| Online Backup Review | |
Mozy Pro Review: Is Mozy Pro Online Backup Right For Your Business? |
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Mozy Pro is one of two online backup solutions offered by Mozy. Mozy Pro, as the name implies, is for “professional,” or business use. Their other service, Mozy Home, is for home users. With Mozy Pro, you get all that the home service offers plus additional features geared specifically for businesses. You also pay a little more for these extra features;) There are two different licenses offered by Mozy Pro – desktop licenses and server licenses. You need one license for each computer your business will be backing up. You’ll pay $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month for each desktop license, and $6.95 + $0.50/GB per month for each server license. You do get a price break, however, if you sign up for a one-year or two-year subscription. You can also get a 15% discount if you use the coupon code provided below. The Mozy Pro server license provides all the features of the desktop license plus Microsoft Windows Server OS support, network share support, backup & restore of Exchange, SQL, and VMWare, VSS writer backup and restore to Exchange, SYSVOL, and Active Directory. Regardless of which licenses your business may need, you’ll discover after reading this Mozy Pro review that this is an affordable online backup solution for small and medium businesses. Use coupon code: JULY Offer only valid on 1 and 2 year subscriptions |
| Reviews & Overview | |
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Expert & Customer Reviews:
This year (2009) marks the first time an online backup and recovery service has won the top spot, and honors go to MozyPro. -Small Business Computing I have been using Mozy for about a year for medical/dental client databases for over 14 clients and adding more nearly every month. Backups under 20 GB are easy and take only a few hours with a normal ADSL class download. -Mozy Pro Customer For the SMB, the professional service (Mozy Pro) is very affordable...this service needs your Internet connection to be top-notch. So, if you do jump into an online backup service like this, take the money you were spending on tapes, backup software licenses, and backup servers to upgrade your Internet connection to the best you can afford. -Rick Vanover, Tech Republic Mozy Pro works fine for us as a secondary measure but we don't use it as our primary backup. We'd recommend it as a secondary backup. -Mozy Pro Customer My Review of the Mozy Pro Online Backup Service Best For: Pros: Cons: In the interest of full disclosure, I have not used Mozy Pro nor have I used any online backup solution for business use. My experiences with online backup services are strictly for home use. So why am I even bothering to give a Mozy Pro review? Good question. Since Mozy is a company I have used and would recommend for home use, people are going to notice when they visit Mozy.com that there are two services available. I owe it to my visitors to at least give them some information about Mozy Pro so they know what it's about and how it differs from Mozy Home. Suffice to say, if you are reading this and you're looking strictly for an online backup solution for your home computer, you don't need Mozy Pro! However, if you are looking for an online service for a business then hopefully you'll find enough information here to get you started. When I put this review together I spent at least an hour searching online for "Mozy Pro reviews" and other variations and it was incredibly tough to find any reviews or comments from actual Mozy Pro users. Most of the reviews and comments I found were for Mozy Home. Either folks that use Mozy Pro are so pleased with the service (as it seems only people who have bad experiences with a service make an effort to complain), or not too many businesses are using it. I'm not sure. Either way, I did find some information worth sharing. FreelanceSwith.com did a brief overview of Mozy and there were some comments left by people who have used Mozy Pro and some weren't that glowing. Keep in mind, there were only a few negative comments and they were left in 2007. I would think that the primary issues the folks pointed out have been corrected by now. The primary issues were that the software was "buggy" and one guy said it was a resource hog and bogged down his system. The other concern that was pointed out was that restoring a large amount of data takes at least 24 hours - and that's just to have Mozy prepare the restored files. That doesn't include the actual time it takes to download the files or order the DVD backups. As one guy said, this alone may render the service useless for doctors, lawyers, or any business that would need any lost data backed up quickly.
I did find some positive comments as well. I saw a lot of the usual, "it works just fine for us" to "it's not perfect but it does the job." Someone at TechSupportForum.com commented that they had several clients using Mozy Pro and have had, "universally good experiences with their technical support and with the success of the backups." Bottome Line of this Mozy Pro Review After reading all the reviews of Mozy Pro I could find, I came to the same conclusion I did for the online backup solutions I recommend for home use - none of these services are perfect. You especially can't expect perfection at these prices. According to my research, Mozy Pro is one of the most affordable online backup solutions for businesses. Some of the prices I saw for competing services were quite a bit more than Mozy Pro. That's not to say Mozy Pro is dirt cheap either, although they used to be until EMC bought Mozy in 2007 and significantly increased the prices of Mozy Pro services shortly after in 2008. Some say the purchase of EMC was a good thing for Mozy Pro users because EMC's expertise is providing rock-solid enterprise solutions for businesses. Unfortunately, EMC has a history of placing a premium price tag on their services so there is the possibility that as Mozy Pro scales in performance and features, so too will the price. Regardless, Mozy Pro is probably in better hands now than it was before EMC came along. If you're looking for an online backup solution for your business then Mozy Pro is definitely worth checking out. And since they do offer month-to-month plans, it wouldn't cost much to test the waters for a month or two to see if it's the right solution for your business. |
| Online Backup Service Specs | |
| Storage Capacity | Unlimited - you pay by the GB |
| File Security | Files are encrypted on your computer using 448-bit Blowfish encryption and then uploaded to Mozy through a secure 128-bit SSL tunnel, the industry standard for safe and secure data transfer. |
| Backup Process | Automatic or scheduled backup |
| File Restoration | Your encrypted files are stored on Mozy's remote servers. To restore files you have 3 options: web restore, client restore, and DVD restore |
| Software | A small program is installed on your computer and works in the background during backups |
| Compatibility | Windows Vista, XP, 2000 & Mac OS X; Windows Server 2003,2000 & Mac OS X Server |
| Pricing Information | |
| Current Promotion | 10% off 1 and 2 year subscriptions; use promo code: JULY |
| Price Details |
Desktop Licenses: $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month |
| Customer Support | |
| Telephone Support | Yes |
| Live Chat | Yes |
| Email Support | Yes |
| Company Information | |
| Company Background |
Mozy was founded in 2005 and was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2007. EMC is a leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions for organizations. Mozy is now part of the Decho Corporation, a subsidiary of EMC Corporation. Decho Corporation is located in Seattle, WA and Mozy's headquarters are in Pleasant Grove, UT. The current CEO of Decho is Harel Kodesh. As of October 2008, Mozy had more than 900,000 customers, 25,000 business customers, and 11 petabytes of information stored at its multiple data centers around the globe. |
| Official Website |
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Geoff:
Thanks for the feedback. While I disagree with you that there aren’t a lot of business backup options (because there are), I think I understand what you’re saying. I suspect you have a small business and your computer backup needs don’t require a sophisticated solution (which a lot of the backup systems for businesses are). Mozy Pro, while not perfect, is probably is as good as it gets for small businesses in terms of providing the most basic backup needs and being affordable. Keep your eye on Carbonite however, as they are going to be rolling out a business solution soon.
