The Top 11 Microsoft 365 (Office 365) Backup And Recovery Solutions
Discover the top Microsoft 365 (Office 365) recovery and backup solutions. Explore features such as automated backups, reporting, and deduplication.
Written by Caitlin Harris
Technical Review by Craig MacAlpine
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Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Backup
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CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365
Having a comprehensive and adaptable Microsoft 365 backup and recovery solution in place has become increasingly important for Microsoft 365 (M365; formerly Office 365) customers. M365 cloud backup and recovery tools capture a point-in-time copy of data stored within a Microsoft 365 environment and write the data out to a secondary storage facility so that users can recover it in the future. This means that any lost data that was deleted accidentally can easily be recovered, but it also means that files are protected against ransomware attacks. These threats involve a hacker holding data hostage until the victim pays a ransom.
While Microsoft has recently launched its own backup and recovery tool, they don’t provide full backup and recovery within Microsoft 365 itself. In fact, because of Microsoft’s shared responsibility model, the default settings within M365 only backup data for 30-90 days on average. This can lead to a lot of complications when organizations believe their systems are backed up, and later find that items have disappeared.
In this article, we’ll explore the top Microsoft 365 backup and recovery solutions designed to protect your organization’s data. These include features such as real-time backups; rollback and restoration; role-based access to backups and reporting; unlimited backup storage, and the protection of remote sites and public cloud workloads. We’ll give you some background information on the provider and the key features of each solution, as well as the type of customer that they are most suitable for.
Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365, a Kaseya company, offers robust backup and recovery solutions for Microsoft 365 applications, serving over 10,000 organizations and 2.4 million users globally.
Why We Picked Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365: We appreciate its automated daily backups that save IT administrators time, and its quick recovery capabilities that mitigate risks from ransomware, malicious file erasure, and accidental errors.
Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365 Best Features: Key features include automated daily backups, on-demand backups, comprehensive data protection, rapid data restoration, and advanced search capabilities. It supports Microsoft Office, Mail, Teams, Calendar, OneDrive, and SharePoint. Additional features include status monitoring, immutable audit logs, Active Directory sync, regional data center options, and individual license management. Built on AWS, it offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee, global data centers, and compliance with SOC2, HIPAA, and GDPR.
What’s great:
- Automated daily backups reduce IT workload
- Quick recovery from ransomware and data loss
- Comprehensive data protection across Microsoft 365 apps
- Advanced search and rapid restoration capabilities
- Robust security features including encryption and intrusion detection
What to consider:
- May require additional configuration for advanced features
Pricing: For specific pricing, contact Spanning directly.
Who it’s for: Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365 is ideal for businesses of all sizes seeking reliable, automated backup and recovery solutions for their Microsoft 365 applications, especially those concerned with data security and compliance.
CrashPlan
CrashPlan is a robust data backup solution that caters to businesses needing comprehensive endpoint and server protection. It offers advanced control over data storage locations and encryption, making it suitable for organizations with stringent data sovereignty and compliance requirements.
Why We Picked CrashPlan: We appreciate CrashPlan’s ability to allow users to choose their backup storage location, whether using CrashPlan’s Azure-based storage or their own. This flexibility, combined with the control over encryption keys, makes it an excellent choice for regulated industries.
CrashPlan Standout Features: Key features include the ability to select backup storage, control over encryption, customizable retention periods, and detailed scheduling options. It supports backups for Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, with granular control over what data is backed up. CrashPlan integrates with Azure to bypass API limitations and offers compliance with standards like ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR.
What’s Great:
- High level of control over data storage and encryption
- Flexible pricing based on storage and user count
- Comprehensive backup for endpoints and servers through a single interface
- Granular policies and retention periods ideal for multinational companies
- Compliance with multiple regulatory standards
What To Consider:
- The user interface is dated and may require a dedicated IT person for setup
- Does not currently support Entra backup, though it is on the roadmap
Pricing: Pricing depends on storage and users.
Best suited for: CrashPlan is ideal for businesses with 100 to 5000 users that require detailed control over data backup and storage. It’s particularly beneficial for organizations in regulated industries needing to meet compliance standards.
CrashPlan
ManageEngine RecoveryManager Plus is an enterprise backup and restoration tool that supports a variety of environments including Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Exchange. It enables IT managers to back up and restore objects, sites, or mailboxes from a single console, ensuring data availability across multiple cloud and on-premises applications.
Why We Picked RecoveryManager Plus: We appreciate its support for multiple environments and the ability to manage backups and restorations from a single interface, which simplifies IT operations.
