Acronis True Image vs. IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2

Acronis Cyber Protect is great for any small/mid-sized business. The price point makes it attractive to all budgets >$100/year for 5 device deployments. Competitors offer less and charge more! Very happy with the suite of products, and renewals are simple and straightforward as well. I hope they don't change a thing!

Incentivized

It scales well from the individual to corporate environments with many different plans to suit your needs and budget. For backing up servers such as Exchange or SQL I've used their sister product iBackup, which is also excellent and we have no problems with, so maybe they should merge the two products into one which would make it a better overall proposition. It also seems to handle backing up mapped drives as well, which is what we used for a while before getting the on server version. That being said it can use up quite a bit of bandwidth so make sure you schedule at night when noone is working. However it does only backup changed files which is great.

Incentivized

• Delta backup makes backups super fast of larger files that do not change in its entirety (e.g. VM images, large PSD files)
• Easy to use (set it and forget it)
• Rescue media makes it easy to restore backups to different hardware and migrate to other work stations
• Lots of backup options on the Windows version of ATI

Incentivized

• I'm using it on MAC, the app works very well in the background
• Logging activities is something I really like, because I can check whether the backup was successful or not.
• I really like the option of being able to select external drivers and back up only specific folders or files.
• The application itself is very easy to use, even though it doesn't have a version in my language (pt-br), I had no trouble setting it up and I'm using it without any problems.

Incentivized

• Some features have actually become more complicated over the years. One that comes to mind is creating a backup plan that can execute daily to an external USB media that is changed daily (older versions would back up to the, for example, "F" drive regardless of which drive was attached - newer versions identify each drive uniquely, and a backup task created with a given external drive will fail due to the lack of media presence if the drive is replaced).
• Error messages could be less cryptic.
• Support turnaround time and live assistance could be faster.

Incentivized

• DropBox-protected folders were not initially backed up as IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2 did not follow the symbolic links created
• I experienced some UX confusion in adding new folders to backup; it's a different interface than setting up exclusions, and they should follow the same workflow and page buttons
• After a reboot, it appears like a full disk scan is performed which can take quite a long time on a disk which has many files and lots of space

Incentivized

It does everything that it needs to to create an effecitve Three level backup to the cloud of all your important data, its reliable, dependable and peformant in its use cases. It overcomes the need to store offsite physical media such as Tape or disk storage. And its cost and level of reporting can be tailored to fit the use case of your business.

Incentivized

Protect my system from data loss and also can manage multiple devices via online cloud from any where and also can set Multifactor authentication for more secure login access. Archive any backup which will use less space and we can transfer it to any other space also so it is very easy as server admin to manage acronics utilities

Incentivized

While both the desktop and mobile apps are pretty straightforward and not complicated to navigate with features and settings fairly easy to understand and execute with clear enough descriptions they could use a refresh to be a but more intuitive and improvements made so they are less glitchy. Also backup speeds could use some improvement

Incentivized

Backups run fast and no significant performance issues other than the ones discussed previously.

Incentivized

Beyond a single instance, I haven't had to approach Acronis' support. I needed a new key following the death of my previous workstation, and they rapidly supplied it. I've heard from colleagues that they've quickly answered any questions that've been asked. If I need something, I'll generally frequent FAQ pages first, although Acronis actually has instructional videos to help users get started, which is forward-thinking. Great software that fills a vital niche for Windows systems.

Incentivized

I have not had to use their tech support. I did call once but luckily figured out what to do while I was on hold so I disconnected. If I really needed them it would have been a very long hold time I suppose.

Incentivized

Did not participate in the implementation.

Incentivized

IDrive is incredibly faster than Acronis on cloud backup. After Acronis' failures on cloud storage I moved to IDrive for peace of mind. IDrive can also do local backups, and either variant of system state, server, outlook, exchange, etc. It does not however have the ability to do a full image of a bitlocked machine like Acronis, so I'm continuing the local imaging with Acronis.

Incentivized

I was a Backblaze user for 5 years because they had a very cost effective plan for my storage needs. However, they were very poor at backing up external devices quickly, and made it a pain in the butt to keep the backups active due to their 30 days connectivity policy.

Dropbox is a great fit for cloud backup when you need to access the backup files in the cloud frequently.

IDrive is the best solution out there for true backup of devices in case they are damaged or lost.

The Windows version is generally reliable and only ran into one issue thus far. Restores are easy and there are many features. On MacOS, it's a completely different story. There is significant resource leakage related to the updater app that can bog down part of a CPU core continuously until it is disabled. The mobile backup feature also needs to be disabled via UNIX command line or CPU usage will go up when a mobile device on the same network like an iPad or iPhone's screen is turned on.

Incentivized

• Peace of mind - knowing that if anything happens to our data, we can recover it.
• File Versioning has saved us a few times - we can grab prior versions of a particular file if there is a problem.
• Reasonably priced - there are more comprehensive backup solutions out there, but for online backup, this was the right product for the right price.

Incentivized

• For individual users such as my case, the savings with the Personal plan are important compared to alternatives like ElephantDrive. For 5TB ElephantDrive costs $600/yr in the comparable Family plan, whereas IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2 costs only $99.50/yr.

Incentivized