What’s Best For Your Business?
TechWizBackup’s Greg Mckeon takes a close look at the data backup options available for small businesses and compares online backup services of Carbonite Pro, Mozy Pro, SugarSync for Business and IDrive Pro for Business.
Trying to compare the pricing plans of the leading business backup plans can be confusing.
Technology is changing the way small businesses store and manage their data. Information once stored in file cabinets can be easily converted or replaced entirely into digital formats.
But losing this data for even a short time can result in productivity and revenue loss for small businesses and permanent data loss can jeopardize a company’s future. Hard drive crash, theft, accidental deletion or natural disasters can happen when you least expect it. According to a study by the National Archives and Records Administration, 60% of companies that lose their data close down within 6 months.
Why Online Backup?
Most companies realize the importance of backing up and storing important data on external hard drives or other media is a common practice. Unfortunately this method isn’t disaster proof. Business experts agree that you should store copies of your data both on and off work premises. Companies like Mozy, Carbonite, SugarSync, and IDrive all offer simple, automatic, and affordable solutions for your small business backup needs. These companies represent the leaders in the industry and all offer features like:
- military grade encryption
- automatic backup scheduling options
- flexible restore options.
So which one is right for you? The biggest difference is in the price structure so I’ll break down the plans to give you an “apples-to-apples” comparison.
Best Small Business Online Backup?
As you can see by the chart, the services vary wildly in how they price their plans. Companies like Mozy and SugarSync charge per user while Carbonite and Idrive adopt tiered plans without any regard to the number of computers. There are additional factors to consider here as well since all the services have their own quirks and unique features. SugarSync offers secured sharing and syncing on mobile devices while Mozy is the only service to offer mailed DVDs as a restore option. Essentially the business plans are upgraded versions of their respective consumer plans. You can compare online backup services or read detailed reviews of the services.
Carbonite Pro and Mozy Pro
Mozy and Carbonite are nearly identical in service offerings so if you’re looking at either of these services, Carbonite has the pricing advantage if you have multiple users since it doesn’t charge a license fee per desktop like Mozy does. (You’ll save a little money with Mozy since you simply pay for the storage used at .50/GB and you don’t have to worry about getting kicked up to the next tier.)
SugarSync For Businesses
SugarSync offers significantly more features than either Carbonite or Mozy and does it for less as long as you don’t mind buying your storage in 100GB increments. But even this doesn’t really matter with SugarSync’s promotion since what Carbonite and Mozy charge for 50GB, you can get a 100GB with Sugarsync for about $5.00 more. (click here to see if SugarSync’s promotion of 30 days free and introductory price of $29.99 is still active) The only concern with SugarSync is they’ll include up to three computers free then it’s a $9.99 monthly charge for each additional user. If you have a large company, these charges can add up.
IDrive Pro
IDrive offers the most aggressive pricing, ridiculously undercutting the competition. You can get 500GB of online storage with up to 1,000 users for less than what Mozy and Carbonite charge for 100 GB. How can they afford to do this? Maybe because IDrive is the company you’ve never heard of. They don’t spend millions on advertising but they’ve been active internationally for years. In addition to English, they offer language support in Spanish, Japanese, German, and French. It’s a solid service that has won many accolades including most recently: Best of the Bunch by PC World, the coveted PC Magazine Editor’s Choice pick and the PC Pro award winner.
If you’re looking for a reliable way to backup your companies data and you’re budget conscious, take a look at IDrive Pro for Businesses.
Which ever service you choose, online file storage has become so affordable, it almost constitutes negligence not to backup your files. Don’t wait for the unthinkable to happen, get protected today.
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Thanks for the comparison, I’ve been looking for something like this. I’ve got a small company with about 6 computers I’d like backed up and I was with Mozy but now thanks to you, I’m going to cut my bill in half with Idrive.
No problem, most people think that the only players in the online backup space are mozy and carbonite.
Greg