RecoveryManager Plus Best Features: Key features include restart-free recovery, incremental backups, attribute-level restoration, and backup retention. It also offers a recycle bin for restoring deleted objects and their attributes along with their parent containers. The solution supports multiple backup storage options such as on-premises, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure file shares. Additional features include oversight of multiple AD domains, Azure AD tenants, and Exchange organizations from a single dashboard, quick deployment, automated backups, custom notifications, and ransomware threat mitigation.
What’s great:
- Supports a wide range of environments
- Offers restart-free recovery and incremental backups
- Simplifies management with a single console
- Provides multiple backup storage options
- Includes a recycle bin for easy restoration
What to consider:
- Advanced features may require additional configuration
Pricing: RecoveryManager Plus offers a free trial and a paid Standard edition. For detailed pricing, visit their website.
Who it’s for: RecoveryManager Plus is ideal for businesses of varying sizes that require a comprehensive backup and restoration solution across multiple IT environments. It suits organizations looking for a reliable tool to manage and secure their critical data.
Acronis CyberProtect Cloud Backup is a robust data protection solution that offers comprehensive backup, disaster recovery, and secure data access. It is designed to safeguard Microsoft 365 data and protect against ransomware with AI-powered technology.
Why We Picked Acronis CyberProtect Cloud Backup: We appreciate its rapid recovery capabilities using Acronis’ runVM technology, which ensures minimal disruption and maintains productivity. Additionally, the solution’s proactive ransomware protection powered by AI technology is a standout feature.
Acronis CyberProtect Cloud Backup Best Features: Key features include file backup, disaster recovery, secure file sync and share, and AI-powered ransomware protection. It also offers instantaneous recovery, verification of backup authenticity, and a web-based management console. Integrations span over 20 virtual, physical, cloud, and mobile platforms, with industry-specific solutions for automotive, healthcare, energy, and government sectors.
What’s great:
- Rapid recovery minimizes user disruption
- Proactive AI-powered ransomware protection
- Web-based management console for flexible administration
- Extensive platform compatibility
- Industry-tailored data protection solutions
What to consider:
- May require additional setup for complex environments
Pricing: For detailed pricing, visit Acronis directly.
Who it’s for: Acronis CyberProtect Cloud Backup is ideal for medium to large global enterprises seeking industry-specific data protection with rapid recovery capabilities.
CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365
CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365 is a robust cloud-based data protection solution tailored for small to midsized businesses. Acquired by OpenText in 2021, it supports backup and recovery for all Microsoft 365 data, including Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, and has been trusted by over 14,000 organizations globally.
Why We Picked CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365: We appreciate its automatic daily backups and the flexibility to customize backup schedules. Its integration with Active Directory ensures new users’ data is backed up immediately upon enrollment.
CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365 Best Features: Key features include daily backups with customizable schedules, unlimited data retention, immutable storage, AES 256-bit encryption, support for two-factor authentication, and global data center options. The solution integrates with Active Directory and supports granular searches for data recovery, offering historical snapshots, cross-user restore, and non-destructive restore options.
What’s great:
- Seamless integration with all Microsoft 365 plans
- Unlimited data retention and immutable storage
- Strong encryption and two-factor authentication
- Global data centers ensure compliance with standards like ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR
- Intuitive interface with 24/7/365 customer support
What to consider:
- Does not back up settings and configuration data
Pricing: For detailed pricing, visit CloudAlly directly.
Who it’s for: CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365 is ideal for small to midsized businesses, particularly educational institutions and non-profit organizations, due to its cost-effective pricing model and comprehensive data protection features.
CloudAlly Backup for Microsoft 365
Datto SaaS Protection is a robust backup and disaster recovery solution tailored for MSPs, focusing on securing Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 data. It offers automatic backups and flexible data recovery options to safeguard against both malicious and accidental data loss.
Why We Picked Datto SaaS Protection: We appreciate its three-times-daily automatic backups and the highly flexible restoration options, which allow for cross-user and granular recovery.
Datto SaaS Protection Key Features: Features include automatic backups of Exchange, Tasks, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams data, with data stored in Datto’s private cloud across multiple global locations. It supports customizable retention periods, multi-tenant management, and data restoration to any point in time, including PST export for Exchange. Integrations include seamless compatibility with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
What’s great:
- Three-times-daily backups ensure minimal data loss
- Highly flexible restoration options, including cross-user and granular recovery
- Compliant with SOC1 and SOC2 Type II standards
- Easy deployment and client onboarding praised by users
What to consider:
- Primarily designed for MSPs
Pricing: For detailed pricing, contact Datto directly.
