Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection Reviews

Continuous backup, cross-platform deployment, ease of recovery, flexible storage destinations, low CPU footprint.

I no longer need to worry that a user has manually postponed backup operations or that backups will cause a slowdown or other interference with my users' workflow.

25-license minimum needlessly shuts out small business users, support for desktop and mobile Safari browsers needs work.

3 years.

None whatsoever. It took less than half an hour to install the server, and about 20 minutes installation per endpoint.

None. I've never had a stability issue with CrashPlan. (IT Central Station requires a longer answer here, bafflingly, but there's nothing more to say here. I haven't experienced any stability issues. Period.)

Again, IT Central Station requires a longer answer here, but really the answer is once again a simple "no". I've used PROe in a larger environment as well as the current small office, with zero issues.

Great. I've barely needed any, but when I have, they've been very responsive. (Once again, I need a longer answer, but there isn't one. This field should probably just be a numeric scale...?)

Also perfect, the few times I've needed to contact them.

(Really, IT Central Station, if you ask us to rate the level of technical support, and it's good, why do you need a wordy answer?)

Client was previously relying on each user to back up their own system on an ad hoc basis, using Windows Backup, Time Machine, or drag and drop. This was not sustainable.

Extremely straightforward. I've installed on Linux (~30 minutes) and on OS X Server (~20 minutes), both are

One person in-house. I cannot imagine CrashPlan requiring much of an implementation team even in larger environments, it's bone simple.

This isn't a metric we calculate or track for our small business.

Hey look, I have to pad this answer to 120 characters too! Is it 1997? Perhaps it is.

This is my only major issue with Code42 at this point. They have an excellent codebase, and a product which has been enormously useful for my small business clients, but they have changed their licensing plans to sell their private cloud product only in quantities of 25 or more licenses. This essentially shuts out small businesses entirely, relegating them to Code42's home-oriented cloud service—the use of which would violate data protection agreements for small businesses which store theft-relevant information, and which requires mass cloud uploading via broadband services which are often glacially slow for uploads.

CrashPlan PROe was formerly a sales driver for me in recommending my small business clients purchase their own servers for PROe backup, but I can no longer make that recommendation for smaller clients given these licensing limitations.

It's especially difficult to understand why this decision was made considering clients using private cloud backup present a *lower* overhead for Code42. It's very strange, and not confidence-inspiring.

Yes, probably too many to list. The free options were overly labor-intensive or unreliable, and the other commercial options seemed topheavy or overly dependent on a certain server architecture.

I'd encourage even smaller businesses to contact Code42 and express interest in purchasing CrashPlan PROe licenses. It's simply the best option out there for multiplatform continuous backup, and I would like to think that the developers would prefer market penetration even in the small business sector to the marginally higher projection stability of higher-volume licensing.

It has efficient processor and bandwidth utilization and clean, straightforward interface and reliable backups. No unusual issues.

It was more cost effective than our previous solution, a better endpoint experience and back-end was much better work with. Everyone has been very happy with this solution.

Quite simply, considerations for security, that have made huge strides in this area. Endpoint backup really should be done with DLP and legal hold considerations and Crashplan is all over this.

2 years

Very easy deployment. Two techs trained, but only one was actually needed. The system came up very quickly and the client deployment went very well.

Zip, nada, none, non-existent, no issues, very stable. It was great to have such a successful implement. Nothing dragged out in the deployment.

No issues with scalability. Customization on the back end was all we needed and they worked closely with us to accomplish what we needed. Was refreshing to have them acknowledge that what we were doing with them would benefit other customers as well.

I won't even bother rating them because they are in in a class of their own. Truly a wonderful organization to work with.

I would rate the level of technical support above average. Everyone at Code 42 was great to work with. This is an excellent organization.

The old system was gasping for air in every aspect you could imagine. The company had been sold twice and when we left they were still in transition flux.

It was straightforward to install and setup. The client is not bloatware and the backend is modern and clean. No unusual performance issues.

We implement with in-house staff. We used assistance from Code 42 staff with developing some reporting capability that was on in the default set.

Improvements in cost, efficiency and user experience. ROI was very good, probably in multiples compared to the previous product.

Pricing is excellent, it's really not too good to be true. That was our initial concern, but the proof was in how well it tested. Kick the tires, it's worth it.

Yes, we looked at Mozey and one other solution as well. We were moving from what had been the number one provider in this space for about a decade.

I recommend the company and the product. Code 42 is a great company with a bright future. The development team is nothing short of amazing.

Restores are amazing and almost fun to do - ransomware is a thing of the past with Crashplan. We don't worry about if a machine is worth backing up anymore or needing to assess the value of its data, it's a yes answer now.

