Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Dell Technologies Logo
7,925 views|6,473 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Zerto Logo
Read 236 Zerto reviews
10,502 views|5,618 comparisons
98% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 19, 2023

We compared Dell NetWorker and Zerto based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data, and you can find the conclusion below.

  • Features: Dell NetWorker is recognized for its intuitive graphical user interface, integration with Data Domain, and impressive speed. Users say Zerto offers excellent data protection, and it’s easy to create VMs. Zerto users also like its real-time replication features. Dell NetWorker needs improvements in reporting, integration, and documentation. Zerto could improve cloud environment configuration, PowerShell scripting, and multi-site replication.

  • Service and Support: Dell NetWorker received mixed reviews, with some customers expressing frustration about delayed responses and unresolved problems. Customers have generally had positive experiences with Zerto's customer service, noting their quick response times and ability to resolve issues. Some customers have encountered slower response times and needed to go through multiple levels of support to get their issues resolved.

  • Ease of Deployment: Some users consider Dell NetWorker's setup to be effortless, but some said it was somewhat complex. The setup process for Zerto can be either simple or complicated, depending on the individual's experience with backup solutions.

  • Pricing: Some reviewers consider Dell NetWorker to be expensive, while others find it to be reasonable and cheaper than other options with similar features. Zerto’s price tag is considered reasonable and in line with industry norms. Others said it was somewhat expensive but still worth the cost.

  • ROI: Users have provided no feedback about Dell NetWorker’s ROI so far. Zerto reduces risks while saving costs and time. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance, and helps businesses grow.

Comparison Results: Dell NetWorker is regarded as a reasonably priced, high-performing backup solution with a user-friendly GUI. At the same time, many users were dissatisfied with Dell’s support and asked for improvements in reporting and documentation. Zerto offers top-tier data protection, excellent customer service, and real-time replication, but some users say its cloud and multi-site functionality could be better.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto Report (Updated: May 2024).
770,765 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is an extremely stable product.""Data domain is a good feature.""The extensive information provided on tool properties has been very useful, specifically the information on databases""The solution is stable.""It has the ability to support all kinds of backups. It can be used to back up databases, operating systems, virtual machines, Lotus Notes, and Exchange. It can also do remote image backups for remote sites. It integrates and works with Data Domain. It is an enterprise-class product that can be used for anything and everything across multiple sites and locations. It is also very scalable.""The backup feature for this product is good. It is easy to set up and easy to scale.""The backup capabilities and the automatization of the backup - along with the potential to make the back up on a virtual machine - are the solution's most valuable aspects.""Dell EMC NetWorker integrates well with our domain and the performance is quite good on-premise. We receive approximately 1 terabyte within one hour."

More Dell NetWorker Pros →

"I like the less than one-minute RPO, the ability to IP customize during failovers, and the cloning feature that I can use to clone VMs over at the target location. As part of the automation failover, if we need to change an IP when it fails over to the other data center, Zerto will handle that; there's no need for manual intervention. As far as the cloning, we use that to do quick testing of a VM in the remote data center for lift-and-shift processors.""I really like how you can test the failover as often as you need.""Zerto's continuous data protection is unmatched. It's phenomenal. It's also very easy to use. The menus are self-explanatory. Once you understand the terminology of the product, what the VPGs (Virtual Protected Groups) are, you're able to pretty much do what you want in the product. It's very easy to use.""We selected Zerto because the RPO is extremely low, so you can get that server back up almost immediately. That was a huge thing. Also, the ability to do failover tests, where you can test your environment, but not have it impact your production environment, was huge.""RPO time for the copied-off VMs appears to be quite short.""The instant recovery at DR locations is the most valuable feature. We're required to do periodic DR tests of critical databases, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL. We have recovery point objectives set for specific databases and we need to be able to achieve them. Zerto helps solve that business problem.""Some of the most valuable features are the synchronous replication and migration with RDMs. I really like the conversion of RDM VMs for migration.""Its ease of use is valuable. You do not have to do much to install Zerto or implement Zerto on the infrastructure. It is not very complicated."

