Mozy pricing has changed, we review online backup alternatives

By Evan Asher February 23rd in Blog

For many years we’ve recommended Mozy online backups for our clients. We’ve found them to be a cost-effective reliable way to ensure that your data is safe should the worst occur. They are a great solution particularly for people with laptops.  When people travel, they rarely bring their external hard drives with them to backup daily, and when they return from their trip, they often forget to plug them back in.  With online backups, as long as you’re connected to the internet, your files will backup.

Every single week we see clients with dead hard drives.  They frequently do not have any backups, or they have an external hard drive backup that stopped working and they weren’t notified or they forgot to plug it in, etc.  Everybody understands the importance of backups, but for some reason people put it off until it’s too late.  Today could be the day you take our recommendation and check that crucial thing off your list!

Recently Mozy announced a pricing change. Instead of $5/month for unlimited storage, they are now $6/month for 50GB or $10/month for 125GB. In response, we have researched the current backup offerings and are recommending an alternative. We wanted a solution that offered the following:

• Unlimited storage
• No throttling of upload/download
• Multiple copies of backups
• Easy to configure
• Reasonable pricing
• The option to receive your data in the mail instead of via download

Here is a quick comparison with our thoughts. Skip to the bottom for our recommendation if you prefer.

Carbonite– One of the leaders in the online backup marketplace, chances are you have heard of them.  What we dislike most about Carbonite is that they throttle your uploads.  After  35GB you can only upload at 512kbps, and past 200GB it drops to 100kbps, or roughly twice dial-up speeds.  Also, there’s no option to get a hard copy of your data.

Backblaze – Unlimited storage for $5/month except files larger than 9GB. This won’t matter for most people, but we’d prefer something without any limits. Also, the program defaults to a 4gb limit, so you’ll have to know how to change that.  They keep 30 days of previous versions and offer USB hard drive restore for $189.

LiveDrive – Unlimited storage for $50/year.  They offer some great features like the ability to access files anywhere, including music, photos and movies on your phone.  However, they only keep 30 versions of your files, which could be only a couple days depending on the file.

Crashplan (Our recommendation) – 10GB for $25/year, Unlimited storage for $50/yr.  PC, Mac, even Linux! Crashplan has no file size limits or throttling and the option to have unlimited previous versions of files.  For those who can’t stand long upload times on your first backup, they offer the option to seed backups (they send you a 1TB USB hard drive, you fill it up and mail it back for $125).  They also offer USB hard drive restores for $125 ground shipping. They support 448-bit Blowfish encryption to keep your data safe.

They even offer a free version which lets you use a friend’s computer in another location as the backup destination.  The friend cannot see your files, and the theory is you each offer to be a backup destination for the other person, making sure your files get off-site, and eliminating the need to pay for storage.  While this is a unique and cost-effective offering, we prefer the paid online backup since you know it will always be turned on.  If your friend goes on a trip for a week and turns off their computer, no backups will be taken!  $4.16/month is a small price to pay for your data.

One downside to Crashplan is that there is no search option in the restore interface, so you have to find any files you need manually.  In addition, they are smaller, and have not been around as long as Mozy.  However, in comparison to other options, this is our personal favorite.  Right now they are offering 15% off when you follow this link, so install Crashplan+ Unlimited now and make sure your data is protected!