CrashPlan is making an immediate pivot to focus its cloud backup service exclusively on businesses, and the company is planning to shut down its consumer-facing “CrashPlan for Home” product as a result. That process will last several months, but effective immediately, CrashPlan has already stopped accepting new consumer users and won’t allow existing non-business customers to renew their backup plan.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen data protection needs of consumers and businesses — both small businesses and enterprises — diverge,” CrashPlan wrote in its FAQ. “To best meet these needs and continue delivering the best possible products and services, we have decided to focus our business strategy on enterprise and small business customers.”
All current subscriptions will be honored until their end date, and CrashPlan is giving everyone an extra 60 days beyond that to allow more time for users to find another cloud service. If your subscription runs until after the October 22nd, 2018 end-of-operations date for CrashPlan Home, CrashPlan will keep you on the home plan until then and switch you over to a small business account until your subscription ends.
For those in search of a new cloud backup home, CrashPlan recommends Carbonite as a replacement and has worked out a referral deal to get a 50 percent discount on Carbonite for Home and Carbonite Core subscriptions for those moving over.
But I’d personally go for Backblaze — and the company is more than happy to accept expelled CrashPlan customers.
CrashPlan has long been The Wirecutter’s pick for best cloud backup service, but in light of today’s news, that recommendation has now changed over to Backblaze. Even with the convenience of these services, you should always have a local backup of your data in addition to copying it to the cloud. That way you’re covered both if something happens to your external drive — or if a cloud backup service just decides to get out of the game.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen data protection needs of consumers and businesses — both small businesses and enterprises — diverge,” CrashPlan wrote in its FAQ. “To best meet these needs and continue delivering the best possible products and services, we have decided to focus our business strategy on enterprise and small business customers.”
All current subscriptions will be honored until their end date, and CrashPlan is giving everyone an extra 60 days beyond that to allow more time for users to find another cloud service. If your subscription runs until after the October 22nd, 2018 end-of-operations date for CrashPlan Home, CrashPlan will keep you on the home plan until then and switch you over to a small business account until your subscription ends.
For those in search of a new cloud backup home, CrashPlan recommends Carbonite as a replacement and has worked out a referral deal to get a 50 percent discount on Carbonite for Home and Carbonite Core subscriptions for those moving over.
But I’d personally go for Backblaze — and the company is more than happy to accept expelled CrashPlan customers.
CrashPlan has long been The Wirecutter’s pick for best cloud backup service, but in light of today’s news, that recommendation has now changed over to Backblaze. Even with the convenience of these services, you should always have a local backup of your data in addition to copying it to the cloud. That way you’re covered both if something happens to your external drive — or if a cloud backup service just decides to get out of the game.