More Zerto Pros →

Cons
"Currently, the NetWorker server only supports the Windows server bare-metal recovery, so an improvement would be built-in support for Linux and UNIX BMR.""It's not easy to integrate. We have to read a lot of documentation in order to configure the solution.""In the next release, I would like to see better pricing and more integration with the other products in Dell EMC.""We are able to do direct backups, but analyzing the logs is not straightforward.""Its console UI should be better. It should also have more out-of-the-box reporting functionalities. It should also have easier cloud integration. They have got cloud boost and things like that, but if you want to directly back up to the cloud, I'm not too sure whether you can do it. For example, you can easily send data from Commvault to AWS, Azure, or a container, but it seems to be not so easy in NetWorker.""The solution could be graphically better.""NetWorker's major problem is its legacy software.""The configuration is too complex."

More Dell NetWorker Cons →

"There's a mandatory VMware version, so we need to update our VMs in order to access our data. Zerto should work with all VMware versions.""Some of the ability to automate selections and automate VPG creations could be better.""Improvements in stability would be welcome; there are some software bugs that can affect RPOs. We want more of a guarantee that we won't lose any of our backups, even in the event of a disaster.""The backup solution needs to be improved. From our perspective, Veeam and Zerto were competing products. They both do very unique things that they're very good at. For instance, Veeam can do replication well. However, it's really a backup product.""Zerto's near-synchronous replication is excellent when it works. I'm trying to be nice to them because I like the product a lot, but we're having a lot of difficulty with it in our environment.""It has a file restore feature, which we have tried to use. We have had some issues with that, because the drives are compressed in our main file system. It is a Windows-based file server. So, it compresses the shares and can't restore those by default.""It took me a little bit of time to get used to Zerto's terminology and to relate it back to how you do a backup traditionally. It was a little different. It took a little while to understand what a VPG is and what it does. That's an area that they could probably improve on a little, making the documentation easier to understand.""The post-configuration part could be improved. For example, it would be super helpful to have the ability to modify DNS. Once the migration is done, we want to do some more modifications to the endpoint."

More Zerto Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Low cost is key."
  • "You have to buy the deduplication software separately from the license."
  • "It's approximate, but I believe we pay around $20-30,000 a month in licensing."
  • "The pricing of this solution is very good."
  • "If you purchase Avamar, NetWorker is free with Avamar, for one terabyte license capacity."
  • "It is excellent from the pricing point of view. It is free with Data Protection Suite. Similarly, when you purchase Avamar, Dell EMC NetWorker is free with one terabyte license capacity. Its price is very competitive."
  • "The price is a little on the high side, but it's reliable and provides a good service."
  • "It is not very expensive and not very cheap."
  • More Dell NetWorker Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing depends on your future growth. Start small and then scale up."
  • "Zerto’s licensing model has changed a bit over the last year and they are in alignment with others. It is pretty simple and more economical."
  • "Licensing is based on the number of VMs to replicate. The first thing should be to get the number of VMs to replicate based on your business needs."
  • "Licensing is VM based so you can buy packages or single VM. Price is not low but the power of application is high, so you will get your money back."
  • "It's a little bit expensive."
  • "We believe the pricing, setup costs, and licensing are easy to understand. The pricing seems very reasonable."
  • "The solution is very cost-effective and very easy to set-up but does not compromise on features."
  • "While we find the twenty-five VM license somewhat inflexible, the actual setup costs are minimal as the product is so easy to install."
  • More Zerto Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
    770,765 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly… more »
    Top Answer:The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability.
    Top Answer:The pricing for the telecom, government, and banking sectors is relatively affordable. Dell offers bundled packages, making it cost-effective, especially when considering the inclusion of DTS data… more »
    Top Answer:Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1 =… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Zerto for us is its DR capability.
    Top Answer:We find Zerto's licensing model compatible with major cloud providers like Google, AWS, and Azure. The Azure pricing model is particularly cost-effective for us compared to other cloud providers… more »
    Ranking
    14th
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    7,925
    Comparisons
    6,473
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    436
    Rating
    7.7
    2nd
    out of 133 in Backup and Recovery
    Views
    10,502
    Comparisons
    5,618
    Reviews
    128
    Average Words per Review
    934
    Rating
    9.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    NetWorker
    Zerto Virtual Replication
    Learn More
    Overview

    Built on a reputation of efficiency and reliability, thousands of customers trust Dell NetWorker to protect their data and applications across multiple environments, from core to edge to cloud.

