Webroot Secure Bakcup Takes on Free Services

THESE DAYS YOU can find sites that offer 2GB of online backup space for nothing, so you'd think that competing as for-a-fee storage service would be hard. But many space for their vital data than free services provide. That's the market niche that Webroot Secure Backup aims for with its storage options.

Webroot doesn't offer a free account, and its plans of $30 per year for 2GB of storage and $40 per year for 5GB of storage aren't terribly appealing next to the 2GB free offerings of competitors Fabrik and Mozy.

But Webroot offers 10GB for $50 a year, and that saves you $10: Beyond their free level, the next step up for both Fabrik and Mozy is $60 a year for unlimited backup.

Webroot includes features that Fabrik and Mozy lack, too, such as the ability to create and share password-protected folders. Another plus is that you can back up to a local drive well as to Webroot's online storage.

Unlike its competitors, Webroot doesn't create a virtual drive within Explorer. Instead, restore operations occur from within the backup client or via the Web.



My backups using Webroot went off without a hitch. And since reliability is not a problem, you can base your choise of a service on economics and on the features you need. If you want to share folders and you have between 5GB and 10GB of data to back up, Webroot Secure Backup makes sense. -Jon L. Jacobi

PC World November 2008