CloudBerry Desktop Backup Review

CloudBerry at a Glance

Your Rating

Rate CloudBerry[rate]

Our Rating

3.75 / 5 stars
[xrr rating=3.75/5]

Price:

  • Base price of $29.99/per copy and the price will include free updates for the first year.
  • Prices for cloud storage depends on provider.

Pros:

  • Very flexible. Can be setup how you like.
  • Can be used for cloud and local backup.
  • Strong encryption choices.
  • Many choices for cloud storage.
  • Meets Security Now Trust No One (TNO) rating.

Cons:

  • Windows only.
  • More complicated than most backup services.
  • Need to provide own storage. (This could be consider a Pro depending on how you look at it).
  • Mobile and web access not available.

Download CloudBerry

Full CloudBerry Review

Cloudberry (1)CloudBerry is a little different from what I usually review here on Cloud Storage Buzz, because CloudBerry does not provide cloud backup but they make it possible to backup to your own cloud backup services.

Installation
For my testing I installed the trial version of CloudBerry Backup Desktop Edition. They offer other versions for servers, MS SQL, MS Exchange and Enterprise, but since my main concern is backing up my desktop and most of the readers here are home users that is the version I decided to take a look at.

CloudBerry is a unique product because unlike most of the services I review here, CloudBerry is a product than a service. They do not directly provide cloud backup, their software allows you to connect to your own storage, local, network or cloud based and backs up your data to those locations. The number of options available to backup to are numerous. They include local storage, local network storage, FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 and Glacier, Google Cloud Storage (not the consumer cloud storage), Rackspace, Windows Azure and the HP Cloud.

To use CloudBerry you need to not only install their software but also have accounts with the cloud storage provider you intend to use to store your backup. If you are using local storage or another local storage device this might not cost you anything additional. If you are using another cloud storage provider you will need to be signed up and pay for that storage in addition to purchasing CloudBerry.

Installation is easy enough to do download from the website and double click the installer. I was testing on a Windows 8.1 virtual machine and also had to install the Microsoft Visuall C++ package. It easily sent me to the Microsoft website to download and install that as well. Once I had the Visual C++ package installed I restarted the CloudBerry installer and had no issues.

Backing Up
Unlike other cloud backup software that is also a service, CloudBerry does not provide cloud backup directly, you need to provide your own to use CloudBerry. Thankfully CloudBerry supports a wide range of backup destinations including Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Rackspace, HP Cloud, Microsoft Azure and local and network drives. When you start the backup wizard to create a backup plan you can select and setup a backup destination or you can add and edit the destinations separately. In my testing I tried four different destinations, a local folder, an FTP location, an SFTP location and Amazon Glacier.

Destination 1: Local Folder
This was by far the quickest to set up. Created a new folder and selected it as the destination. The backup ran and all the files where backed up to the folder.

Destination 2: FTP Location
I run an FTP server on my local network so I tried backing up to that FTP location as well. I had no problems having CloudBerry backup to the FTP location. Since this was on my local network it was quick but if I had selected an FTP location on the Internet somewhere I am sure it would not have been as fast.

Destination 3: SFTP Location
If you are sending files over the Internet it is always a good idea to use a secure connection so I tried setting up an SFTP destination to my Backupsy VPS server that I have still been playing with using BitTorrent Sync. I had no problem connecting to the Backupsy VPS account using Filezille but was not able to successfully connect using CloudBerry. After reading the forums I suspect it was because the Backupsy certificate is a self signed certificate and CloudBerry could not accept it. While I understand the reasoning behind this it would mean if you want to use your own server over SFTP you would need to get a real security certificate to make CloudBerry work.

Destination 4: Amazon Glacier
Setting up Amazon Glacier was extremely easy. I logged into my Amazon AWS account copied and pasted the credentials into CloudBerry and setup a small backup plan. It easily sent everything up to Amazon Glacier for storage.

One of the strengths of CloudBerry is their encryption, and they are one of the few that have gotten the “Trust No One” approval from Steve Gibson of Security Now. You need to make sure you setup the encryption when you setup your backup plans but they have made that easy to setup and use.

Overall you have a lot of choices of how to backup your data, where to back it up and you can manage it all from inside CloudBerry.

Restoring
The restoring wizard is as easy to use as most restore wizards are. I only tested my local backup test to restore and it was easy and all the files were restored with no problems. Depending on the backup destination will make a difference on how long this takes. For example restoring from Amazon Glacier is going to take longer than restoring from a local backup.

Overall
Overall CloudBerry backup is some very impressive backup software but it is not for everyone. If you like to manage everything about your backup and manage where your backup is stored CloudBerry makes it easy to manage it. If you just want to install a backup service and have it work, well CloudBerry might not be for you.

Download CloudBerry

Screenshots

Download CloudBerry

Review updated December 5, 2013.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Share This