BackupAssist: Product Overview and Insight

See the full list of Top 10 Leading Backup Products 

Company Description: BackupAssist develops Windows Server backup and recovery software for small and medium businesses. As such, it focuses on ease of use, but includes more advanced features for the expert.  Founded in 2001, it is a private company and part of Cortex I.T. Labs Pty Ltd., which is based in Australia. 

Product description: BackupAssist is a backup, disaster recovery and ransomware protection product designed for small and mid-sized enterprises that run Windows Servers and virtualized environments. BackupAssist first hit the market in 2002, and has since gone on to sell to 165 countries, with hundreds of thousands of servers backed up. In 2017, new ransomware protection features called CryptoSafeGuard was added, shielding backups from corruption by ransomware. A new cloud engine featuring data deduplication was also released. 

Key Features: 

·  Backs up entire servers for fast disaster recovery to physical or virtual machines (P2P, P2V, instant recovery)

·  Support for Hyper-V, Exchange, SQL, with granular restore options

·  Ransomware detection and shielding protects and preserves backups from being corrupted by ransomware attack

·  Backup to cloud using our advanced engine, featuring data deduplication, compression and encryption

·  Easily implement multiple layers of backup protection, including onsite, offsite, cloud, and archival backups in cold storage.

·  Centralized management and monitoring services, as well as MSP and reseller monitoring services available

Insight and Analysis: Analyst firm Storage Switzerland said BackupAssist’s, “two-pronged approach of protecting the backups themselves from an attack and checking the contents of the backups for evidence of compromised files in the environment is a solid approach. The first allows companies to use a Windows-based backup system without the risk of their backups being corrupted. The second ensures typical backup practices don’t end up erasing the protected copies once an infection happens.”

The analyst firm also said it: “provides enterprise class features and performance normally found in more expensive and complex data protection solutions. Its features and options make it simple to deploy and manage which make backups fast and stress free. It also works with a wide range of storage targets including the cloud and tape.”

However, it did not make it into the Gartner MQ for data center backup. While BackupAssist is successful in bringing enterprise-class features down to the SME market, it does not play well in the large enterprise space. 

Implementation: Install a 30-day trial on the server you’re backing up. Configure in 15 minutes, run a test backup and scan for ransomware-corrupted files, and then you’re done. For multiple server deployments, link each install to BackupAssist centralized monitoring and administration services to manage the backups at scale.

Delivery: Software installed on user machines, together with monitoring services provided by the BackupAssist cloud servers.

Markets and Use Cases: All but large enterprise and corporate data center markets. BackupAssist only backs up Windows systems.

Agents: No

Pricing: BackupAssist (Core Product) = $279

BackupCare for 12 months, including CryptoSafeGuard = $106 

MultiSite Manager 12 Month License = $289

MultiSite Manager 24 Month License = $462