Bitdefender GravityZone vs. Carbonite by OpenText

Bitdefender had been a great replacement for our previous product - it was painless to make the switch with very few issues. We tested in a VM lab a few different offerings, but Bitdefender was the one that covered everything we required at the time and allowed us to be able to expand the offering simply.

Incentivized

More than enough for small companies with several on-prem servers. In 2021, it wouldn't be wise to pit all important data to a single backup service. Carbonite Server is solid, but it's not 100% reliable so I'd definitely recommend having multiple backup services either on the cloud in conjunction with other backup services so the user has multiple safety nets in case of disaster and failed granular restorations.

Incentivized

• Once installed, Bitdefender [GravityZone] runs silently in the background with little to no need for user interaction.
• The cloud-based console provides for easy computer management and deployment.
• Bitdefender [GravityZone] is extremely flexible, with a policy-based system wherein different profiles can be created (i.e. a policy to deactivate the firewall, a policy to allow for admin control on a machine, etc.) and pushed out to individual computers.
• Computers can be grouped into different categories, with different policies automatically deployed to each category.
• Bitdefender [GravityZone] is relatively resource-light and runs well even on lower-end computers.

Incentivized

• Simple administrative web interface - It's easy to provision users, look at data usage stats, disable users, and update policies to control what folders users are allowed to backup, and what options they can access
• Easy client installation - Installing and updating clients was very simple. The client would notify the user when a new update was approved by the site admins, and they typically went very smoothly.
• Good performance - Backups went fairly fast, and were generally invisible to the user, other than the icon updating on files to indicate whether the current version of a file was backed up or not.

Incentivized

• Who do I ask? This is my chief complaint is once the initial licenses were purchased through Bit Defender, there was no one to contact that could help navigate some of the initial questions I had with regard to specific policies to implement for our file server. The parent web site is, well, hard to navigate when one is trying to "learn" the system.
• The second issue is in increasing the licenses. It took several days for the parent company (by contact and phone) to inform me that they could not increase the licenses and I would have to go through a private vendor. There was no intent to connect me to a vendor or provide a vendor list until I asked specifically. YET I continue to get email from the parent company reminding me to pay an annual fee for the licenses purchase through the private vendor. The parent company can see the number of licenses yet did not sell them to me.
• Gravity Zone Dashboard, while excellent for those who have experience, is not particularly intuitive for those who have never used it. There does not seem to be a lot of documentation for those responsible for implementation.

Incentivized

• While overall file restoration is easy to do, obtaining earlier versions is not as user friendly as it could be. You need to enter a date and click search to bring up the latest versions as of the date entered. That’s fine, but what is missing is the ability to see all versions of an individual file. If I am looking for a past file version I want to be able to view the file history as a subset of that file (in other words I should be able to click a + sign and expand to see past versions of the file). Otherwise I am just guessing which dates the file was changed in the past. Sometimes that’s OK, but Mozy needs to build in this enhanced, but necessary feature.
• A couple of years ago, for non enterprise users, Mozy made radical storage and pricing changes forcing myself and many users off their system, as the price for the same storage was going up significantly. So be careful when using Mozy as past experience has shown they are willing to make major changes regardless of the negative impact on their users.

Incentivized

It works. I rely heavily on my vendors to provide a product that works, is easy to implement, and that they support. As well as be a decent value for the money

Incentivized

Carbonite Server Backup does not integrate or support any reporting; it is not good at it. We required monthly and quarterly reports for audit. If we fail in that we get fined or we have to pay a certain amount of money to customer. It does not support cloud instances and we are using N2WS for the cloud instances. This is an additional burden for customers.

Incentivized

On the whole I find the product very easy to use but some features need me to do some digging about in the console menus to find everything. I think if the interface used a bit less jargon and more clear plain language, it would be easier to find how to do things within the console.

Incentivized

Out of all the vendor we deal with they are one of the best when it comes to customers service. Reliable,you can reach them by telephone easily, Great overall can not say anything to the contrary. Usibility is excellent. I recommend them highly whether you need a simple backup ofr more complex for servers etc.

Incentivized

Yes its very available. The software continues to protect you even if you are offline. It constantly runs in the background and will check for updates again once back online.

Incentivized

The console is quite fast and responsive, and once you start to get used to it, it is easy to use and you can see the main dashboard status at a glance. You can then dig deeper into the individual Companies / Endpoint clients and check the status of each. The software itself is not heavy on system resources in each PC.

Incentivized

Support is an area Bitdefender has always struggled with. While their products work great, the GravityZone dashboard is very technical in nature. If you aren't IT inclined, it could be difficult to setup. While most times support is helpful, we tend to work with them over email because of their very thick accent, they are hard to understand over the phone.

Incentivized

I usually find what I need to know by looking in the Carbonite knowledge base online. We haven't had any major problems, usually we just need clarification on a point or more details about a feature so we look it up. We haven't had to call in for help in quite awhile.

Incentivized

The trainer went through everything in the console an showed me what each setting did. If I had any questions on how to do something, he showed me where to go and how to do it. The trainer was very helpful and knowledgeable, and also professional and patient. Highly recommended.

Incentivized

The trainer went through everything in the console an showed me what each setting did. If I had any questions on how to do something, he showed me where to go and how to do it. The trainer was very helpful and knowledgeable, and also professional and patient. Highly recommended.

Incentivized

We had appliance and we just needed to setup the Director Console which was straight forward and easy.

Incentivized

We were a Kaspersky shop for years. Kaspersky was a resource hog and it didn't even block half of what was thrown at it. We had more outbreaks and more end-user complaints in a year of Kaspersky then we have had in almost three years of Bitdefender.

Incentivized

Netbak is a great product but we also had a secondary issue of having to backup several PC's on site and at remote locations. Carbonite helped with both and gave us one central admin console to be able to check the progress of all our backups, where netbak would have required us to setup a tunnel or use the internet to move data back to our main office.

Incentivized

I give it this rating because one you have the console running, you can add or remove whole companies, add computer endpoints (and remove them), and easily create and deploy endpoint packages to the machines that need the software. Once installed, the software starts to report back to the Bitdefender servers and the number of active licences is then seen and billed.

Incentivized

• The ROI for Bitdefender is hard to quantify except that it requires very little maintenance time from our staff.
• We've spent no time troubleshooting user complaints or issues from users, so it has been a big time-saver over our previously used anti-malware software.
• Bitdefender's customer service is usually pretty good and also very responsive, so I don't have to wait by the phone or to keep checking email to resolve a problem--although our issues have been mostly informational and not a problem with functionality.

Incentivized

• We have a safety net that we didn't have before.
• Key players are now backed up through an automated system that was easy to silently install.
• The resources used impacted our exchange server negatively and slowed email until it was disabled.

Incentivized