CrashPlan Reviews

Pros

Trustworthy backup solution. Having used code42's backup solutions for both business and personal backups for over 5 years, I can attest to their reliability and speed of backup.

Business plans allow one to access employee backups online, which saved us a ton of rework.

Personal plans also allow remote restoration, giving real peace of mind regarding the safety of personal files.

Pros

I used Crashplan for almost 2 years, as a client to backup all my clients data on local servers. the menus are simple and yet complex and when the time comes and you need to recover your data the process is very simple and quite fast (depends of course what size of backup data files you have)

Cons

Does a lot of problems with Very old OS (windows XP for example) sadly as a company that have some very old software that don't work well on win7 and above the Crashplan didn't work good on them.

the Price is little bit high compare to other products in the market

Alternatives Considered

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Reasons for Switching to CrashPlan

Recommended by a colleague

Pros

Until recently, Crashplan for Small Business was very reliable.

Cons

I have used Crashplan for Small Business for many years. They have recently implemented a change, as of May 1,2019, which had devastating effects for my businesses. They have chosen to remove from the backup all files in the /user/xxx/library/containers/ directory as well as all root directory application and system folders.

My company’s financial data was stored by our 3rd party Unix app in that directory and Code42 just randomly excluded it from backup, even though it was in the USER directory, and deleted ALL PREVIOUS BACKUPS without permission. Apparently they sent this information out in a “newsletter” to their business clients in Mid April, and implemented the change on May 1.

We had a file corruption of our database on May 18, and we were unable to recover from our online backup with Crashplan. The company made this change to a live system, had no backout plan and no recovery path for the data they deleted without our knowledge or permission. We lost 10 years of data. Absolutely devastating. The customer trust has been breached, but their attorneys claim that we didn’t have a “contract”. This is unbelievable on so many level, and my guess is that most business clients do not realize that this is happening or that their data is missing until they go to recovery and find it gone.

Pros

Once CrashPlan is set up it runs continually, in the background, backing up as you work. I have not noticed any affect on my computer processing speed like I did with other backup software

Cons

Sometimes the backup on the second computer fails to connect.

Pros

It does everything it claims to do, and it does it quickly, quietly and seamlessly. The administrative console is easy to use and navigate. After the environment is up and running, maintenance and administration is minimal.

Cons

There is an occasional delay in responses to online tickets, mostly due to time zone differences depending on who picks it up. Phone support is faster if you cannot wait.

Pros

Schedule
Versioning
Remote Recovery
End-User management
Bandwidth Management
Encryption
Easy-of-User

Cons

If you have to pay 120$ per computer per year, you may look at alternative that gives other features. Sometimes, Dropbox is enough.

Pros

The master console! All settings and controls for all clients are configurable from one console. The reporting is great and gives us great insight as to how much data is on our client machines and who to scold when thier music folder is 500gb. The fact that if one of my Executives is traveling and gets their machine stolen or lost and being able to just download the app and sign in on a new machine and start restoring thier data is AMAZING. We had that happen, Mac stolen in London enroute to a big pitch for new business. He called me in an absolute panic. In a 5 minute phone call we had the data he needed for the meeting restoring to a new machine that he had just purchased at the Apple store, when he left the Apple store he had all of his data back, with 1 FIVE minute phone call.

Cons

In previous versions Java usage was a bit out of control, but they have had that fixed for a few versions now, so no cons at all.

Pros

Legal hold feature. Ability to lock down controls from administrator level and prevent users from not backing up. Ease of use for the client as well as the administrator console.

Cons

Night mode was removed from newer versions of the console.

Pros

Ease of deployment
Ease of use
The support team

Cons

The movement from Cold Storage could use a little more work.

Pros

Just works, low admin overhead.

Pros

The interface is clean and intuitive. Data de-duplication seems to backup lots of files efficiently even if you re-organize your folder structures. Upload and download speeds are generally good.

Cons

Back-up used to run automatically, but changes to the app in 2020 made it so that the app constantly logs outs so that you have to enter your password and run a back-up manually or nothing is backed up. If you do run a back-up manually, sometimes the app will now log you out before your back-up has finished. Worse still, if you move or delete a large number of files in a short time the app treats your computer as a new device and starts charging you for two devices resulting in being charged double. This is hard to fix because customer support isn't very good.

