¹ Online Backup Service Mozy Discontinues Unlimited Backup Plans - My Plan Now Costs 1390% More Money - Thoughts Media Forums Digital Home Thoughts

Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

Register in our forums so you're ready for our next giveaway contest...


Zune Thoughts

Loading feed...

Apple Thoughts

Loading feed...

Laptop Thoughts

Loading feed...




Go Back   Thoughts Media Forums > DIGITAL HOME THOUGHTS > Digital Home Talk

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 02-01-2011, 08:37 PM
Jason Dunn
Executive Editor
Jason Dunn's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
Default Online Backup Service Mozy Discontinues Unlimited Backup Plans - My Plan Now Costs 1390% More Money

Up until today, I've been an extremely enthusiastic supporter of Mozy for the past several years. For $93.56 USD, I was signed up for a two year plan that worked wonderfully. That works out to only $3.90 per month, which is affordable for anyone who has a computer and an Internet connection. Even if you were paying the $4.95 monthly fee, it was still cheap. I was such a fan of Mozy I was constantly evangelising their service to friends and family; I've seen the effects of data loss first hand and wouldn't wish that anger and frustration on anyone. For the price of a Starbucks coffee per month, Mozy would protect all of your digital information...until now.

Today Mozy announced what I consider to be one of the most bone-headed business decisions in the history of cloud-based services. They discontinued their unlimited backup plans and have replaced them with a $5.99/month plan with 50 GB of storage, and a $9.99/month plan with 125 GB of storage. How much data do I have with Mozy? 634 GB. For $3.90 per month, I'm certain that Mozy was losing money on me because there's so much data used in my account. However, my family members who have 20 GB stored with Mozy? Mozy is making money off them. From a business model perspective, it should balance out that most users have smaller data sets and in the aggregate, Mozy is profitable. Kind of like the way health insurance is supposed to work.

However, just like corrupted health insurance business models that want to squeeze profit out of even their sickest members, Mozy has switched to a model that will doubtless eject their heaviest data users. If you have more than 125 GB of data, you need to pay for that excess data in 20 GB chunks at $2/chunk. How does the math work out for me? If I buy 645 GB of total storage, it will cost me $61.99/month or $54.24/month if I sign up for two years again. That's a 13.9x increase in fees in a best case scenario, which I'm obviously not going to pay. I have until July of this year to decide whom my next databack provider is going to be, but it sure as hell isn't going to be Mozy.

So why did Mozy do this? I'm not sure, but I'd guess they wanted to get rid of the top 5% who were using up lots of storage. By making the fees ridiculously expensive, I'd say anyone with more than 125 GB of data will leave Mozy and take their heavy usage patterns with them. Mozy will think, short term, that they've "won" - they'll reduce their costs on storage by forcing all the users with lots of data to leave. Long term though, Mozy's reputation has been trashed and, worse, they've shown themselves to be a company completely lacking in integrity by changing the fundamental reason customers signed up with them to begin with: unlimited data backups.

Right now I'm looking at LiveDrive, Backblaze, and CrashPlan. CrashPlan in particular has me interested because I'm already using it to act as a backup host for data from my in-law's computer and my sister's computer. They have a really innovative backup system that involves having encrypted blobs of your data on the hard drive of another computer. LiveDrive has a discount for people fleeing Mozy, and Backblaze developers their own storage servers which I've always found to be really cool.

One things for sure: I'm no longer a fan of Mozy and will be actively encouraging everyone within my sphere of influence to cancel their accounts when it's time for renewal.

__________________
Want to contact me personally? Use this. Want to read my personal blog? Check it out. Want to follow me on Twitter? Here you go.
 
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 02-01-2011, 11:11 PM
Phillip Dyson
Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,520

It's strange, a few days ago I was thinking that a tiered approach might make sense for those that wanted to pay for additional computers, or WHS support. I might have even considered putting in extra money for this.

But then today I got my Mozy notice indicating that my plan would go from $54/year to $131.89/year. According to their email I"m storing 137.39 gigabytes with a single computer.

That's quite an increase. I'm not sure what I'll do. I'm definitely back in the market come March 1st. Which is probably their plan to begin with. Perhaps they want to push their heavy users to their Pro plan. I had considered doing a price comparison. At least then I might get WHS support.

Mozy can give you the credit for me even using them versus other competitors. You've given me something to think about concerning such an obscene increase in fees. To be honest I would have expected maybe a $10 increase to the unlimited and some lower end tiers, but this is crazy.

I think I'll check out the off-site backup landscape again. I noticed you didn't mentioned Carbonite, your previous service. Was that intentional?
__________________

Phone: Nexus one Backup Phone: AT&T Samsung Jack; Future Phone: I'm Watching WP7; Media Player: Platinum Zune HD 32GB; Home Server: HP MediaSmart Server LX195 Console: XBox 360, PS3, Wii
 
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 02-01-2011, 11:15 PM
Jason Dunn
Executive Editor
Jason Dunn's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson View Post
Mozy can give you the credit for me even using them versus other competitors. You've given me something to think about concerning such an obscene increase in fees. To be honest I would have expected maybe a $10 increase to the unlimited and some lower end tiers, but this is crazy.
If Mozy had said, "OK, we need to change our business model, we can't scale to the data storage costs right now, we need to price the unlimited plan at $9.99" I wouldn't have been happy, but I would have been OK with that because it's still a good deal. But to take me from $3.90 to over $50 is highway robbery.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson View Post
I think I'll check out the off-site backup landscape again. I noticed you didn't mentioned Carbonite, your previous service. Was that intentional?
Ah, Carbonite. I used to use Carbonite (I actually helped them with their logo when they first started), but they irked me when they changed their backup plan to exclude videos by default – if you tag a folder full of vacation photos and videos for instance, the videos will NOT be backed up unless you go into the folder, manually select the video files, then tag them for backup. That’s just intellectually dishonest in my opinion – if a customer tags a folder for backup, they want ALL the files in that folder backed up. Carbonite does the same thing with EXE and ISO files; two formats that I use for digital software that I’ve purchased. Carbonite didn’t want to let me back up my purchased software, so I left them for Mozy.
__________________
Want to contact me personally? Use this. Want to read my personal blog? Check it out. Want to follow me on Twitter? Here you go.
 
