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Home > Glossary > Offsite backup solutions: Definition and Meaning. Offsite backup software types.

What is offsite data backup solution? The most popular offsite backup challenges and features.

Updated 1st August 2023, Rob Morrison

Introduction to offsite backup

Every modern company understands that there is a possibility of malfunction in storing important information, so businesses try to protect their data by backing it up. In case of damage to hardware, software, etc. and consequent loss of important data, it is then possible to recover it. There are two ways to backup corporate data and each of them have both advantages and disadvantages: these are onsite and offsite backup.

Offsite backup is the replication of the data to a server which is separated geographically from a production systems site. Offsite data backup may also be done via direct access, over Wide Area Network (WAN). Onsite backup means the storage of the backup data on local storage devices such as hard drives, DVDs, and more.

Offsite backup solutions help organizations to safeguard digital information from unexpected events which in one way or another represent data loss, partial or total, which may affect the organizations operation.

For protection of digital information, two different approaches are typically used for the destination of backups: local and/or remote locations.

offsite data backup solutions architecture

Local locations are used, generally, for the backup of information of equipment of a LAN to tapes or autochangers connected directly to the servers, or to NAS or SAN solutions, or in a same physical space. They are physically close by, but in a different, accessible place.

Local data backup allows organizations to have a mechanism to recover user or machine information from computer systems, applications, databases, etc., in situations that are usually only affecting operations in a partial manner. Often there are different levels of criticality according to the processes involved. Generally, many of these data recovery situations are accidentally caused by users.

It may be important that with local backup, the speed of both backup and recovery processes are probably faster, assuming a reasonable network, and the times of recovery are less in comparison with other backup destinations. This may be significant in achieving successful compliance with an organization’s policies regarding backup windows and other requirements.

The use of remote locations on the other hand, guarantees organizations to have recovery mechanisms in case of situations that totally affect their operations. For example, in the case of natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.) or physical failures in infrastructure, such as electrical problems, fires, access control violations, robberies or other forms of attack.

For the management of remote destinations, it is necessary that the backup applications consider and manage the necessary variables needed for operation. This is the offsite backup solution concept, which maintains the characteristics of a backup and recovery solution while allowing the copy and retrieval of the data to/from remote storage sites. This could involve a remote device or computer system, or a service or resource in the cloud, such as Google, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, etc. Of course, adequate levels of security and speed are important

Why businesses need offsite backup?

There can be many reasons why offsite backups are necessary for any business or organization – be it security, convenience, safeguarding against accidents, or a strategy to spread the risk. Here are a few examples:

  • Extreme accessibility. A cloud backup system gives its users access to all the necessary data at any point in time, boosting availability and improving collaboration between departments
  • Backup automation may allow for better security across the board, since you only have to set everything up once, and then a new backup copy would appear in the offsite location after a specific time period
  • Removing a copy of a company’s data from the immediate vicinity of the original is a great way to fight many kinds of natural disasters and cyberthreats, from viruses and rootkits to works, botnets, logic bombs, and so on.
  • Keeping a copy of existing data offsite is not all about security, either – it can also be a matter of convenience, backwards compatibility, versioning, and many other reasons. Of course, this is something that every company has to look into by themselves, since not all of the offsite backup solutions may offer versioning or some other unconventional feature

As such, we can also state some of the biggest advantages of offsite backups as a whole.

Main differences between onsite and offsite backup types

Even though onsite and offsite backups can be useful in specific cases, it’s still possible to directly compare them.

For example, onsite storage is typically less expensive than the offsite, for a number of reasons. The data transfer speed is also faster than with offsite backups, and it requires no internet connection, as well, due to the close proximity of your onsite servers.

On the other hand, onsite storage can be easily destroyed if any disaster occurs at your main office, and you’ll have no way of returning all of your data in that case. This also works for robberies, as well – the consequences of someone stealing your storage units would be the same as in the event of them being destroyed. That’s where offsite backup type comes in, as a way of not losing your data due to an unfortunate event.

Some specific offsite storage advantages also include the ability to share backup data in the several different physical locations, the possibility to gain access to your data from anywhere by using only your internet connection (or via FTP). And, of course, at least one copy of your data survives if there’s a tornado at your main office and your entire main building is gone.

Of course, the offsite backup type isn’t exactly perfect, as well. For once, accessing your data can be problematic in some cases – if you need your data at the time when your server is offline for the routine maintenance job, or something similar. Of course, clients of such servers are warned about these time frames beforehand, but it’s still quite inconvenient if you need immediate access to that data.

Different ways of creating your offsite backups

As it stands, offsite backup means that you have to transfer your data into the remote location somehow. There’s two main ways of doing this – traditional and modern.

Traditional method means transferring copies of your data directly over to the different storage devices. For example, creating a copy of your data once a week, moving this copy to your own external drive and storing this drive anywhere other than your office – even using a safe deposit box in a bank isn’t out of the question. On the other hand, using tape as your offsite data storage is a possibility, as well. As you can imagine, this method is difficult, time-consuming and limits the frequency of your offsite backups, which might cost you weeks of progress if you suddenly have to restore a month-old copy of your data.

That’s where the modern way comes in – transferring files via the internet. Simple as that – there’s a number of different internet backup services that you can set up and it’ll be automatically copying your data to the designated location. Most of the third-party backup solutions are capable of offering the same feature, as well.

While the traditional way might come in handy in specific cases, the nature of the modern world leaves no doubt that transferring your data using the Internet is probably the best transferring method we have so far. And while using tape as a primary offsite backup storage can be considered a part of the traditional method – the data itself can be transferred there using an internet connection, as well.

Offsite backup as a helpful measure in case of a data breach

A natural disaster or an unfortunate accident aren’t the only reasons that can cause data loss. Another popular factor of losing a company’s data is a data breach. Data breach is when your sensitive or private data gets into the hands of an unauthorized party. Data breaches are getting more and more common in the last several years, and a new breach happens basically every month or even more often, causing a lot of sensitive data to get into the wrong hands.

