyber security solution that offers users backup and recovery options with an extra layer of security.
Though different from synchronizing services like Dropbox and OneDrive, many individuals are still confused about both.
The difference here is that synchronizing services (like OneDrive and Dropbox) only allows users to access documents across all devices, whereas backup services create online copies of files from our devices so that they can be restored if eventually lost from the original device.
Acronis has products specifically designed for different categories of users, including Service Providers, (Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud), Businesses (Acronis Cyber Protect), and Individuals (Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office).
Acronis uses an end-to-end AES-256 e encryption protection, providing users with maximum security resistance to hacking by any brute force.
Other features Acronis offers include minimal CPU and memory storage, a friendly/easy-to-use/easy-to-understand interface, a color-coded list of files, enabling good visualization, dual protection, and ensuring that users’ files are protected both locally and on the cloud, etc.
However, Acronis is not without a downside. First, Acronis is expensive compared to other competitors that offer similar services. This makes it unaffordable for small businesses and even low-income earning individuals to afford.
Another downside is that most users show contempt for its poor mobile and web experience, and there are other software that have improved on this.
if you’re concerned about cost, you can try other Acronis alternatives. We have outlined some of the best Acronis alternatives below.
Best Alternatives To Acronis
1. Macrium
First on this list is Macrium. A free, yet solid alternative to Acronis that clones disks.
This freeware provides more than enough power for most users. If you are only looking to backup your system and drives, Macrium is a pretty dependable tool and works perfectly.
Macrium also boasts improved performance with the latest version 7, and a free version for that is on the way.
One feature that Macrium has over Acronis is its minimal CPU consumption and a backup that is typically performed in the background or during off-hours. That way, we don’t place a high value on performance in analysis.
With Macrium, you also get several scheduling settings and retention preferences (about how long you’d like to keep some files and what to remove when the space is insufficient). With the paid version, you also get notifications for email and password protection.
Macrium also masters boot record and partition tables for globally unique identifiers. In addition, you can change the flavors of Windows Preinstallation Environment to best fit the OS being backed up.
It lets you choose the drivers you want to install. PE also allows driver injection (adding them at restore time), so you’re likely okay there anyway.
You can check here for their plans.
Check out the best alternatives to Macrium in this post.
2. Clonezilla
Clonezilla is a highly customizable, feature-rich, and very dependable cloning and disk imaging solution for individuals who are accustomed to command-line utilities, regardless of the support choices.
Their standout features include powerful cloning and imaging software, highly customizable with numerous options.
Clonezilla is a free, open-source partition, and supports a wide range of file systems including Linux, macOS, Windows, and Chrome OS.
Clonezilla is available as a USB or Live CD for backup and restoration of a single machine. It can also be a server for multi-machine cloning, encryption, and extensive customization.
More than Acronis, Clonezilla supports 19 file systems in total for Windows, macOS, Linux, Minix, and several others, thus it may be used on practically any system.
Those with minimal command-line knowledge will find the backup and restore processes simple, however, a plethora of options allow more advanced users to fine-tune most aspects.
The majority of the stages may be automated for unattended execution, and several boot parameters can be changed to tailor imaging and cloning. However, although it necessitates manually modifying configuration files, automated cloning is best suited to advanced users.
Clonezilla is unaffected by the OS of the computer being cloned, backed up, or restored. For Clonezilla Live, it is installed on a CD/DVD or USB first, or it can be used as a server application in the case of Clonezilla Server instead.
All in all, Clonezilla is a powerful and dependable backup and cloning tool that is extensively used by system administrators.
Also Read: UpdraftPlus vs Duplicator
3. Carbonite
Carbonite is a recommended alternative to Acronis for online backup solutions due to its ease of use and limitless backup devices.
With impeccable ease of use that offers excellent security, privacy, and customer assistance, Carbonite also provides unlimited storage for computers at a low cost.
Being able to back up your external drive, computer, and servers depends on the Carbonite package you choose. The backup and restoration process of files is really simple and needs very little work and expertise from the user.
With better specificity than Acronis, Carbonite lets you continually backup your data or schedule backups (depending on your preference). You can even configure it to exclude particular times of the day.
Some of their outstanding features include excellent security (once you enable private encryption), and a courier recovery option.
