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Veeam is the default answer in this market, which means most comparisons of it are written either by Veeam or by someone trying to displace it. We sell Hornetsecurity and Nakivo and work with Veeam estates, so what follows includes the cases where Veeam is the right answer and we would tell you to buy it.
In short: Hornetsecurity VM Backup suits Hyper-V, VMware or Proxmox estates that want the fewest moving parts, and deliberately does less. Nakivo suits mixed or mid-migration estates, licensing per workload with units reassignable between types, and covering Nutanix AHV, physical machines, Oracle and EC2. Veeam does more than either, integrates with more, and has the largest pool of engineers who know it, at meaningfully higher cost and complexity. The decision is not which is best; it is whether you will use what the extra buys.
The three, in one screen
- Hornetsecurity VM Backup. Hyper-V, VMware, Proxmox. Simple by design. Small and mid-sized estates.
- Nakivo Backup & Replication. Adds Nutanix AHV, physical machines, Oracle databases, EC2. Per-workload licensing, reassignable. Three editions.
- Veeam. The broadest coverage, deepest integrations and largest ecosystem. The most expensive and the most to run.
Hypervisor and workload coverage
This is the first filter, and for some estates it is the only one that matters, because it eliminates options outright.
| Hornetsecurity VM Backup | Nakivo | Veeam | |
|---|---|---|---|
| VMware | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Hyper-V | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Proxmox | Yes | Check current release | Check current release |
| Nutanix AHV | No | Yes | Yes |
| Physical machines | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Oracle database | No | Yes | Yes |
| Amazon EC2 | No | Yes | Yes |
Two entries in that table decide most shortlists on their own. Nutanix AHV removes the simpler products from consideration entirely. Proxmox is the newer question, and the one worth checking against current release notes rather than a comparison table, because support for it has been moving.
"Check what you already own before you shop. A meaningful number of businesses looking at Proxmox assume their existing backup will not follow them, and buy something new when the product they already pay for covers it."
Licensing, and why the rates are not comparable
The most common mistake in this comparison is treating three prices as three prices. They are three different units.
Nakivo licenses per workload: one VM, one physical machine, one Oracle database or one EC2 instance, with physical counted as one server or three workstations. Units can be reassigned between workload types during the subscription, which is genuinely useful mid-migration and is the strongest practical argument for it in a changing estate. A perpetual option exists priced per CPU socket instead.
Hornetsecurity VM Backup is priced for host-based estates and aimed squarely at small and mid-sized deployments.
Veeam's model varies by product and edition, and is the one most likely to need a conversation rather than a calculator.
Because the units differ, the only reliable method is to count your own estate properly, then price that same estate with each. That count is also where estates discover they have been paying for decommissioned machines, or protecting fewer servers than they thought.
Where each one genuinely wins
Hornetsecurity VM Backup
A single-hypervisor estate that wants backup to be a solved problem rather than a project. It does less than the other two, and for a business with twenty virtual machines and no Nutanix, no Oracle and no orchestration requirement, doing less is the feature rather than the limitation. It is also the one to check first if Proxmox is in your plans.
Nakivo
Mixed estates, and estates in motion. If you run VMware and Hyper-V together, or virtual alongside a meaningful number of physical servers, or you are partway through a migration, per-workload licensing that can be reassigned removes a real problem. Nutanix AHV support is the clearest single differentiator: if you run it, the field narrows immediately.
Veeam
Large estates, heavily regulated environments, and anywhere backup has to integrate with something else rather than stand alone. Two advantages get undersold in comparisons written by its competitors. The ecosystem is deep, so tooling, documentation and third-party integrations exist for situations you have not met yet. And the pool of engineers who know Veeam is by far the largest, which matters when you need to hire, hand over or get help at short notice. That is an operational advantage, not a marketing one, and it is worth real money in an estate that will outlive its current administrator.
What a comparison table will not tell you
Every product here will protect your estate competently when configured properly. Every one of them will also fail you in the same three ways, none of which appear on a feature matrix.
