Top data protection software vendors for business in 2026
Data compromises carry real financial risk to organizations. It's imperative to invest in the right multifunctional data protection software that ensures security.
To compete in today's digital markets, organizations must manage and safeguard their data. But choosing the right data protection platform can be difficult due to varied workloads, regulations and budgets.
Data protection mitigates the risk of data loss, compromise or corruption and helps keep business data available. There are two broad categories:
- Endpoint data protection. This protects data on PCs, physical or virtual servers, and other managed devices.
- SaaS data protection. This addresses data on third-party SaaS platforms, such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
Most major data protection vendors support both categories, and most modern data protection software typically delivers a range of core capabilities and features, although some tools and platforms offer additional features. Core capabilities found in most data protection software include the following:
- Backup features that make copies of production data that organizations can fall back on in the event of a compromised production environment.
- Recovery tools that expedite restores for data and systems after a breach, corruption or loss event.
- Data discovery to find the data businesses must protect but might not realize exists within their large, complex IT estates.
- Monitoring and anomaly detection to identify risks, such as malware lurking within backup data.
Determining which data protection tool or platform is the best fit for an organization depends on several factors. Considerations include required levels of protection, how much risk the business can tolerate, pricing and which data protection capabilities best meet the enterprise's strategy for data backup, recovery, privacy, security and compliance.
Who offers the best data protection software?
This list of data protection vendors and products reflects research from analyst firms regarding the largest, most innovative or most popular software. Key sources include the following:
- Gartner's inventory of "Backup and Data Protection Platforms Reviews and Ratings."
- IDC’s MarketScape "Worldwide Cyber-Recovery 2025 Vendor Assessment."
- Forrester research on data resilience providers.
When possible, pricing data comes directly from the vendors. Where official pricing data is incomplete or not publicly available, the article draws on customer reports detailing the prices they've paid for the products. While the latter isn't a complete representation of actual product costs, it provides a basis for a very broad understanding of what organizations might expect to pay. Many vendors offer custom quotes for enterprises that require exact pricing.
To refine the data protection product comparisons, the article draws on additional sources. Each vendor entry includes key capabilities, distinguishing features, prices, typical use cases, and pros and cons. Offerings appear in alphabetical order.
Acronis
Acronis International's data protection platform is most notable for its integrated approach to cybersecurity and data protection with an all-in-one package. It offers enhanced data protection efficiency, such as storage optimization for data backups.
Acronis bases pricing mainly on the number of devices or workloads that need protection. Acronis Cyber Protect has three pricing options: Standard, Backup Advanced, and Advanced. Pricing for the standard data protection product starts at $85 per physical workstation per year, $595 per server per year, and $285 per Windows Essentials license. The Backup Advanced and options include protection for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace users, each priced at $209 per year for 5 seats.
Arcserve
Arcserve provides a suite of data protection and ransomware defense products. The company caters to the SMB market more than most other vendors on this list, but its offerings can perform at enterprise scale.
Arcserve pricing varies by product and licensing model. Costs begin as low as $19.99 per month for a single UDP license covering one terabyte of data. However, this cost doesn't include backup storage, SaaS backup features or anomaly detection.
Barracuda
Barracuda Networks' platform offers key data backup and recovery capabilities, providing storage efficiency. The platform places special emphasis on deduplication, which reduces backup storage costs and accelerates recovery by removing redundant information from backups.
Barracuda's advertised pricing for data protection starts at $5 per user per month, for its Email Protection package. However, its Cloud-to-Cloud pricing is more opaque. Actual costs vary widely depending on different factors. The company offers a pricing calculator to estimate total costs for specific scenarios, including the following:
- The total data volume organizations want to protect.
- Whether a physical or virtual server hosts the data.
- Which support features an organization chooses.
- If the data is automatically replicated to an off-site location.
Cohesity
Cohesity's platform combines data management and data protection features into a single platform. It doesn't just provide data backup and recovery, but also data monitoring and replication using an integrated tool package.
In December 2024, Cohesity acquired Veritas and integrated Veritas' data protection capabilities into their product suite. For example, Cohesity still offers NetBackup, Veritas's main enterprise-scale data protection solution, as a standalone product.
Cohesity pricing is primarily based on total data volume, whether customers host the product on dedicated hardware devices or in the cloud and the specific data protection capabilities selected. The company doesn't publicly disclose precise pricing terms, but offers custom quotes on demand. Customers on social media report paying approximately $500 per terabyte annually for Cohesity, but again, actual costs can vary widely.