You can check their page for what pricing plan works best for you.
4. Microsoft Azure Backup Service
As the name implies, this cloud service is owned by Microsoft, giving them some market credibility. Microsoft claims that about 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure Backup Service for their business, with an additional reach of 140 countries and 54 regions, giving it more coverage than any other cloud hosting provider.
There are currently 17 data centers that power Azure Backup Service and more are expected to be added in the future. This means that no matter where you are, you have access to an Azure data center close by, which provides both speed and reliability.
Unlike Acronis, Azure Backup Service is strictly a cloud computing service, meaning, it does not offer some products that Acronis offers.
This makes its computing more efficient and helps it cover for some of the slowness users face when uploading or recovering files from Acronis.
Azure Backup also protects your essential business systems and backup data against ransomware attacks by performing preventive steps and offering tools that shield your organization from every step attackers take to penetrate your systems.
It secures your backup environment while your data is in transit and at rest.
Azure Backup service has a starting price of $29/mo for Developer, about $100/mo for Standard, and $1,000/mo for Professional Direct, making a better deal than Acronis, which has a starting price of $69.99. Also, Azure has no entry-level fee.
It is also Windows, Linux, IOS, and Android compatible.
5. Cohesity
Cohesity is a great alternative for Acronis that deals with the data fragmentation problem that businesses today face.
In most enterprises, all of the data used for testing and development is stored in separate silos, making it expensive to manage, and difficult to protect and analyze.
Cohesity consolidates all of your disparate systems into a single, unified web-scale platform by using Cohesity.
Apart from data consolidation, Cohesity also has a nice, concise, and user-friendly interface, that allows for file sharing and network-attached storage.
Cohesity outpowers Acronis in several key areas which include scalability, manageability, user experience, and eco-system integration, including an overall rating of 4.7 from Gartner Peer Insights, a reputable technology-based rating website.
Overall, Cohesity stands tall as one of the finest backup solutions for big data enterprises. It is credible, stable, and reliable.
6. MSP360
MSP360 offers easy-to-use and easy-to-manage backup and recovery solutions, with centralized management, monitoring, and reporting.
This product is natively integrated with all major cloud services to enable top-notch data protection and cyber security for its users.
This product is very flexible and efficient with data recovery, and when it comes to the speed of data processing (upload and recovery), MSP360 is more efficient than Acronis.
It also has a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service to shield sensitive data from leaks which could lead to serious financial and reputation damage. The solution also has an efficient anti-malware capacity targeted at Ransomware.
However, unlike Acronis, MSP360 does not have a mobile client, and though described as an easy-to-manage solution, the interface may look different for new users.
One other important distinction between this solution and the Acronis is that MSP360 allows users to choose from a wide variety of third-party cloud storage resources or other vendors and local storage you might have available.
Overall, the MSP360 is best as a small and midsize business cloud backup solution and ticks most of the boxes as an efficient service. Pricing is reasonably fair, compared to its capabilities.
You can check their pricing plans here.
7. Veeam
The latest V11A release of Veeam Backup & Replication offers industry-leading modern data protection with new cloud and security features for your growing enterprise.
Do you want the most flexible hybrid cloud options from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud? Veeam has you covered! On one platform, Veeam provides hardened immutable storage, reliable cloud-native backups, continuous data protection, and much more!
It is worth noting that Veeam, like Acronis, is designed to accommodate small and large businesses and enterprises, showing optimum efficiency up to 500 employees. This means, it can be used for any cloud computing purpose without fear of glitches.
It’s worth noting that the new V11A release is a game-changer with a built-in anti-ransomware feature, Microsoft Windows Server 2022 support as guest OS (same for Microsoft Windows 10 21H1), and native protection of some additional features.
You can check out the rest of the upgrade features here.
However, to its praise, it has a great deal of replication recovery capabilities which include easy recovery of individual files of VN, instant recovery for NAS, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle, and easy portability and recovery to AWS, Azure, and Azure Stack.
Check here for their pricing plans.
Find out more tools like Veeam in this post.
8. Rewind
With Rewind, you can easily create a backup of your web apps and roll them back if necessary, and you can rest easy knowing that the most important data on your web apps are safe.