Best suited for: Datto SaaS Protection is ideal for MSPs, especially those serving clients in sectors like healthcare, finance, and legal, where data protection and compliance are critical.
Dell APEX Backup Services for SaaS apps is a cloud-based data protection solution that secures Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce data. It offers comprehensive backup, disaster recovery, and long-term retention, eliminating the need for complex hardware installations.
Why We Picked Dell APEX Backup Services: We like its unlimited retention periods and highly flexible restoration options, making it ideal for large-scale Microsoft 365 data backup.
Dell APEX Backup Services Best Features: Key features include automated point-in-time backups, isolated and immutable storage, source-side deduplication, and flexible recovery options such as mailbox, individual file, and bulk recovery. It supports in-place, as-a-copy, and point-in-time recovery, with the ability to restore data outside Microsoft 365. Additional features include eDiscovery tools for file searching and export, and detailed audit logs for compliance.
What’s great:
- 100% cloud-based, easy to deploy and scalable
- Automated backups with no purge timeframes
- Robust security features ensure data integrity
- Flexible recovery options cater to various needs
- Comprehensive eDiscovery and compliance tools
What to consider:
- May require expertise for full utilization of advanced features
Pricing: For detailed pricing, contact Dell Technologies directly.
Who it’s for: Dell APEX Backup Services for SaaS apps is best suited for mid-market and larger enterprises looking to secure and manage large volumes of Microsoft 365 data with a scalable, cloud-based solution.
Druva’s Data Security Cloud is a robust resilience solution that secures data across endpoints, applications, and workloads, ensuring compliance and business continuity. It offers comprehensive backup and recovery for SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, and Salesforce.
Why We Picked Druva’s Data Security Cloud: We appreciate the platform’s automated, incremental, cloud-to-cloud backup for Microsoft 365, which covers OneDrive, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams. Its ransomware protection and compliance with multiple data protection standards make it a strong choice for organizations handling sensitive data.
Druva’s Data Security Cloud Best Features: Key features include automated backups with invisible backup windows, global source-side deduplication, federated search and eDiscovery tools, self-service restore for end users, and full audit trails. It also provides AES 256-bit encryption for data at rest, TLS 1.2 for data in transit, and supports single sign-on via ADFS and Okta. The platform is FedRAMP authorized and aligns with EDRM, Department of Justice requirements for legal hold management, and offers support for SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, and Privacy Shield compliance.
What’s great:
- Comprehensive backup and recovery for Microsoft 365 and other SaaS applications
- Automated, incremental backups with minimal impact on system performance
- Strong encryption and ransomware protection
- Robust eDiscovery and compliance features
- Quick deployment and on-demand scalability
What to consider:
- May require additional configuration for complex environments
Pricing: For detailed pricing, visit Druva’s website.
Who it’s for: Druva’s Data Security Cloud is ideal for mid-market and large enterprises needing secure backup solutions for sensitive data like PII, PHI, and legal records, with a focus on compliance and business continuity.
Rubrik Microsoft 365 Protection is a robust backup and recovery solution tailored for Microsoft 365 environments. It automatically backs up data across Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, offering advanced search and granular restoration capabilities to mitigate data loss effectively.
Why We Picked Rubrik Microsoft 365 Protection: We appreciate its automatic discovery and backup of new users, sites, and teams, ensuring comprehensive data protection. The solution’s advanced search and granular recovery options allow for precise data management and restoration.
Rubrik Microsoft 365 Protection Best Features: Key features include automatic backups, advanced search tools, granular and bulk recovery options, scheduled and on-demand reporting, and secure storage of backups. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 through APIs, enabling automatic detection and protection of new users and troubleshooting of outages.
What’s great:
- Automatic discovery and backup of new data
- Granular recovery to original or alternate locations
- Secure, isolated backup storage
- Comprehensive reporting and compliance tools
- Identification and protection of sensitive data
What to consider:
- May require additional configuration for complex setups
Pricing: For detailed pricing, visit Rubrik’s official website.
Who it’s for: Rubrik Microsoft 365 Protection is best suited for large enterprises and organizations in highly regulated industries that require a reliable, easy-to-deploy backup solution with strong data protection and compliance features.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is a robust solution designed to protect and restore Microsoft Office 365 data, including mailboxes, Exchange, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams.
Why We Picked Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365: We appreciate its flexibility with 25 recovery options and frequent backups as often as every five minutes, ensuring rapid data recovery.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Best Features: Key features include frequent backups, 25 flexible recovery options, support for native Microsoft formats, customizable retention policies, and multiple storage options. Integrations include AWS S3, Azure Blob, IBM Cloud, and on-premise storage.