There are several different exploits and weaknesses that can be used to gain access to your data, including weak passwords, malware, software vulnerabilities, and more. The main purpose of offsite backups in case of a data breach is the ability to get a clean copy of your data that is not infected to look for a way to start cleaning up your main server from compromised data. Having offsite backups also allows you to lessen the downtime caused by a data breach. Such advantages could’ve been helpful to a lot of companies that suffered a data breach in the last several years, like Landry’s, PhotoSquared, and more.

Offsite backup best practices

Offsite backup can become your last hope in case of a disaster. And even though a lot of companies know this, there’s still a lot of mistakes when it comes to offsite backup handling. Here are some of the best practices that you should implement with your offsite backup.

  • Verify your backups manually or automatically. It is not impossible for a backup to go wrong somehow, and you’ll probably only know it only when you’ll need that backup to be ready for the restoration process. That’s why it’s important to have at least some way of monitoring your backups. One way to do it is to perform it manually or have a specific person that does that for you – although there are some backup solutions that offer automatic backup monitoring, too.
  • Plan your storage expenses. Knowing how much storage you need is quite important when it comes to choosing a proper offsite backup solution. Underestimating your data size would leave you with incomplete backups and other problems, and overestimating may cause you to pay much more that you should have for the same backup service. Some backup solutions might offer estimating your data size and predicting how much you’ll need, as well – it’s a useful feature if you don’t know or don’t want to learn that by yourself.
  • Use a reliable connection and a high data transmission speed. This one is as simple as it gets, the speed of your offsite backup process is heavily dependent on your network speed, increasing your speed should decrease the overall copying time, but might bring additional fees thanks to the network speed increase. On the other hand, keeping your internet connection speed at sub-par levels would bring you a lot more problems than just a longer offsite copying process and is not worth the difference in data plans most of the time.
  • Use services that offer configurable scheduling. While it is possible to perform scheduling by yourself, it’s still a question of time when you’ll make some sort of error that would cost you a lot of money. That’s why a lot of services nowadays are capable of offering various scheduling options and features that take this burden away from you. For example, there’s a question of chaining backups. There are some cases when doing those is necessary, but most of the time it’s an unnecessary risk – one failed backup would bring down the entire chain with it. Automated systems are capable of deciding by themselves if there’s a need for the backup chains to appear, most of the time.

These might be the obvious things, but a lot of companies still tend to forget about at least some of them. And that’s not all of the typical mistakes, as well. But knowing and using these offsite backup best practices might save you a lot of time and money in the possible future.

  • Bare metal restore (BMR), a technique that allows backing up the data in a way that is available to be restored in a computer system from “bare metal”, that is, a computer without any operating system and installed applications. The backed up data is available in a form which enables a system administrator to restore a computer system from “bare metal”, i.e. without any requirements as to previously installed software or operating system.
  • Management of snapshots of instances defined and configured in virtualization environments, both in physical equipment and in resources defined in the cloud.
  • Facilities for handling archiving, which allows storing data archives in order to maintain them for a determined period of time and perform search operations and information queries, for specific time scenarios.
  • Replication of information between different locations, which allows for higher levels of protection and security of backup volumes. When this is done to different physical locations, the possibilities of data loss are minimized.
  • Facilitate and allow the implementation of a disaster recovery solution, taking into account the aforementioned characteristics, security and optimization of network speed and bandwidth This is to protect companies from the occurrence of situations that could adversely affect its total operations, not necessarily only in the area of technology.
  • Have mechanisms and tools that provide optimal levels of speed for the execution of backup and recovery activities, as well as the adequate protection of records. This in turn increases the reliability of the solution implemented, since companies have an effective backup of their information, both operational, administrative and management.
  • Offer organizations fair and affordable prices and costs, which allow them not only to install and configure effective offsite backup software, but also to grow as information volume and operation requirements increase with time.
  • Offer excellent technical support, which guarantees users to have effective and timely offsite backup solutions to incidents and problems that may occur in connection with the operation of the application. This support can come from different sources, such as the community of users (in case of using an open source offsite backup solution) and/or the company that sold and/or created the solution. Users may be subject to different levels of service, but the service should have an ultimate outcome: always provide a solution to the user.

Offsite backup is a well-known solution architecture approach between cloud backup and disaster recovery applications, and should offer the following features:

  • Bare metal restore (BMR), a technique that allows backing up the data in a way that is available to be restored in a computer system from “bare metal”, that is, a computer without any operating system and installed applications. The backed up data is available in a form which enables a system administrator to restore a computer system from “bare metal”, i.e. without any requirements as to previously installed software or operating system.
  • Management of snapshots of instances defined and configured in virtualization environments, both in physical equipment and in resources defined in the cloud.
  • Facilities for handling archiving, which allows storing data archives in order to maintain them for a determined period of time and perform search operations and information queries, for specific time scenarios.
  • Replication of information between different locations, which allows for higher levels of protection and security of backup volumes. When this is done to different physical locations, the possibilities of data loss are minimized.
  • Facilitate and allow the implementation of a disaster recovery solution, taking into account the aforementioned characteristics, security and optimization of network speed and bandwidth This is to protect companies from the occurrence of situations that could adversely affect its total operations, not necessarily only in the area of technology.
  • Have mechanisms and tools that provide optimal levels of speed for the execution of backup and recovery activities, as well as the adequate protection of records. This in turn increases the reliability of the solution implemented, since companies have an effective backup of their information, both operational, administrative and management.
  • Offer organizations fair and affordable prices and costs, which allow them not only to install and configure effective offsite backup software, but also to grow as information volume and operation requirements increase with time.
  • Offer excellent technical support, which guarantees users to have effective and timely offsite backup solutions to incidents and problems that may occur in connection with the operation of the application. This support can come from different sources, such as the community of users (in case of using an open source offsite backup solution) and/or the company that sold and/or created the solution. Users may be subject to different levels of service, but the service should have an ultimate outcome: always provide a solution to the user.