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 02-01-2011, 11:42 PM
paschott
Intellectual
paschott's Avatar
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 211

I've been a really satisfied Crashplan customer (no relationship with company other than a paying customer). They're offering a 15% discount for Mozy customers who are coming over to them - it may be on their website, if not then it's in their recent Tweets. Unlimited backup, versioning of files (I'm sure there's a limit, but it's still cool), ability to back up multiple family PCs on one account, ability through their client to do backups to friend's pc's, local drives, etc., and the ability to do open file backups. I know a one year plan was $50, monthly plans are $5/month, and the prices slowly drop as you pay ahead.

I liked their ability to specify which folders are backed up as well. Too many programs try to make that easy for the consumer, but make it so dumbed down that you can't back up files stored outside of the "standard" folders.

One of the things I liked about Crashplan was that they don't have a "Server OS" restriction. Backblaze either wouldn't install on the server or required a much higher priced plan just for being on a server. I can't remember which right now, but I know it disqualified them.

I don't have any experience w/ LiveDrive. I don't remember them being a major player when I was evaluating a little while back.


So count a vote for Crashplan from a satisfied customer.
 
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 02-02-2011, 12:27 AM
buzzard
Theorist
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 276

What are the advantages of online backup versus an external hard drive? It certainly can't be space and it seems like a one time purchase is preferable over monthly or annual payments but I'm sure you have good reasons for using the online approach and I'm curious why. Is it that all devices are at the same location therefore a safety concern?
 
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 02-02-2011, 12:31 AM
Jason Dunn
Executive Editor
Jason Dunn's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160

Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzard View Post
What are the advantages of online backup versus an external hard drive?...Is it that all devices are at the same location therefore a safety concern?
Correct. An online backup is no substitution for a local backup because it's so slow to upload and slow to download (in comparison to a local drive); in the same way, a local backup is no substitution for an online backup because if you have a fire, flood, electrical surge, theft, or any other type of physical damage, odds are high that your external drive is going to get destroyed/stolen along with your primary drive.

If you're serious about protecting your digital memories, a three-prong solution is critical drive: master data, slave data (external drive), and off-site backup.
__________________
Want to contact me personally? Use this. Want to read my personal blog? Check it out. Want to follow me on Twitter? Here you go.
 
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 02-02-2011, 01:27 AM
paschott
Intellectual
paschott's Avatar
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 211

Gotta agree with Jason on this one. A single local drive can go bad. Easy way to lose everything on it. It's really, really easy to start treating that large external drive as a place to not only store backups, but also to start storing the original. It wouldn't start intentionally, but I've seen it happen, especially as files grow larger.

One of the big advantages of an online backup is getting your files out of the house/office and somewhere less likely to be affected, or at least less likely to be affected at the same time as you having a HD failure.

While I realize it's a subscription service, I think it's cheap insurance to use an external service. I can only imagine what sort of grief I'd face if all of our family pics disappeared due to a hard drive failure.
 
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 02-02-2011, 01:29 AM
Jason Dunn
Executive Editor
Jason Dunn's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160

Quote:
Originally Posted by paschott View Post
While I realize it's a subscription service, I think it's cheap insurance to use an external service. I can only imagine what sort of grief I'd face if all of our family pics disappeared due to a hard drive failure.
I've seen it happen and, honestly, it's horrifying - especially the strain between husband and wife where the wife assumed the husband was backing up the treasured family photos and he wasn't...it's ugly. Real ugly. And for under $6 a month from a variety of services, it's simply foolish not to do backup in SOME fashion, preferably external AND online.
__________________
Want to contact me personally? Use this. Want to read my personal blog? Check it out. Want to follow me on Twitter? Here you go.
 
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 02-02-2011, 05:42 AM
Phillip Dyson
Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,520

I just wish I could find something to work with my WHS. Right now its conducting backups of all of my PCs, but there is now way to get those backkups online.
__________________

Phone: Nexus one Backup Phone: AT&T Samsung Jack; Future Phone: I'm Watching WP7; Media Player: Platinum Zune HD 32GB; Home Server: HP MediaSmart Server LX195 Console: XBox 360, PS3, Wii
 
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 02-02-2011, 06:16 AM
Jason Dunn
Executive Editor
Jason Dunn's Avatar
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phillip Dyson View Post
I just wish I could find something to work with my WHS. Right now its conducting backups of all of my PCs, but there is now way to get those backkups online.
I don't think there's anyone that wants to tackle all that data - it would be kind of insane (though I too wish I could back up all that data!). Do what I do: install SyncbackSE and pull content from your WHS onto an external drive, then push all the data into the cloud via a backup service. It's not as much work as you think, and once it's running, it's 100% automated.

Although I should point out that this is only for the data on my network (files), not the bare-metal system backups. That would be an ungodly amount of data!
__________________
Want to contact me personally? Use this. Want to read my personal blog? Check it out. Want to follow me on Twitter? Here you go.
 
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 06:56 PM.