CrashPlan Reviews

Trustworthy backup solution. Having used code42's backup solutions for both business and personal backups for over 5 years, I can attest to their reliability and speed of backup.

Business plans allow one to access employee backups online, which saved us a ton of rework.

Personal plans also allow remote restoration, giving real peace of mind regarding the safety of personal files.

It's easy to setup and once you do you can forget it. Also, support team is very responsive nad helpful (had few minor problems along the way and they were quickly resolved).

Compared to some other softwares the upload speeds could be better (I tested same files with the same network and Crashplan was the slowest).

This software is easy to use and configure. I have recommended this software to others who are not tech savvy and they loved it. It's easy enough for them to "set and forget" and files recovery is as easy as selecting the folder/file you want to recover then process it.

Cross platform is a definite positive and we needed a solution that worked with MAC and Windows.

I have used this software for a few years installed on a MAC and a Windows machine. It was good until I upgraded to Sonicwall Gateway. With the latest firmware it seems as that CP on the MAC had a hard time bypassing the firewall security so I had to explicitly open all the required ports then it started running normally again. Months went by without any issues then problem with the MAC machine reappeared where it cannot connect to the CP server (meanwhile no configuration change was made to the firewall).

I have worked with both technical support from CP and Sonicwall, both have different ideas of what may be the problem. It's just odd that the MAC CP is having problems communicating out of the firewall while the Windows machine is fine. Further finetuning of the firewall will be required.

In conclusion, CP is a good reliable and cost effective backup solution providing that you are behind generic firewall. However, you may run into frustrating issues if you are behind advance security gateways like Sonicwall, Fortinet, etc. and it's not as low maintenance as one would expect it to be.

This is an overall great data backup solution. I have used this for many many years for backing up my parents personal and small business computers. Great tool.

I cannot think of any real cons for this software. There are some cheaper options nowadays for data backup. However, this is still a great tool.

I used Crashplan for almost 2 years, as a client to backup all my clients data on local servers. the menus are simple and yet complex and when the time comes and you need to recover your data the process is very simple and quite fast (depends of course what size of backup data files you have)

Does a lot of problems with Very old OS (windows XP for example) sadly as a company that have some very old software that don't work well on win7 and above the Crashplan didn't work good on them.

the Price is little bit high compare to other products in the market

Once CrashPlan is set up it runs continually, in the background, backing up as you work. I have not noticed any affect on my computer processing speed like I did with other backup software

Sometimes the backup on the second computer fails to connect.

It does everything it claims to do, and it does it quickly, quietly and seamlessly. The administrative console is easy to use and navigate. After the environment is up and running, maintenance and administration is minimal.

There is an occasional delay in responses to online tickets, mostly due to time zone differences depending on who picks it up. Phone support is faster if you cannot wait.

Schedule
Versioning
Remote Recovery
End-User management
Bandwidth Management
Encryption
Easy-of-User

If you have to pay 120$ per computer per year, you may look at alternative that gives other features. Sometimes, Dropbox is enough.

The master console! All settings and controls for all clients are configurable from one console. The reporting is great and gives us great insight as to how much data is on our client machines and who to scold when thier music folder is 500gb. The fact that if one of my Executives is traveling and gets their machine stolen or lost and being able to just download the app and sign in on a new machine and start restoring thier data is AMAZING. We had that happen, Mac stolen in London enroute to a big pitch for new business. He called me in an absolute panic. In a 5 minute phone call we had the data he needed for the meeting restoring to a new machine that he had just purchased at the Apple store, when he left the Apple store he had all of his data back, with 1 FIVE minute phone call.

In previous versions Java usage was a bit out of control, but they have had that fixed for a few versions now, so no cons at all.

Legal hold feature. Ability to lock down controls from administrator level and prevent users from not backing up. Ease of use for the client as well as the administrator console.

Night mode was removed from newer versions of the console.

