Try Magic Backup, its awesome!

I've know Andy Fanton for years. I met him back in the Raindance days when he had a company that build MP3 software. Later his band of rockstar software developers built the windows (and mac) client software for Raindance Meeting Edition (a collaborative meeting platform) when I was CTO of Raindance Communications. It blew away everything else out there when we sold the company to West Corporation in 2006. Intercall, killed the product last month….ahhmm

A while back Andy started a new company Magic Softworks with the concept of building a better backup software service experience for people's desktop computers. Magic Backup just sits there and quietly backs up your computer into a secure datacenter without having to over-think the entire thing. Set it and forget it.

All I can say is thank god! I have talked a lot about this in the past and even looked at doing it myself, a little, but had other irons in the fire. Try a Lijit search of "backup" on my blog to see various ramblings on this subject and competitors I have bookmarked.

Today, I got an email from Andy saying the first commercial release of Magic Backup was live. I tried a few of the Alpha's and Beta's along the way so I was anxious to give it a try.

One thing I knew would be critical to success with this idea would be the user interface. I have poked around with other solutions a little and they always seemed unintuitive. Andy and the guys have always been user interface wizards so I knew it would good. But, I wasn't expecting it to be this good. The only thing you have to catch on to is that you right click folders or files to add them to the backup set. It makes total sense if you know it but could a little confusing the first time if you didn't (and, ahh didn't read any user guide).

As I type this it's backing up the documents folder on my laptop as I sit at Amante having a coffee. I configured it that way to test but its default configuration is simply 'backup' this computer.

Another cool thing, you can try it for free, without putting a credit card in – a refreshing change from other services that require you to go back and cancel the free trial to keep from being charged.

Within minutes I found myself clicking around to find out how much all this was going to cost. It's really slick and I definitely want to learn more. It looks like its $5 a month with savings if you buy longer time frames. There is no mention of size restrictions..hmm can this be true?

Andy told me in his email that 70% of free installers buy a subscription. That's a phenomenal conversion rate, I can't wait to watch these dudes take off.

Comments

[Andy Fanton]

Todd is right - Magic Backup has no storage limit, so you can back up all of your stuff for $5 per month. It is pretty impractical to backup any more than about 10-15 GB over the Internet, but if you have the patience, we'll provide the storage. There are some tech savvy users who have tons of data to store, and we're happy to have them as customers. There are also many more less sophisticated users who have much less data to store, so from a business perspective, the averages play in our favor.

[Todd Vernon]

@Andy thanks for the comment. Personally, i think this model is awesome. Look forward to my 14 more days of trial!

[Scott Lasica]

Looks interesting. Is this something that is targeted at home users or corporations also? We're currently trying to figure out how to do effecient backup and the "ship external drives to the field people" plan failed miserably.

[Andy Fanton]

The current release is targeted at home users, but is also quite suitable for corporate "field people" who need their machines backed up. We are currently putting finishing touches on our "Magic Backup Enterprise" release which adds support for centralized account administration, provisioning and billing. The client agent software is essentially the same, minus the necessity for the end user to purchase an individual subscription. This new version, with the added bells and whistles for IT administrators, is scheduled for a September release.

I'd love to talk to you about your experience with backup and get your feedback on our enterprise design. Please feel free to contact me through the support link on the MagicBackup.com web site if you're interested!