Crashplan allows us to use our own storage and as much of it as we want, so it's basically a set it and forget it platform for backup. No longer are we assessing the value of the data on each machine to decide if it should be backed up, we just drop the agent and let it go, we've got plenty of back-end storage.

I don't really have any suggestions for improvement, this is a great platform. If anything, make integrating cloud storage a little bit easier - I'd love to be able to choose the close I'm going to push to, but it's hard to find instructions for doing that.

We've been using PROe for four years now.

No issues, though we started with Crashplan Home, then went Pro, then went PROe before we found our niche. We've been on PROe now for almost 4 years.

We've had an issue every once in a while with upgrades, but a quick email to support has always fixed it. Those guys know their software backwards and forwards.

No scalability issues, though our install is one server, one storage backend, and a small environment. We had our own storage and server ready, so nothing major was encountered.

Absolutely fantastic, A++++ Would buy from again! ;) I don't really have anything else to say other than these guys are great, but this has to be 120 characters.

I can't say enough about these guys, they know their software and they are more than willing to share and explain what happened to cause issues and how to fully resolve them. These guys are amazing!

We have three solutions in place, Crashplan is one of them. Crashplan is our 'anything and everything' solution, for any system that is non-critical or just probably should be backed up. We use another appliance-based system for critical backups and pushes those off to a cloud service, and then we use another dedicated system that shares the Crashplan storage for virtual servers.

It was very simple and straightforward, though we did end up using all three versions before we found the right one. Home, Pro, and PROe - we're on PROe now. It was a case of we wanted more features, not complexity issues.

We used our own expertise in-house to install it, no issues were experienced, though our storage is from a network share and Crashplan did not want to backup to a NAS, so we had to trick it by mapping the CP storage as iSCSI and giving it to CP as a drive letter instead. Has worked perfect ever since.

No data lost to ransomware in 4 years. Can't put a price on that. Got hit with CryptoTesla on a business office share two weeks ago - 3 clicks and 20 minutes later, no data lost.

I don't really have much to say there, it's pretty straightforward. They list it on their website, though they did change the licensing model about two years ago and made it a little more complex/simple. I liked it the old way, but now I like it the new way. Go figure.

Yes, and we still use other systems for other purposes. Crashplan was purchased to fill a gap that the others weren't right for.

If you have the storage space available and a need to back up multiple machines, Crashplan is a no-brainer almost.

Multiplatform. We're challenged everyday since our employees started using Windows, Mac and Linux. It's not easy to find a solution that will work on all computers.

You may think that backups are only for hard drive failure or file deleting, but don't forget computer stealing. Also, versioning helps employees recovering hard work.

They may need to add more features since Google Drive and Dropbox are getting into more and more markets. People don't use traditional backup anymore.

More than 3 years

It was a very straight forward deployment without any issues. The only challenge was to not forget any computer. We didn't have any software deployment tools.

The service stopped working once after an upgrade, but the support did fix it very easily. It was a Java version issues. Since it is running java, the certificates didn't work at first.

Nop. You create groups, and add disk spaces. If you are self-hosting the server you may have bandwidth issues with too many client computers, but with the cloud, no worry.

Awesome. They listened to me and helped reached my goal. They develop a backup software, not a text editing. They understand that data is important.

Awesome. The guy that I reach fixed my issues without having to escalate hundred of times. He did a remote control session and walked thru the errors.

We used Microsoft Data Protection Manager before, but it was Windows Only, and it was pretty hard to backup off-site computers.

Straightforward. You take a computer, install the server application, and public the port. Everything else can be done by the end users without issues.

In-house only. It is easy to deploy, so you don't need any help. You may think about it if case of a very large deployment in a short time window.

Data is hard to value, but every time you restore a file, or a whole computer, you understand how it is important to do computer backups.

It is not cheap. Pricing can get hard to understand, and they don't do perpetual licenses anymore. You need to value your data in a per month perspective.

CrashPlan was recommended and I was already using it at home, so the decision was very fast and easy. It was the best solution by the time.

You may ask if you need a classic backup software or if a synchronization software like Google Drive or Dropbox may work better.

CrashPlan, in general, is a great tool to have because backups are essential. The service is easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to recover files if things go wrong. The service is reasonably priced, but you won't even consider the cost if something goes wrong and you need your files back. Recommended. I use CrashPlan at home and at work.

Allows easy recovery of data, and that's the most important part.

The GUI could use improvement, but generally it's fine. 

I've used the home solution for two years now. I have over 1.5TB stored on their servers.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

The endpoint backup component (the primary feature) is second to none. It does exactly what it's supposed to and it does it quickly, quietly, and efficiently. It is a dream come true for IT professionals looking to secure their users' local data. The fact that it constantly monitors for changes and can back up over any internet connection makes it ideal for those organizations with a large mobile workforce that rarely "comes in" to connect to traditional network shares.