    Inherently flexible, NetWorker helps you deploy and leverage the data protection that fits your needs. NetWorker protects both physical and virtual environments, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as cloud workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

    NetWorker is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. NetWorker is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

    Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, specializes in data protection and empowers customers to run a business by simplifying the protection, disaster recovery, and mobility of on-premises and cloud applications. Zerto uses advanced hybrid cloud IT technologies to recover and protect business-critical applications in on-premises and cloud environments, enabling them to deliver continuous service without compromising security. Zerto’s foundation is based on continual data protection (CDP) technology. Users can benefit from a single, unified, and automated recovery and data management experience across all virtualized or container-based workloads.

    Zerto's native clustering technology creates a resilient, fault-tolerant system that automates recovery of critical virtual machines while supporting software updates, new OS releases, and upgrades. With native clustering, a creation, migration, or deletion of a virtual machine is automatically replicated to all nodes in the cluster. This creates an automated failover and availability solution with the features of high-end dedicated servers running at a fraction of the cost.

    Zerto Features

    Zerto has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Continuous data security
      • Continuous replication
      • The industry's lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs
      • App and database protection and recovery on a granular level
    • Agility across hybrid and multi-cloud
      • Protection between clouds
      • Simple on-premises to cloud migration
      • User-friendly native cloud services
    • Simple to scale
      • Automation and orchestration are built-in
      • Cross-platform, multi-site analytics
      • Unified experience regardless of cloud
    • Software-based
      • Hardware, hypervisor, and cloud are all independent
      • No physical appliances
      • Future-proof

    Zerto Benefits

    • Robust disaster recovery: Continuous data protection enables recovery of entire clusters, multi-VM applications, or even a single server with the lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs. Zerto allows users to safeguard, manage, and recover all of their key digital assets, whether they’re recovering to a secondary location, the public cloud, or a managed service provider.
    • Constant backup: Instead of making backups every 12 or 24 hours, Zerto creates backups every 5-15 seconds. Zerto backup has no impact on production and eliminates the burden of micromanaging backup windows by using CDP instead of snapshots. Its backup provides immediate recovery of data, folders, or virtual machines (VMs) that are only seconds behind the original, which is a simple approach to completely avoid ransomware or erase inadvertent deletions.
    • Strong long-term retention: Send data to the cloud or a purpose-built storage appliance of your choice for months or years of retention. These long-term copies can be made from local backups or DR replicas, and they can be kept wherever is most convenient for your company. Its powerful indexing and search makes discovering and restoring data simple. For data you want to maintain but only use infrequently, use cost-effective cloud tiering to shift LTR copies from hot to cold to deep-freeze storage.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Zerto stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its disaster recovery abilities and its ease of use. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Justin C., Director of IT at Arnott Inc. writes of the solution, “If we had to deal with a ransomware event, Zerto would be one of the first things I would use, because it is going to be the fastest to restore data to a certain point. If there were a fire in our building, Zerto would be a big thing too, because we would shut down everything that's in our building… It's definitely going to be one of our prevalent DRBC layers of protection."

    Brad W., Vice President of Information Technology at a financial services firm, notes, “The file restoration is very helpful. They've improved it over the years to make it a lot more user-friendly and easy to do, which I appreciate. So, we use that quite a bit. The failover process is quite simple and intuitive. Even the configuration and setup are pretty easy to do.”

    Sample Customers
    Republic Bank, Westgate Resorts, Macquire Cloud Services, Shriners, Panatonni, Qatar Islamic Bank, Eurosport
    United Airlines, HCA, XPO Logistics, TaxSlayer, McKesson, Insight Global, American Airlines, Tencate, Aaron’s, Grey’s County, Kingston Technologies
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm28%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Insurance Company12%
    Healthcare Company10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise66%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise57%
    Buyer's Guide
    Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    770,765 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Dell NetWorker is ranked 14th in Backup and Recovery with 73 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 236 reviews. Dell NetWorker is rated 7.8, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell NetWorker writes "A stable tool that has an easy-to-use GUI that enables quick restoration". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Dell NetWorker is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Dell Avamar, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veritas NetBackup and Commvault Cloud, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Commvault Cloud and Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines. See our Dell NetWorker vs. Zerto report.

    See our list of best Backup and Recovery vendors.

    We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.