If you’re looking for online backup and security software, you’ll find a feast of features and options in Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office—probably more than you’ll need. The app can back up and restore your entire PC, clone individual drives and partitions, back up entire disk images, and back up any set of files and folders. It saves backups to local or network directories or, if you’re willing to pay for it, to Acronis’ proprietary cloud service. Most of the features in the latest version work perfectly, but some important ones failed in testing. While Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is a powerful and usually quite useful tool, the issues we at PCMag experienced in testing may give pause. ShadowProtect SPX is a less flexible tool (it only backs up disk images), but it's astonishingly reliable, making it an Editors' Choice winner for backup software.
How Much Does Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Cost?
Acronis now sells only subscription-based licenses of Cyber Protect Home Office. Until 2021, you could buy a perpetual license, which is still valid though no longer available to new users. You can try the product for 30 days without providing payment information, which is a nice touch. Mobile devices also do not count against device limits for any of the plans that support them.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office comes in three versions, all of which are generous. Even the lowest-cost version of Acronis’ app is stuffed with more goodies than most users can digest. A low-cost Essentials version costs $49.99 per year for one computer. It includes backups and restores to local and network devices, plus ransomware protection. For a mere five bucks more, you can get a subscription to the cheaper of the two Advanced versions. That advanced version offers either 50GB of online storage for $54.99 per year or $500GB for $89.99 per year. Both Advanced plans offer a wider range of malware protection and backups of Microsoft 365 files from Microsoft’s cloud to Acronis’ cloud.
At $124.99 per year, the Premium version gives you 1TB of cloud storage (upgradeable to 5TB at $284.99 per year), plus options for blockchain certification of files and digital signatures on files if you don’t have a certificate supplier of your own. You can upgrade a one-computer subscription to cover three or five machines.
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What's Included and How to Cancel
All versions include disk-cleanup and system-cleaning utilities. A feature called Try&Decide lets you use your system as a protected sandbox, so you can visit sketchy websites or install software that you’re not sure you trust—and then, with a few clicks, either return your system to the way it was before or keep the software that you installed while using the feature. Read my warnings about that feature later in this review.
One annoyance I found with Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office has to do with its pricing. I paid $54.99 for the 50GB cloud storage Advanced subscription and then tried to upgrade it to the $89.99 500GB Advanced subscription. You might assume Acronis would charge only the $45 difference. Instead, it listed the charge as an additional $89.99 to upgrade. That effectively penalizes you $55 for not choosing the 500GB version the first time. You can cancel your account from the web portal or by submitting a support ticket, but, as with many subscription-based services, you may need to search for the option to cancel. I found it from a “Manage your subscription” link in the e-mail acknowledging my order.
Comparatively, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office's starting price is in the middle of the pack. Carbonite Safe and Backblaze offer unlimited backup storage for $60 and $83.99 per year, though both services limit licenses to a single computer at that price. IDrive is cheaper at $79.50 per year for 5TB of storage for an unlimited number of devices. If you need disaster recovery services, you'll have to look at Acronis' business-focused offering, Acronis Cyber Protect. Both IDrive and Backblaze offer disaster recovery options for consumers.
Beginner-Friendly, But Handle With Care
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is available on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, but not Linux-based devices. I tested the Windows and iOS versions. The Windows installer is large, at over 1GB, and it won’t let you start the program until you register for an Acronis user account. The app starts with a spacious, friendly interface, with seven flat tabs along the left rail and large, clearly labeled buttons throughout for various tasks. It's one of the most visually attractive of the services I've tested, despite all its extra features, and it’s easy to set up a backup schedule, encrypt your backups, and decide how long to keep older backups.
For example, when you’re creating a backup, the app displays two big icons, one for the source and one for the destination. To change the source, you simply mouse over its icon, and the words “Change source” appear, so you can click and change the source to anything from the complete PC through individual disks or partitions, or files and folders—and also set up a backup from a mobile device or from Microsoft’s Outlook or OneDrive storage.
You can simply click on an icon to perform a simple one-time backup, or you can customize the backup schedule, add encryption and backup-validation settings. Everything is clear and well-explained.