As above, it has allowed us to confidently and reliably secure the local data for our mobile users who rarely come into an office to connect to the network shares.

We would like to see a little more flexibility in the reporting from the admin console. That is being highly touted in the newer versions, though. This criticism may be resolved when we upgrade soon.

Almost 3 years

The only issues we encountered during initial pilot deployment centered around LDAP sync for user authentication, but vast improvements have been made to that LDAP sync functionality in subsequent releases. We have not had those issues for some time.

We have not encountered any issues at all with stability. This product has been as reliable as you could hope for. It's the ultimate "set it and forget it" solution for backup and much more.

Once we proved our case and began preparing to ramp up deployment, we made the switch over to a Code42 Managed Appliance to replace our internal VM Master Server. We were told that server performance with a VM was likely to suffer around 500+ users.

We have had positive and infrequent interactions with customer service, which is always a good sign. For questions/issues that are not pressing needs, their online ticketing system is sufficient and we generally get 1 reply per day. For serious concerns, their phone support is quick to respond.

The Code42 Customer Champions have been knowledgeable in our few dealings with them. They will bring in colleagues to assist, as needed. They are also persistent and will continue to troubleshoot diligently for more complex issues until a resolution is reached.

Our previous backup solution for local files was external hard drives and scheduled backups. This is highly flawed if the user is not attached to it at the time the task is scheduled. CrashPlan solves that problem by always running (or on a set schedule) whenever an internet connection is present.

The initial setup was not very complex for our deployment. Our assigned engineer walked our systems team through the configuration, we pushed the clients out and they began connecting with little fuss.

We had a Code42 engineer assigned to us to assist with the configuration of the VM and the installation of the environment. After we installed a client and confirmed connectivity, we were able to take it from there and pretty much self-teach.

I am not the person to generate exact figures, but our users find the peace of mind to be priceless when they know their work is safe if/when things do happen.

Once we made the decision to do a large scale deployment, we received a significant discount for buying a large set of licenses.

There was another product on the table during Code42 evaluation, but I was not on the team at that time, so I cannot comment on this point.

We could not be more pleased that we pulled the trigger on CrashPlan from Code42. It is the kind of solution that just works. There are a lot more features coming in pending releases, which we are excited to take advantage of.

Being able to backup devices even when they don't come into the office on a regular basis. We can still monitor and know they are backed up.

IT spends less time monitoring and fixing backups and more time on other issues. We just check the dashboard once in awhile to make sure everything is still working as it should.

I would love to have an app on my phone to give me status updates on the backup system and push me notifications if something goes offline or has an issue so I wouldn't have to go look at the dashboard as much.

3 years. The first 2 years on the public cloud and least year using the private cloud option.

Deployment was a little slow due to the number of servers we needed but we were able to reuse existing servers and storage.

The product has been very stable and once we were running has been largely trouble free after the installation was completed.

We started off with 130 users and now are at 141. We add storage as we want to keep archives longer. It has been very easy to scale and add licenses as needed.

Customer service has been great with getting our license codes and getting up and running. Other than that we haven't had much contact with customer service, everything just works.

I haven't needed technical support from Crashplan as the system has been so reliable. I do sometimes lookup information in the knowledge base for guidance. They could make the installation documentation a little easier to follow.

Yes, we used Retrospect and we switched because Retrospect couldn't backup when computers were out of the office, and the system would frequently freeze and stop backing up devices and we would just have to delete and restart the backup.

It was a little complex due to our having 9 offices and a central console to manage all the sites. But we were able to work through it and it was worth it.

We used our own in-house team to deploy the product. Each member of the team took a couple of sites and we were up and running within two months and that was with all of our regular work and chasing down users to install the client and establish the backup.

Almost instant. Crash plan had the same annual cost as our Retrospect system and we were able to use existing hardware and storage. Once the deployment was done we had immediate time savings and reliability improvements.

The pricing model is fine and with the latest version they make it easy to add licenses as the company grows. I would like to see discounts as number of users increase to keep costs down.

Yes, we looked at BackBlaze, upgrades to Retrospect, TimeMachine, and several other solutions. Nothing I found did as much, worked cross platform, worked while mobile, allowed me to use my existing hardware and fell in at the same price point.

It is worthwhile for any IT environment to deploy this solution. I haven't seen any environment where it wouldn't be beneficial.

Lightweight client, Version backups, Cloud and/or in-house repositories, Separate encryption key from data repository, Centralized Administration, ADFS authentication, Mobile App, Non-Windows platform support

Numerous real world restorations on servers and laptops, central administration ensures we see who isn't backed up before they lose data.

