Expert Insights Verdict
CrashPlan is a great solution for organizations with upwards of 100 users, that require granular control and detailed backup information, to ensure adherence with regulatory or compliance standards. A standout feature of Crashplan is its ability to either backup data to Crashplans’ Azure storage or for the customer to utilise their own storage and backup to AWS, Google or an on-premise server. Its biggest weakness is its dated UI .
Pros
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You can choose where your data is backed up
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Flexible pricing options when providing your own storage
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Great degree of granularity and control
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Able to bypass M365 API limits if using Azure
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Control your own encryption keys
Cons
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UI isn’t as user friendly as it could be
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Doesn’t currently offer Entra backup, though we are told that this is on the roadmap
CrashPlan is a data resilience solution for servers, endpoints, and SaaS applications, including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. CrashPlan was initially part of Code42, but in 2022, the company was spun out to Mill Point Capital.
In 2024, CrashPlan acquired Parablu, strengthening its backup and recovery capabilities for OneDrive and Azure environments. Although CrashPlan is a relatively new company, their technologies have a solid foundation and heritage.
In this review, we’ll take a detailed look at CrashPlan’s features to help you decide the right backup and recovery solution for Microsoft 365.
CrashPlan Features
Control and Security
CrashPlan is an excellent solution for organizations looking to maintain control and security over their backups.
- Bring your own encryption keys: You can control your own encryption keys, giving you certainty over the security of your data. While this feature might not be necessary for small organizations, it is a great option for larger and more heavily regulated organizations. This level of control is not offered by many other competitors.
- Policy controls: You can set up user groups to apply policies with high precision. You can specify retention periods, frequency of backup, type of data backed up, and backup schedule.
- Stubbing: One of CrashPlan’s great features is ‘Stubbing’. This allows users to access emails from a backup, rather than a live Exchange environment. Practically, this means that you can reduce your M365 storage requirements, without having an impact on the end user.
- Vendor Agnostic Storage: CrashPlan allows you to save your data to your own storage, such as Azure, Google Drive, Amazon S3, IBM Softlayer. If you select the Azure storage option, you are able to bypass Microsoft’s API throttling.
Incremental Backups
CrashPlan will initially take a full backup of the data you want saved. From there, incremental backups will ensure that only changes are stored, thereby reducing storage requirements and reducing the impact of backups. Backups can be configured to run multiple times per day on a schedule selected by the client with the ability to bespoke schedules for different user groups.
- Comprehensive coverage: CrashPlan also provides granular coverage over stored data in Microsoft 365. CraashPlan Supports Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Teams, including email, contacts, tasks, and calendar events. It should be noted that backup of 1 to 1 chats in Teams is not covered due to Microsoft imposing API restrictions. This issue is not unique to Crashplan and affects other cloud backup providers.
- Granular backup: The admin dashboard also allows you to exclude or include specific folders or file types. Again, this is a great feature for organizations that must ensure compliance with different regulatory frameworks. Admins are also able to delete specific files, emails, and folders from backups, allowing you to ensure compliance with GDPR’s ‘right to be forgotten’.
Data recovery
In the event that a backup does need to be restored, CrashPlan gives you the ability to restore it to its original location, or to a different user.
- Search and restore: By default, admins have complete access to search through backups to find the relevant information. These permissions can be removed or restricted to specific admin accounts.
- Granular search: The search function operates beyond just file names and dates as it also allows admins to search for text within an attachment, making file discovery much easier.
Compliance
CrashPlan helps to ensure the data you are backing up is compliant with several regulatory frameworks.
CrashPlan is compliant with all the regulatory frameworks that you would expect, including ISO 27001, HIPPA, SOC2, DFARS, NIST, GDPR, and CCPA. It will also provide SOC 2 independent auditor reports if required.
Features Summary
CrashPlan delivers a comprehensive set of data backup and recovery features. In our testing, we found the dated UI is the one thing that holds the platform back. Rather than having information presented to you, we find that you need to drill down into the platform to find information.
While there is such a thing as too many alerts, it would be helpful to ensure some way of making key information unmissable within the platform. The platform does hold all the information you need, we just wish it presented this information more clearly.
Installation And Set Up
CrashPlan is designed for use in mid to large scale organizations who require a good deal of configurability and granular insights. As a result, the platform’s setup is more complex than some other platforms.
- Technical users are looking at a setup time of around 1 to 2 hours. This is because the platform allows extensive customization, allowing you to assign specific policies to specific groups. This level of detail and control is good for larger organizations operating in regulated sectors needing granular management abilities.
- The simplest setup would be applying a single, default policy to all users. Beyond this, however, you are able to set up user groups to apply policies with more precision. You can specify retention periods, frequency of backup, type of data backed up, and backup schedule.
The complexity in setup relative to other cloud backup providers is due to CrashPlan’s strengths. You are able to control your own encryption keys, giving you certainty over the security of your data. This is a great option for larger and more heavily regulated organizations.
This benefits multinational companies where different jurisdictions may have different requirements with regard to data backup retention periods or frequency. The flexible backup schedule ensures that the process does not impact employee productivity, and that if any data is lost, a recent backup can be restored.
Ease of use
For all of its practical capabilities and granular control, this solution could be more user friendly. The admin console doesn’t feel as fresh or intuitive as some of its competitors and is in need of an update.
The monochromatic boxes are not user friendly. Admins need to go looking for alerts or misconfiguration information, rather than having an alert box or a color coordinated scheme make this obvious.
That being said, this platform is designed for medium to large organizations with a dedicated IT team and has a lot of granular capabilities for this user group. This configurability means that the onboarding process is going to be longer, but that admins have greater control over the specifics of the setup.
One great feature that improves ease of use is the platform’s ability to manage servers and endpoints. Again, this is a feature designed for enterprise users, that allows them to manage both from a single platform, rather than having to manage multiple tools. This makes it a great solution for hybrid organizations with on-prem and cloud infrastructure.
Compatibility
CrashPlan allows you to backup M365 data – Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Teams.
Pricing
Detailed pricing details can be obtained by contacting CrashPlan directly. They will ask about number of users, amount of data, and storage location, generating a custom quote from this information.
The biggest pricing difference depends on where the data is stored; CrashPlan’s cost will be cheaper if you host it yourself, but there are additional costs on your end when dealing with that.
For example, a business organization with 100 users would be looking somewhere in the region of $36/user/year.
Final Verdict
CrashPlan is a great solution for medium and large organizations. It offers a great deal of granular control, allowing you to specify how the platform functions and how your data is secured. The level of configurability makes it a good solution for organizations working across multiple territories, with different compliance needs.
The only thing holding this platform back is the dated interface that isn’t as intuitive as some other platforms, due to critical information not being presented as clearly. Overall, for the right organization, one who has the time and expertise to hone the platform to their specific needs, CrashPlan can be a powerful and robust tool.