In addition to the above functions offsite backup solutions may also allow:

  • Remote access to backed up data from anywhere to people with the appropriate permissions and access levels.
  • Reduced maintenance costs of backup infrastructure in resources such as servers, tape drives and robotics. In the case of cloud-based solutions, expenses related to these items are not necessary. With a cloud based solution, all activities of maintenance and replacement of parts and equipment are carried out by the responsible provider of the datacenter and its platform.
  • Management of the resources defined in virtual environments, in a way that makes their implementation possible in an agile and efficient way. These include: snapshots, virtual instance backups and host that are running virtualized environments, etc.

Therefore, offsite backup software should consider:

  • Security in the safekeeping of the data, since they are in relatively publicly accessible sites on a network. In the case of remote locations belonging to the company, levels of physical access to these sites must to be reinforced.
  • Organization and adequate management of bandwidth, in order to ensure the execution of the copy processes in an integrated manner and with adequate response times for the restoration operations, according to service levels.
  • Easy adaptability to the changes that may occur in the configuration of the information to be backed up or recovered, as well as the resources to be used.

Local locations are used, generally, for the backup of information of equipment of a LAN to tapes or autochangers connected directly to the servers, or to NAS or SAN solutions, or in a same physical space. They are physically close by, but in a different, accessible place.

Local data backup allows organizations to have a mechanism to recover user or machine information from computer systems, applications, databases, etc., in situations that are usually only affecting operations in a partial manner. Often there are different levels of criticality according to the processes involved. Generally, many of these data recovery situations are accidentally caused by users.

It may be important that with local backup, the speed of both backup and recovery processes are probably faster, assuming a reasonable network, and the times of recovery are less in comparison with other backup destinations. This may be significant in achieving successful compliance with an organization’s policies regarding backup windows and other requirements.

The use of remote locations on the other hand, guarantees organizations to have recovery mechanisms in case of situations that totally affect their operations. For example, in the case of natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.) or physical failures in infrastructure, such as electrical problems, fires, access control violations, robberies or other forms of attack.

For the management of remote destinations, it is necessary that the backup applications consider and manage the necessary variables needed for operation. This is the offsite backup solution concept, which maintains the characteristics of a backup and recovery solution while allowing the copy and retrieval of the data to/from remote storage sites. This could involve a remote device or computer system, or a service or resource in the cloud, such as Google, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, etc. Of course, adequate levels of security and speed are important

Why businesses need offsite backup?

There can be many reasons why offsite backups are necessary for any business or organization – be it security, convenience, safeguarding against accidents, or a strategy to spread the risk. Here are a few examples:

  • Extreme accessibility. A cloud backup system gives its users access to all the necessary data at any point in time, boosting availability and improving collaboration between departments
  • Backup automation may allow for better security across the board, since you only have to set everything up once, and then a new backup copy would appear in the offsite location after a specific time period
  • Removing a copy of a company’s data from the immediate vicinity of the original is a great way to fight many kinds of natural disasters and cyberthreats, from viruses and rootkits to works, botnets, logic bombs, and so on.
  • Keeping a copy of existing data offsite is not all about security, either – it can also be a matter of convenience, backwards compatibility, versioning, and many other reasons. Of course, this is something that every company has to look into by themselves, since not all of the offsite backup solutions may offer versioning or some other unconventional feature

As such, we can also state some of the biggest advantages of offsite backups as a whole.

In addition to the above, there is an important point to consider in offsite backup solution based on the cloud: the increasingly frequent use of hybrid platforms, that is, those with shared resources in local and remote sites, managed from a single software platform. This represents an operative scenario with potentially more elements to be taken care of.

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Examples of offsite backup solutions

Since the number of features and details to look out for is very broad, it may be better for us to try and change the approach a little. Instead of going for more “things to look out for” and “best practices”, we are going to try and present a list of examples of software that can be considered an offsite backup solution. This particular list is not a rating or a comparison, every solution is looked at with as much objectivity as possible.

Carbonite Safe

carbonite landing page

Carbonite Safe is a software lineup from Carbonite that was created specifically for professional use, it packs a respectable range of capabilities, including backup, recovery, granular restore, data protection capabilities, and support for all types of deployments (physical, virtual, cloud, even hybrid). It can create snapshots, perform full, incremental, or differential backups, and more.

Carbonite itself is a rather notable name in the business cloud backup industry, and the Safe product lineup can cover regular desktops, laptops, and even servers – with features such as ransomware recovery, and 128-bit encryption, to name a few. Carbonite’s protection measures are also compliant with HIPAA, GLBA, and FERPA, making it a great option for smaller teams (strictly up to 25 people) that have to be compliant to a specific standard or standards.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 4.3/5 stars based on 165 customer reviews
  • TrustRadius – 10/10 stars based on 29 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.0/5 stars based on 195 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • Carbonite’s customer support receives nothing but praise from the overwhelming majority of the customers, and the fact that it is available 24/7 makes the customer experience even better
  • General ease of use is a massive benefit to Carbonite, especially in the market full of complex backup solutions with an outdated interface
  • Despite its apparent simplicity, Carbonite can still work with plenty of different storage types, from endpoints and servers to external drives, and more

Shortcomings:

  • A hard limitation of 25 computers would be an inconvenience for many businesses, which is why Carbonite Safe is only suitable for some SMBs and practically unsuitable for large enterprises
  • Carbonite Safe has its own limitations on the technological site, as well, with the solution not supporting smartphones or other mobile devices at all, as well as the entire solution not working with third-party cloud storage services at all
  • Carbonite’s Mac version seems to have plenty of issues that are absent from the Windows version, including plenty of errors, infrequent backup speed slowdowns, as well as the software taking over the entire system’s resources, leading to lags and generally uncomfortable experience

