We have been using Altaro VM backup for about 4 years now and our experience has been exemplary. The compression and deduplication feature is phenomenal, I never imagined I would be able to keep 3+ weeks history retention and still have my backups take up less space than my VMs themselves. The offsite server is also a huge bonus, absolutely free, just pay 3rd-party hosting and storage fees and put the server wherever you like. Their support is top-notch.

Cost can get a little high if you have a lot of hosts, but still worth it and still less than most other options

Veeam is the Cadillac of backups, and there are lots of Chevys that will get the job done but really make you work at it, but Altaro sits in the sweet spot of a great value with lots of features. I have deployed it at every client that runs VMs on Windows, and it has saved the day several times. Setup takes about five minutes, especially if you are using an attached target. Even complicated NAS-based backups with off-site copies (another great feature) can be set up in less than 30 minutes for every VM on a server.

The ability to schedule sandbox restores drew me to Altaro, but honestly, the few times that I have needed Tech Support (including one time on a holiday) it was outstanding. The quality of the support, the speed with which I can reach someone, and the genuine politeness of the staff make getting support painless. I also like the ability to do off-site copies of the backups. This work s great when I use a direct-attached targets like ioSafe drives and then replicate the backups to portable USB drives to go off site.

The software is amazingly full featured, but I would like to see the sandbox restore take a snapshot of the services snap-in on the restore once started, shut down the sandbox, delete the restored machine, and send me the image so that I know it worked. The first time you put in the license code it is a bit convoluted. This is nit picking.

We use Altaro to backup our hosts with hundreds of VMs. We are now migrating to a different plataform, due to the lack of support to ReFS and the other limitations stated above.

Easy of use. It take some time to learn the software schema, but after that, it is very easy to use on the day to day experience.

Support is almos informal. There is a ticket number, but the follow up is poor. Chat is almost always offline. About disk space, the backups keep groing indefenitely, even if the VM has not much updates. The optimization tool to recover space does not work properly, takes too long to execute, while it runs, it blocks ALL backups funcionality and at the end there is almost no space freed. There is no limit for backup space per VM or per storage. You need to always keep following up the disk usage. There is no support for ReFS, what is a shame for a software that runs on Windows Servers and ReFS has been around for a while already.

Altaro is a very reliable backup solution. If and when we have required support, the webchat function within the software is fantastic and the support guys are incredibly helpful

What I like most, is the wizard driven selections. Setting it up is super easy because of this. Even if you haven't used Altaro before, you will be up and running in no time.

we have fund previously that if a new version of Altaro is released, it creates a new folder for backups, which takes up more room on the media, as it keeps the previous backups as well as the new.

The whole experience wrapped up is just - Good!! We had a situation causing us to move away from another backup vendor due to issues (not being able to depend on a backup to simply do its job causes sleepless nights after a while). We installed Altaro VM Backup, configured it - all in 15 minutes, including set-up of the email alerts and left it for the evening. Next day - Emails are usually our first encounter as to what occurred overnight - They were all Green! Seriously - a big wow from us! 7 Virtual Machines all backed up successfully and in a time window that seriously made me look twice. The compression and the speed of backups - wow!

I have a few things I like - but the most nicest thing: The user interface on Altaro product always seems so simple, and logical. Being in IT support, I dread those times when it takes 20 minutes to work out the GUI or interface to try and restore a file or check a backup log.

OK - Not being funny - I'll have to come back to this question, because I struggle to think of something I really don't like right now.

This software allows us to back up our customers VM's easily and gives us peace of mind with a daily recap of the previous day's backups.

Implementation is a breeze and it doesn't need a tertiary degree to get it deployed.

I would love to be able to back up endpoints directly to cloud storage without needing an additional Windows server.

very easy to use. Nice Dashboard with a lot of first sight information.

German Language! Not everyone can understand it.

Overall a very good backup solution for a great price.

- Easy to deploy as an MSP - Support is more than excellent. Direct response and highly skilled technicians. - Easy of use

- More detailed error messaging - Endpoint backup to the VM Backup location. (This was promised in the early days of Altaro)

Has been overwhelmingly positive overall!

- Easy to deploy and manage, the CMC (Cloud Management Console) is really fantastic and hard to beat. - Can initiate backups and restores from cloud, and get robust and detailed history/info on usage metrics as well as standard history logs for daily backup activity (ability to filter down on specific clients is another big plus). - Boot from backup is also amazing, cant imagine going without it now, makes testing backups fast and easy. - Really impressive compression and deduplication Fair per-VM pricing is what sold us - easy flat model for our customers to understand

Occasional errors in backups (these generally correct on their own though, self healing backup chain), not FIPS compliant unfortunately

We backup 6 hosts we over 40 VMs Onsite and offsite, and it works really well, no complains, also it is a very goood way to test new environments by restoring backups from any server.

What I most like about it, is the pricing model per Host instead of VM, it is very similar to the competitor, but has better pricing, its easy to try before buying, it is super intuitive to set it up, you don't even need to read the how to documentation, because is is really easy to use.

Some times the Altaro Services drops or Backups stops working (don't understand exactly why) SO You have to contact support (that is excellent and immediate) to solve it. This is the only reason we have been paying for the continuous support.

Great simple to use interface and the ability to link up to many clod providers including our own space at datacentre. Also the Tech Support are great!

Granular file recovery a bit painful but fine of restoring a few files / folders

We have reduced the average time of recovery for a failed server. Clients appreciate that we can recover their business servers within a few hours instead of a few days. We have been using Altaro VM Backup since v. 4 I think. I was impressed with the early version and have specified Altaro VM Backup as our standard for Virtual Machine environments. The addition of the Cloud Management Console and integration with ConnectWise is a big plus.

Setup and configuration is fairly quick. Restore options allow for a granular file level from a VM image backup. Ability to restore to different host. Ability to copy an Offsite backup to remote location. Support for Cloud storage sites for off site backup storage. Speed of recovery time on a failed host. Able to restore a VM to new host within a couple hours. Compression and de-duplication saves storage space on backup media. Product support is excellent. Usually able to solve errors within the Support Chat. Support is always ready to answer even the simplest question to help us out.

The local management console is not password protected. Limited explanation of error messages in the software. Setting up network connections to NAS storage can sometimes fail with cryptic error message.

I use altaro backup for few years now, started with the free licenses for 2VM environments and with every new version there is bunch of new features (like CDP, replication for example).

The biggest reason for use of Altaro VM Backup is the price. For reasonable money you can get full package of virtual machine backup tools. Now it is even cheaper (for small environment with 2-3 virtual machines) with Altaro MSP program, for like 5 bucks a month per VM you get unlimited plus license - such a great deal!

The only cons in some cases is no option for Hyper-V host backup. I know, it is necessary in like 3% of cases, but still, if you are part of the 3%, you have no chance with Altaro and you have to use another app for host backup. I was a bit disappointed with new limitations of free license - no retention policy available, no immediate backup notification to email in V8. But anyway - you can now always jump to MSP program for really small money.

The backup of customer servers to our own premises was the ultimate goal and this has been achieved at an affordable rate to use and our customers - other solutions were just not user friend at all.

The MSP pricing is excellent compared to all others and very simple to get my head around. Simply buying a license per server backed up is much easier than worry about cost per GB and cost per CPU core that some others think is normal.

On the MSP dashboard managing hosts regards licencing is a little tedious and confusing. Simply converting an existing installation from the 2 guest to MSP version is a hassle and not obvious how to do without a lot of trial and error to work it out.