Loading...Backup (in various types and forms) is one of the most effective ways of protecting a company’s data against data loss or corruption. By preventing such a potentially catastrophic event, a company can avoid losing revenue, reputation and in some cases, bankruptcy. There’s a lot of different classifications of backup types, and one depends mainly on the data’s location: onsite backup and offsite backup - each with their own set of features and challenges, pros and cons.
Onsite vs offsite backup
Offsite backup specifically is when a copy of your data is transferred to a data storage that is geographically separated away from your main production site. The same data transfer can be performed using direct access with the help of a WAN (wide area network). Conversely, onsite backup is where data is backed up and then stored on a variety of local storage devices, like disks, hard drives, etc. In recent years, the term“offsite” has grown in application, equally meaning Cloud as well as the more physically tangible destinations. Accordingly, this article also covers cloud storage solutions.
The storages’ location-related benefits of free offsite backup software are the following:
- The data that is stored off site is likely to be safe from any sort of disaster or accident that happens on your main site, like fire, robbery, natural disaster, etc.
- Technically, offsite backup as a method can be considered more reliable than the onsite ones since the data is usually backed up and transferred automatically.
- You can get access to your offsite data using either FTP (File transfer protocol) or your usual Internet connection.
- If you’re using tape drives as your offsite backup storage medium, their nature allows for your data that is stored on tape to remain virtually impossible to be affected by the majority of malware and other viruses, since tape backups have no need to be turned on to store the data in question.
One other way to formulate the onsite vs offsite comparison is to look at it in terms of a difference between local data storage locations and remote data storage locations.
Local backups are represented by the data from a LAN to autochangers or tapes that are connected to your servers directly (or they can be connected to SAN/NAS solutions or just belong to the same physical space). There is typically not a lot of physical space between the two, but they are still placed apart from each other in some way. These local backups are most effective for situations when there is only a part of data that has been affected by a disaster or an accident of sorts, allowing for quick recovery to reduce the downtime as much as possible. Such backups are usually faster as well, if the company’s network speed is at least reasonable. This decrease in recovery time and transfer time can also help with compliance to a company’s policies about backup time windows, etc.
Remote backup locations, on the other hand, are much more valuable in case of some kind of natural disaster or other unfortunate event that affects the entire organization’s working process, such as inside threats, robberies, accidental or intentional fires, natural disasters, and more. These are a lot of different free offsite backup solutions, and they typically involve removable storage devices like tape or disk, or they can work with the help of a third-party service providing cloud storage, such as Amazon S3, MS Azure and others. The remote nature of this backup type however, doesn’t mean it is not important to have at least reasonable levels of security and data transfer speed.In fact, recovery speed (and therefore bandwidth) can be critical in a business being able to restore its systems before fatal business damage occurs.
Features of an offsite backup solution
Generally speaking, an open source offsite backup is a popular backup solution architecture that keeps the balance between disaster recovery services and cloud backup services. Here is the list of main features that an offsite backup for an enterprise should have, at a minimum:
- Technical support. Various support sources and channels to help with resolving any possible problem that might occur in regards to the offsite storage’s working process.
- Replication. Minimizing the probability of data loss by duplicating the information and distributing copies in different locations.
- Archiving. Includes capabilities of storing data archives for the purpose of maintaining them for a set period of time with the ability to perform search operations within archived data.
- Collaborative work with disaster recovery solutions. Implementing disaster recovery solutions taking into account all of the offsite backup’s characteristics and limitations allows for a more robust backup and disaster recovery process in general.
- Adequate security. Increases the total reliability of your free offsite backup software.
- Bare metal restore. Allowing for creating specific backups that can restore the entire system from bare metal state. This is a computer or server that has nothing installed on it, not even an OS. This alleviates the requirements of all and any programs to be pre-installed on the machine, making the restore process easier and / or more effective, in some cases.
Of course, there’s a lot more features that may also be included in the better, free offsite backup solutions. Some of the less prevalent functions are:
- Reduced maintenance costs for backup infrastructure when it comes to tape drives, disks, servers, etc.
- Bandwidth management and organization to ensure that there’s no problems in the process of copying your data to or from the offsite storage, if it’s being done remotely.
- Easy remote access to your data in the form of backups from anywhere (if you have the necessary clearance level, of course).
- High adaptability of the solution in general, allowing for some freedom of changing the configuration of the information to be recovered or backed up.
- Resource management that allows for multiple virtual environment functions, like snapshots, virtual instance backups, etc.