Improved reporting on backup progress. Re-scan shows how much data there is to scan for a backup, not how much data there is to backup (E.g. Scanning 1 TB drive may show 800 GB to 'backup' which means it is scanning 800 GB but may only find 10 MB of data that needs to be transmitted off the laptop to a backup destination).

I have enjoyed the seamless and automated nature of CrashPlan the best. I never have to worry about catastrophic issues for both myself and end-users when I know CrashPlan is installed.

We have saved central storage space on our servers by having most individual user data be backed up through CrashPlan.

What would be great would be if they could improve the featur eset of the mobile application. Yes, I can review my backups from there and download them to my phone, however, what if it could do more. What about backing up the data on my phone and tablets? A secure backup of work related pictures and downloaded forms on organization-owned mobile devices would be great to have.

3-4 years

Not really once the package was complete and tested. We rolled it out through Altiris. What I mean is that we have certain procedures for rolling out new software over our network. We had to create an installation script and properly test it to ensure it did not cause any problems. Code42 was very helpful with this and we did not really run into any problems.

Not really. Most issues are due to other computer related problems.

Very well. They are quick to respond to inquiries.

Very well. Responses to inquiries are detailed and easy to understand.

No. CrashPlan was already well known among many of the IT employees. We knew what it was capable of and only had to test how it fit into our specific environment.

Code42 has done a fantastic job creating a solid enterprise product that is easy to use, transparent to the end-users, and backed by a company that takes an active interest in the input of their customers.

Client backup products are not always without impact to end-point performance. CrashPlan's interface is simple and easy to use. Virtually no training is required for both end-users and administrators. Granted that backup is not an overly complicated process, but CrashPlan has refined the process better than the competition.

Whether using the on-prem or off-prem option, CrashPlan provides security and stability for your company's critical data.

Even with the trend of moving data to the cloud, end-point backup remains a critical necessity in the modern end-user computing environment. Systems fail, users delete data, users switch computers and things still go wrong and make backups a necessity.

CrashPlan is equally useful for file recovery or simply moving a user to a new computer. The best part of CrashPlan is that is just works. Its a solid, well-written product with great support that give users a sense of security about the data that keeps the business working.

My only real criticism with Code42, is that in the last year they have not focused sufficiently on the development of CrashPlan. I feel like they made a poor choice to focus too much on SharePlan, which was not something that was critical to their core business.

CrashPlan is also a bit behind the curve on features related to legal hold and e-discovery, but they are trending in the right direction.

Greater than 5 years

No. Code42 has a managed approach to the entire process. The software is easy to deploy to end user workstations and minimally impactful to system performance. The older versions did have Java dependancies that could be problematic, but those issues have largely been resolved.

Generally speaking, no. Both the server back-end and the client side are very stable. I think that it speaks a lot to Code42's commitment to quality engineering.

Generally speaking, no. Code42 is very easily scaled in the Enterprise. Our deployment is global and it has not been an issue to grow as needed. I think that this alos speaks a lot to Code42's commitment to quality engineering.

Code42's Customer service team gets a 10 out of 10 any day of the week. This team consistently goes above and beyond to make sure that all issues are taken care of in a timely, user-centric manner.

Code42's Techincal support team gets a 10 out of 10 any day of the week. This team consistently goes above and beyond to make sure that all issues are taken care of quickly. Their team's proactively alert us when their are issues and as a result, major issues have been averted.

No. We started out with a CrashPlan deployment as we had nothing in place prior. We needed a solution for this issue and selected CrashPlan as the solution.

Even though the initial deployment was to almost 1000 users, it was very straightforward. That is one of the selling points of CrashPlan is that it is very easy to configure and deploy.

We deployed in-house. The initial deployment as about 1000 users and even though we did it ourselves, it was fairly easy and straightforward.

The ROI with CrashPlan is that it has made the backup process seamless and saved countless users from losing data due to system failure or migrations.

I have not had the opportunity to discuss this with any colleagues. If I did, I would encourage them to work with the inside team to ensure that they were getting discounts commensurate with their long-term growth strategy.

No. CrashPlan was the clear industry leader and we decided that they were the best general match for our needs. Since we did not evaluate other options, there would not be much to add to this answer.

Even with the trend of moving data to the cloud, end-point backup remains a critical necessity in the modern end-user computing environment. Systems fail, users delete data, users switch computers and things still go wrong and make backups a necessity.

CrashPlan is equally useful for file recovery or simply moving a user to a new computer. The best part of CrashPlan is that is just works. Its a solid, well-written product with great support that give users a sense of security about the data that keeps the business working.

Read More