Pricing:

  • Carbonite Safe is one of several branches of Carbonite’s software offerings, and this particular branch has three different pricing options:
    • “Carbonite Safe – Core” – $24 per month, a basic feature offering from Carbonite that can cover up to 25 computers without a server, and includes 250GB of secure and encrypted cloud storage
    • “Carbonite Safe Server Backup – Power” – $50 per month, offers one server and up to 25 computers, as well as 500GB of secure and encrypted cloud storage
    • “Carbonite Safe Server Backup – Ultimate” – $83.33 per month, does not have any limitations for the number of servers covered (still limited to 25 computers at once), and the same offering of 500GB of cloud storage as the previous pricing plan
  • It is worth noting that both “Power” and “Ultimate” pricing plans are sold at a discount right now, meaning that the price may differ in the future

My personal opinion on Carbonite:

Carbonite established its reputation in the business cloud backup field quite a while ago, with its variety of features and supported deployment types. It is not particularly expensive and offers quite a few unusual features, including its compliance to HIPAA and several other standards. Its Mac version has a few issues here and there, and the lack of mobile device support is a significant disadvantage, but the biggest issue for Carbonite’s popularity is the hard limitation on just 25 computers per single license, which makes it rather unappealing for larger businesses.

Livedrive

livedrive landing page

Livedrive is a rather unusual pick for this particular list, since this cloud storage solution is not suitable for clients outside of the EU or UK at all. Livedrive’s servers are located in Europe and the service itself is focused on working with European businesses first and foremost. At this point, Livedrive supports the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France (with a promise to expand to other countries in the future).

One of the biggest advantages of Livedrive is its compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is extremely important for companies that are physically located in the EU or UK in the first place. It can technically work for customers from other companies, but most of the other large regions of the world (such as the US) have plenty of solutions with more affordable pricing available already.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 3.4/5 stars based on 10 customer reviews
  • G2 – 3.6/5 stars based on 7 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • GDPR compliance for EU/UK-based companies is a massive advantage in and of itself, since becoming compliant to this particular standard is no small feat
  • Livedrive can offer the basic set of security features to its clients – end-to-end data encryption and two-factor authentication, to be more specific
  • The solution allows for more storage and/or more users to be added with minimal effort

Shortcomings:

  • Livedrive’s pricing is not particularly user-friendly, even for some companies that are located in the EU or UK, since the solution’s total cost tends to scale up extremely fast as soon as extra storage is needed
  • As surprising as it may be, Livedrive is not HIPAA-compliant, which can be a big turning point for some potential clients
  • Livedrive also offers little to no features when it comes to data protection (aside from 2FA and data encryption) – which means no ransomware protection, no scanning for malware, etc.

Pricing:

  • Livedrive’s pricing model is fairly simple in itself, with only three different pricing plans to choose from:
    • “Backup” – £6.99 per month, a basic package intended for a single user, does not have any limitations on the amount of cloud storage available
    • “Briefcase” – £10.99 per month, another interesting offering from Livedrive, offers 2TB of Briefcase storage to its users, as well as the ability to back up both desktop and mobile devices
    • “Pro Suite” – £15.99 per month, the biggest starting offering from Livedrive that includes both “Backup” and “Briefcase” plans, can offer 5TB of Briefcase storage, backups for mobile devices and tablets, as well as 5 user account backups for either Mac or Windows users
  • It is worth noting that this information only covers the baseline pricing of Livedrive, and adding more users or more storage is bound to have an additional cost attached to it

My personal opinion on Livedrive:

Livedrive would’ve been a rather basic cloud storage solution with a higher-than-average pricing if it wasn’t for the fact that it is region-locked. There is a very short list of countries that Livedrive currently works in to its fullest, and trying to purchase it from another location is far too expensive to try it in the first place. The fact that Livedrive is GDPR-compliant, on the other hand, is a massive advantage to practically any EU-based company since all of them have to be compliant to GDPR in the first place.

MSP360 (formerly Cloudberry Lab)

msp360 landing page

MSP360 has been known as Cloudberry Labs for quite a while, and its rebranding is fairly recent – it managed to keep all of the previously existing features while also adding new ones to the package. As a cross-platform backup and recovery solution with plenty of integrations and features to choose from, MSP360 successfully builds up from its predecessor’s legacy, offering features such as data compression, data encryption, file-level backups, image-based backups, and many others.

What is interesting to know about MSP360 is that the solution itself is mostly aimed at managed service providers (MSP) that resell the service in question – even though it can still be purchased and configured directly. MSP360 offers the ability to choose from a number of third-party cloud services as your cloud storage, including AWS, Backblaze, and many others – and combine that storage with any local storage the client may have already for a seamless experience.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 204 customer reviews
  • TrustRadius – 8.1/10 stars based on 45 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.5/5 stars based on 403 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • MSP360 is a good example of a comprehensive backup solution with a relatively simple initial setup/configuration process
  • As a rather complex data protection solution, MSP360 is capable of working as a centralized data management software, offering a quick overview of different data sources and storage types within the same company
  • A lot of MSP360’s basic features, such as data recovery or data backup, are easy to work with and simple in terms of configuration

Shortcomings:

  • MSP360 may claim that they are suitable for businesses of any size, there’s little to no SMB customers for this particular solution simply because it is a lot more expensive than these businesses can afford
  • MSP360 does have a customer support team, and user reviews about the effectiveness of customer support vary quite a lot, ranging from completely useless to extremely useful and everything in-between
  • Despite the fact that MSP360 does not reveal any kind of public pricing at their official website, there are plenty of customer reviews citing that a lot of the features are not included in the “base” package and have to be acquired separately for an additional price

Pricing:

  • MSP360’s pricing information is not publicly available on their official website and the only way to obtain such information is by contacting the company directly for a quote.
  • Their special “quote calculator” page allows potential customers to specify what device types they want to be backed up in the future. This particular page allows for three different solution types to be mentioned.
  • The first one is MSP360 Managed Backup – a cross-platform backup and recovery solution, this part allows a potential customer to specify how many devices and data sources of specific types they need covered by the solution, including:
    • Windows Desktop
    • Windows Server
    • MS Exchange
    • MS SQL Server
    • Mac OS Desktop
    • Linux Desktop
    • Hyper V Server or Server Socket
    • VMware Server or Server Socket
    • Microsoft SharePoint
    • Microsoft Teams
    • Microsoft 365
    • Google Shared Drives
    • Google Workspace
  • The second one is MSP360 RMM – a trustworthy endpoint management solution with options such as RMM (priced per administrator), and deep instinct (priced per endpoint)
  • The last option is MSP360 Connect – a well-protected remote access solution, it allows for the number of potential remote access devices on either Windows or Mac platform to be specified
  • Additionally, a potential customer has the option to mention the need for premium support, onboarding, custom SSL, and advanced rebranding
  • After the correct number of options for each data source have been selected, a potential client has to provide additional information about the company in question so that they can be contacted later with a personalized quote.

My personal opinion on MSP360:

MSP360 is an example of a more traditional comprehensive backup solution that also offers the ability to store backups in the cloud. Building upon the legacy of Cloudberry Labs, MSP360 offers cross-platform backup and recovery software with an impressive list of features to work with, and also a number of different cloud storage providers to choose from (AWS, Backblaze, etc.). There are three main products that MSP360 can offer, and each of them covers its own specific niche, be it general backup and recovery tasks, endpoint management, or even remote access.

Arcserve Cloud Direct

arcserve landing page

Arcserve as a software provider is quite an interesting company with a variety of different solutions, and their cloud-oriented Arcserve Cloud Direct is also quite interesting in itself. It is a rather sophisticated offsite backup solution that offers a variety of very specific high-end features that you would usually only see in an IT-grade environment, it can perform backups and restores in highly distributed environments, replicate virtual infrastructures, perform disaster recovery operations, and so much more.

However, the complexity of this solution is a double-edged sword of sorts, with the feature set itself being a hard sell for most SMBs with the lack of any kind of public pricing available whatsoever. The same could be said for larger businesses, as well, but if the price is not the main argument for the company, and especially if the company itself has a dedicated IT personnel, then Arcserve Cloud Direct may be one of the best offsite backup solutions a business can ask for.

Customer ratings:

  • G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 15 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • As a cloud solution, Arcserve Cloud Direct does not have to be physically attached to a company’s server using some form of hardware appliance, it can provide cloud-native backup and recovery options after virtual deployment
  • Arcserve has plenty of different software and solutions to choose from, and Cloud Direct specifically boasts a surprisingly long list of IT-grade features when it comes to its data protection capabilities – including disaster recovery, backup operations, restore tasks, and more
  • Despite the fact that Arcserve’s cloud solution boasts a large variety of complex features and capabilities, most of these features are surprisingly easy to work with and should be easy to work with for practically any IT specialist out there

Shortcomings:

  • Arcserve’s lack of support for any kind of mobile device may be a dealbreaker for some potential customers, purely because of how many mobile devices are used inside of a single company on a regular basis
  • There is no public information about the pricing of Arcserve’s cloud solution, but the variety of different expert-level features make sure that this particular offering would not be suitable for smaller businesses whatsoever, and the lack of any kind of approximate pricing may even turn some of the bigger clients away
  • Arcserve Cloud Direct may be a cloud-centric solution, but the fact that it does not have any form of data deduplication to reduce storage requirements is not a good look from the competitive standpoint
  • Some of Arcserve’s tools and offerings are not as tightly integrated as they perhaps should be, causing potential pain to the user.

Pricing:

  • Arcserve does not usually reveal any kind of pricing information about its solutions publicly. As such, the only way to receive such information for a company is for that company to request a personalized quote.

My personal opinion on Arcserve:

Arcserve as a software provider is not exactly the most popular company on this market, but it would not be true to call it completely unknown, either. Arcserve offers a variety of different solutions and software to choose from, one of which being their Cloud Direct solution – a comprehensive cloud-oriented offsite backup platform with a lot of features that are usually only present in very complex enterprise-level backup software. Unfortunately, this kind of complexity is also one of the biggest detriments of Arcserve’s popularity, leading to both small and large companies not picking it for one reason or another – but it still has its audience, and remains a great option for middle-sized teams with IT departments that know what they’re doing.

Acronis Cyber Protect

acronis landing page

Acronis is quite a well-known backup solution provider, offering a small selection of solutions for different use cases. Acronis Cyber Protect is considered the flagship solution of the company, offering a comprehensive approach to data security that also covers offsite backup capabilities. It focuses on cybersecurity, integrated protection management, and backup/recovery tasks at the same time, offering an incredibly versatile data security platform with a wealth of capabilities.