Elsewhere in the app, some of the menus aren’t as clear as others. For example, the Clone Disk Wizard uses a different visual style from the main menu, with cramped, uninformative dialogs. Some items on the main menu lead only to menus inviting you to buy other products, including the third-party remote access tool Parallels Access, which has nothing to do with backup and has been retired by its vendor, so it won’t work at all after April 2024. If you click on Parallels Access on the menu, the soon-to-be-retired app downloads and installs itself without giving any warning against buying it.
An Inaccessible Cloud
Acronis’ app is packed with features that use its cloud-based storage for backing up files, syncing files between the cloud and one or more computers, or archiving backups of large or older files on a separate drive so that you can get more room on your disk. These features seem to work for most users, but the cloud storage features went disastrously wrong on my real-world test system, and Acronis’s top-level tech support needed to try three different fixes before they got it working. Their attempts included a half-hour remote control session when an Acronis engineer gathered data from my system while I twiddled my thumbs and watched, only for Acronis to conclude that the problem was on their server, not on my machine.
The worst failure occurred when I set up a simple cloud backup of my desktop files. The app told me that the backup was completed successfully, but when I went to the Recover tab to try retrieving the backed-up files from the cloud to my machine, there were no files waiting for me in the cloud—absolutely none. Instead of a list of files from the backup that was supposedly complete, the app displayed the message “No data to recover yet.” The backup that the app said had been completed successfully had, in fact, never even begun. This happened repeatedly, with multiple attempts. Acronis finally determined that there was a “routing error” on their server, and they eventually fixed the problem. But I will never trust a backup program that tells me it completed a backup that it didn’t make at all.
Something similar happened when I tried to set up a sync operation between a folder on my desktop and the Acronis cloud. The app refused to make the sync and bafflingly told me to start Acronis on “your other PC” and log into Acronis from there. But I don’t have another PC with Acronis installed on it, so I couldn’t go to it and log in. Also, when I tried to use the “Cloud archive” feature that moves large files off my machine and stores them in the Acronis Cloud, the app at least reported that the “archiving operation failed” but didn’t tell me why. All these problems seem to have been caused by the same “routing error” that caused my backups to fail, and the sync and archive operations worked correctly after Acronis’s tech support finally corrected the error. Probably none of this will happen to you, but it will make me think twice about spending my own money on Acronis.
Emergency Planning
I tested all of Acronis’s disk-imaging and backup features, focusing both on the most common tasks and on complex operations that only advanced users will care about.
As long as I didn’t use Acronis Cloud, all basic tasks went blissfully smoothly. A spacious menu lets you choose the files, folders, partitions, or disks that you want to back up, as well as select a destination PC or NAS drive. The menu also lets you plug in an external USB drive and use it as a destination. Every step is clear, and backing out of any choice is easy until you finally click OK. Acronis does an impressive job performing all the tasks that most users will want, including a full disk image backup, which is the default option.
Like other disk-imaging and backup apps, Acronis lets you create an emergency boot disk to use when you need to restore a system that won’t boot or when you’re restoring your backups to a new hard drive. Acronis’ emergency disk isn’t easy to navigate, and the emergency disk that you can create from the Acronis app’s main menu can’t restore a system to new hardware that’s different from the original machine, such as a new-model motherboard.
For restore operations that restore to different hardware from the original system, you need to download a separate utility called Acronis Universal Restore, which creates a special version of the emergency restore disk that works with different hardware from your original backed-up system. If your system fails, however, and you have neglected to create this universal restore disk, you may not be able to restore your system to a new machine. It would make more sense to include the universal-restore features in the standard emergency disk—which is what Arcserve ShadowProtect SPX does in its emergency boot disk.
I used Acronis’ app to make an image of a boot drive and then used the Acronis emergency disk to boot up the system and restore the image to an empty disk drive. What made this operation tricky was that the boot drive was formatted as a GPT (GUID Partition Table) drive and the drive I was restoring to was formatted as a traditional MBR (Master Boot Record) drive. I knew it would be tricky because, in past testing with a different app, I had a bad experience trying to clone a boot partition from a GPT drive to an MBR drive. The cloned drive couldn’t boot to the Windows desktop because this kind of restore operation only works correctly if the backup software performs some cleanup operations during the restore. Acronis, however, performed those cleanup operations just fine. Arcserve ShadowProtect SPX also performed this task correctly in a test.