Shopify, BigCommerce, and QuickBooks Online data are automatically backed up by this top-rated backup app. You also don’t have to worry about CSV exports and imports.
Rewind is best for Shopify, GitHub, Trello, Microsoft 365, BigCommerce, and QuickBooks Online accounts, and as already stated, it backs them up regularly so that you can rest easy knowing that your data is safe.
Their pricing is way apart from Acronis, having a starting price of $3/month. Making it very affordable.
Although they don’t have a free version, this is cushioned by the free trial they offer. You can check the rest of their pricing plans here.
Aside from data backup, Rewind offers encryption and secure data storage, adding to its credibility.
Overall, Rewind is a great substitute to Acronis, seeing that it ticks the major boxes a backup solution should, doing so at a very affordable price.
9. Rubrik
Gartner Peer Insight gave Rubrik a 4.8 rating, further proving its credibility as a backup service.
Rubrik promises users optimum data security, called the “Zero Trust Protection.”
However, unlike Acronis which specifies the usage if they didn’t specify the encryption technology they use the end-to-end AES-256 e encryption protection, Rubrik does not.
In addition to backup and protection, Rubrik deals with threat and ransomware investigation, in a bid to protect users from hijackers and viruses.
A high point for Rubrik over Acronis is that Rubrik has integrated applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL Server, Active Directory, and Oracle RDBMS whereas Acronis does not.
Another comparable difference with Acronis is that Rubrik does not have a stipulated pricing system; it uses a quote system instead.
This means pricing information is only available upon request. That way, you get to use their consultation services and discuss what is perfect for you or your business.
Overall, Rubrik does well visually and has a user-friendly and easy-to-understand interface. Data upload and recovery are reasonably fast. It is ideal for someone looking for major backup features.
10. NinjaOne
Ninja Data Protection is a cloud backup and recovery service with built-in remote monitoring and management, giving users control over managed endpoints.
Highlights include efficient and fast backup and restore workload, ability to work seamlessly with all third-party security solutions, unified RMM, endpoint management, and advanced security solution
Aside from being affordable, NinjaOne also stands as one of the industry’s best backup solutions, having great visualization, and a simple yet strong configuration.
NinjaOne offers the best value for the money, giving it an edge over Acronis. NinjaOne offers top-notch services and features a starting price of $3/month, making it preferred by most users.
NinjaOne also comes with integrated applications which include TeamViewer, Splashtop, Connectwise Control, Bitdefender, Warranty Master Autotask PSA, Accelo, SherpaDesk, Harmoney PSA, Computicate, etc.
To their credit, both solutions are web-based, PC and mobile compatible, and most suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.
When compared to Acronis, NinjaOne is easier-to-use, proves to be the best value for the money with their brilliant pricing, and has more efficient customer support – a common complaint among Acronis users.
11. IBM Spectrum Protect
IBM Spectrum Protect is a tried and true, reliable alternative to Acronis that meets all major backup needs in the enterprise.
It is super-efficient in protecting physical and virtual file servers, as well as a wide range of applications, from data loss. A single backup server can handle billions of objects.
IMB Spectrum protects the storage environment with two-key authorization for administrator commands, encryption, proactive security, etc.
In addition to IBM Spectrum Protect, companies can also use IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to store their data for long-term data retention and disaster recovery purposes.
IBM is priced per storage per month, having a starting price of $19.10 per terabyte for a Spectrum Scale DM Monthly License, and a price of $656.00 per terabyte for the Spectrum Scale DM Perpetual License. You can check the rest of their pricing plans here.
While Acronis users complain of lag, IBM reduces Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective so that users can respond quickly to clients and services in case of data loss.
All in all, IBM Spectrum Protect boasts good performance and optimum security for their users.
12. NAKIVO
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a leading brand in backup software, vetted by some of the world’s renowned companies, such as Honda, Coca-Cola, SIEMENS, etc.
It is a fast, dependable, and cost-effective backup and recovery solution for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments.
The solution includes advanced features that improve backup performance and reliability while also speeding up recovery. As a result, it saves businesses time and money.
It features advanced capabilities that enhance backup performance and reliability while also speeding up recovery times. This helps businesses benefit massively by saving time and money.
