Does your Online Backup Service Backup your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Other Online Accounts?

November 20, 2009

By Robert C. May, President of http://www.backupify.com

Does your Online Backup Service Backup your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Other Online Accounts?

Affordability of Online Data Backup Services
Can I afford to use online backup? That is not the question you should be asking. The right question is ‘Can you afford to lose all your data’. This article is not meant for those who think they cannot afford an online backup service. If the answer is no, then read on and find out whether or not you can afford to use online backup services for backing up all your important data.

Why Online Backup Services Are Useful
First let us understand why using online data backup services are essential. When you backup your data locally on a hard drive or other devices like CD/DVD, they are prone to certain threats. These include threats from virus or physical damage or threat from calamities like fire, burglary and floods or any other natural disaster. Online backup service providers are trained to handle such threats and react to them. Most of the backup processes are performed without users’ involvement; hence your work does not get affected in any way.

Since backup is so important and service providers are so efficient and unobtrusive, do you think you should look at affordability? Definitely.

Online Backup Selections
Some online backup companies offer optional, limited free services. All websites that allow you to store data online are not online backup services. Some are online storage - meaning you store your data once - the process might not be automated to continuously backup your data as your files change. These online storage sites at times require you to manually upload your files and do not install a client side software to do the task for you automatically. Home users who have limited amount of data may find this useful especially when the service comes in for free. Some might restrict bandwidth usage.

If you wish to use online backup services for backing up your data, then there are a number of service providers out there. All you need to do is sign up for the service from their websites. If your need just to backup 2 GB or less, consider signing up with free services. However, if you have to backup more than 2GB of data, you can always compare various service providers against certain parameters and decide accordingly.

Remote access and recovery of data should also be kept in mind while selecting a service provider for online backup. Selection of the online backup service provider should be determined by specific factors you identify.

What Files and Accounts To Backup
One area of data most users don’t back up is their social network accounts, like Facebook, and Twitter as well as Gmail. At Backupify, we believe that the future of data is in the cloud. Consumers and business are installing less software on PCs and using more hosted software. The question that naturally arises is who will back all that up? The choice is clear - it is Backupfy.

Backupify is one of the few companies currently solving that problem. Backupify provides online backup of Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Hotmail, Basecamp, Delicious, Xmarks, Google Docs, Blogger, Wordpress, and more.

Backupify is built on Amazon Web Services so that it is simple, secure, and scalable. Previously, backing up services such as Gmail, Facebook, or others required users to export data manually or use software that they had to install on their PC. With a Backupify account, a customer can set up multiple social media accounts in just a few minutes and from there, all backups are automatically run once a day with no further intervention. All backups are then stored in the cloud for easy access from any computer with an Internet connection.

Reasons for backing up cloud data are different than reasons for backing up local hard drives. Cloud data is unlikely to be lost due to hardware failure, the most common cause of lost data on PCs. As data moves to the cloud, hacking, viruses, and user error are much more common concerns that prompt users to backup their online accounts.

The company formed one year ago, in November 2008, and has seen strong demand for backup of social media accounts since launching publicly in June, 2009.  Account options range from free backups for Twitter to $15 per month for 50Gb of storage and unlimited social media accounts.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that there are options for every type of user who wishes to use online data backup services. If there is no service charge at all, then there is absolutely no question of affordability, and even if you have to pay for it, just evaluate the service on your important parameters. The risk of data loss, including your social networking and email accounts, should be weighed against the price and not vice versa.

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Robert C. May is the President of Backupify.com and his bio can be found here

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