Acronis Cyber Protect is a very effective solution, but it is not the cheapest one, and also not the easiest one to work with. Drawbacks like these are what keeps Acronis from dominating the entire market – and it still manages to earn quite the reputation for itself over the years as one of the best backup solutions with cybersecurity capabilities.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 204 customer reviews
  • TrustRadius – 7.8/10 stars based on 133 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 668 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • Data collection is extremely easy with Acronis and can be performed any any point in time with little to no effort from the user
  • Acronis Cyber Protect may be a security-focused solution, but it is also a great backup solution that supports workstations, VMs, applications, servers, and many other deployment types
  • AI-based malware detection and comprehensive monitoring are just some of the security-related features that Acronis can offer to its customers

Shortcomings:

  • A lot of customers consider the UI of Acronis Cyber Protect to be rather outdated and not particularly straightforward in its logic
  • The backup agent of Acronis has quite the appetite – its hardware requirements are surprisingly high, even by this market’s standards
  • The same could be said for how Acronis approaches pricing, there may be several different pricing models and solution types, but the average pricing of Acronis is often deemed well above market average, making it unattainable for some SMBs. Conversely, Acronis may not be a good technical fit for large enterprises.
  • Limited technical scalability; Acronis may not work well for large enterprises.
  • No Kubernetes support

Pricing:

  • There are three versions of Acronis Cyber Protect that differ quite a lot in their approach to pricing – Standard, Advanced, and Backup Advanced (Acronis Cyber Protect – Backup Advanced is an extension of a legacy software called Acronis Cyber Backup, the standard package of this software’s capabilities is now included in Acronis Cyber Protect Standard by default)
  • Acronis Cyber Protect Standard and Advanced have their own share of differences, with the Advanced version building upon the Standard version by adding SAN storage snapshots, Acronis ASign, Acronis Notary, tape backup support, Xenserver support, Oracle VM Server support, and more.
  • As such, it is fairly normal for the Advanced version to cost more than the Standard one, including:
    • From $85/$129 (Standard/Advanced respectively) per one workstation, be it physical or virtual, macOS or Windows
    • From $595/$925 (Standard/Advanced respectively) for one server, be it physical or virtual, Linux or Windows
    • From $705/$1,175 (Standard/Advanced respectively) per one virtual host, be it Hyper-V or VMware (no limitations on the number of virtual machines per host)
    • From $285 for one instance of Microsoft Windows Server Essentials (physical/virtual), includes application backup, only available in Acronis Cyber Protect Standard
  • The capabilities of Acronis Cyber Protect – Backup Advanced have a completely different approach to pricing depending on the nature of the backup target:
    • From $109 per one workstation, be it physical or virtual, macOS or Windows
    • From $779 for one server, be it physical or virtual, Linux or Windows
    • From $1,019 per one virtual host, be it Hyper-V or VMware (no limitations on the number of virtual machines per host)
    • From $139 for either Microsoft 365 data (across SharePoint Online, Teams, OneDrive for Business or Exchange Online) or Google Workspace data (across Contacts, Calendar, Drive, or Gmail)
  • Acronis Cyber Protect – Backup Advanced can offer file-level backups, image-based backups, incremental/differential backups, ransomware protection, vulnerability assessment, group management, AD integration, reports, and more.

My personal opinion on Acronis:
Acronis is one of the most well-known backup software providers on the market, and it is widely known that Acronis puts a lot of emphasis on security features in its applications – comprehensive data monitoring, AI-assisted malware detection, and plenty of other features as well. That’s not to say that there are no backup options to choose from – since Acronis Cyber Protect also supports a variety of backup-related storage target locations, such as servers, workstations, applications, and many others. Possibly not the best choice for a large enterprise’s backup and recovery.

Backblaze Business Backup

backblaze landing page

Backblaze as a company is mostly known for its B2 Cloud storage offering – an infrastructure-as-a-service product that plenty of backup vendors can work with. However, that is not the only product or service that Backblaze offers. Backblaze Business Backup is a good example of that – a primarily cloud solution that was created in order to safeguard files and systems, be it workstations/endpoints, servers, NAS, or even the data of Veeam customers.

Backblaze Business Backup has plenty of backup options to choose from, be it downloading from the cloud, copying from the cloud to some other  storage unit, or even using the company’s own external hard drive to copy your data – a hard drive that the company would send to you afterwards. The aforementioned feature is practically free if the storage unit is returned afterwards, and if it isn’t – the price is not that high, either.

Customer ratings:

  • TrustRadius – 9.0/10 stars based on 60 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • One of the biggest advantages of Backblaze Business Backup is the fact that no user is limited by the amount of storage space they work with
  • The aforementioned unusual hard-drive-by-mail feature is not the most convenient option in the world, but at least it stands out, which is also an advantage for the solution as a whole
  • The solution itself does not consume a lot of resources while running in the background, and it can be integrated with Backblaze B2 with little effort, since both come from the same company in the first place

Shortcomings:

  • Backblaze Business Backup does not have any Linux client at all, which limits its reach in terms of potential client base – not to mention security questions
  • Business Backup may be a solution that can perform backup and recovery tasks, but it lacks quite a lot of features that most competitors have, such as the ability to gather and show advanced backup analytics to its users whenever necessary
  • Limited scalability flexibility and technology compatibility.

Pricing:

  • Backblaze Business Backup has a rather simple pricing model that is split in four “categories”:
    • Creating a server backup costs $5 per Terabyte per month, copying a customer’s data to B2 Cloud Storage
    • Creating a NAS backup also costs $5 per Terabyte per month, with the ability to work with TrueNAS, QNAP, and Synology
    • Creating a workstation backup is priced at $70 per year per workstation, and there is always an option to change the billing to monthly or bi-yearly if the client chooses to do so
    • Creating a backup of Veeam data is also priced at $5 per Terabyte per month, an integration that no other solutions have in the first place

My personal opinion on Backblaze:

Backblaze is not just about its cloud storage in the form of B2 Cloud – it is also quite a comprehensive cloud data solution with plenty of features to work with. One of the less common features here is to write a backup copy or several to a single hard drive and then to physically send to it the recipient. This feature itself is fairly cheap, and the same could be said for the entirety of the solution, as well – even though there are plenty of offerings on the market that offer the same feature set for a higher price.

iDrive Team

idrive landing page

iDrive does not have enough features to stand at the same level as comprehensive enterprise-level backup solutions, and it is not really trying to do so. There are several different pricing tiers that iDrive offers, one of which is called iDrive Team – a rather inexpensive set of features that allows five (or more) users to be connected to one account with 5 Terabytes worth of cloud backup (or more). It is a great option for smaller businesses that can manage their entire team’s data from a single centralized interface with a solution that can also cover mobile devices and NAS, not just desktops.