Alternatives Considered

Carbonite

Reasons for Switching to CrashPlan

When I signed up Crashplan was very economical, has a free feature for backing up programs to your own devices, worked in the back ground consistently and reliably and was generally hassle free. None of that is true any more. I miss what Crashplan used to be.

Pros

Installing, maintaining, and updating the PROe server is trivial on both Debian Linux and OS X. (One-click updates directly from the administrative console would be a nice addition, since locating update files on the Code42 site is not as quick as it perhaps should be, but that's a minor nuisance).

Likewise, installing and configuring clients is fast and easy, and once the client software is installed on a workstation, the administrative console allows control of all client settings, saving legwork. Client access can be restricted to ensure that backups are not interrupted, and CrashPlan PROe has a complete set of legal hold tools available in a separate administrative interface should your organization require them.

The client is lightweight and offers good granular control over bandwidth use. The server is extremely flexible, allowing any number of storage points on any number of running servers, even across server platforms, and the CrashPlan architecture further allows any client to be delegated as a storage point for other clients, in the case of, for instance, a satellite office scenario, disaster recovery, or server maintenance.

Cons

The only real operating nuisance I've encountered is browser incompatibility with the otherwise lovely administrative console, which does not scale properly for Mobile Safari, and which presents a baffling "server disconnect" message on Safari for OS X. On the desktop, one can simply use Firefox or Chrome, but a proper mobile Safari theme--or even the ability to permanently eliminate the client download prompt when accessing the console from a mobile browser--would be a huge improvement for those of us who do an increasing amount of our admin tasks from our mobile devices.

The ugly is that this wonderfully designed, private cloud backup system, which was once my first choice for small business clients, is now available only in packages of 25 licenses and up. Not only does this make no sense from a supply side—Code42 incurs no storage or infrastructure overhead from private cloud backup, so one would think they would prefer to sell these licenses—but it arbitrarily shuts out small businesses from a product which is otherwise perfect for the small business use case, forcing these businesses, often creative firms which generate multiple gigabytes of new data each hour, to rely on Code42's public cloud product (try uploading 2 terabytes on virtually any broadband connection in the US) or, more realistically, to look elsewhere for onsite backup solutions.

I used to recommend CrashPlan PROe to all my small business clients. I can no longer do so, not because the product is not excellent—it is—but because Code42 literally will not sell it to them if they can't buy 25 or more licenses. The mind boggles at whatever bean-counterish logic led to this decision, which both locks small businesses out of an otherwise ideal product for their needs, and amounts to Code42 throwing away all potential revenue from those in the small business sector who cannot rely on public cloud backup alone.

I'd encourage small businesses and consultants working with small business to contact Code42 anyway, and put some pressure on them to revise this policy. CrashPlan PROe is otherwise as close to a perfect product as I have seen in the last ten years of IT, and it is simply foolish to refuse to sell it because a client has a smaller budget or smaller needs.

Pros

The cost for this backup is what most people value. The option to encrypt your backup prior to sending it to Crashplan's server is comparable with other high end backups. The option to backup to multiple other devices also makes CrashPlan one of the very few backups that allow you to multi-backup to different sites, machines, or other users using CrashPlan.

Cons

The time to backup a 1TB drive could take well over a month (My experience). It never tells you when all files are completely backed up, but continuously keeps backing up. The software does not tell you if a backup has failed or cannot pend. Overall, great value for a small business with 5 or less employees, however, if your a larger company, I would look else ware.

Pros

The free plan offers really great features, being able to backup to a separate computer has been in-valuable. With the paid-for option offering an even better service, letting you backup directly to CrashPlans cloud servers.
Restoring to previous versions is also super simple, with a simple-to-use user interface it really isn't hard to figure out. Also, restoring is a very quick process, much faster than other backup programs I've used in the past.
The initial installation and continued maintenance of CrashPlan is also very straight-forward, taking virtually no time at all to do either.

Cons

The biggest negative of CrashPlan is the sheer amount of resources it takes up on your PC / MAC to get these back ups done. On a pretty powerful machine you can sometimes notice a very slight lag.
Integration with other firewalls can be a pain, especially if using a more obscure and not-well-known brand. Also, the web interface doesn't work on some web browsers, which isn't a big problem for me, as I solely use Google Chrome. But it may be a sticking point for other users.