- Heightened physical and general security of the offsite location where the data is being stored, both in cases of a third party storage provider and in case of the remote location belonging to the company itself.
There’s also one popular change that’s relatively new for the open source offsite backup environment in the cloud, and it’s the increasing popularity of hybrid platforms (allowing for shared resources for remote and local sites). While these might be a useful approach for some organizations, it’s important to remember that this will likely create more storage locations to take care of and manage.
Examples of free offsite backup software
As we have mentioned before, “remote or offsite backup” covers a wide range of different services and platforms, and many of them turn out not actually to be free of charge at all. But to illustrate what kind of offerings are available, we will present a number of different free offsite backup solutions, explaining their unique traits and terms of use.
IDrive
IDrive is a rather versatile backup solution with an abundance of different features to it. IDrive supports a variety of different devices for backup purposes, from desktop and mobile devices to NAS and servers, and there are also features such as versioning, data deduplication, and encryption for data that is both mid-transfer and at rest. That encrypted data can also be managed by yourself only (encryption key storage), and there is also an SSL/TLS protocol supported. IDrive also has a free pricing plan in that has 10 GB of storage for free – and plenty of other paid plans with terabytes of space available, even though there is no unlimited plan available.
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:
- A decent backup-centric feature set, with data deduplication, data versioning, encryption at rest and mid-transit, etc.
- IDrive can also send physical storage units with backed up data to its users, if requested
- Most of iDrive’s pricing is relatively user-friendly and not particularly expensive
Shortcomings:
- iDrive for Linux is not the same as iDrive for Windows, there are plenty of differences between the two, and the Linux version is a lot more difficult to set up initially
- While iDrive does technically support all business sizes, it is often most suitable for SMBs only
- There are also little to no ransomware/malware protection capabilities that iDrive itself can offer, so an additional solution would have to be used for security reasons, at the very least
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- 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 does offer 10 GB of free storage for creating your own account, but the free version’s capability is rather limited
- iDrive’s pricing is separated in 7 different categories:
- iDrive Mini as the cheapest and the most basic offering for individuals
- iDrive Personal as a standard home and work device backup solution with a focus on personal use
- iDrive Team is the first offering that is business-centric, it is mostly aimed for small businesses
- iDrive Business is an extensive business-centric cloud storage and backup solution with impressive scalability
- iDrive e2 is nothing but cloud storage with immutability features
- iDrive BMR offers an on-site bare metal recovery capacity for large-scale businesses, can start at 8 TB of storage
- iDrive 360 is an endpoint cloud backup that can be managed using nothing but a web browser
- Each different pricing category has its own pricing plans attached to it. For example, iDrive Team 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 not a backup solution first and foremost, and its capabilities are not enough to compete with enterprise-grade backup software within the same market. However, it is still quite versatile and can be of great help to individuals or small businesses with its relatively low pricing and a number of data-centric features – deduplication, versioning, encryption, etc. Its Linux version is quite limited, and there are little to no malware protection features in place, but it is still a decent backup solution with a free subscription tier.
Sync.com
Sync.com, or Sync, is a service that promotes itself as a document collaboration/file storage platform. It is a collaboration platform, first and foremost, even though it does have offsite backup capabilities for specific data types. Sync can be used to backup files and share documents, and presents itself as a secure place to keep your data in. There are multiple different pricing plans that Sync has, starting from a basic free plan that has 5 GB of storage to it, and going upwards to plans such as Teams Unlimited, which includes zero storage limitations, 24/7 support, an administrator account, custom branding, and more.
Customer ratings:
Advantages:
- Compliance with a number of important industry standards, such as HIPAA
- Relatively simple user interface with easy configuration
- Easy data sharing with third parties and mandatory data encryption for all files
Shortcomings:
- A very limited feature set outside of the file storage capacity
- Little to no integrations with other software and services available
- Low performance of the solution, especially with desktop syncing (speculated to be because of the inefficient backup encryption algorithm)
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- Sync.com has a free version and several different premium pricing plans. The free version is rather limited in its capabilities and only offers 5 GB of free storage
- The premium version of Sync.com is split into five separate pricing plans
- “Solo Basic” – $8 per month, a simple extension of the free version with 2 TB of storage, advanced sharing features, and so on
- “Solo Professional” – $20 per month, a rather versatile offering for individual users that may need extra functionality and extended (6 TB) storage capacity
- “Teams Standard” – $6 per month per user, a great option for small businesses or teams, offers a relatively basic feature set with 1 TB of storage capacity and a separate administrator account
- “Teams+ Unlimited” – $15 per month per user, the advanced business-centric offering from Sync.com with unlimited storage capacity, phone support, admin delegation, custom branding, and more
- “Enterprise” is also technically a subscription tier, it is limited to companies with 100 users or more, offers a dedicated account manager, custom requirements, and no public pricing available at all
My personal opinion on Sync.com:
Sync.com is a cloud storage solution with basic backup and recovery capabilities. It does not have much to offer in terms of the overall feature set outside of actual file sharing and data storage, but it does offer plenty of storage for a relatively small price. There is a very limited free version, as well, but it is not particularly viable because of the solution’s overall feature set and the upper limit of 5 GB of storage for a free account.