Installing, maintaining, and updating the PROe server is trivial on both Debian Linux and OS X. (One-click updates directly from the administrative console would be a nice addition, since locating update files on the Code42 site is not as quick as it perhaps should be, but that's a minor nuisance).

Likewise, installing and configuring clients is fast and easy, and once the client software is installed on a workstation, the administrative console allows control of all client settings, saving legwork. Client access can be restricted to ensure that backups are not interrupted, and CrashPlan PROe has a complete set of legal hold tools available in a separate administrative interface should your organization require them.

The client is lightweight and offers good granular control over bandwidth use. The server is extremely flexible, allowing any number of storage points on any number of running servers, even across server platforms, and the CrashPlan architecture further allows any client to be delegated as a storage point for other clients, in the case of, for instance, a satellite office scenario, disaster recovery, or server maintenance.

The only real operating nuisance I've encountered is browser incompatibility with the otherwise lovely administrative console, which does not scale properly for Mobile Safari, and which presents a baffling "server disconnect" message on Safari for OS X. On the desktop, one can simply use Firefox or Chrome, but a proper mobile Safari theme--or even the ability to permanently eliminate the client download prompt when accessing the console from a mobile browser--would be a huge improvement for those of us who do an increasing amount of our admin tasks from our mobile devices.

The ugly is that this wonderfully designed, private cloud backup system, which was once my first choice for small business clients, is now available only in packages of 25 licenses and up. Not only does this make no sense from a supply side—Code42 incurs no storage or infrastructure overhead from private cloud backup, so one would think they would prefer to sell these licenses—but it arbitrarily shuts out small businesses from a product which is otherwise perfect for the small business use case, forcing these businesses, often creative firms which generate multiple gigabytes of new data each hour, to rely on Code42's public cloud product (try uploading 2 terabytes on virtually any broadband connection in the US) or, more realistically, to look elsewhere for onsite backup solutions.

I used to recommend CrashPlan PROe to all my small business clients. I can no longer do so, not because the product is not excellent—it is—but because Code42 literally will not sell it to them if they can't buy 25 or more licenses. The mind boggles at whatever bean-counterish logic led to this decision, which both locks small businesses out of an otherwise ideal product for their needs, and amounts to Code42 throwing away all potential revenue from those in the small business sector who cannot rely on public cloud backup alone.

I'd encourage small businesses and consultants working with small business to contact Code42 anyway, and put some pressure on them to revise this policy. CrashPlan PROe is otherwise as close to a perfect product as I have seen in the last ten years of IT, and it is simply foolish to refuse to sell it because a client has a smaller budget or smaller needs.

I use CrashPlan for Small Business. The greatest thing about CrashPlan is that it offers unlimited backup and this is not a gimmick. When they say unlimited, we're talking all of your precious terabytes. The 2nd greatest thing about CrashPlan is they have amazing customer service. I hardly ever find myself waiting and their help is always fast, precise and effective. If you are someone who has a lot of data then $10 per month is going to seem like a small price to pay to know that data is always safe.

If you don't have a super fast connection then backing a terabytes is going to take some time but their support forum has a comprehensive guide to increasing speed and decreasing backup time. It's an additional $10 per computer so some people may take issue with this but again for unlimited back up it's still very reasonable in my opinion.

Decent cross platform support, not limited on backup size. It has a number of options to backup your data.
Can't beat the price for the storage. Keeps deleted files indefinitly.

Runs on java, easier network and removable storage backups. More control on the backups with deletions, selections and exceptions. Verification on file backup could be better. Needs block level deduplication.

this app does what is meant to do. Assuming you have a decent upload speed it can handle several GB of files and backup within a few hours. For those with normal documents the backup would be instant no matter your providers upload speed.

The cons are not against Crashplan but the needed upload speed which many providers limit. It works fine for smaller files but if sending hundreds of large image files a higher speed connection is needed to keep up.

