no more unlimited online backups w/ Mozy smh

Dear Macario James,

Thanks for being a valued Mozy subscriber. For the first time since 2006, we’re adjusting the price of our MozyHome service and wanted to give you a heads up. As part of this change, we’re replacing our MozyHome Unlimited backup plan and introducing the following tiered storage plans:

50 GB for $5.99 per month (includes backup for 1 computer)
125 GB for $9.99 per month (includes backup for up to 3 computers)

You may add additional computers (up to 5 in total) or 20 GB increments of storage to either of the plans, each for a monthly cost of $2.00.

While this policy takes effect for new MozyHome customers starting today, your MozyHome Unlimited subscription is still valid for the duration of your current monthly term. In order to ensure uninterrupted service, you’ll need to select a new renewal plan.

As the leader in online backup, we’re committed to continually providing the highest levels of service and protection that you’ve come to expect from us as well as delivering those innovations you’ve been asking for. For more information on the factors that led to this change, please read my note or visit our FAQ.

That, my friends, is the email i received from Mozy about two weeks ago regarding the changes to their service.

Livid. Up in arms. Surprised. Are all apt to describe how i was feeling. I’m fine with paying a premium (within reason) for a great, even good service. But, with Mozy, that hardly was the case: often, my backups wouldn’t complete for days at a time (i had them scheduled daily at 4am) and they were very slow to upload my files to their servers. And, i only had about 400GB backed up!

So, i decided to look into their competitors. Surely, they couldn’t be as insensitive nor wouldn’t want to take a PR-drumming like Mozy has with their annoucements.

I found three alternatives: BackBlaze, Carbonite, and CrashPlan.

I added the yellow circular emphasis

My criteria was as follows: unlimited space, secure backups, $5-15/month, and allowance of video/music files backups. All three sufficed on the requirements. I decided on BackBlaze, though, for a purely superficial reason: i loved their site layout and aesthetics. Plus, their sticking-it-to-Mozy with the message (highlighted above) was awesomeness i couldn’t pass up.

It seems like BackBlaze is truly a top-notch service! I didn’t even begin to backup anything, but i was given a detailed breakdown of what BB would do for me (it’s below):

After excluded some duplicate folders (i just installed a new internal 2TB hard drive, and copied some files over), i’m going to have an initial backup of 1TB (that’s 1,000 GB or about 10 iPod classics lol). I look forward to reporting in the next few weeks how my initial backup fared, as well as if i run into the same issues as with Mozy.

I encourage everyone to sign up with an online backup solution. I’ve had several external HDDs die on me in the past few years, and it’s not fun to lose music, video and/or important documents or schoolwork.

Hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading 🙂

I’m out.

Peace