pCloud
pCloud is also not exactly a standard example of an offsite backup solution, since it is a cloud storage provider first and foremost. The reason why pCloud is on this list is that it recently added a number of features to facilitate backup and restore. It may not be the most feature-rich solution on the market, but it is easy to use and the ability to combine an effective cloud storage provider and a backup solution in one place is more than enough to compensate for at least some of its shortcomings. pCloud offers 10 Gigabytes of storage for free after signing up, and it also has several different paid plans with different storage capacity limitations – although only business plans have zero traffic limitations whatsoever.
Customer ratings:
- Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 165 customer reviews
- TrustRadius – 9.0/10 stars based on 28 customer reviews
- G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 151 customer reviews
Advantages:
- Can act as a centralized data source for collaboration and data sharing purposes
- Capable of extending its cloud storage capacity to act as the continuation of a physical storage
- Good performance with most data-related operations, be it exporting, importing, etc.
Shortcomings:
- Locating file duplicates in order to save storage space is a rather inconvenient process as a whole
- There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to pCloud’s interface for new users
- A free plan’s offering is just 10 GB, which is barely enough for anything but personal use for specific purposes
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- The simple process of registration provides every new user with 10 Gb of free storage to all new users
- There are also several different premium plans that offer a lot more storage space and several new features
- “Premium” – $59.88 a year or $570 permanently for 500 Gb of both storage and shared link traffic
- “Premium Plus” – $119.88 a year or $1,140 permanently for 2 TB of both storage and shared link traffic
- “Custom Plan” – $6,000 for a permanent access to 10 TB of storage and 2 TB of shared link traffic
My personal opinion on pCloud:
pCloud is not a standard offsite backup solution, it is a cloud storage provider with basic backup and recovery capabilities. It is relatively easy to work with and offers a combination of cloud storage and backup features in one solution. It can be a bit confusing at first, since its interface has some unusual design choices, and the free version of the solution is a bit limited in its capabilities (as well as the overall storage capacity, 10 GB of storage in a modern-day is a very small amount). However, its overall performance and the ability to serve as an extension of the physical storage for smaller businesses would be enough to convince plenty of people to use it.
Jottacloud
Jottacloud is another example of a hybrid cloud storage and backup solution that is a great fit for offsite backup purposes. It supports different target device types, as well as features such as file syncing, multithreading, speed throttling, etc. There are also some characteristics that are specific to Jottacloud. For example, its interface looks extremely dated, even though it is still easy to work with. Additionally, Jottacloud does not have private encryption support – so every potential user would have to rely on the integrity of Jottacloud’s own servers located in Norway when it comes to data security. It also has mobile apps for both iOS and Android, offering a free plan for a single user and 5 GB of free storage – and zero plans with uncapped bandwidth limitations.
Customer ratings:
- Capterra – 4.5/5 stars based on 165 customer reviews
- TrustRadius – 9.0/10 stars based on 28 customer reviews
- G2 – 4.3/5 stars based on 151 customer reviews
Key features:
- Support for a multitude of storage types and a dedicated mobile version for Android/iOS
- Plenty of features to work with, including speed throttling, multithreading, file synchronization, etc.
