Market Guide for SaaS Backup

1 June 2026 - ID G00855806 - 12 min read
By Sankalp Rastogi
Organizations are identifying gaps in SaaS data protection and recoverability due to limited native recovery features and rising data loss risks. Heads of I&O should use this research to assess the SaaS backup market and find solutions that meet their organization’s backup and recovery requirements.

Overview


Key Findings

  • The SaaS backup market remains fragmented, with vendors varying significantly in SaaS application coverage, recovery capabilities, and operational consistency, which may require organizations to use multiple solutions across SaaS environments.
  • Vendors increasingly differentiate through depth of application protection, including granular recovery, metadata support, and scalability of recovery operations for business-critical SaaS platforms.
  • SaaS provider APIs and platform limitations significantly influence the scope, consistency, and effectiveness of third-party backup and recovery capabilities across SaaS applications.

Recommendations

  • Evaluate SaaS backup solutions based on required application coverage, recovery capabilities, and operational consistency across the organization’s SaaS environment rather than selecting tools solely for individual SaaS platforms.
  • Assess vendor capabilities for granular recovery, metadata protection, and large-scale recovery operations based on the recovery and resilience requirements of business-critical SaaS applications.
  • Validate how SaaS provider APIs and platform limitations affect backup coverage, recovery workflows, and restore consistency before standardizing on a SaaS backup solution.

Strategic Planning Assumption


  • By 2029, 75% of enterprises will treat SaaS application backup as a critical component of their data protection strategy, up from 40% in 2026.

Market Definition


Gartner defines SaaS backup as technologies that capture point-in-time copies of SaaS application data and configurations to complement or replace native SaaS application backup and recovery capabilities. Their primary purpose is to enable recovery from data loss scenarios such as accidental deletion, corruption and malicious activity. These solutions enable policy-driven retention and recovery of SaaS data to meet operational and compliance requirements, and are typically delivered as cloud-based subscription services with centralized management across SaaS workloads.
Protecting and recovering data stored in SaaS applications is a critical priority as organizations increasingly rely on these platforms for business operations. Under the shared responsibility model, SaaS providers are primarily responsible for service availability, while customers remain responsible for data protection and recovery. Native recovery capabilities are typically limited in retention, scope and control, creating gaps in recovery scenarios such as ransomware, large-scale deletion, misconfiguration and compliance-driven requests.
SaaS backup solutions address these gaps by providing greater control over retention, recovery points and restore granularity, helping organizations meet business continuity and data protection requirements, including support for audit and investigation needs. They enable organizations to more effectively capture, retain and restore application data and selected configurations to a known-good state.
Common use cases include restoring accidentally deleted emails, files or records; recovering from malicious activity; reversing misconfigurations or policy errors; and retrieving retained data for audit, investigation or legal purposes. Many SaaS backup solutions enable centralized protection across multiple SaaS applications, improving operational consistency and reducing complexity for IT, security and application teams managing diverse SaaS environments.

Mandatory Features

  • Backup of SaaS application data using provider-supported APIs and integrations to capture data from supported SaaS application platforms
  • Recovery of SaaS application data from data loss scenarios such as accidental deletion, corruption, misconfiguration and malicious activity
  • Support for granular recovery at the item, object or application level to enable targeted restore within the SaaS application
  • Backup and data retention policies to define backup frequency, scope and retention in alignment with business and compliance requirements
  • Ability to perform point-in-time recovery to restore data to a consistent, known-good state
  • A centralized interface for configuration, management and monitoring of backup and recovery activities, including reporting of job status and operational metrics
  • Immutable storage capabilities along with access controls and security measures to protect backup data against unauthorized access, deletion or modification

Optional Features

  • Support for protection across multiple SaaS applications through a single platform to enable centralized management of backup and recovery
  • Support for logically isolated or air-gapped storage options to reduce exposure of backup data to production environments
  • Integration with security tools and platforms such as SIEM or SOAR to support alerting and incident response workflows
  • Advanced cyberthreat detection capabilities, such as anomaly detection and malware detection, applied to backup data
  • Support for backup data storage in customer-managed locations, including bring-your-own-storage models
  • Support for cross-tenant, cross-region or alternate-location recovery capabilities
  • Recovery orchestration capabilities to automate and coordinate recovery workflows across users, applications or datasets
  • Support for backup of additional SaaS components such as metadata, permissions, policies or relationships beyond primary data objects
  • Support for role-based access to backup data and recovery operations, enabling capabilities such as end-user self-service recovery and access to search, e-discovery and investigation functions for different personas
  • Support for expanded backup data insights and access capabilities such as data categorization and classification, sensitive data scanning, search and investigation
  • Reporting and analytics capabilities providing insights into backup coverage, success rates and data growth
  • Support for region-specific data storage and residency options to address regulatory or sovereignty requirements
  • Support for data archiving capabilities, either natively or through integrated or adjacent offerings, to enable long-term retention and compliance use cases

