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Code42 Says Crashplan Backup Service Will Discontinue All Personal Backup Plans (crashplan.com)
Reader amxcoder writes: Code42, the company behind the popular Crashplan online backup service has announced that will be discontinuing all of its personal and family backup plan offerings to focus on business backup service plans only. In the letter sent to existing personal plan customers, it says that next year will be the cutoff date for personal plans and all existing personal plan holders will have to upgrade their subscriptions to more expensive business plans or leave for another provider after current subscription runs out. Crashplan personal and family services were one of the best (and most affordable) options available for online backup, providing features that other rivals do not, including backup options for cloud, external local drives, and to other friends/family member's drives (trusted offsite). Looking at Carbonite services (who Code42 is recommending existing personal subscribers switch to), does not offer many of the options and features in their backup software, including multiple backup sets, unlimited deleted file retention, the trusted offsite options and any type of 'family subscription' offerings. Here is a statement from the Code42 CEO Joe Payne.
I use them for personal backup... this is the first I've heard of this! I just went and searched my email and didn't find anything.
This is definitely a shame! One of the things I liked most about their service is that it was easy to setup with black/white lists on what to back up. I really only wanted a backup for my photography hobby... everything else is backed up fine via Time Machine (and I rotate a drive offsite). Crashplan dealt well with this.
Anyway - nothing to do about it now. I'll start shopping around...
You might want to do some due diligence and see whether it makes sense to move your cloud backups elsewhere - or at least set up an account with a second backup provider. Businesses don't retrench for no reason - these guys may be in trouble.
#DeleteChrome
I mean, I understand your sentiment. But this seems like a company exiting a business the right way. Notifying and giving customers ample time to find a replacement. Would you rather they just shut their business down and put up a "fuck you" landing page? Further, what is your suggestion for Joe and Jane User for their backup solution? Here are the requirements: 1) Little to no computer knowledge needed. 2) Replicated off-site. 3) 5-10$/month 4) Hands-off backup.
A solution that meets your average user's needs is not possible without "the cloud"
I agree - I'm sad to see them go, but it's really hard to draw the "don't trust the cloud" conclusion from this: I paid them money, they provided a service. They haven't lost my data, and they are committing to continue providing the promised service through the end of my contract with them.
Looks like Crashplan is going to screw Linux users as Carbonite does not support Linux as far as I can tell. I have 2TB of stuff backed up to Crashplan. That took me MONTHS to complete.
Why are they pushing Carbonite? Their page selling the small business product (https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/business/compare/) still points out some of the major failings of Carbonite - which is why I switched a few years ago in the first place. Linux support, my own passphrase for the backup, automatic support for other file types... Small business fits me pretty well still, and the price isn't bad, but I'm still going to look around for something else. The fact that they are pushing a competitor one one side & pointing out their flaws on another smells of larger business problems to me. Bye Code42!
Be Excellent To Each Other
I wouldn't recommend Crash plan for business unless there's an IT person on site. Too many interruptions that a regular office person isn't going to notice. I get emailed updates when the computers don't backup after so many days and need to investigate. Most times, the service needs to be manually restarted and works again for a while. Other times, you need the secret menu to run advanced commands that restart things differently. When I needed to call someone, the hold time was 52 minutes and then was offered a call back. No callback. Another time, I got a callback, but only for someone to take the issue down and someone else was supposed to call me. They never did. On more than one occasion, the server picked for backup shits the bed. I have to contact Crash plan to tell them their server is fucked. After some time, they report it's confirmed and under going maintenance. Wait another day and still not fixed. Contact them again, and says maintenance didn't go well and then did something to use another server. By the end of it, it hadn't backed up in 9 days and took 4 days to resolve after reporting issue. I don't think their stuff is robust and unless you constantly verify, you could be in a situation where you find your backed up data very old.