- No support for private encryption and no pricing plans with unlimited bandwidth
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- Jottacloud’s pricing model is subscription-based and all of the pricing plans are separated into three categories
- Jottacloud Personal consists of only two pricing plans
- “Free” is a very basic offering for individuals with 5 GB of storage and standard backup capabilities
- “Personal” – €9.90 per month for a single user with unlimited storage (upload speed gets limited after exceeding the total data size of 5 TB) and little to no other differences from the free plan
- Jottacloud Home includes four different pricing plans, with the main difference between them being the total amount of storage they can offer (common features here are premium support, no bandwidth limitation, and the inclusion of Office Online)
- “Home 1 TB” – €6.90 per month for 5 family members
- “Home 5 TB” – €13.50 per month for 5 family members
- “Home 10 TB” – €59 per month for 5 family members
- “Home 20 TB” – €115 per month for 5 family members
- Jottacloud Business also consists of four different pricing plans
- “Business Free” is a completely free offering from Jottacloud that also has 5 GB of storage and supports up to 2 users at once, with a limited support, standard backup capabilities, and a license for commercial usage
- “Business Small” – €12 per month for 2 users, 1 TB of storage, and a standard feature set
- “Business Medium” – €18 per month for 10 users, 1 TB of storage, and a standard feature set
- “Business Large” – €49 per month for an unlimited number of users, 1 TB of storage, and a standard feature set
- More cloud storage capacity can be added for the Business category specifically for €9.90 a month
My personal opinion on Jottacloud:
Jottacloud is a rather interesting example of a storage solution that also has plenty to offer in the backup and recovery department. It can offer multithreading, speed throttling, as well as file synchronization, and plenty of other features. It also offers quite a lot of storage in its pricing plans – more than enough to satisfy most small or middle-sized businesses (which is the target audience of the solution). At the same time, Jottacloud’s interface looks rather outdated, its pricing approach is confusing, and it resorts to possibly one of the more negatively-perceived tactics when it comes to its “unlimited storage” offerings – stating that the storage is unlimited but also stating that the upload speed is going to be drastically limited after a certain threshold.
Backblaze B2
Backblaze B2 is a notable name on the cloud storage market, and it is a good option for offsite backup purposes – even though that may not be initially obvious. Unlike IDrive, Backblaze puts a lot of emphasis on being simple and straightforward, – and it is also one of the cheapest offerings on the market when it comes to traffic costs. Backblaze has 10 GB of free space that it gives to every new user, and it also offers a fairly reasonable price for an unlimited cloud storage space.
Customer ratings:
- Capterra – 4.7/5 stars based on 135 customer reviews
- TrustRadius – 9.0/10 stars based on 60 customer reviews
- G2 – 4.6/5 stars based on 113 customer reviews
Advantages:
- Very simple and easy first-time configuration process, should be extremely easy for most people, even the ones not familiar with the industry
- Backblaze B2 is a well-known and reliable cloud storage solution, and its reputation has been this way for a while now, putting a lot of emphasis on data reliability and low price
- Backblaze B2 also supports plenty of data transfer approaches, including several unusual types – SFTP, for example
Shortcomings:
- There are limited options to store your personal encryption keys in Backblaze’s storage solution
- Some of the administration tasks may be a bit challenging
- Backblaze B2 is a cloud storage solution first and foremost, so its backup and recovery capabilities are not as advanced as some.
Pricing (at time of writing):
- Backblaze B2’s storage cost is $0.005 for one Gigabyte of storage for a month, and its data download cost is $0.01 for one Gigabyte of storage for a month.
- It also offers data reserves for $19,500 (250TB of storage for a year with free download)
- The price of API transactions goes as follows:
- Class “C” – 2,500 free per day, the rest is $0.004 per thousand transactions
- Class “B” – 2,500 free per day, the rest is $0.004 per thousand transactions
- Class “A” – completely free
- More information about the solution’s pricing could be obtained by contacting Backblaze directly and requesting a quote.
My personal opinion on Backblaze B2:
Backblaze B2 is another relatively well-known example of a cloud storage solution with backup capabilities. It is often considered one of the highest value cloud storage solutions on the market (without sacrificing the quality of service), and it can also offer 10 GB of free storage capacity to all of its new users, combined with standard backup/recovery capabilities. It is easy to set up, but can be harder to manage.
CBackup
CBackup is a fairly standard offsite backup solution that offers cloud storage and backup capabilities in a single package. It supports file synchronization, has some degree of scalability, and is capable of performing automatic backups on a regular basis. CBackup has its own cloud storage available, and it also supports cloud storage from other cloud storage providers, both free and paid ones. CBackup uses AES-256 encryption and other features to improve data safety for all of its customers. The basic package of CBackup is completely free and offers 1 GB of traffic per month, while also giving 10 GB of CBackup’s own cloud storage. There are also several other pricing plans available, with the highest one offering no limits on the amount of traffic and also giving 5 TB of CBackup cloud storage as a bonus.