Market Description


SaaS backup solutions protect data stored in business-critical SaaS applications, most commonly including collaboration, productivity, CRM, and identity and access management (IAM) platforms such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, and Salesforce. As organizations expand their SaaS adoption, SaaS backup solutions provide a centralized approach to backup, retention, and recovery management across multiple SaaS workloads.
Core capabilities typically include automated data capture, policy-driven retention, and point-in-time recovery. Vendors commonly support granular recovery of individual files, objects, records, or users, along with broader recovery scenarios depending on the SaaS application. These solutions rely on provider-supported APIs and integrations to capture and restore data, which can affect recovery coverage, consistency, and performance across platforms.
Most SaaS backup solutions are delivered as cloud-based services with centralized management, although deployment models vary across SaaS backup vendor-hosted, customer-managed, and hybrid architectures. Solutions are designed to maintain recoverable copies of SaaS data independent of the production application environment to support operational recovery, resilience, and compliance objectives.
Vendors primarily differentiate through recovery capabilities, including recovery granularity, scalability, and support for large-scale or complex recovery scenarios. Additional areas of differentiation include breadth of SaaS application support, operational simplicity and ease of use, security controls such as encryption, immutable storage, and role-based access controls, flexibility in storage and retention options, and centralized visibility, reporting, and policy management across SaaS workloads.
Some SaaS backup solutions also provide capabilities such as policy-based automation for backup scheduling, retention management and recovery workflows, as well as audit and investigation support and integrations with security and governance tools. However, functionality varies significantly by SaaS application and depends on provider APIs and platform limitations, which can affect the scope and completeness of backup and recovery operations.

Market Direction


The SaaS backup market is shifting from point solutions focused on individual applications toward platforms that provide centralized protection and recovery across multiple SaaS workloads. As SaaS adoption expands, buyers are increasingly prioritizing consistent policy management, operational visibility, and standardized recovery processes rather than maintaining separate tools for individual applications.
Over the next year, vendors will continue to expand SaaS application coverage while improving recovery capabilities and depth of protection within supported SaaS platforms. Enhancements in SaaS provider APIs and expanded metadata capture are enabling broader recovery coverage and more granular recovery operations, although capabilities will continue to vary based on SaaS application architectures and API limitations. Competition will increasingly center on vendors’ ability to deliver scalable and reliable recovery operations, broader workload support, and operational simplicity across diverse SaaS environments.
Recovery capabilities will remain a major area of differentiation. Vendors are investing in improved recovery speed, granular restore options, and scalable recovery operations to address growing buyer requirements for faster recovery performance and large-scale recovery scenarios. Ease of recovery execution and administrative usability are also becoming more important purchasing considerations.
Security and resilience of backup data are gaining buyer attention, particularly in response to ransomware concerns and regulatory pressures. Vendors are strengthening capabilities such as immutable storage, encryption, access controls, and logically isolated backup architectures to support enterprise resilience and compliance objectives. Buyers are also placing greater emphasis on maintaining recoverable copies of SaaS data independent of the production SaaS environment.
Additional factors, including regulatory requirements, data governance initiatives, and continued SaaS expansion, will further increase demand for SaaS backup solutions. As SaaS environments become more complex, organizations will increasingly favor platforms that deliver centralized management, policy consistency, and scalable recovery across diverse SaaS applications.

Market Analysis


The SaaS backup market is expanding beyond protecting a limited set of SaaS applications toward broader platforms designed to support increasingly complex enterprise SaaS environments. Early adoption focused primarily on collaboration and productivity applications, particularly Microsoft 365, where awareness of recovery limitations and shared responsibility concerns became more established. As organizations increase reliance on SaaS applications for business operations, demand is growing for solutions that support a wider range of business-critical workloads.
The market includes vendors originating from multiple segments, including traditional enterprise backup providers extending capabilities into SaaS environments, specialized vendors focused primarily on SaaS application protection, and SaaS application vendors offering native backup and recovery capabilities. As a result, offerings vary significantly in application coverage, recovery functionality, and operational design, creating a fragmented market with meaningful differences in scalability, recovery consistency, and administrative experience.
A key market distinction is the trade-off between breadth of application coverage and depth of protection capabilities. Some vendors prioritize broad SaaS application support but provide limited recovery granularity, scope of protection, or metadata support within individual platforms. Others deliver deeper application-specific functionality, including more comprehensive object recovery, configuration protection, and support for adjacent use cases such as sandbox seeding or archiving, but support a narrower set of SaaS applications. These differences are influenced heavily by SaaS provider APIs and application architectures.
Buyer requirements are increasingly shifting from application-specific backup toward operational consistency across the SaaS estate. Organizations are placing greater emphasis on centralized policy management, standardized recovery workflows, and consolidated operational visibility, reducing the suitability of isolated point solutions for enterprise-scale SaaS protection strategies.

