CloudZow First Impressions

If first impressions are important CloudZow has already proven to me that they are not really serious about online backup but are serious about being a multi level marketing scheme. I first started to hear about this new service from a number of comments that have been left here on the site. When I say a number it was a significant double digit number of comments from a number of different people all leaving affiliate links that pointed to different places but all ended up at CloudZow. Now I have no problem with affiliate links, obviously I use them here on the site, but I am more interested in offering good information to people to help them make a wise decision about online backup. I don’t push services to number one based on their affiliate payout or simply because they offer to buy the top spot. To put it simply, I tell the truth as I see it and the affiliate links help to pay the bills.

Back to CloudZow though. If you do a search for them on Google or even better on YouTube you don’t find much information about the service, instead you find a great deal of information on their affiliate program. To sum it up their affiliate program is a pretty basic multi level marketing program. Thus the cause of all of the comments from many of their affiliates here on the website I would suspect. They are all trying to get as many people to be under them as possible and instead of trying to make a decent website talking about CloudZow, just leave useless comments on a decent website about online backup. Not a good way for CloudZow to make an impression on me.

Since all of these CloudZow affiliates felt the need to leave useless comments all over my website I decided to take a look at this new online backup service, trying hard to not be biased because of the actions of their affiliates, but honestly how could I not be biased. The home page of the CloudZow website looked not to bad so I clicked the Sign Up Today link and expected to be able to sign up for their free trial they say they offer. Now a company that is serious about signing up customers you would expect to just be presented with a sign up form, not CloudZow, they offer you a great little line telling you that to sign up you need to “Contact your referring affiliate to get started today!”. Hmm not helping my impression of this company, I suppose it is great that they are supporting their affiliates but they seem to be more concerned about those affiliate sign ups than customer sign ups directly. Considering how competitive the online backup space is you would think they would just want people to sign up no matter what, but apparently not.

Since I could not sign up directly I went back and looked at some of the comments mentioning CloudZow here on my pendng comments section and picked one that seemed ~~less spammy~~ more intelligent than the others and clicked through. This took me to a landing page and eventually a sign up page. Lots of hops just to sign up for a service that is suppose to be easy. Once I was signed up I got my next red flag about the service. I got a welcome email with my user name and password sent to me in plain text over email. Not the most secure method of sending me my password, in fact anyone that could gain access to my email could also then gain access to all of my computer files that are backed up to CloudZow. Not impressed so far about the service.

Now that I have an account I could sign in to the website and download the client to install. The next red flag is on the login page on CloudZow. The link to the login screen on CloudZow goes to a plain http web page, not a https page by default. Now you can add https to the login page and it uses SSL encryption but this should be a red flag to all users to make sure they sign in using https. Why would an online backup company that is supposed to be concerned about security not have the login page and user account area default to using SSL I don’t know but it is a concern how secure they are.

I have since downloaded the Windows desktop application but have not had a chance to install it. It would be nice if their website gave more details about their actual application and service instead of focusing so much on the multi level marketing aspect. For example there are little to no details about where the data is stored, what kind of encryption is used, if you can use your own private encryption key etc. This service appears to have been built by someone more interested in multi level marketing and not someone with a passion to keep your data safe.

In any event my first impressions of this service are pretty poor and for $5.00/month you will be much better off with Backblaze or CrashPlan. Companies that you can trust to keep your data safe.

Note: I have not actually linked to their website because even if I did you would not be able to sign up through it, since I am not an affiliate for them, and I doubt I will ever be. Also note that any CloudZow affiliates that leave comments here that in my opinion are a total waste of my and my readers time will be marked as spam and deleted like all of the others!

Posted

Livedrive

Cloud Storage Buzz Team

Tags:

Cloudzow

Comments

11 responses to “CloudZow First Impressions”

Kay Thomas Brown

Hi .. here are the results of my CloudZow restore: first of all I did not know how. I logged into my acct and hit restore files.. took me to a page with a 2 1/2 min vid explaining how.. apparently with Windows you need to download a restore software … Mac’s it is built in. So I downloaded the software and ran the .exe .. it installed okay in less than a min. I then tried to login.. glitch .. I checked my login from my Welcome email.. for some reason they capitalized the first letter on my user email and first letter of my password.. so going with that I logged in okay. I then selected a single folder that had 3 sub-folders .. all having numerous files.. some pdf’s .. some html files.. I hit restore and it gave me the option to restore in original location or else where .. I selected a test folder I created on my external hard drive .. so they downloaded rather quickly .. it then gave me the option of creating a report on the restore.. which I selected yes.. bottom line.. I opened a couple of the files .. a pdf and an html file .. both in perfect condition…… here is my concern about CloudZow .. being they are a reseller of livedrive .. and an MLM to boot .. are they going to be around for the long haul? .. if I thought so and I am thinking about it … I would become an affiliate with them .. like Mobile Websites .. I think online backup is a valuable needed service .. I am just not convinced they will be around long term . . and I am not really sure how I would sell the service .. one question I still have which I will attempt to find an answer to is this: If CloudZow folds .. is their a means for customers to still restore their files through LiveDrive? I will post my results to this question when I get a definite answer… Over all though I am pleased with the upload software .. the download software .. the whole shebang..

