AppStorm

by Justin Stravarius

A major USP of the cloud and SaaS apps is data security. Anyone with logical thinking would understand the benefits of having their data stored in a world class data center managed by experts and their data duplicated across multiple centres across the globe for redundancy.

There’s still one part of most cloud setups that makes it weak, the human connection. Human errors can override the checks and balances in place and threaten the safety of the data stored. We’ve witnessed quiet a few instances of this. Backupify helps you set up an extra layer of backup ensuring peace of mind.

Overview

Backupify is a secure, all-in-one archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and more. That’s right, this web app helps you backup the cloud services you’ve chosen for having superior data redundancy services.

Over the ensuing months I’ve come across tones of situations when popular technology companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft accidentally deleted or wiped out customer data. And this article couldn’t have come at a better moment as just a few days ago, Google deleted about 150,000 Gmail accounts’ data by mistake.

The accounts are since being restored, but unnecessary anxious moments and in some worst cases, serious financial implications could be avoided by using a reliable third party tool to backup the data stored in remote cloud servers.

Pricing

Backupify has two paid plans and a wonderful free plan. While a lot of popular cloud apps are covered in the free plan, you will have to pay to get data from Google Apps accounts backed up. The number of accounts being backed up, storage limits and the schedule of backups vary with each plan. All paid plans come with a 30 day free trial period.

Getting Started

As I mentioned earlier, Backupify supports a laundry list of services to backup and you can start doing it as soon as you sign up. Since my cloud accounts are usually jam packed to the brim with data, I chose to backup my Twitter account for this review.

Before jumping in, I have few nice things to say about Backupify’s user interface. For an app that performs a mission (well, at least a quazi) critical task, they have a simple and clutter free interface. The design is very user friendly and even non-tech savvy users can find what they are looking for in a few seconds.

Mission Backup

The backup process begins with a very predictable step — allowing Backupify access to my Twitter account. Allowing access to Twitter happens via OAuth and your login credentials are not stored by the app.

Backupify for Twitter creates daily, independent archives of your Twitter feed, protecting your precious tweets from the clutches of the Fail Whale. Backupify doesn’t just backup your data in non-readable gibberish format, but in fact downloads your Twitter archive as a searchable PDF book at any time, even when Twitter is offline.

All your archived tweets, direct messages and mentions of your user name (@replies) are preserved for posterity. The app also maintains a record of your Twitter friends, followers and favorites.

Well, that’s about all the hard work you will have to do. Setup takes minutes and your information is stored safely and securely in the cloud. The account is added to the backup queue and you will be notified when the import is complete.

Accessing Archives

Another plus point about Backupify is that with one account you get centralized access to all of your information, stored securely and ready for restoration or transfer at a moment’s notice. Even though the app informs you that it will take about two to three days to complete a backup, in my experience, I found it to start immediately and if the account doesn’t have too much data, you can get the backup in a few minutes.

You can keep an eye on the status of the backup from the History tab. This section logs all completed and in progress imports with a detailed timestamp.

Once the import is complete, the data can be accessed from the Archives section. It often throws a “Server is experiencing heavy load” page, but if you can get past that, you will see data backups neatly laid out for each service under its won category.

Backupify performs daily or weekly backups of your online data, based on your subscription plan. And as for the ownership of data, Backupify clearly states that all the data is yours and you can do whatever you please with it. When it comes to data retention, in the case of free accounts, the archives are maintained until you delete it.

For paid subscriptions, there is a seven day grace period after a subscription has ended and after that the data will be purged.

Final Thoughts

Backupify is a billion dollar idea. Over time, Backupify has put skeptics to shame (that includes yours truly, albeit partially). The number of cloud apps available for backup is impressive and so are their pricing plans. Backupify has proved, without doubt, a necessary utility in this era of the cloud, but the question of why someone skeptical about data on the cloud will import data back to the cloud.

An option to allow customers to get data sent back to them in DVD or physical media could really go a long way in building confidence. If you are someone who has made a serious investment in SaaS apps, Backupify is the data bodyguard you are looking for.