The job that has been failing quietly. Backup software reports errors; somebody has to read the report. The most common serious finding in an estate audit is a job that has been erroring for months.
The scope that never included the thing that mattered. New servers get built and not added. A hypervisor gets migrated and the old job keeps running against nothing.
The restore nobody timed. A business assuming four hours and a restore taking four days is not a backup problem, it is a planning one, and it is only ever discovered by testing.
The gap between a tested backup and an assumed one is larger than the gap between any two products on this page.
How we would advise
If your estate is a single hypervisor, under about fifty virtual machines, with no Nutanix, no Oracle and no orchestration requirement, start with Hornetsecurity VM Backup and stop there.
If it is mixed, in motion, or includes anything beyond virtual machines, look at Nakivo and count the workloads carefully before pricing it.
If you are large, regulated, or need backup to integrate rather than operate alone, price Veeam properly rather than dismissing it on cost. There are estates where it is straightforwardly the right answer, and telling you otherwise to sell you something we resell would be a poor trade for both of us.
And whichever you choose, agree a recovery point and recovery time objective with the business rather than inheriting a default, then test a restore against them. That is what our backup and disaster recovery service adds on top of the product, and it is the part that decides how the bad day actually goes.
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to Veeam?
There is no single answer, because Veeam's competitors are not trying to be Veeam. Hornetsecurity VM Backup is the alternative if your estate is Hyper-V, VMware or Proxmox and you want the fewest moving parts; it deliberately does less. Nakivo is the alternative if your estate is mixed or mid-migration, because it licenses per workload with units reassignable between types, and covers Nutanix AHV, physical machines, Oracle databases and EC2. The honest framing is not which product beats Veeam, it is whether you will use what Veeam's extra cost and complexity buy. For a lot of mid-sized estates the answer is no, and for large or heavily regulated ones it is usually yes.
Is Veeam worth the extra cost?
It depends almost entirely on scale and obligation rather than on features. Veeam does more, integrates with more, and has the deepest ecosystem and the largest pool of engineers who know it, which is a real operational advantage when you need to hire or hand over. Where that stops being worth paying for is a mid-sized estate that needs reliable backup and tested restores rather than orchestration, deep application integration and automation. Buying the most capable product and using a fraction of it is a common and expensive way to feel safe.
Which backup product supports Proxmox?
Hornetsecurity VM Backup covers Proxmox alongside Hyper-V and VMware. This matters more than it used to: VMware's licensing changes have pushed a meaningful number of businesses to evaluate Proxmox, and most assume their existing backup product will not follow them there. Check what you already own before buying something new. Veeam and Nakivo both have broad hypervisor coverage of their own, so the sensible order is to confirm your current product's support first and only then compare.
How do the licensing models differ?
They are not comparable rates, which is the single most common mistake in this comparison. Nakivo licenses per workload, where a workload is one VM, physical machine, Oracle database or EC2 instance, with physical counted as one server or three workstations, and units reassignable between types during the subscription. A perpetual option exists priced per CPU socket. Hornetsecurity VM Backup is priced for host-based estates and aimed at small and mid-sized deployments. Veeam's model varies by product and edition. Because the units differ, the only reliable comparison is to count your own estate properly and price the same estate with each.
Do any of these back up Microsoft 365?
Hornetsecurity's 365 Total Backup does, and Nakivo and Veeam both offer Microsoft 365 backup as separate products from their VM backup lines. Worth knowing before you compare: Microsoft now sells a first-party backup product of its own, generally available since late 2024, which covers OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange Online with one-year retention. The third-party case is no longer that Microsoft offers nothing; it is that Microsoft's copies stay inside its own service boundary, so they are not an independent copy.
What actually matters more than the product choice?
Whether restores have been tested, and how long they take. Every product on this page will back up your estate competently if configured properly, and every one of them will fail you if the job has been erroring for months and nobody read the report, or if the scope never included the server that mattered. The differences between these three are real but they are smaller than the difference between a tested backup and an assumed one. If you take one thing from this comparison, make it the restore test rather than the shortlist.