Pushing the Envelope
Some of Acronis’ features seem to push the technological envelope in ways that make me worry about the risks of using them. You don’t have to take my word for it—just look at Acronis’ own troubleshooting and advice pages. For example, the Try&Decide feature is designed to let you experiment with new software or sketchy websites and then undo the changes to your system if you don’t want them. This feature seems to get less and less safe with each new update to Windows because Windows keeps adding security features that get in the way of low-level modifications like Try&Decide.
An Acronis web page about the feature warns about hardware and software configurations that the feature won’t work with—including the Memory Integrity feature that’s turned on by default in Windows 11 and Windows’ long-established BitLocker encryption system. What if you don't look at that warning page until it’s too late? An alarming-looking troubleshooting page about the feature includes items that tell you what to do when the Try&Decide feature fails to undo changes that you made to your system while you were using it and that you now urgently want to reverse. But the page doesn’t tell you how to undo those changes. It only tells you how to reproduce the issue if you encounter it. Why would you want to reproduce the issue that you’re trying to solve?
Weirdly, that same Troubleshooting page says that Try&Decide is no longer installed in the app by default—but in fact, my newly downloaded setup included that feature, and I didn’t do anything to change the defaults. If you want to use the Try&Decide feature despite all these alarm bells, you would be well-advised to test it by making harmless changes and then undoing them to make sure that you can do so when you experiment with dangerous features. But my takeaway from Acronis’ troubleshooting page is that I don’t want to use that feature at all.
The Clone That Finally Cloned
Other Acronis features produced mixed results, with some improvements over previous versions. When I last looked at Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office in 2022, the Clone Disk feature didn’t work at all when I tried to clone the boot partition on my system to a second hard drive, something I had done effortlessly with Paragon Hard Disk Manager, EaseUS Partition Manager, and other disk-management software. This time, the cloning procedure worked correctly both times I tried it, although one of its menus left me worried because it erroneously reported that the target drive would retain the MBR system of disk management when the disk was, in fact, organized by the more modern GPT system. This wasn’t as bad an error as the ones that said a backup was complete when the backup never happened, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the quality control that went into the app’s development.
Some of these problems are not surprising. Over the years, we’ve had problems with different versions of Acronis' software. Multiple posts on Acronis’ user forums and third-party forums indicate that we're not alone.
Acronis has always been an innovator in backup technology, and sometimes, its innovations work imperfectly in the real world. Acronis has long offered a “secure zone” feature that creates an encrypted partition on your hard disk for storing backups that ransomware and other malware can’t damage. It sounds like a good idea (although, as Acronis warns, it’s useless if your disk is physically damaged), but if you've experienced other problems with Acronis’ proprietary technology, as I have, you may be reluctant to use this or any other feature that goes deep into your system. I should note that it did work as described in testing, but that might not be enough to put any worries you might have about it to rest.
Protection and Privacy
Acronis says that it uses end-to-end encryption (AES-256) to protect your files and that it is designed so that the company has zero knowledge about the content of your backups. Users can set up a local encryption key (non-recoverable if you forget it) that is never sent to Acronis for each backup set, as well. Acronis' data centers are protected from a physical security standpoint (fences, biometric access checks, and video surveillance) and can continue operating in the event of a power loss for 48 hours.
Acronis' privacy policy states that it collects the personal information you provide (contact and payment information) and your usage data (server logs and device information). This data is used to maintain your account, contact you, and improve and tailor its services. Acronis says it shares this data with vendors and resellers and will give this information to law enforcement officials provided there is a legal basis. For reference, Acronis was founded in Singapore and is now based in Burlington, Massachusetts, in the US.
Which Do You Want: Friendly or Reliable?
If you make a list of features in both Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Arcserve’s ShadowProtect SPX, ShadowProtect looks less impressive. ShadowProtect does only one thing—create and restore images of one or more partitions on your disk—but it does it reliably and consistently. ShadowProtect has never failed PCMag in testing. Its interface isn’t beginner-friendly, but it’s a powerful tool designed for experienced users and IT managers who care about their data.