Commvault
Commvault offers core data backup and recovery features found in most data protection platforms, but also provides advanced capabilities, such as active threat scanning and cyber deception, which sends decoys to mislead attackers seeking sensitive or mission-critical data.
Commvault doesn't publish pricing details for most of its products; however, it lists pricing for data protection capabilities for SaaS platforms. The lowest pricing begins at $1.70 per user per month for Microsoft 365 Backup. Other types of SaaS backup, such as VMs, cost $102.49 per 10-pack of VMs per month.
Dell
Dell Technologies' data protection platform primarily delivers data backup and recovery capabilities through PowerProtect Data Manager. Complementary capabilities, such as data discovery and database activity monitoring, are not a major focus. Dell supports most modern environments and has recently expanded features for multi-cloud data backup and recovery.
Because Dell's portfolio includes a broad range of capabilities that address various use cases, costs can vary tremendously. Price depends on which products and features customers use, as well as if they bundle data protection with other Dell products.
Druva
Druva's data protection package is notable for its emphasis on cost optimization and efficient data recovery in addition to core capabilities, such as data backup. By helping businesses determine the types of assets they need for cost-effective backup, the platform strikes a balance between data protection and business cost-efficiency.
Druva provides pricing on request. Costs vary by workload type -- data protection for SaaS platforms costs less than for endpoints -- and backup and recovery features. Third-party and customer reports mention backup costs of approximately $8 per user per month, or $560 per terabyte per month.
IBM
Although IBM is better known for other computer services and products, the vendor also offers data protection products, most notably Storage Protect for SaaS products and Storage Defender, which provides more advanced features.
Offerings are enterprise-centric and focus on the needs of complex, sprawling IT estates, such as those that operate multi-cloud infrastructures. IBM also places special emphasis on data protection for legacy workloads, such as SAP S/4HANA.
Costs for IBM data protection vary by product. Storage Protect pricing starts at approximately $4 per user per month. Storage Defender pricing is more complex due to the wide variety of features with different price points.
Microsoft
Microsoft focuses on its own platforms through Azure Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup, which provide data backup and recovery features for protecting data in the Azure cloud and Microsoft 365, respectively.
Pricing for Microsoft data protection products is primarily based on the amount of data organizations back up. Costs begin at approximately $0.15 per gigabyte per month for Microsoft 365 Backup. Costs can be as low as $0.0224 per gigabyte per month for Azure Backup if organizations use low-cost backup storage within the Azure cloud. Azure Backup also includes a fixed monthly fee for each cloud server instance that customers protect. Pricing begins at around $5 per server instance per month.
Quest
Quest Software provides data backup and recovery capabilities as part of a broad package addressing data security, data management, migration and endpoint management products. Quest's data protection features combine with its wide range of other offerings to provide comprehensive data management, security and protection capabilities.
Quest does not publish pricing for its data backup products. The company offers custom pricing quotes upon request. Purported customers on social media state that Quest backup and recovery costs tend to exceed its competitors but believe the features justify the higher costs.
Rubrik
Rubrik is a cyber-recovery provider focusing on helping organizations prepare for and respond to ransomware attacks and other breaches. Its products place equal emphasis on backup and recovery across single cloud, multi cloud and hybrid cloud architectures. It also supports backup and recovery for major SaaS platforms, such as Google Workspace.
Rubrik only offers custom pricing quotes and doesn't publicly disclose pricing details. Customers mention annual costs of $650 per terabyte.
Veeam
Veeam Software offers a comprehensive, general-purpose data protection package that works with most IT environments, including data assets hosted on bare-metal servers, VMs and the cloud. Features include the following:
- Instant restore.
- Storage-based backup.
- Whole disk and file recovery.
- AI-powered malware detection engine.
Veeam has several different data protection packages. According to general pricing guidance on Veeam's website, the standard package -- Veeam Data Platform Essentials -- costs start at approximately $90 per year per Veeam Universal License, which can be used for up to 50 workloads. However, Veeam sells the licenses in packs of five, costing enterprises $450 a year for one pack. Veeam also has pricing for SaaS backup starting at approximately $3 per user per month.
Chris Tozzi is a freelance writer, research adviser, and professor of IT and society. He has previously worked as a journalist and Linux systems administrator.
