Updated: Verizon is following the herd with an improved broadband backup and sharing product for home PCs announced today. Just drag and drop your files into a folder on your PC, and Verizon will store them online for you — no matter who provides your broadband. New features also include sharing among selected friends. The first 250 MB is free, but it will cost $30.99 a month for 50 GB.
I’ll applaud Verizon for trying to get more revenue from broadband subscribers (even other companies’) by offering a service rather than capping bandwidth or selling customers’ data, but that’s pricey. Verizon is reselling storage from DigiData. Providers such as Drop.io and SugarSync have similar services for less. Dropbox offers 50 GB for $99 a year or $9.99 a month, and SugarSync charges $9.99 a month for 60 Gb or $99.99 a year. Update: And if you’re looking for backup only, get Carbonite — unlimited storage for $49.95 a year ($4.16 a month), or Mozy for $4.95 a month.
I’m personally a big fan of Mozy. Carbonite had issues and Mozy seems to be more customizable. Just make sure you’re backing up, period.
what’s the best online backup solution for mac users? what’s the cheapest?
Stacey – I thought Verizon has had this service for a while. Atleast, I remember seeing it on their website a few months ago. I was looking into what service providers are offering for content backup services and at what cost.
Mozy rules…….
For online backup news, information and articles, there is an excellent website:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Okay, Mozy fans, I was remiss in leaving them out. I’ve added that info to the story, and thanks for letting me know.
Hemel, it looks like VZ added sharing and more features to their backup product. I’ve updated the story to make that clear.
My favorite is IDrive. I know there are carbonite and mozy fans out there, but do a real world comparison of large amount of data backups and restores. You will see the difference. And it works for Mac as well.
Stacey,
Verizon is trying to market a backup + sharing service. There are not many who do this; IBackup, Upline by HP are among the few who offer this. The ones you listed in your article, drop.io and sugarsync address different problems including sharing and syncing, and of course, carbonite and mozy are pure play online backup services. You probably need to clarify this.
Raghu Kulkarni
Note: I represent IBackup.com.
I think Cryptonite or Mozy gives a better deal than any other.
Hands down, the best solution for Macintosh is BackJack (backjack.com) – I’ve been using for several years – note, that they work with business users only, however -
Don’t forget about Jungle Disk which uses Amazon S3 for storage. Cheap and reliable.
I’m using a combination of Amazon S3, DropBox and my own remote servers. As to the consumer’s perspective, I think DropBox is the best option so far.
Good old Verizon… always trying to rob its customers blind.
-Jack
Hello all! Thanks for allowing me to jump in here.
Humbly speaking, do yourself a favor and checkout CrashPlan. We’ve reinvented backup for enterprises.
Completely free for consumers, please feel free to download us at http://www.crashplan.com.
We work great within enterprises. CrashPlan is truly cross-platform on both the client and server side. Its pretty simple, we just work with everything all the time.
Enterprise clients tell us our differential block level data-de-duplication is second none, as well as our guarenteed restore technology.
Combine that with a strong compression engine and super secure encrytion tool all prior to leaving the laptop (desktops and servers too) and you will see great performance.
Unlike other solutions, we also allow you to store and restore data from multiple locations for free. We recommend keeping backups on-site, near off-site and far off-site. Use your own storage or ours, its up to you.
Kind regards,
Robert Casserly
VP, Business Development
bob@crashplan.com
612-578-5104
I’ve been giving customers Amazon S3 + Jungle Disk. I started on Carbonite, but it kept going down and I’d have to reinstall software which got old fast, plus it was actually cheaper for a lot of customers to use S3.
For $20+$1/mo from JungleDisk and $2-7/mo from S3, the price can’t be beat for the robustness of JungleDisk and the reliability of S3.