Data loss can quickly turn from a minor headache into a full-blown catastrophe. Have you ever felt in a cold sweat, realizing an essential file just disappeared into the digital ether? If so, you’re not alone.
The solution? A reliable cloud backup service designed with your business in mind. But with the many options available, how do you pick the right one? Is it just about storage size and speed, or are other factors at play?
In this article, we sift through the options, providing a detailed guide to the best cloud backup services for businesses. We’ll dig into their features, weigh the pros and cons, and offer recommendations tailored to various needs. Because when it comes to safeguarding your business data, good just isn’t good enough.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a fast, affordable, and top-rated solution for small businesses and enterprises in all industries. The software delivers backup, instant restore, replication, disaster recovery, and infrastructure monitoring in a single pane of glass. With NAKIVO Backup to Backblaze B2, you can easily store your data in a secure, scalable, cost-effective cloud storage platform.
Multiplatform Support
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides reliable data protection for virtual, physical, cloud, and SaaS environments, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Windows/Linux servers and workstations, Amazon EC2 instances, Microsoft 365, SMB/NFS file shares, and Oracle Database via RMAN.
Various Backup Targets
You can keep backups onsite for quick recovery or store them on NAS disks separately from the production environment. The NAKIVO solution also allows you to send backup copies to public clouds (Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Wasabi, and Lyve Cloud), to S3-compatible storage platforms, or to tape.
Robust Ransomware Resilience and Security
One of the main advantages of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the built-in anti-ransomware protection measures that ensure a safe recovery after an incident or a breach.
- Immutable backups: Enable immutability in local storage, public clouds, or S3-compatible storage platforms to prevent data modification or deletion by ransomware.
- Backup malware scan: Scan backup data for malware before recovery to ensure straightforward recoveries and stop the infection from spreading to your production environment.
- Air-gapped backups: Send backups to detachable media such as tape and keep them offline to create air-gapped backups that cannot be targeted by ransomware or malware.
- Advanced encryption: Apply AES 265 encryption to in-flight and encryption for at-rest data to protect your backups during transfers or storage.
Enhanced Network Performance
Boost the speed of data protection workflows and reduce the load on your network by setting LAN-Free Data Transfer modes (Hot Add and Direct SAN Access) or by enabling Network Acceleration and Bandwidth Throttling. You can also perform backups directly from storage snapshots to offload your production network, especially during working hours.
Reliable Automation Capabilities
The NAKIVO solution includes several automation features that simplify administration tasks. Policy-Based Data Protection allows you to automatically protect workloads with specific criteria. The Calendar Dashboard provides a bird’ s-eye view of all your tasks, allowing you to schedule workflows and prevent overlaps. In addition, the job chaining feature allows you to configure automated data protection sequences to run one after the other.
Backblaze Business Backup
With its unlimited storage capacity and user-friendly interface, Backblaze Business Backup ensures that all your valuable data is securely backed up without hassle.
One of the most significant advantages of Backblaze Business Backup is its unlimited storage offering. This means you don’t have to worry about running out of space or constantly upgrading your plan as your business grows. Instead, you can focus on what matters most – running your business – while Backblaze safeguards all your essential files and documents.
Easy-to-Use Interface
Backblaze understands that not everyone is a tech expert, so they’ve designed their platform with ease of use in mind. The intuitive interface allows users to quickly set up their backup preferences, schedule backups, and manage their stored data without technical expertise. This simplicity makes it an excellent option for businesses with varying levels of tech-savviness among employees.
Continuous Data Protection
With Backblaze’s continuous data protection feature, your files are continuously backed up in real time as they’re created or modified. This ensures that you always have the most recent version of your data available in case of an unexpected event, such as hardware failure or ransomware attack.
Cross-Platform Compatibility
Whether you use Windows or macOS devices, Backblaze has you covered. Their software is compatible with both platforms, ensuring seamless integration into your infrastructure without compatibility issues.
Strong Security Measures
Backblaze takes security seriously by implementing robust encryption methods for data at rest and during transmission. Before leaving your device, your files are encrypted using AES 128-bit encryption and transferred over a secure SSL connection to their data centers.
Carbonite Safe
Carbonite Safe excels at providing end-to-end encryption for your data. This means your files are encrypted during transmission and stored on their servers. With 128-bit Blowfish encryption, you can trust that your data remains secure from unauthorized access.
Another critical feature of Carbonite Safe is its automatic backup functionality. Once configured, the service continuously monitors changes in your files and backs them up without your intervention. This ensures that you always have the latest version of your data available for recovery in case of accidental deletion or system failure.
Scalability for Growing Businesses
As your business grows, so does the data you need to protect. Carbonite Safe offers scalable storage plans to accommodate companies of all sizes. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, there’s a plan tailored to fit your needs.
One standout feature is the ability to back up an unlimited number of devices under one account. This allows you to centralize all backups for multiple computers and servers, making managing and monitoring the overall backup process easier.