iDrive as a solution may not be the best option for hundreds of people at once – but not every company in the world is a massive enterprise with thousands of people working there. iDrive also has other tiers for larger businesses, such as Enterprise or Business, but iDrive Team is at its best when working for smaller companies that value versatility and high price-to-performance ratio.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 4.6/5 stars based on 739 customer reviews
  • TrustRadius – 7.2/10 stars based on 29 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.4/5 stars based on 1,163 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • iDrive’s capability to work with regular workstations, NAS, and mobile devices is a massive advantage and is practically unheard of in this price range
  • Similar to Backblaze, iDrive can send backups in physical storage units transported by regular mail
  • Another massive advantage of iDrive is its extremely low pricing, something that a lot of SMBs are very grateful for

Shortcomings:

  • iDrive’s malware and ransomware protection capabilities are very limited and practically nonexistent
  • iDrive’s web-based user interface is not exactly polished and is not as user-friendly as it could be
  • Setting up iDrive for Linux devices is far more complicated than with Windows-based workstations
  • iDrive is often limited to suitability for only small businesses

Pricing:

  • iDrive is quite a versatile solution, there are different pricing plans with different feature sets, but the solution itself is still the same, which is why the pricing can be a bit confusing
  • iDrive Team is the centerpiece of this segment of the article, and iDrive offers quite a lot of pricing plans depending on the number of computers/users that the client needs to cover:
    • $9.95 per month for 5 computers, 5 users, and 5 Terabytes of storage
    • $19.95 per month for 10 computers, 10 users, and 10 Terabytes of storage
    • $49.95 per month for 25 computers, 25 users, and 25 Terabytes of storage
    • $59.95 per month for 30 computers, 30 users, and 30 Terabytes of storage
    • $69.95 per month for 35 computers, 35 users, and 35 Terabytes of storage
    • $79.95 per month for 40 computers, 40 users, and 40 Terabytes of storage
    • $89.95 per month for 45 computers, 45 users, and 45 Terabytes of storage
    • $99.95 per month for 50 computers, 50 users, and 50 Terabytes of storage
    • $199.95 per month for 100 computers, 100 users, and 100 Terabytes of storage
    • $399.95 per month for 200 computers, 200 users, and 200 Terabytes of storage
    • $599.95 per month for 300 computers, 300 users, and 300 Terabytes of storage
    • $799.95 per month for 400 computers, 400 users, and 400 Terabytes of storage
    • $999.95 per month for 500 computers, 500 users, and 500 Terabytes of storage
  • All of these plans can be purchased for 1 or 2 years in advance, providing a discount to the total price

My personal opinion on iDrive:

iDrive is one of the least expensive cloud backup solutions on this list, with an impressive feature range and several types of data it can work with. It is an affordable offsite backup option mostly suitable for smaller companies that struggle to afford an offsite backup solution in the first place. It has its own flaws, such as the lack of any serious malware protection in place, or the complexity of the Linux software version, but the general consensus is that iDrive Team is an interesting solution for small businesses with low expectations from cloud backup software.

ElephantDrive

elephantdrive landing page

Backups and cloud synchronization are the focus of ElephantDrive – a set of versatile data protection tools that are also easy to work with. ElephantDrive claims to offer a level of data security and data management that was previously only available to large companies and enterprises. ElephantDrive’s data is always AES-256 encrypted at rest and transferred using 128-bit SSL secured channel, and it can also integrate with NAS devices of all major hardware providers to offer direct backups from NAS, as well as traditional endpoint backups.

Customer ratings:

  • Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 14 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.2/5 stars based on 12 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • Automatic backups add a lot of convenience to the solution
  • The convenience of all data being encrypted both in transit and at rest
  • ElephantDrive as a cloud backup solution is relatively cheap by this market’s standards

Shortcomings:

  • The structure of the solution is fairly rigid and sharing files is rather difficult
  • The interface is not particularly user-friendly
  • There’s no first-time tutorial or guide after initial setup
  • This seems like another solution that is only likely to be of use for small organizations

Pricing:

  • ElephantDrive’s pricing is as simple as it gets, with only two pricing plans
    • $10 per month for 1TB of storage, 10 devices, 3 sub-accounts, and the max file size of 10GB
    • $20 per month for 2TB of storage, 25 devices, 10 sub-accounts, up to 50GB of max file size and premium customer support

My personal opinion on ElephantDrive:

ElephantDrive is a small-scale backup and recovery solution – it may offer quite an impressive security to customer backups, such as the AES-256 encryption at rest and 128-bit SSL protection in transit. It is also one of the cheapest solutions on the list, and its automation capabilities are impressive, but it may be difficult to set up initially, with the overall interface not being particularly user-friendly. Additionally, the solution’s structure is rather rigid and sharing data with other users may prove to be difficult.

Infrascale

infrascale landing page

Infrascale is another example of a solution attempting to provide enterprise-grade disaster recovery without the complexity and the price that usually comes with such a solution. Infrascale can be delivered as either a virtual or a physical appliance, it includes disaster recovery capabilities, and supports plenty of backup storage locations, with the biggest one being the cloud. Infrascale managed to develop its own set of tools that is easy to manage and can offer a reliable and affordable alternative to a complete enterprise-level backup and recovery system.

