This is your weak link

I have been using the pro version now for almost a year, and it is superior to WHM in most ways, EXCEPT the backup system sucks.

You should be able to do a full account restore from a single backup file, not having to do the site and database separately.


You fix that, and you have a WHM competition.

I can only tell you that I had to restore a client's backup for the first time about 2 weeks ago, and like you I was quite skeptic it'll work on the first go, but hey - I was so proud and glad it worked with one click, and the client was so happy I could restore his site so quickly...
So I don't know exactly where your problem is (did you enable backup for the site you were trying to restore?), but my experience was totally different.

On second thought - do you refer to a single site restore or to the full server?