User-Friendly Interface
Carbonite Safe boasts an easy-to-use interface that simplifies the setup and management of backups. The intuitive dashboard displays all essential backup information, such as status updates and storage usage.
Additionally, restoring files is a breeze with Carbonite Safe’s user-friendly file recovery process. You can easily search for specific files or folders when needed and restore them with just a few clicks.
Support & Reliability
Regarding support, Carbonite Safe has 24/7 customer assistance via phone, chat, or email. Their knowledgeable support team can help you with any questions or concerns.
IDrive Business
IDrive Business sets itself apart by offering a hybrid backup approach. This means it combines local and cloud storage benefits, ensuring fast backups and quick data recovery in an emergency. By storing data on-site and in the cloud, you’ll have extra protection against data loss due to hardware failures or natural disasters.
One significant advantage of IDrive Business is its ability to support various devices. IDrive covers whether your business uses PCs, Macs, servers, or mobile devices (iOS and Android). This extensive device compatibility ensures that all critical data across various platforms can be backed up seamlessly without juggling multiple backup solutions.
Security
Your business’s sensitive information deserves top-notch security measures. IDrive Business uses 256-bit AES encryption during data transfer and storage to ensure your data’s highest level of protection. The platform also offers private key encryption, allowing you to set your encryption key and ensuring that only authorized personnel can access your backups.
Ease of Use
Managing your company’s data backups shouldn’t be a daunting task. IDrive Business offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface that simplifies setting up, monitoring, and restoring backups. With features like centralized management, remote backup management, and detailed reports, you can stay on top of your data protection efforts with minimal hassle.
Acronis Cyber Protect
Acronis Cyber Protect integrates cybersecurity into its platform beyond traditional backup services. This means that it protects your data from accidental deletion or hardware failure and defends against cyber threats like ransomware, viruses, and malware.
Some of the key security features include:
- Real-time protection: Acronis uses AI-based technologies to detect and block any suspicious activity in real-time, ensuring your data remains safe from cyberattacks.
- Vulnerability assessment: Regularly scans your system for vulnerabilities and recommends ways of fixing them.
- Data encryption: All stored data is encrypted using AES-256 encryption, ensuring your sensitive information remains protected even if a breach occurs.
The company also understands that every business has unique storage requirements. That’s why they offer a variety of storage options to suit different needs:
- Local storage: You can store your backups on-premises for faster recovery times.
- Cloud storage: Store your backups in Acronis’ secure cloud infrastructure with multiple data centers worldwide.
- Hybrid storage: Combine local and cloud storage for a more balanced approach to data protection.
In addition, Acronis offers customizable retention policies so you can decide how long you want to keep your backups. This helps optimize storage usage while still maintaining compliance with industry regulations.
Datto SIRIS
When it comes to ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery, Datto SIRIS stands out as an all-in-one solution that could perfectly fit your organization. This comprehensive cloud backup service offers numerous features designed to protect your valuable data and keep your business running smoothly despite unexpected challenges.
One of the key aspects of Datto SIRIS is its image-based backup capabilities. It captures a complete snapshot of your system, including all files, applications, and settings. This approach safeguards your data and allows faster and more efficient recovery in a disaster.
Another standout feature is Datto’s Inverse Chain Technology, which simplifies the backup process by eliminating the need for traditional incremental backups. Instead, each new backup directly depends on the previous one, reducing complexity and improving overall performance.
Downtime can be incredibly costly for businesses, so Datto SIRIS offers Instant Virtualization. In case of a system failure or hardware issue, you can quickly spin up a virtual machine with your most recent backup to minimize downtime and keep your operations running.
Moreover, Datto SIRIS provides ransomware detection to help protect your business from this growing threat. The system monitors for suspicious activity and alerts you if any potential ransomware attacks are detected so that you can take immediate action.
Veeam Backup & Replication
Explicitly designed for virtualized systems, Veeam Backup & Replication cloud backup service offers a robust set of features that ensure the safety and integrity of your data.
The platform provides comprehensive data protection by leveraging its powerful capabilities:
- Instant VM Recovery: In a disaster, you can quickly restore entire virtual machines (VMs) within minutes, minimizing downtime and keeping your business up and running.
- Backup from Storage Snapshots: This feature enables you to create backups directly from storage snapshots, reducing the impact on your production environment and improving backup performance.
- Built-in WAN Acceleration: Veeam’s WAN acceleration technology ensures efficient backup data transfer over wide area networks (WANs), making offsite backups faster and more reliable.
- End-to-End Encryption: Secure your sensitive data with end-to-end encryption that protects your backups at rest and in transit.
One of the major advantages of Veeam Backup & Replication is its support for multiple virtualization platforms, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, and more. This flexibility allows you to protect all your virtual environments with a single solution.
Veeam Backup & Replication integrates seamlessly with major cloud storage providers like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, and IBM Cloud Object Storage to further enhance its capabilities. This lets you store your backups offsite, ensuring data redundancy and protection from local disasters.