Pros

They have good support and their website has good online support.

Cons

Several times over the past year the s/w just disappears from my computer and I have had to reinstall it. Code42 acknowledges that sometimes this happens. The only way I know this happens is that I get an email saying "your computer has not been backed up for <n> ways". The price has also doubled. The s/w also seems unable to complete the backup if scheduled to run only during off hours. I have opted to quit using it when my monthly subscription expires this month and replace it with a less expensive, faster and more reliable product.

Pros

- Fairly easy to deploy
- Secure
- Noisy when it needs to be
- Enables the admin to be hands-off but they can check in on a backup anytime using the admin portal

Cons

- The end-user experience to set up the tool is pour. As an admin who helped implement this tool I had to walk though the initial setup process with a large number of end-users because they were overwhelmed by the setup process
- After 1.5 years of this tool being implemented, most end-users still don't keep their list of items CrashPlan backs up up-to-date. Their backup list is only updated when they start experiencing hardware issues
- Using Migration Assistant to restore data to a new Mac will corrupt the CrashPlan app and it must be reinstalled which causes confusion for the end-users

Pros

Small app that does a good job of backing up important files. It auto restarts and rarely fails. If the app does fail the system notifies you via email. It keeps multiple revisions of the files so you can not only restore them quickly but go back to a later date if you need to. The app allows you to set up a local backup as well as your cloud backup for quick restores. Definitely, a must if you are required to store legal documents for up to 8 years like our company.

Cons

The app can sometimes get stuck on huge files but most of the time it resolves the issue without assistance. Can sometimes take up a lot of RAM depending on how many files you need backed up.

Pros

Crashplan was easy to setup and provided great customer service for a fair price.

Cons

Many of the features of Crashplan were aimed at enterprise clients, and the management portal was somewhat overwhelming for the needs of our small organization.

Alternatives Considered

Carbonite

Pros

It backs up everything you tell it to and has a ton of flexibility in how it does that. It is easy to deploy and manage your devices to make sure they are being backed up and haven't fallen behind on backing up.

Cons

It cannot do a bare metal restore. We can easily restore files, but not from the ground up. You will have to spend some time building the machine again to get it back to where it was if you are doing a complete restore.

Pros

The most impactful feature is backup and restore.
We use this product to take backup of our entire data on the PC.
The entire backup process goes easy and ofcourse because its automated.

Cons

There is no such feature that I find is missing from my perspective.
It gives all the possible and feasible options which are required from a user's point of view.

Pros

Software had an amazing design. You could use an an existing old computer as a backup drive for your other computers on the network and share it with additional family members.

this was new and different from competitors

Also - the software subscription fees is quite affordable

Cons

With cloud services coming on and advent of networked machines, expecting that Crashplan would continue to offer more differentiating features

Pros

CrashPlan will backup your entire server regardless of size for virtually nothing. I can't believe they can do it for such a nominal fee.

Cons

This seems like a stupid thing, but I really wish they would auto-send me my invoices each month. I have to reconcile my credit card statement and turn it in to our accountant who requires supporting documentation, and it is a bit of a hassle signing in to get the invoice when they could easily set it up to email me each month.

Pros

Knowing that if one of our users loses any data we can get it back, we don't need it often but it has definitely saved us a few times. We install it on all of our users computers and they don't even know it is there until they need it, it is lightweight and easy to use.

Support is also excellent.

Cons

There really is nothing I do not like about it, we have tried a few different backup solutions and this is by far the best.

Pros

It is easy to set up the background task and get it running.

Cons

The recovery interface is not very user-friendly.

Pros

Once installed on the computer or server you would like backed up you never have to touch it again really. I've now installed this on 6 different machines in our business that I wanted to be backed up offsite and it works seamlessly and effortlessly. It runs in the background and has tons of settings in which you can modify how you want the backup to occur. You can choose which files, how often, when, how much bandwidth to use, how much CPU to use, and does it with ease.

Cons

I can't really come up with much of a con really. I use this as a company expense so that makes the price easier to swallow but I can still see this being useful for a single user at home as well.