CrashPlan vs. Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365

This is a great Cloud backup solution. The cost is low, the bandwidth is managed well within the application, and the footprint for the client on a machine is very small and provides a notification menu icon with info about what is happening now or very recently. This does not backup to anything locally, so if that is a requirement, it will not meet that need. It used to be able to backup from one machine to another remote machine at one time, but now it is only cloud-based.

Incentivized

Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 is well suited for medium-size companies who have a significant amount of free storage and want to keep their own copies for retention/legal reasons. It is also a great way to back up SharePoint sites in the event of something being lost or incorrectly changed by a user. It is not great for deep visibility into your backups and exact sizing. There is no good way to truly view which items are taking up storage without digging into PowerShell commands.

Incentivized

• Code42 is the most affordable backup system offering unlimited storage that I could find. I came from SOS Online Backup, which I ultimately decided to drop after my monthly rate for their unlimited plan increased by 20x.
• With Code42's unlimited storage option, I don't have to worry about the fact that my backups are significant in space. As a photographer with thousands of images at stake, I need to run large backups often.
• Code42 runs continuously and silently in the background of my desktop computer. It is truly "set and go", so I don't have to think about it when I'm away. It runs until the designated drive has been fully backed up to my cloud storage. It will then automatically email me once the backup is complete (or, it will email me if it encounters any errors).
• Customer service is above par. Anytime I need help, a chat agent is available (chat is my communication preference), they are always friendly, and go above and beyond to resolve my needs.

Incentivized

• My CFO seemed to have lost a whole year of important emails. I simply restored them to his mailbox in a matter of minutes.
• An employee left the company but an issue came up with a quote this person sent out. I could search his mailbox and got the quote as well as all communications from that customer.
• It is nice to be able to search emails in various mailboxes without disturbing the user.
• It is also nice to go back in time. Say they deleted those emails last month I can go back years if needed.

Incentivized

• The CrashPlan program installed on your computer is Java-based vs. a native application. While this makes development for CrashPlan easier, there are a lot of drawbacks to Java programs including more resources usage, less stability, and overall more clunky interface.
• While this was also in the Pros category - CrashPlan is an extremely powerful and flexible program, which adds a great deal of complexity. Setting up CrashPlan isn't always a simple procedure, and depending on the complexity of your backup set, can take a while to tinker around with the settings to get everything to work properly.
• The CrashPlan desktop program consists of a Java program front end, as well as a backend service - there are times when the backend service will crash, and the front end Java program will refuse to load. Typically, restarting the service or restarting the computer will resolve the issue, but sometimes more in-depth troubleshooting is required.
• Perhaps one of the biggest downsides to CrashPlan is its price - at $10/month/computer CrashPlan is more than double the price of some existing backup services such as Backblaze (priced at $50/year/computer). To add salt to the wound, about a year and a half ago, CrashPlan discontinued their consumer options - which were very reasonably priced at $60/year for a single computer or a family plan priced at $150/year for up to 10 computers. When these options were discontinued, the cost of backing up with CrashPlan was effectively doubled for the same feature set.
• Along with the previous example, CrashPlan had the option to back up to a remote machine on a different network with a free Crashplan account. This option was eliminated when the consumer line of services were discontinued.
• While the backup service provided by CrashPlan are still first in class, the above two controversial changes have broken some trust between CrashPlan and its clients.

• Backing Up "Public Folders" is quite a hassle, but this is not the "fault" of Veeam but the way Microsoft exposes this data.
• No option to integrate the product into their other solution, it would be great to access M365 backup in the Backup & Replication application.

Incentivized

No other product works as well.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 just works so well and is so easy to use. I researched multiple options for Office 365 backup and none seemed to be as easy to setup and use as Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 and the pricing was very comfortable to us. I can't imagine any reason why we would change away from Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365.

Incentivized

Overall, it is simple to use, lightweight, and effective.

Incentivized

Veeam Data Cloud has an easy and user-friendly interface, easy integration with Microsoft 365 cloud, strong backup and recovery functionality, and robust security features. It is one of the few solutions that can export to .pst files and also has a very simple opt-out because the data is stored on the Microsoft cloud.

Incentivized

I have yet to need it during any of their scheduled maintenance windows. It's always online.

Incentivized

We have a lot of data, and pulling backups out of the store sometimes takes a bit of time - but this is within acceptable tolerances. I don't expect restores to be instantaneous, and I can't quantify if the speed is software or data repository.

Incentivized

Friendly and knowledgeable support team available to assist with this product. Code 42 (formerly CrashPlan) offers unlimited storage options for reasonable costs, so you really can't go wrong with this product. They have been a reliable resource for our company, and I would recommend to others looking for an easy setup with unlimited storage.

Incentivized

Support for all Veeam products is pretty good. While documentation sometimes is written for someone who's already an expert on the platform, their support portal is easy enough to use, and they are very responsive once a support need is documented. I have never had a problem with Veeam that could not be resolved in fairly short order.

Incentivized

Very easy to follow the install guide.

Would have marked a 10 but the storage in AWS was very complicated. Would be nice to have more help/guidance connecting to external storage.

Incentivized

CrashPlan (in my specific case the CrashPlan Pro or CrashPlan for Small Business (there seems to be somewhat of an ongoing identity crisis with the products) is significantly lower overhead, in terms of cost and complexity, when compared to the other two products I have evaluated/used. The downsides are that it is also significantly less functional than the other products. CrashPlan is, as I have said a good value simple point solution.

My familiarity with Veeam Data Cloud specifically is what drew me to the product. They both seem equally capable, but when you know a product you generally tend to go that direction. I believe the other provider could back up our environment, but I am not familiar with it and as I have stated when you need to get up and going quick it is best to be very familiar with the product you are utilizing.

Incentivized

I have had no issues scaling this software as my organisation or data estate has grown. It always does exaclty what it says on the box.

Incentivized

• Tremendous cost savings as the amount of data you backup doesn't impact cost. One flat rate!
• Implementation time was minimal and requires little to no maintenance. Since installation, I've not had to correct or fix any issues. It just works.
• We opted to supplement Code42 with another solution that allowed us to backup data to a local repository due to the amount for data that changes in our firm.

Incentivized

• The only real impact is from a compliance standpoint. Our company is expected at a regulatory level to be protecting our data and even though the tenant has little traffic there could still be some regulated data in there. We have to be able to tell an auditor that it's being backed up by an enterprise grade solution, and that's what VDC was intended for.

Incentivized