Reply
1. Cloud Storage Buzz Team
  
  The Livedrive restore process is not the easiest one around. You should look in the folders that you restored and put the view on detail so you can see the file size. One of the common problems with Livedrive is files appear that they are there but it is just an empty file. Look and see that none of the files have 0kb as the files size. If so then you should be good.
  
  How long will CloudZow stick around is the question. One of the biggest problems with resellers they might not be around long term. Granted the MLM aspect of CloudZow is a new take on being a reseller, so perhaps it will make enough money to stay up or until the owners get tired of it and move on.
  
  There have been Livedrive resellers who have gone out of business in the past and the people that lose are the end users that have trusted the reseller to stay in business. If I recall when those other companies went out of business the users lost their files and had to start over again, Livedrive could not move the accounts over. I could be mistaken though. Someone who had an account at one of the ex-Livedrive resellers might be able to comment on what happened to their files.
  
  Anyways, nice the hear that someone is happy with CloudZow and Livedrive. In the end it is a good thing that you are choosing to backup.
  
  Reply
Kay Thomas Brown

I am a CloudZow customer. I found a flier in a local store and I had been concerned about backing up as my laptop is a few years old and so I installed the program. I like it a lot. It took a few days to upload all of my files. It runs in the background uploads any new files I have been working on. I know they are working from a resellers account with LiveDrive. That in a way makes me feel more comfortable, that they are not actually the engineers of the tech that backs up my files. LiveDrive has a resellers program and CloudZow took well advantage of it .. I have no problem with that .. I just like how it runs in the back ground and the knowledge that all of the stuff that I deem valuable on my computer can be restored if my hard drive crashes. Two of my grand kids have had that happen with in the last 2 years.. and my son in law a few years back lost probably a thousand photos of his daughter ..my grand daughter in her baby to 3 year old range .. gone forever those memories.. so I recommend cloud storage .. and like CloudZow ..just my opinion.

Reply
1. Cloud Storage Buzz Team
  
  The question is will you be able to get your data back if your hard drive dies? There are a number of people that have left comments here talking about how it is impossible to restore their data from Livedrive. Not saying it will happen to you, but I would recommend you try doing a restore (a full restore if you have the time) and make sure all your files are there and not corrupt. That is good practice anyway not just if you are on Cloudzow/Livedrive but if you are on any service.
  
  Reply
  1. Kay Thomas Brown
    
    Good suggestion. .I will attempt diwn my files to a external hard drive and report back the results. Regarding Robs comment that it was max 10mbit..dont think so..on my initial upload I set it in cust mode to approx 40 mbps with 3 connections
    
    Reply
  2. willemijns
    
    you absolutly right… and also do not only copy on one location, best is 2 copies online + 2 copies offline.
    
    Reply
Rob

I tried the service today, and i already deleted it afterwards. The speeds are very slow (max 10mbit), and drop below 1mbit if you have several small files. I can imagine some overhead, but with a 100mb full duplex fiber connection i expected way more (at least 40~50mbit). (I openend a support call about this, and got told i should use another service then).

Also, it scans your harddrives very intensivly, generating i/o errors on my harddrive, resulting in the disk becoming unresponsive at some times. This is inexcusable.

Also, beware, it’s not really a backup service, more of a sync tool. Altohugh it has a 30 day retention.
But it means that if you delete a directory with important work, you would have to logon to the website, go to the deleted files section, and from there restore your files.
Did it take longer than 30 days? too bad, data permanently gone!

Reply
1. willemijns
  
  some competitors as blackbaze does this 30 days retention,
  
  on some rare case (use of .GHO or dd image disks) you can use a workaround to avoid this but it is so complex and a little dangerous that i do not explain it…
  
  Reply
willemijns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y_3XU4jNB8

seems to be on livedrive galaxy

N E X T !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChUjQ5lAps

seems to be the classical restore livedrive software…
no time to really check

Reply
1. John Tucker
  
  A Livedrive reseller was my first thought, but I don’t think it is for a couple of reasons.
  
  1. I was able to create an account which I cannot usually do with a Livedrive reseller because I already have a Livedrive account with my main email address.
  
  2.The software installer properties do not mention Livedrive when you check them on Windows.
  
  It could be they are a white label reseller I suppose, but even then they are selling (if they actually sell the service to people) at a price point lower than Livedrive does. Not to mention the affiliate program would end up paying out something ridiculous like 70% of the monthly purchase price. That would mean the income from each subscriber would be only $1.50/month and if you have to signup through an affiliate all the sales are affiliate sales. Does not add up to me. Don’t know of any service that can make money on that amount.
  
  Of course if each affiliate needs to pay for 8 computers like I heard even if they don’t have 8 people that has bought from them then I guess they make money by not actually backing up computers but money from affiliates that want to try and sell the service. I could be miss understanding this part.
  
  The whole MLM thing just makes the whole service feel slimy. Not a company I would want to trust with my data.
  
  Reply
  1. willemijns
    
    I do not spoken of a livedrive reseller
    but the classical white label livedrive reseller as the famous ZOVO, BACKIFY and BEECLOUD (R.I.P to both of them)
    
    I think ZOVO offers the same than this ******* cloudzow offer at 19¬£/year=30$
    today exchange rate.
    
    some videos about this businessmodel are so funny… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JzrnJJkVkc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj_IGzy16NA
    
    Reply

CloudZow First Impressions

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11 responses to “CloudZow First Impressions”

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