NAKIVO is more appealing to SMEs. But unlike Acronis, NAKIVO charges per workload, with prices ranging from $25/workload to about $40/workload. So, while Acronis has a starting price of $59, NAKIVO’s pricing is flexible.
NAKIVO excels in the interface, customer support, speed, and security, making it a formidable competitor to Acronis.
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13. Druva
Druva is a one-place alternative for backing up a wide range of data, whether OneDrive, email, SharePoint, etc.
Unlike other competitors, Druva does not require users to purchase third-party storage or a separate server for data backup.
To its credit, it has a straightforward installation, and incredible speed, two features that most Acronis users complain about and wish could be improved on.
It has an efficient security feature. All the data is well-encrypted, and the software automatically scans files for ransomware after every backup.
But an interesting feature is that the software splits data into pieces so that if an endpoint is compromised by ransomware, the compromised machine can be relocated or restored, allowing for all data that was previously backed up to be restored from the cloud.
One outstanding feature that Druva has over Acronis is that Druva has a good geo-location feature, allowing stolen machines to be tracked once switched on and connected to the internet.
In addition, an admin can auto-run a geo-wipeout feature so that data cannot be accessed by any third party, in the case of a stolen machine.
Druva pricing starts at $2/user/month for SaaS applications. You can check the rest of their pricing and the features they offer here.
14. Bacula
Bacula Enterprise is a great open-source alternative to Acronis.
It is a subscription-based enterprise data backup solution, though the latest release came with free backup software.
This software has been proven to ensure minimal downtime, quick recovery, positive business advantages, and unrestricted data growth, without volume or other complicated charges.
Bacula Enterprise has been adopted by many large organizations around the world, including NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom, and Sky PLC, due to its advanced feature set, exceptional reliability, and ability to handle large volumes of data at a low-cost point.
Bacula and Acronis have many common features to their credit. They are both highly dependable, executing data recovery operations and backup at a fair speed, and in a consistent and integral method, without fear or risk of losing any information.
Both also have a user-friendly interface for high visualization, enabling data monitoring, administration, and configuration.
It is compatible across a wide range of OS, including Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Android, etc.
An outstanding feature is that this software can also back up virtual machines running on VMware (or Hyper-V), Hyper-V (or Red Hat), Proxmox (or Xen), SQLite (or Sybase), and Oracle (or PostgreSQL).
However, Acronis offers unmatched ransomware protection and exceptional business software support. Bacula may need to improve its services in these regards.
You can check their pricing plans here.
15. Arcserve UDP
Arcserve UDP is another great alternative to Acronis with an efficient data protection and recovery disaster solution, functioning on software, hardware, and hybrid cloud platforms.
While traditional enterprise solutions can be cumbersome and difficult to use, this is one of the first to combine enterprise-ready features with the ease of use of traditional solutions.
Arcserve UDP performs backup, virtual standby, instant VM, and replication.
It also functions fully on a wide range of platforms, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft IIS, Oracle Database (PostgreSQL), Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
The pricing starts at $50 per Terabyte for cloud backup, with a 50+ Terabyte commitment required. For recovery of cloud disaster, you’ll have to contact them for a quote.
16. ExaGrid
ExaGrid’s Tiered Backup Storage comes not only with memory, but also bandwidth and high processing power – all of which are needed to attain high backup performance.
A highlight of ExaGrid is it delays deletes and has an immutable deduplication feature, being the first non-network-facing tiered backup storage solution with such.
This unique feature ensures easy data recovery or VMs booted from the storage system in the case of a ransomware attack.
The ExaGrid system has three times the speed of other solutions.
Some of the outstanding similarities it has with Acronis include high backup speeds, native Veeam integration, space-efficiency, and a friendly user/management interface. Overall, ExaGrid is an excellent alternative to Acronis.
To buy, you’ll have to contact them for pricing.
17. Afi
The Afi backup solution, like Acronis, is highly flexible and works across several platforms, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams Works, and other private channels. It has excellent security options, effective in ransomware detection and encryption.
Afi is efficient in archiving deleted Microsoft 365 users, backing up SharePoint lists and OneNote books, and fast offline export of a mailbox and SharePoint items.
