Acronis vs Duplicati

Acronis is a Swiss-headquartered cyber protection company founded in 2003, known for its True Image disk imaging software and, today, mainly for a multitenant platform that managed service providers use to back up, secure and manage their clients' systems. EQT agreed in 2024 to take a majority stake, and Acronis says more than 20,000 service providers and 750,000 businesses use its platform.

The business offering, marketed as the Acronis Cyber Platform and sold to service providers as Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, combines backup of servers, PCs, VMs and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with disaster recovery, EDR and MDR, email security, data loss prevention, patching, RMM and PSA-style billing and service desk tools. MSPs pay per workload for actual usage; IT departments buy one to three year terms. The consumer line, Acronis True Image, is sold per year: Essentials for local backup and cloning, Advanced with cloud storage and anti-malware, and Premium with 1 TB or more of cloud storage.

Acronis fits MSPs that want one console for backup, security and RMM, and home or small-office users who need full-disk images and cloning. Backblaze is simpler and cheaper for plain cloud backup, Afi.ai focuses on SaaS backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Veeam is the usual choice for large virtualized data centers.

Buying tip: True Image prices rise with each extra computer and terabyte, so a 3 or 5 computer pack is better value for households. MSPs should check which security modules they already license elsewhere.

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup client for Windows, macOS and Linux, started by developer Kenneth Skovhede and maintained with a community and, more recently, a company that sells central management. It creates encrypted, compressed and deduplicated backups and uploads them to almost any storage target, so you can keep an offsite copy without trusting the storage provider with readable data.

Backups are encrypted with AES-256 before upload, split into blocks and stored incrementally, so only changed data is sent after the first run. Supported destinations include S3-compatible storage, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SFTP, WebDAV, local disks and network shares. Scheduling, versioned retention rules and a browser-based interface come in the free client, and the paid Duplicati Console adds centralized monitoring and management across many machines.

It suits home users, homelab owners and small offices that want encrypted cloud backups for the cost of storage only. It requires technical comfort: restoring large backup sets can be slow, the local database occasionally needs repair, and support is community-based unless you pay. Restic and Kopia are faster command-line alternatives, Arq is a polished paid option for Mac and Windows, and Backblaze Personal Backup is simpler for people who just want unlimited backup of one computer. Whatever you choose, test restores regularly.