Mozy—our previously favourite tool for setting up foolproof, off-site backups—has changed its pricing, most notably dropping unlimited backup plans. Bummer for Mozy users. Here are the details:
Under the new plan, you can back up 50GB on one computer for $US6/month, or 125GB on up to three computers for $US9.99/month. Current Mozy unlimited can keep their unlimited backup through their last payment term (for example, I’m pretty sure I paid for a year last month, so I should be good through December 2011). For all other existing customers, the new plans will take effect on March 1. As a loyal Mozy unlimited user, I admit I didn’t really know how much I was backing up, so I checked the computer I back up the least from: Turns out, it’s 226GB. Uh oh.
You can add an additional 20GB of storage to the 125GB account for $US2/month per 20GB, so we’re talking an extra $US10/month for an additional 100GB. In my case, for example, I’d need to pay $US20/month to back up this one computer—up from my previous $US5/month for the unlimited plan.
I love Mozy, and have been using them loyally for years, but this is a pretty huge price jump. Mozy explains the increase by discussing how much more data users are making these days—which I suppose is true, but then storage gets cheaper every year, too, right?
Oz ed note: Using unlimited online backup in Australia has often been problematic anyway because of the existence of upload limits on many ISP plans, which is something our US cousins are only just discovering as a nasty market reality. That said, shifting from unlimited to 50GB is a pretty big shift.
From a business perspective, we can sympathise, but from a user perspective, this is potentially a big problem. Mozy seems to think all backup services that offer unlimited plans will be heading in this direction, and that may be true. Either way, it looks like we may be on the hunt for alternatives.
While we do our hunting, you may want to check out our Hive Five best online backup tools. And if you’ve got an online backup alternative with unlimited plans that you’re happy with (I know a lot of people like Carbonite), we’d love to hear about it in the comments.
New Plans [Mozy]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.