CrashPlan for Small Business
CrashPlan for Small Business is a cloud-based backup solution designed for small businesses. This service focuses on offering secure, off-site storage for businesses’ critical data, ensuring that in the event of data loss due to hardware failure, theft, natural disaster, or ransomware attack, a copy of the data is safely stored and can be recovered.
Here’s an overview of its key features:
- Automatic Backups: Imagine your files being watched over every minute of every day. CrashPlan does that—it automatically backs up your data as you work, capturing every change. This means you’re always just a few clicks away from recovering a lost or corrupted file.
- Versioning and Retention: You have the power to turn back time. With CrashPlan, you can access and restore different versions of your files, giving you a safety net for those “Oh no!” moments when you’ve accidentally deleted something important or need an earlier document version.
- Unbreakable Security: Your business’s data is encrypted with military-grade security measures while uploaded and stored in the cloud. This encryption fortress keeps your sensitive information safe from prying eyes.
- Every Device Matters: Whether your team uses Windows, macOS, or Linux, CrashPlan has you covered. Its cross-platform compatibility ensures no device is left unprotected, maintaining consistency in your data protection strategy.
- Customizable Backup Settings: Your business is unique, and so are your backup needs. CrashPlan offers customizable settings to tailor the backup frequency, file selection, and data retention to fit your business requirements perfectly.
Now, let’s pivot to a critical discussion. While CrashPlan offers an affordable solution designed with your small business in mind, weighing the ongoing costs against the volume of data you need to secure and the number of devices in your network is imperative. The essence of cloud-based solutions is that your ability to back up and restore data hinges on a reliable internet connection. Consider the potential challenges this could pose, especially during large data restores or in regions with less stable internet service.
Furthermore, the impact of continuous backups on system performance is worth noting. CrashPlan is engineered to be as unobtrusive as possible, smartly managing its resource usage to minimize slowdowns. However, the reality remains that running any background process will somewhat affect your system’s performance. This calls for a strategic balance, ensuring your data protection needs don’t overshadow the operational efficiency of your business.
Zoolz BigMIND Business
When managing your business data efficiently, Zoolz BigMIND Business stands out with its AI-powered data management and intelligent search capabilities. This cloud backup service offers a unique combination of features that can save you time and effort while ensuring the safety of your valuable data.
Zoolz BigMIND Business uses artificial intelligence to analyze and categorize your files automatically. This means you don’t have to spend hours manually organizing your data. The AI can recognize various file types, such as documents, images, and videos, and sort them into appropriate categories for easy access.
Finding specific files in a large dataset can be a daunting task. With Zoolz BigMIND Business, you can quickly utilize its intelligent search capabilities to locate the files you need. You can search for files using keywords, file types, or even document content. This feature is handy when dealing with large amounts of unstructured data.
Flexible Storage Plans
Zoolz BigMIND Business offers a range of storage plans to suit businesses of all sizes. Whether you need 100GB or 100TB of storage space, there’s a plan available for you. Additionally, the service allows unlimited users and servers under one account, making it an excellent option for growing businesses.
Security and Compliance
Your business data’s security is crucial, so Zoolz BigMIND Business employs military-grade encryption to protect your files during transfer and storage. The service also complies with industry regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA, ensuring your sensitive information remains secure.
MSP360 Managed Backup Service (MBS)
MSP360 Managed Backup Service (MBS) is an excellent option for businesses of all sizes. Its cross-platform support and customization options allow you to tailor the solution to your company’s unique needs.
One of the standout features of MSP360 MBS is its ability to work across various platforms. Whether your business operates on Windows, macOS, or Linux, MSP360 MBS has you covered. This compatibility also extends to mobile devices, supporting Android and iOS platforms.
By offering cross-platform support, MSP360 MBS ensures that all your devices are protected regardless of their operating system. This makes it easier for you to manage backups across your entire organization without worrying about compatibility issues.
Customization Options
MSP360 MBS also offers a wide range of customization options that allow you to create a backup solution tailored specifically for your business. Some of these customizable features include:
- Flexible Scheduling: Set up automatic backups according to your preferred daily, weekly, or monthly schedule to ensure your data is always up-to-date without manual intervention.
- Backup Storage Options: Choose from various storage providers such as Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Storage, or local storage options like NAS or external hard drives.
- Data Compression & Encryption: Optimize storage space by compressing data before uploading it to the cloud and secure sensitive information with military-grade encryption.
- Retention Policies: Define custom retention policies based on your company’s data retention requirements and ensure compliance with industry regulations.
- White Labeling: Customize the look and feel of the software by adding your company logo and branding elements.
These customization options make MSP360 MBS an ideal choice for businesses that require a tailored backup solution to meet their specific needs.
Summary
Finding the right cloud backup service isn’t a task to take lightly. Your business data is too valuable to entrust to any service that promises storage space. By now, you should have a clearer understanding of what’s out there—whether you’re looking for blistering speed, military-grade encryption, or user-friendly interfaces.
But remember, the best service for you is the one that aligns closely with your specific needs and budget constraints. Whether you’re a small startup or a sprawling enterprise, secure, accessible backup isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity.