Representative Vendors


The vendors listed in this Market Guide do not imply an exhaustive list. This section is intended to provide more understanding of the market and its offerings.

Vendor Selection

The SaaS backup market includes vendors originating from multiple segments of the broader data protection market (see Note 1). Some vendors are established backup and data protection platforms that have expanded their platforms to support SaaS applications alongside on-premises and cloud workloads. These vendors typically position SaaS backup as part of a broader data protection strategy, often emphasizing centralized management, operational consistency, and integrated recovery capabilities across diverse environments (see Table 1).
Other vendors are focused primarily on SaaS application protection and were developed specifically to address backup and data protection requirements for SaaS workloads. These vendors often emphasize depth of application support, granular recovery capabilities, and operational simplicity for specific SaaS platforms or SaaS-centric environments. Some vendors remain focused primarily on a limited set of SaaS applications, while others are expanding coverage across broader SaaS ecosystems (see Table 2).

Backup Vendors Supporting SaaS and Non-SaaS Workloads

Vendor
Supported SaaS workloads
Acronis
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365
Arcserve
Confluence Cloud, Google Workspace, Jira Cloud, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Power BI, Salesforce, Zendesk
AvePoint
Confluence, GitHub, Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Power Platform, Okta, Salesforce, etc.
Bacula Systems
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365
Barracuda Networks
Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID
Cayosoft
Microsoft Entra ID
Cohesity
Box, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce, Slack
Commvault
Atlassian Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub, GitLab, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Power Platform, Salesforce
CrashPlan
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365
Dell Technologies
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce
Druva
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Power Platform, Okta, Salesforce
Huawei
Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID
HYCU
Box, Confluence Cloud, Docusign, GitHub, Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce, etc.
IBM
Azure DevOps, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce
Kaseya
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce
N-able
Microsoft 365
Nakivo
Microsoft 365
NinjaOne
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID
OpenText
Box, Dropbox, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce
Quest Software
Microsoft Entra ID
Redstor
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Xero
Rubrik
Atlassian Jira, GitHub, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Salesforce
Semperis
Microsoft Entra ID, Okta
Synology
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365
Veeam
Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Salesforce
Source: Gartner (June 2026)

Backup Vendors Focused Exclusively on SaaS Workloads

Vendor
Supported SaaS workloads
Acsense
Okta
AutoRABIT
Salesforce
Gearset
Salesforce
GitProtect
Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, Confluence, GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Microsoft 365
Keepit
GitHub, Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Power Platform, Okta, Salesforce, etc.
Odaseva
Salesforce
Own from Salesforce
Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday
Rewind Backup
Azure DevOps, BitBucket, Confluence, GitHub, Jira, Miro, Monday.com, QuickBooks, Shopify, Trello, etc.
Spin.AI
Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Slack
SysCloud
Box, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Slack, Xero
Source: Gartner (June 2026)

Market Recommendations


Heads of I&O responsible for SaaS data protection and recovery should:
  • Prioritize SaaS applications based on business criticality, recovery objectives, and retention requirements. Do not assume native SaaS capabilities are sufficient for long-term retention, granular recovery or large-scale recovery scenarios.
  • Establish and document ownership for SaaS data protection, retention, and recovery activities across IT, security, and application stakeholders. Ensure governance, risk, and compliance processes account for the limitations of native SaaS recovery capabilities under the shared responsibility model.
  • Utilize SaaS backup solutions to implement consistent policies for retention, backup frequency, and recovery objectives across business-critical SaaS workloads. Align operational processes and policy management across SaaS applications while balancing requirements for centralized administration and application-specific recovery capabilities.
  • Differentiate solutions based on recovery granularity, scalability, and operational simplicity. Validate recovery workflows and recovery performance through regular testing to ensure alignment with enterprise requirements.
  • Assess how solutions protect backup data through capabilities such as access controls, encryption, immutable storage, and logical isolation. Ensure backup data remains resilient against corruption, unauthorized modification, and loss of access to production SaaS environments.
  • Establish SaaS data protection practices with enterprise requirements for auditability, retention, and regulatory compliance. Ensure backup and recovery capabilities support broader governance and risk management objectives.

Note 1: Gartner’s Initial Market Coverage


This Market Guide provides Gartner’s initial coverage of the market and focuses on the market definition, rationale for the market, and market dynamics.