- Fairly easy to deploy
- Secure
- Noisy when it needs to be
- Enables the admin to be hands-off but they can check in on a backup anytime using the admin portal

- The end-user experience to set up the tool is pour. As an admin who helped implement this tool I had to walk though the initial setup process with a large number of end-users because they were overwhelmed by the setup process
- After 1.5 years of this tool being implemented, most end-users still don't keep their list of items CrashPlan backs up up-to-date. Their backup list is only updated when they start experiencing hardware issues
- Using Migration Assistant to restore data to a new Mac will corrupt the CrashPlan app and it must be reinstalled which causes confusion for the end-users

Managing hundreds of computers (and the data within each) can be an enormous task, but CrashPlan organizes and manages this need impeccably. Users tend to dislike this kind of program, because they often involve interruptions of slowdowns during their work (while it backs up their files), but CrashPlan does this seamlessly behind the scenes as a non-intrusive background process. Now, any of our user's computer could crash hard, and we'd be able to recover it in very little time and with very little effort.

There's little to dislike. I wouldn't mind if it cost less, but the price is reasonable if you're protecting data of even modest value.

Crashplan was easy to setup and provided great customer service for a fair price.

Many of the features of Crashplan were aimed at enterprise clients, and the management portal was somewhat overwhelming for the needs of our small organization.

It backs up everything you tell it to and has a ton of flexibility in how it does that. It is easy to deploy and manage your devices to make sure they are being backed up and haven't fallen behind on backing up.

It cannot do a bare metal restore. We can easily restore files, but not from the ground up. You will have to spend some time building the machine again to get it back to where it was if you are doing a complete restore.

I am a software consultant for a fortune 100 company, and they have rolled out CrashPlan to all the macs. The software just runs..and never stinks CPU to back up your machine. You never have to worry about the software...it just does its job and backs you up. Highly recommended.

when on VPN, CrashPlan still attempts to back you up...I wish there was a feature that would sense that you are on VPN and throttle or delay the backups (a setting, not everyone would like this feature)

The CrashPlan agent works really well. We have not had any issues with backups not starting and we have not had to fix the agent connection once. I love the file versioning and the options for restoring files.

The web console isn't great. The UI is clunky. Assigning organizations and creating users takes a couple more clicks then it needs to.

CrashPlan will backup your entire server regardless of size for virtually nothing. I can't believe they can do it for such a nominal fee.

This seems like a stupid thing, but I really wish they would auto-send me my invoices each month. I have to reconcile my credit card statement and turn it in to our accountant who requires supporting documentation, and it is a bit of a hassle signing in to get the invoice when they could easily set it up to email me each month.

They nail the endpoint backup thing! The new features they have added are great for certain uses cases, such as legal holds and insider threat monitoring.

Would love to get away from the need for an on-premises appliance while still keeping the security that we get with the appliance. Would save the inconvenience of constantly updating and patching to keep up with all the latest and greatest. Would also love to have a native app rather than a Java based app.

I like that it runs in the background when I schedule it to. It can easily store documents from more than one computer and is easy to set up. Retrieval of information and documents is easy and allows you to select some or all of the documents.

It is hard to get a hold of any customer service representatives. If there is an issue its hard to resolve quickly.

Once installed on the computer or server you would like backed up you never have to touch it again really. I've now installed this on 6 different machines in our business that I wanted to be backed up offsite and it works seamlessly and effortlessly. It runs in the background and has tons of settings in which you can modify how you want the backup to occur. You can choose which files, how often, when, how much bandwidth to use, how much CPU to use, and does it with ease.

I can't really come up with much of a con really. I use this as a company expense so that makes the price easier to swallow but I can still see this being useful for a single user at home as well.

Crashplan worked in the background without slowing down my computer. It works without you having to do anything once it is set up so you don't forget to do the backups. You can backup to the cloud as well as a local drive.

They have recently upgraded and will no longer support home users. Setting up was a bit confusing and finding individual files is kludgy.