Many years ago, when I was testing an old Acronis version on a complex multi-boot system. Acronis’ restore feature failed badly and made my system unbootable. I was only able to recover because I had previously made a backup using ShadowProtect SPX, and I used ShadowProtect’s recovery disk to get my system back. That’s an experience you don’t forget in the software-reviewing business, even when a newer version offers all the goodies that Cyber Protect Home Office offers.
Speaking of goodies, Acronis Cyber Protect offers a whole host of them for security protection. Some high-end security suite products, such as Norton 360 Deluxe, include cloud backup as one of their components. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office comes from the other direction, adding full-scale malware protection to its spectrum of backup and sync capabilities. While malware protection isn’t this product’s primary focus, it does promise real-time protection against malware, including “never-seen-before threats.” Neil Rubenking put these features to a thorough test in an earlier version and was impressed with most of the results.
You can access all the security features from the Protection section on the left-rail menu. This page offers some quick stats on recent antivirus activity and lets you verify which protection components are active. You can launch a full antivirus scan or just a quick scan with the click of a button.
Malware and Ransomware Protection
I did only a minimal survey of Acronis’s malware-protection feature; Lead Analyst Neil Rubenking has done extensive tests on it in the past and gave it excellent marks, as mentioned earlier. By default, the app’s malware protection runs in the background, and a few hours after I installed the app, it told me that it had quarantined nine dangerous files. I knew that all nine were completely harmless false positives because I had created all the files myself using the AutoIt scripting language, and Windows’ built-in malware detection wasn’t bothered by them. Rubenking also tested an earlier version of Acronis’ ransomware-protection features and was impressed with its results.
Most people will likely opt to get their malware and ransomware protection from antivirus or security suites, but Acronis' protection will certainly be an attractive option for some.
Vulnerability Scan
You know the drill. Just when you need to use an app right away, an update request gets in your face. You ignore it, figuring you can take care of things later. But do you? The thing is, those updates aren’t just vanity. Chances are good that some clever crook discovered a flaw in the app’s code, something that could open your computer to hacking. Installing that security patch update fixes the flaw. Skipping it leaves you vulnerable.
Acronis's app includes a vulnerability scan, which by default checks your apps daily and checks your installed software versions with the National Vulnerabilities Database. You can also go to the app’s Protection tab and run a manual scan at any time. On my test system, the scan found a dozen vulnerabilities in outdated versions of some graphics programs, which the app ordered by severity: Critical, High, or Low. Unlike the vulnerability scan in Avast Free Antivirus and some others, Acronis makes no attempt to install the missing updates. The scanner simply advises that you install the latest updates for all affected programs and then scan again. When I followed that advice, the new scan came up clean.
A Mobile App That Finally Worked
I tested Acronis Mobile on an iPhone with the same mixed results. There are currently four different Acronis apps listed on the Google Play store, but the correct one for personal accounts is called Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. The app has a clean design, and it worked well when I reviewed it in 2022. It offers to back up your phone’s photos, videos, contacts, calendars, and reminders. But when I began testing it this time, it refused to back up to the Acronis Cloud, only reporting that an “unknown error” had occurred. When I tried to delete the failed backup plan and create another, the app told me it couldn’t delete the backup. This was evidently the same problem that got in the way of cloud backups from my desktop machine, and the app gave me no hint about what was going wrong.
Eventually, I was able to fix the problem by deleting the app and its data, including the backup plan that the app couldn’t delete. I then reinstalled the app, logged in again, created a new backup plan, and everything worked correctly at last.
Should You Back Up With Acronis?
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office impresses with its intuitive interface, flexible backup preferences, and extra security options like ransomware protection. That said, it took multiple contacts with Acronis’s tech support to get its cloud features to work at all in testing—and that included a half-hour wasted while Acronis took remote control of my system. This probably won’t happen to you, but it may prompt you to double-check everything when using the app if you choose to buy it. In contrast, you can ignore ShadowProtect SPX completely while it does its job reliably, year after year, and for that, it wins our Editors' Choice award for backup software, even though it only backs up disk images.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office's backup options and security extras are flexible and often excellent, but some are unreliable, and other features may be too risky for cautious users.
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