Zimbra by Synacor vs. Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365

I consider Zimbra Email & Collaboration a viable alternative to the major American cloud email platforms. In a scenario where data protection and privacy are critical, especially in an on-premise environment, Zimbra is a very suitable solution. It is also capable of offering a comprehensive set of tools and additional features (tasks, calendars, contacts, briefcase) in an integrated manner.

Incentivized

Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 is well suited for medium-size companies who have a significant amount of free storage and want to keep their own copies for retention/legal reasons. It is also a great way to back up SharePoint sites in the event of something being lost or incorrectly changed by a user. It is not great for deep visibility into your backups and exact sizing. There is no good way to truly view which items are taking up storage without digging into PowerShell commands.

Incentivized

• The management of incremental mail backup. It is very simple, and the administrators of my company recover information quickly.
• The management of the distribution lists is structured. This allows easy distribution of mass information.
• The web application is very complete and intuitive.

Incentivized

• My CFO seemed to have lost a whole year of important emails. I simply restored them to his mailbox in a matter of minutes.
• An employee left the company but an issue came up with a quote this person sent out. I could search his mailbox and got the quote as well as all communications from that customer.
• It is nice to be able to search emails in various mailboxes without disturbing the user.
• It is also nice to go back in time. Say they deleted those emails last month I can go back years if needed.

Incentivized

• User web interface could be more friendly, but it is enough for daily use. It could be renewed and has to consider some usability concerns. Improving usability would significantly improve users' satisfaction.
• Message backup recovery is not a simple activity.
• As an administrator, some of the features work better using the command-line interface.
• The webclient uses ajax requests in almost every event. Because of that you may need a fast internet connection to have a good experience. You can switch to HTML version but it will limit what you can do.

Incentivized

• Backing Up "Public Folders" is quite a hassle, but this is not the "fault" of Veeam but the way Microsoft exposes this data.
• No option to integrate the product into their other solution, it would be great to access M365 backup in the Backup & Replication application.

Incentivized

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 just works so well and is so easy to use. I researched multiple options for Office 365 backup and none seemed to be as easy to setup and use as Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and the pricing was very comfortable to us. I can't imagine any reason why we would change away from Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365.

Incentivized

The web usability of the solution is adequate, with all functions integrated into a single interface. However, it is important to note that in the desktop environment, it lacks its own application and relies on ActiveSync synchronization with reference solutions like Outlook or Thunderbird. Some features, such as the briefcase, will be excluded. The same happens on smartphones.It is also common for competing solutions to include integrated chat or video call tools, which Zimbra lacks. These shortcomings are among the most frequently requested by users.

Incentivized

Veeam Data Cloud has an easy and user-friendly interface, easy integration with Microsoft 365 cloud, strong backup and recovery functionality, and robust security features. It is one of the few solutions that can export to .pst files and also has a very simple opt-out because the data is stored on the Microsoft cloud.

Incentivized

I have yet to need it during any of their scheduled maintenance windows. It's always online.

Incentivized

We have a lot of data, and pulling backups out of the store sometimes takes a bit of time - but this is within acceptable tolerances. I don't expect restores to be instantaneous, and I can't quantify if the speed is software or data repository.

Incentivized

Support for all Veeam products is pretty good. While documentation sometimes is written for someone who's already an expert on the platform, their support portal is easy enough to use, and they are very responsive once a support need is documented. I have never had a problem with Veeam that could not be resolved in fairly short order.

Incentivized

Overall, we were satisfied with the implementation. We perhaps should have spent more time consulting with Zimbra or others regarding best practices but as we got to know the system better we were able to make changes relatively easily after the fact.

Incentivized

Would have marked a 10 but the storage in AWS was very complicated. Would be nice to have more help/guidance connecting to external storage.

Incentivized

• We were originally a Groupwise shop before changing to Zimbra in 2008. Zimbra, from an end-user standpoint, pricing, system administration, and management is a far better system.
• We use Google Apps for our students. We did not find it to be suitable for faculty and staff due to its lack of shared accounts.
• We are moving from Zimbra to Office 365. Office 365 offers just about all that Zimbra had, though its web interface is inferior to that of Zimbra. It does offer us greatly reduced costs though, and high availability. If Zimbra were to have a fully HA environment, we may have stayed with them.

Incentivized

My familiarity with Veeam Data Cloud specifically is what drew me to the product. They both seem equally capable, but when you know a product you generally tend to go that direction. I believe the other provider could back up our environment, but I am not familiar with it and as I have stated when you need to get up and going quick it is best to be very familiar with the product you are utilizing.

Incentivized

I have had no issues scaling this software as my organisation or data estate has grown. It always does exaclty what it says on the box.

Incentivized

• Improved internal communication and dissemination and distribution of messages and corporate objectives.
• The creation of an internal network of employees is something that gives us security and confidence.
• Having a private and exclusive messaging system differentiates us from the competition and from other companies.

• The only real impact is from a compliance standpoint. Our company is expected at a regulatory level to be protecting our data and even though the tenant has little traffic there could still be some regulated data in there. We have to be able to tell an auditor that it's being backed up by an enterprise grade solution, and that's what VDC was intended for.

Incentivized