Acronis Cyber Protect and Veeam finished joint top of the category, each named in 3 of the 6 buyer answers we recorded. We put six database backup software questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, gave each one live web search, and logged every product and every source domain that came back. No product was named in more than half the answers, and 29 distinct product labels turned up across just six questions.
The middle of the table is a six-way tie. Acronis (2 of 6), Commvault (2 of 6), HYCU (2 of 6), IDrive (2 of 6), Redgate SQL Backup Pro (2 of 6) and SQLBackupAndFTP (2 of 6) each landed in exactly two answers. Below them sits a long tail: 21 of the 29 products were named once, in a single question and nowhere else.
The shortlist changed with every question
The most useful thing in this data is not the winner, it is how completely the shortlist rewired itself when the question changed. The bare "best database backup software" question returned 7 products, and 3 of them, Veritas Backup Exec, Microsoft Azure Backup and Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup, appeared in that question and no other.
Add one word and the list turns over. "Best free database backup software" produced only 4 names, and 3 of them, SQL Backup Master, SqlBackupFree and Bacula, showed up nowhere else in the study. The word "free" dropped the enterprise suites entirely and pulled in small, SQL-specific free tools instead. Only SQLBackupAndFTP bridged the free list and the plain "best" list.
"Most affordable database backup software" behaved like a third market again, returning 6 names. Wasabi, Vembu and Backblaze B2 were unique to the affordable question, mostly cheap cloud storage rather than full backup suites, while Veeam, Acronis and Redgate SQL Backup Pro carried over from the pricier lists. So "best", "free" and "affordable" acted like three different categories, not three wordings of one.
The other three questions kept the pattern going. "For small teams" gave Backblaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan and Cohesity DataProtect as names that appeared only there, 4 of that question's 8. "What database backup software should I use" surfaced Rubrik, Naviko, Druva and Unitrends as one-question-only picks. "Database backup software recommendations" added ShadowProtect SPX Desktop and EaseUS Todo Backup, again seen nowhere else. Being on one shortlist is almost no signal that you will make the next one.
Where the answers came from
Reddit was the only source cited in all 6 answers, the single most-used domain in the study. Community threads did a lot of the work: Reddit, plus community.spiceworks.com in 3 of 6 answers, plus justanswer.com in 1, meant a forum post sat behind a large share of what ChatGPT and Gemini said. Quora, the other community name people expect, did not appear once.
The key insight sits in the vendor domains. hycu.com was cited in 5 of the 6 answers, more than any source except Reddit. HYCU the product was named in only 2 of those answers, which means HYCU's own pages are being read as a general guide to the whole category, not just as HYCU's sales page. acronis.com was cited in 4 answers, and Acronis was one of the two most-named products. red-gate.com (2 citations) sits under Redgate SQL Backup Pro's 2 mentions, and bacula.org (2) plus baculasystems.com (1) sit under Bacula. When a vendor's own domain got into the retrieved set, that vendor usually got named.
Being retrieved was necessary, not sufficient. handybackup.net and zmanda.com were each cited once, yet Handy Backup and Zmanda were never named as products. Roundup and tech-media pages filled the rest: backup.education fed 3 answers, pcworld.com 2, and pcmag.com and askleo.com 1 each.
Review directories showed up, but only some of them. G2 was cited in 2 answers and Gartner in 2, while Capterra did not appear at all, across any of the six questions. In this category the peer-review and analyst sites counted for less than the vendors' own pages and one busy subreddit.
What gets a backup vendor named
If you sell database backup software, this measurement reads as a checklist, not a leaderboard. The products named were the products present in the 22 source domains the assistants read, not the products with the biggest market share. Naviko, a name few people would recall unprompted, got named in 1 answer because it happened to sit in a page that was retrieved.
The data points at four places to be present. First, Reddit, which fed all 6 answers. Second, Spiceworks, in 3. Third, the roundups that keep recurring: backup.education (3), pcworld.com (2), pcmag.com (1). Fourth, and most in your control, your own domain: hycu.com and acronis.com prove a vendor site can be the source that gets you named, if it actually answers these buyer questions rather than just selling.
Notice what is missing from that list. Capterra never appeared, and even G2 and Gartner backed only 2 answers each. A directory profile is worth less here than one strong Reddit thread and one genuinely useful comparison page on your own domain. The source list decides the shortlist, so the work is getting into the sources.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Acronis Cyber Protect | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Veeam | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Acronis | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Commvault | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| HYCU | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| IDrive | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Redgate SQL Backup Pro | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| SQLBackupAndFTP | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Backblaze | 1 of 6 | 17% |
Two things in this table need a footnote. "Acronis Cyber Protect" (3 answers) and plain "Acronis" (2 answers) are the same vendor logged under two labels, and they never share an answer, so the Acronis brand counted loosely surfaces in 5 of the 6 questions, missing only the free list. We keep the rows apart on purpose: the measurement recorded two labels, and merging them would invent a number the data does not contain. The same split shows up with Backblaze and Backblaze B2 (1 answer each), Cohesity and Cohesity DataProtect (1 each), and SQLBackupAndFTP (2) and SQLBackup&FTP (1). Backblaze, in the last row, is simply the first of the 21 products that were each named exactly once.
Glotier does not sell database backup software, so we are correctly absent from all 6 of these answers, and we would not want to fake our way in. We published this because the method is the point: it is exactly what we run for a customer's own category, the same six-question fan-out and the same source map of the pages the AI actually read. If you want to see where your product stands when buyers ask these questions in your category, the check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.