What a disaster Mozy’s recent decision has been. They are switching away from unlimited storage and charging rapacious rates for the new capped plans that replace them. 3 times the cost for infinitely less service – brilliant! First of all, I am not sure they can just change the terms of service and not honor the terms of the previous legally binding contracts. I suspect at some point there will be a class action lawsuit against Mozy from existing customers. If that comes to pass, I will happily join it.
In my case, in December of 2010 I created a new Mozy account for my wife’s Mac and committed to a 2 year unlimited storage contract. Mozy is now telling me that on October of 2011 that 2 year unlimited commitment converts to the capped storage scheme – not even 11 months into a 24 month agreement! Further, I was paying less than $300USD for unlimited backup on three computers for a 2 year contract. Mozy now wants to force re-up me for nearly $1000USD per year.
No thanks.
Right now, Crashplan is looking like the best alternative – they offer unlimited backup, a much more efficient and feature-rich client and I can get a household plan that covers backing-up up to 10 computers for four years for less than what I am paying now for three computers under Mozy. Crashplan is even offering a 15% discount to users switching from Mozy. Here is the URL for the Crashplan discount: http://www.crashplan.com/mozyonover .
My initial testing of the CrashPlan Mac client shows it transferring data at about 5x faster than the Mozy client (that is uploading to CrashPlan Central over my crappy DSL). I also have the option of backing up data to a folder on a local (or external drive), to another computer on my LAN or even a friend’s computer across the Interwebs.
It is probably going to take a few weeks to get my base data uploaded to CrashPlan so I can then go back to smaller incremental backups, but there is no way on this earth that I am staying with Mozy and their insane pricing. If you are a current Mozy customer, give CrashPlan a look (and even a free 30 day trial). If you are considering Mozy: don’t – run away from that train wreck and spend your money with a less greedy and ethically challenged business.
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