Customer ratings:

  • TrustRadius – 9.6/10 stars based on 10 customer reviews
  • G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 10 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • A solution that is fast, versatile, and feature-rich
  • Storage space usage is as efficient as it gets, combining encryption and deduplication for maximum effectiveness
  • Supports server backup, application backup, and other target backup types

Shortcomings:

  • May not be particularly user-friendly when it comes to specific features
  • More complex backup operations require a lot of knowledge in the field to configure everything correctly
  • There is no changed block tracking technology and the solution must scan the entire file storage in order to be able to track changes in the first place

Pricing:

  • There is no public pricing data available at Infrascale’s website, the only official way to obtain any kind of pricing information is to request a personalized quote

My personal opinion on Infrascale:

Infrascale is a small solution that tries to provide enterprise-grade disaster recovery capabilities to its users while also not being too complex for its own good. It can offer efficient storage usage (deduplication + encryption), multiple different backup target types, and a generally high performance across the board. It is not very user-friendly, and some less basic tasks may be difficult to set up without a proper technical background, but it is still a notable effort to create a great backup solution for smaller businesses.

CyberFortress

cyberfortress landing page

CyberFortress helps businesses to stay safe from both accidents and intentional cyberattacks, securely backing up important data as a whole and all of the employee data, as well. CyberFortress is a software provider that offers a variety of services and solutions that cover different parts of essential data security, ranging from firewalls and malware defense to content filtering, online cloud backup, and more. It also has encryption, network protection, substantial storage type variety, and more.

Customer ratings:

  • G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 31 customer reviews

Advantages:

  • It is true that there is no public pricing available from CyberFortress, but many users have reported it as a great price-to-value offering
  • Outstanding customer support is always ready to help with any kind of software-related problem or issue
  • Very simple user interface as a whole, without any kind of steep learning curve

Shortcomings:

  • The storage as a whole is limited with CyberFortress, and constantly paying for an expansion drives the costs up with a surprising speed
  • A simplified interface is also a detriment to a certain degree, making it difficult to access more specialized features and options from the get-go
  • Backup restore process can be very problematic at times
  • Probably not suitable for medium and large enterprises.

Pricing:

  • While it is true that CyberFortress offers multiple different solutions to choose from, most of them are sold from within the same package
  • Unfortunately, there is no way to obtain exact pricing data about CyberFortress, but there is a dedicated pricing calculator page available at the official website
  • This page is a glorified feedback form, it allows users to specify how much data they want to protect using either Managed Cloud Backup as a Service or Managed Disaster Recovery as a Service. Other options include the number of users for Microsoft 365 specifically, and the number of users for endpoint backup recovery meter

My personal opinion on CyberFortress:

CyberFortress is the last solution on this list, it is a rather unknown software provider that offers a wealth of different features within the realms of the same environment –  content filtering, malware defense, firewalls, online cloud backup, and plenty of other features. Its simplistic interface can be a detriment to its own efforts, and the pricing model as a whole may not be 100% clear, but the general idea about CyberFortress is that it is a rather versatile small-scale solution that would find its target audience with ease.

Offsite backup solution market and Bacula Enterprise

Of course, this is not the conclusive list of all the offsite backup solutions available on today’s market. In fact, there are plenty of other examples to choose from, including solutions such as Bacula Enterprise.

Bacula Enterprise is a comprehensive backup and recovery solution with an overwhelming number of features and integrations to choose from. It supports pretty much every backup storage type available, including disk, tape, robotic media libraries and, of course, cloud storage. Bacula can offer multiple file encryption capabilities, data immutability, air gapping, MFA support, anti-virus scanning, and more.

Bacula’s solution is used in many government-level organizations, including the largest military organizations in the West, which serves as testimony to its especially high security levels and its reliability. Its module-like structure makes it easy to add even more features to an already impressive base package if necessary, so that almost any medium-sized or large company may find the feature they are looking for in an offsite backup solution with Bacula Enterprise.

Conclusion

Offsite backup as a backup type is a necessity for many organizations – a significant part of any company’s data security efforts, used as a critical safeguard against both natural disasters, mistakes and cyberattacks, and most offsite backup solutions would be able to act as general data management systems, as well.

The overall market for backup software is rather competitive, which makes choosing a single solution problematic. Some users may be looking for small-scale backup solutions with high-end features such as CyberFortress or Infrascale, others may find large, feature-rich data protection platforms such as MSP360, or Acronis better for their business. For medium and large enterprises wanting high security backup and recovery, Bacula Enterprise is likely to be the best fit for their case.

There are perhaps as many different potential use cases as there are companies in the world. An organization should be clear in what qualities it  would need from a backup solution, what technologies it has that need to be protected, what its budget is and how important security is – today and tomorrow – in order to discern the best possible  backup solution fit for itself.

Why you can trust us

Bacula Systems is all about accuracy and consistency, our materials always try to provide the most objective point of view on different technologies, products, and companies. In our reviews, we use many different methods such as product info and expert insights to generate the most informative content possible.

Our materials offer all kinds of factors about every single solution presented, be it feature sets, pricing, customer reviews, etc.  Bacula’s product strategy is overlooked and controlled by Jorge Gea – the CTO at Bacula Systems of Bacula Systems, and Rob Morrison – the Marketing Director of Bacula Systems.

Before joining Bacula Systems, Jorge was for many years the CTO of Whitebearsolutions SL, where he led the Backup and Storage area and the WBSAirback solution. Jorge now provides leadership and guidance in current technological trends, technical skills, processes, methodologies and tools for the rapid and exciting development of Bacula products. Responsible for the product roadmap, Jorge is actively involved in the architecture, engineering and development process of Bacula components. Jorge holds a Bachelor degree in computer science engineering from the University of Alicante, a Doctorate in computation technologies and a Master Degree in network administration.

Rob started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years, Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat, and Pentaho ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours Digital Media and Communications degree, and completed an Overseas Studies Program.

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About the author
Rob Morrison
Rob Morrison is the marketing director at Bacula Systems. He started his IT marketing career with Silicon Graphics in Switzerland, performing strongly in various marketing management roles for almost 10 years. In the next 10 years Rob also held various marketing management positions in JBoss, Red Hat and Pentaho ensuring market share growth for these well-known companies. He is a graduate of Plymouth University and holds an Honours Digital Media and Communications degree, and completed an Overseas Studies Program.
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