Code42 (formerly CrashPlan) Reviews

CrashPlan Pro is not as seamless a product as Microsoft OneDrive and should be viewed as an additional layer of backup redundancy and noted that the recovery process will not be as easy to execute. CrashPlan Pro is also an incremental cost where Microsoft OneDrive is included in the cost of Microsoft Office 365.

Both AppAssure and Acronis Disaster Recovery Service was used in the IT business management firm in which I worked. AppAssure required off sight storage. It was challenging in that the size of offsite storage was an additional cost and rolling up could take hours. Restoring files only was a challenge to navigate. Other backups used were Backup Assist, Windows server backup, etc. While each was designed to backup servers, it was also intended to restore files. Again, rotating NAS, VSS errors, and other issues made theses systems cumbersome and sometimes incomplete when attempting to do a file only restore. Acronis Disaster Recovery Services was by far superior for system imaging and file restoration. The dashboard is relatively easy to manage, but easier to IT than the simple on-site techie like me. If what you need is file restoration then Code42 is your answer.

I have used SOS online backup. SOS might have had some advantages and was fairly easy to use, especially when searching for files. This is not to say that Code42 is difficult. But I did not feel that using SOS was justified given the exorbitant pricing scheme used by SOS.

Have used Veritas, Symantec, Mozy, and Carbonite. Veritas and Symantec Backup Exec from my tape days, and Mozy and Carbonite when I wanted to move to a modern backup service. Code42's interface, cost, simplicity of use, versioning, security, and low-impact sold me. No contest with the other services in my experience.

We've been using Nakivo and Code42 together. It works great as we are able to have the peace of mind of having data backed up offsite (Code42) and locally (Nakivo) I found this combo worked better than the costly and complicated setup of both Unitrends and Zerto. My biggest complaint about Zerto is the inability to easily change drive size on a source and having the corresponding backup drive destination match that change or being able to make that change easily without having to re-sync the whole share across the WAN. Not only do we end up saving the frustration, but we saved money in the process. By leveraging existing storage space and Code42 not charging by the amount of data, we also save the cost of data storage.

I formerly used SOS Online Backup. It was a very similar system, originally offering unlimited backups at a price similar to Code42. After more than a year of backups, SOS informed me that they'd be reducing my storage from unlimited to 2tb, and, increasing my monthly rate by 20x. This was completely unacceptable. I began to research alternatives and quickly realized that Code42 had the most to offer, so I made the switch and never went back.

The main advantage that Code42 has on competing services is it's ability to back up network drives and keep your backup archives indefinitely. While Backblaze costs significantly less ($50/year/computer vs. $10/year/computer - or $120/year/computer), it does not have the ability to backup network drives and only keep backup archives for 30 days. For some clients, the additional cost of Code42 is well worth it. On the other hand, I would never recommend Carbonite, as it is both overpriced and under featured compared to Code42 and Backblaze.

OneDrive is not a good backup solution for endpoints. It is for storing a few files and sharing those files but not for business backup. Druva is a very good product that we never had any problems with and I'm not exactly sure why we switched from it. Code42 has some extra features but they also cost quite a bit to use. There are a lot of competitors in this space and whichever one you select, you should negotiate a good price per user for it. I think that for the price Code42 is average to slightly below average in value.

For our business model, Carbonite was not as economical. CrashPlan offered unlimited backup and unlimited deleted file retention for similar cost. Additionally, we had better results with support during evaluation with CrashPlan.

For personal, end user backup CrashPlan really is the best option in my opinion. Easy to use, easy to manage, relatively easy to recover.

We compared CrashPlan with other choices and they were either too expensive or didn't have the backup capacity we required at the time. For lack of a better solution, we were very close to signing with Mozy, and this was years ago when CrashPlan was still a new player in the market. I found them at the eleventh hour and started the product comparison. Mozy couldn't offer us unlimited storage space and when we found that CrashPlan could, it was almost a no-brainer. Carbonite was a close contender as well, but if I recall correctly, they didn't offer enterprise level pricing that we were looking for (note, this was years ago and their current offerings may be different).

I like Crashplan's centralized nature and flexibility with support for all platforms. Their support has been the best of all other competitors' solutions.

We use Windows Server to backup our in-house associates as they are connecting to the domain and it is easy to keep track of. Our remote associates do not connect to the domain as often so we had to find a solution to enable us to get a secure, accurate backup of their data. CrashPlan fit that bill perfectly.

Atempo worked well but CrashPlan offered several more services that we found more useful e.g. reporting, legal hold, centralized admin console.

CrashPlan demonstrated a more advanced development than other products we were evaluating. A number of them didn't compress and dedupe, which affected performance on the machine as well as the network. The controls and reporting of crashplan were way more intuitive and comprehensive than other products. Plus the recommendations from other larger customers also helped with our decision.

The deduplication feature and continuous backup puts this application ahead of others. The ability to prevent users from deleting files from backups is another feature that was attractive for our management and legal team. Set and forget is great. No intervention from the remote user is even better. I don't have to worry about whether they did the backup. Cost wise the application is on par with other cloud based backup [solutions]. Plus CrashPlan will keep the user from deleting files from the backups. We evaluated iDrive, Carbonite, Zipcloud, BitCasa, and SpiderOak. CrashPlan required a little more IT setup on the front end but was a better fit for our organization.

We looked at file sync solutions that require an end user to move data independently, and two major things stuck out:

1. The human error factor was high. You cannot trust people to move files, even if they are important or they've agreed to move them on a certain schedule, and inevitably the expectation is that IT will automate the process.

2. File sync is not your friend. Versioning is lost, the constant overwriting of files is prohibitive to keeping data, and it is an administrative nightmare.

We tried out both Mozy and Carbonite before choosing Crashplan - it was the simplicity and power of the backup application that led us to pick Crashplan. Backups and restores just made sense and the application was organized in a way that was easy to navigate and understand. The fact that we could encrypt the backups with our own encryption key was also a factor in the decision - we store some sensitive data as part of our training and have a need for that functionality.

Crashplan beats most backup software, at an outstanding price.

We tried Backblaze. The backup schedule and management is not as good as Crashplan. But it's much cheaper. Also it is not 100% compliant with our security policies. We already use Google Drive for sharing and team working. We ask our users to put their sensitive files there, but it's not always done. Also Google Drive does not have the best retention policy.

I have used it since I have worked for my current company. Truthfully I do not think that there are any other companies that offer software as good as this.

We selected CrashPlan because of my personal experiences with the company. I had had CrashPlan in the home for the past 3 years before being implemented at D+H. We looked at a couple others and none came close to the user experience and the admin tools available to support the users.

Either you need much more Hardware (Druva) or the Software is old/outdated (AirWatch).

CrashPlan seems like it is much more geared towards enterprises and organizations than either Carbonite or Mozy. There are many more features that enterprises can use.

We evaluated a few different solutions years ago, but I don't recall what they all were called. Jungle Disk was one we used for a short time, but we needed something with better management. CrashPlan came out on top. It was easy to use, had a hybrid cloud solution so we could leverage our AD environment, but store the files on CrashPlan's servers. The level of control you have is the best out there.