Fast performance & mature feature made Backupify #1 in the review, but its backup success rate & overall reliability are low
Backupify
Pros
- Fast backup & restore operations (but slower than Afi)
- Multitenancy (ability to manage multiple domains from a single Backupify account)
Cons
- Unreported fails: when Backupify is unable to backup & skips files from backup, it still reports it as successful.
- Reliability issues (low overall backup success rate, errors during initial setup, restore and export).
- No Gmail/Contacts online preview (makes restore & version browsing difficult).
Backupify achieved #1 in the review thanks to its fast performance. Backupify is faster than with any other vendor (but Afi). It also has all the key G Suite backup features including the audit log, admin roles, mbox export for Gmail and email alerts for admins.
On the flip side, Backupify proved to be less reliable than other solutions. The overall backup success rate was 86%, significantly less than the market benchmark of 95-97%. During the test period Backupify executed backup runs 3 times a day and 2,890 of the total 3,361 backup runs were successful.
All the successful backups that were examined (50) proved to be recoverable. 3 recovery attempts yielded a 500 error screen, but eventually the restore operations succeeded on the 2nd attempt.
You may have seen this screen if you use Backupify
The most significant Backupify issue is related to Google Drive Backup. In some cases the service is unable to complete the backup of all Drive files and it skips them. At the same time, admin is not notified about such incomplete backups. In the reporting module Backupify presents such backups as successful. Even if admin manually goes through the reporting tables and discovers the unreported (partially) failed backups, then there is no way to see the list of the files skipped from in the backups.
Backup runs with files skipped from the backup are reported with Success status in Backupify
Backupify has configurable email admin reports with a summary of daily/weekly G Suite backup events. However there are no instant alerts and when backup or restore operations fail, no notifications are sent to the domain administrator. Backupify dashboard shows the number of protected and total users in the domain as well as the storage consumption and recent events, but no status of the backup runs. In order to track the number of failed or successful backup runs administrator must head to the reporting section and generate a report manually.
There is no Gmail preview for emails in Backupify. If you need to restore data, you will have to export the mailbox contents offline and browse through them using MS Outlook, or another email client, in order to find the lost messages.
The offline export works fast, but requires multiple steps to complete. Instead of the instant download option, you need to start the export by clicking the Export button, then go to the export section and wait for the export link to appear. Once the link appears there, the admin can use it to start the download.
Backupify provides configurable admin roles that can be configured to allow IT administrators to backup G Suite user data, execute data recovery and data export. The system has no end-user self-service recovery portal and no configurable roles for the end-users.
Backupify is working on the new UI, and in the meantime there are two interfaces stitched together (Classic and New). No details for ongoing backup and restore operations - this will probably be fixed when the solution fully migrates to the new UI.
Company Background
Backupify was launched in 2008 - earlier than any of its competitors, and before the notion of cloud-to-cloud backup became apparent. At the time, it was the only cloud G Suite Gmail backup tool, providing backup for organizations as well as consumer Gmail backup for individuals.
In 2014 Backupify was acquired by Datto Corporation, which tried to integrate the solution into its broader disaster recovery and data protection solution. Datto's main focus is hardware appliances with replication, backup and NAS capabilities. As part of Datto, Backupify backup for G Suite was de-prioritized and started to experience quality and customer service issues. Reddit and other community resources have a lot of negative user feedback concerning reliability and service issues in 2017-2019.
Datto Backupify dropping the ball - Reddit r/Data/Hoarder
All i can say is that i hate [Backupify] like a fat kid hates exercise.
Let's forget about the random failures for no particular reason.
Let's forget about the UI that makes you want to open a vein and wait for sweet relief.
Do [Backupify] know the meaning of the words "reporting" or "notification"?
buster3845
Despite the negative feedback, the company continues to work on the product, improving it and adding new features. In 2019 Backupify released 32 updates mostly focused on product stability, almost 3x more than in 2018 (11 updates) and 2017 (10 updates).