TravisVS
Site Admin
Just a warning, folks. If you have at least 2G of data to recover, be prepared to wait at least a whole day for Mozy Pro to fully restore all your lost documents. Add another day to that if you hit a snag as it practically takes another day to get hold of technical support. I’m still going to use Mozy Pro though, because at the moment, there aren’t a lot of options available for business backups. But now at least I know that everything is not as easy as they make it appear.
Alex:
Thanks for the suggestion. I am considering adding SugarSync to the mix of online backup providers so stay tuned. As for your business needs, you may want to give MozyPro a shot if you just have a few computers at your store to backup. You certainly wouldn’t need anything fancy I wouldn’t think and MozyPro may be perfect. I don’t know when Carbonite will be rolling out their business backup product, but I’ll let you know as soon as it does.
TravisVS
Site Admin
Travis, it would be interesting to find more reviews of other online backup service providers here in your site other than Carbonite and Mozy. As for a Carbonite Backup for businesses I’d probably be one of the first to sign up for a free trial
I already use it at home and would like to have the same easy interface for the PCs I use in my small hardware business.
Mark:
I think you mean I rated Mozy HOME second to Carbonite as Carbonite doesn’t have a business solution yet to compete against Mozy Pro. Nonetheless, I’m glad to hear you’ve had success with Carbonite.
As for Mozy Pro, which this review is based on, it’s a great affordable solution for small businesses. Rumor has it that Carbonite will be rolling out an online backup solution for businesses as well. It should be interesting;)
TravisVS
Site Admin
I see that you’ve ranked Mozy second only to Carbonite, and rightly so. I’ve had the chance to use the two online backup services and while they are both user-friendly and as you say, “dirt-cheap”, I’ve had some problems restoring files with Mozy. No such issues with Carbonite though, as their restore function worked flawlessly for me.
Chris:
Awesome comments!! Thanks so much for taking the time to give a mini review of Mozy Pro. I appreciate it.
TravisVS
Site Admin
I have used MozyPro for small business customers at work, and MozyHome for, you guessed it, my home
use. I currently backup just short of 1TB for home. Most small business customers backup ~50GB.
This is a solid reliable service. Handles SQL Server and Exchange nicely. Not for the novice, though.
For example, backing up a shared drive is witchcraft. Talk about having to learn the secret
handshake. The user interface can be confusing, but now that I’m used to it I have respect for what it
can do. I’ve had to do some restores for individual files which worked flawlessley (beautiful because
I can restore a customer’s file from my office or anywhere with an Internet connection and then email
them the most recent backup of the file within a couple minutes). Clients are amazed. I know that’s
not a unique feature of Mozy, but at least I’ve SEEN it work (several times) which counts for a lot with me.
Phil:
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with Mozy Pro backup. Regarding your comment about the accuracy of what I wrote, I simply passed along some information I read about from other IT professionals (or business folks) who have tried Mozy Pro. As I stated in the beginning of the review, I have not used Mozy Pro myself so I can’t really comment on it directly.
I appreciate folks such as yourself taking the time to share their experiences with Mozy Pro, however, so that others who read this will get more anecdotal information.
Thanks!
TravisVS
Site Admin
You’ve written a review of other reviews and not an entirely accurate one. Much of what you’ve written, however, is, so I’ll only comment on the one glaring deficiency. I’ve used MozyPro for over a year and on dozens of servers and workstations across a half dozen client companies. There is an option in the configuration to allow Windows Explorer to display the virtual drive; in fact, by default it shows the backup virtual drive. This can be navigated like any other volume in Explorer; I believe the home version works similarly. I have renamed a file that had been backed up by Mozy Pro, then gone to this virtual drive (hosted by Mozy) and selected that file to be restored. Within a few minutes, it was. It has never been my experience, and we regularly test restores as SOP, to have to wait more than a few minutes, let alone “24 hours.”