Key features:
- Capability to work with other cloud storage providers, in addition to offering its own cloud storage capacity
- Plenty of features to ensure consistency and security of customer data, spearheaded by AES-256 encryption
- File synchronization, backup automation, limited scalability, and plenty of other features outside of general data storing capacity
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- CBackup’s licensing is subscription-based and is also separated in four pricing tiers
- “Free” – $0 per month, a very basic feature set with 10 GB of cloud storage and 1 GB of traffic per month, supports up to 2 backup threads, end-to-end encryption, and most of CBackup’s feature set
- “Standard” – $1.99 per month, up to 100 GB of traffic per month, 5 threads for backup/synchronization tasks, 24/7 support, and backup scheduling
- “Essentials” – $4.99 per month, includes 2 TB of traffic per month, 1 TB of cloud storage, and all of the aforementioned features
- “Premium” – $14.99 per month, no limitations on the traffic per month, 5 TB of cloud storage, up to 7 backup/synchronization threads, and the rest of the feature set
My personal opinion on CBackup:
CBackup is another interesting offering that combines cloud storage and backup functionality. It can offer plenty of backup-related features, as well as data protection, multiple backup targets, and so on. Its pricing plans are separated based on the amount of traffic transferred from one place to another – but the solution itself is relatively cheap, even in its biggest package that has no limitations on the amount of traffic consumed. CBackup does not offer anything exceptional in terms of the feature set, but it is rather cheap and offers a great price-to-performance ratio for plenty of SMBs to be satisfied with it.
Duplicati
Duplicati is an offsite backup software that does not have its own hosted server space, offering the customer to choose one of the third-party cloud storage providers. Duplicati also supports customer-oriented cloud storage providers such as OneDrive and Dropbox. Other than that, Duplicati is a backup solution that is completely free and open source, making it extremely useful for smaller companies that have a limited budget for data security. That does not mean that Duplicati is always user-friendly, however. It may be problematic in terms of the initial setup and the regular usage, and the lack of customer support makes this particular problem that much more significant – although it is not surprising, given that this is a free solution.
Customer ratings:
- G2 – 4.1/5 stars based on 8 customer reviews
Key features:
- Extremely flexible backup solution with a lot of customization options – backup destinations, data recovery options, and so on
- Vast automation options that can also be customized to an unprecedented degree, with different target storage types, different backup types, etc.
- Support for plenty of third-party cloud storage services, as well as various physical storage
- Can be extremely difficult to get into and learn about different features for newcomers and less experienced users
Pricing (at the time of writing):
- Duplicati is completely free and open-source, the only cost that can be attached to it is the cost of third-party cloud storage of a client’s choosing – and that tends to vary quite a lot depending on the cloud storage provider
My personal opinion on Duplicati:
Duplicati is a rather unusual contender for the status of a free offsite backup solution – it is one of the few solutions in this article that is actually free (if not the only free one), which is relatively obvious based on its open-source nature and licensing model. It is extremely versatile and can offer a great deal in terms of backup and recovery customization, including automation, scheduling, backup targets, storage targets, and even support for a variety of third-party cloud storage services as backup storage locations. At the same time, the solution in question has a rather high knowledge barrier – information that is required in order to be able to operate it properly, and the learning curve of Duplicati is rather steep, which may not be the best option for all users.
Bacula as a free offsite backup solution
The list above showcases that there are quite a lot of different offsite backup solutions available, but most of them have some sort of limitation when it comes to either traffic, data compatibility, application compatibility, backup levels, scalability or storage capacity, meaning that free solutions such as these turn into a paid solution sooner or later. There are, however, some solutions that are actually free and have far fewer limitations when it comes to how much data they can work with – Bacula Community is one such solution.
If you’re looking for a free offsite backup solution, Bacula might be the best solution. It’s an open source software solution that is especially capable of handling a variety of different backup and recovery variations. It is extremely scalable and as a result is popular with many large organizations. Bacula’s use requires some knowledge of Linux, however once it is implemented, it is extremely robust and stable. Bacula offers a number of advanced storage management features that can make your life a lot easier. There is a lively online community and the software continues to enjoy further development and an exciting roadmap. For ease of use, Bacula offers a choice between a GUI and a command line interface. Bacula is free and immensely popular, with well over 2,5 million downloads and several thousands of contributors from all over the world.
Why you can trust us
Bacula 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 the Marketing Director Rob Morrison.
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.
