Online Backup Gets Cheaper

In my review earlier this year I dinged Spare Backup for its relatively high price and some feature glitches. I haven't yet had a chance to evaluate their new version, but the pricing sure has changed!

It used to cost $96/year for the first gigabyte and $19/year for each additional GB. To backup 50GB you'd pay over $2,400/year! Well, that pricing scheme is gone with the wind. Now you pay $60/year for any amount of backup, up to 50GB. Competitor Mozy (which I use myself) gives you a "mere" 30GB for that price - of course they'll give you 2GB for nothing while Spare Backup still costs $60 for that 2GB.

Carbonite may sound like a bargain, as it charges $50 for unlimited backup of personal files (though they'll cut you off if you "abuse" the account). But it doesn't save previous versions - no way to recover last Tuesday's version of a document.

Data Deposit Box has also cut pricing, but their cuts just don't compare. Previously the monthly price was a penny per megabyte up to a gigabyte and 0.3 cents per megabyte thereafter. Now it's a straight $2 per gigabyte per month. So where you used to pay a bit over $1,900 to backup 50GB for a year, now you pay $1,200. Big deal.