The software is user-friendly and easy to configure and manage. But unlike Acronis, Afi is more cost-effective, and best suited for medium and large enterprises. You can check their pricing here.
18. Commvault
Another great alternative to Acronis is Commvault.
Unlike Acronis’ simple interface with a lot of basic features, Commvault has many features that you can explore with a lot of value to be tapped.
With an engine termed “ransomware-agnostic,” Commvault provides data protection and you don’t have to worry about the engine compromising the backup data.
In regard to data protection, Commvault does not just age off until it has been copied. This means the secondary copy has to be completed before it expires when your retention ends.
This allows you to keep data that would have aged off at the end of your retention, making it near impossible to lose data with Commvault.
Another outstanding feature Commvault has over Acronis is centralized management. This provides reliability and stability for single-console data backup while reducing work and time for the IT administrator.
To purchase Commvault, they offer a value calculator to project cost savings and give you a report. You can also request a demo.
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19. AOMEI
AOMEI is an ideal alternative to Acronis for an average user looking for reliable data security and backup, which is still appealing
Comparatively speaking, AOMEI is simpler to use than Acronis and can help you clone a drive easily. It also supports several backup techniques.
Unlike Acronis, AOMEI enables incremental and differential backups with the option to merge incremental backups using the command line.
With AOMEI, cloning a drive does not require you to create a different system image, but allows you to create partitions on the second drive and helps limit the space used for the clone.
The cloning feature of AOMEI is also extremely useful when transferring an OS or upgrading a hard drive to ensure a successful boot. With all its cloning, backup, and restore functions, it poses as a comprehensive and adequate backup software for Windows.
When a disaster occurs, such as a system crash, it is possible to swiftly and conveniently restore the computer to its original state.
Designed for Windows users, servers and PCs alike, it is built to keep operating systems and the files on their computers safe and retrievable.
You can check their pricing plans here.
20. iDrive
With iDrive, you can backup as many devices (PCs, Macs, iPads, Android, etc.) as you want, regardless of their OS. You can also back up data from external hard drives, and sync files and folders across all your devices that are connected to iDrive.
With iDrive, sync storage has no effect on backup storage and is equal to the limit of your backup storage. You also get data backup and recovery in less than a week using physical storage shipment, with no bandwidth utilization.
One unique feature that iDrive has over Acronis is the Snapshot feature that provides a historical perspective of data for recovery from specific points and protection against ransomware. With this feature, you can keep up to 30 versions of your files at different points in time, all backed up.
You also get a web-based interface that assists in managing data backups, restorations, program settings, and other tasks on remote PCs. You can choose to backup your data at either the file or sector level to protect the computer and restore it to its original state in the case of a disaster.
Check here for their pricing plans.
21. EaseUS
Also known as EaseUS ToDo Backup, EaseUS supports image-l and file-level backup, similar to Acronis. Both software also allows you to backup files, partitions, disks, and folders.
One feature that distinguishes EaseUS from Acronis, however, is its ability to back up the entire system. When you want to create a backup, the software will automatically back up your boot and system partitions.
EaseUS is also a user-friendly design for inexperienced users who may have difficulty choosing which partition is the system partition.
In addition to using basic backup operations to produce full backups, EaseUS also allows incremental and differential backups to reduce duplication in content backup and conserve space on your computer.
You can check here for their prices.
22. Datto
Datto SIRIS is an all-in-one business continuity and disaster recovery solution used to assist Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to recover from a disaster, prevent data loss, minimize downtime, and continue or resume normal business activities.
Datto lets MSPs offer their clients local backup and recovery with a cloud-based, yet secure repository, as well as full catastrophe recovery in the cloud, by taking a cloud-first approach.
All of this is managed through a cloud portal, which enables MSPs to monitor, manage, and restore client data from one single interface, better than Acronis. Flexible deployment options include software-only backup appliances and hardened backup appliances.
You can check their prices here.
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Best Acronis Alternatives – Recap
The best backup solution & acronis alternative will largely depend on the needs of the user. Taking into account that all have their high points and downsides, a user may have to consider each, as well as other external factors like budget and purpose.
However, Microsoft Azure is a superior alternative to Acronis looks that tick all the boxes for an average user.