What’s great:
- Frequent backups every five minutes for quick recovery
- 25 flexible recovery options for all incident types
- Multiple storage options including cloud and on-premise
- User-friendly dashboard for easy management
- Native format support for faster data restoration
What to consider:
- Enteprise focussed solution, best suited for larger teams
Pricing: For detailed pricing, visit Veeam’s official website.
Who it’s for: Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 is ideal for mid-market and enterprise organizations needing a flexible and reliable backup solution for Microsoft Office 365. Small businesses can also benefit from the free Community Edition for up to 10 users.
Veeam Data Cloud
Veeam DataCloud, launched in 2024, is an all-in-one storage, cloud backup, and ransomware recovery solution designed for Microsoft 365 and Azure, offering protection and recovery for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Teams, Azure VMs, Azure SQL, and Azure Files.
Why We Picked Veeam DataCloud: We appreciate its cloud-native, as-a-Service model that simplifies deployment and eliminates the need for on-premises storage management. Additionally, its immutable cloud storage in Azure ensures robust data protection.
Veeam DataCloud Best Features: Key features include backup and recovery for Microsoft 365 and Azure environments, scheduled backups, restore operations, backup status visibility, user account management, license activity tracking, storage usage monitoring, role-based access controls, and user activity logging. The solution supports a web-based interface for easy management.
What’s great:
- Easy deployment with out-of-the-box functionality
- Modern, user-friendly interface
- Immutable backups in Azure for enhanced security
- Comprehensive management of Microsoft 365 and Azure backups
What to consider:
- Enteprise focussed solution aimed at larger organizations and backups
Pricing: Contact Veeam directly for pricing information.
Who it’s for: Veeam DataCloud is best suited for small and mid-size organizations seeking a secure, cloud-based backup solution for their Microsoft 365 or Azure environments.
Veeam Data Cloud
Other Backup And Recovery Services
We researched lots of cloud backup solutions while we were making this guide. Here are a few other tools that are worth your consideration. Note that all of these tools are “Microsoft preferred” solutions.
Straightforward protection that requires very little configuration, without compromising on security.
A fully managed Backup-as-a-Service solution designed to protect SaaS, cloud-native, and on-prem data sources.
A cyber resilience platform that provides a robust defense against ransomware, thanks to its Metallic AI feature.
Quick and easy data backup and recovery, with lots of useful integrations that make the platform easier to manage.
FAQs
Everything You Need To Know About Microsoft 365 Backup And Recovery (FAQs)
Microsoft 365 backup and recovery solutions provide you with the ability to take historical snapshots of your M365 data and store them in a secondary storage facility. This facility could be your own on-premises environment, the backup provider’s global private cloud data center, or even a popular public cloud like AWS or Azure. Keeping your backups separate from your live servers offers an added layer of protection, as any compromise to the latter won’t affect the former. For example, if your organization falls victim to a ransomware attack, your safely stored backups will remain untouched.
Having backups in place ensures that in the event of data loss or destruction due to human error, a technical glitch, a natural disaster, or a cyberattack, your backup and recovery provider can quickly restore your M365 backup data to its previous state—and often, to the right location within your M365 environment.
To ensure you’re always able to restore lost data from a backup, we recommend that you follow the “3-2-1” rule of backing up data: keep at least three copies of your data, stored in at least two different formats, and store at least one copy off-premises.
Cloud backup tools for Microsoft 365 work by replicating your M365 data onto cloud-based servers. They either do this using continuous replication or scheduled replication.
Continuous replication is when the backup provider copies your data to their cloud data center in real-time as changes are made within your live M365 environment. This is the most common type of cloud backup, as it provides organizations with an up-to-date copy of their data so that, in the event of a data loss incident, they can recover their data to a point in time as close to the incident as possible, resulting in minimal disruption.
Scheduled replication is when the backup provider copies your data to the cloud server according to a pre-defined schedule (e.g., daily or weekly). The main drawback to this method is that, if you experience a data loss incident, you will lose any data created between your last backup and the time the incident occurred. So, if you’ve scheduled weekly backups that take place on a Friday and you experience a cyber attack on a Thursday, you could lose 6 days’ worth of data.
Veeam’s 2023 Ransomware Trends Report found that one in seven organizations will see more than 80% of their data affected as a result of a ransomware attack. That means that not only are these attacks likely to happen, but they’re also likely to be successful. However, cybercriminals don’t want organizations to be able to recover their systems easily, because being able to do so means they can refuse to pay the ransom and still recover their data. So, ransomware actors are increasingly targeting backup systems in their attacks. In fact, in 93% of attacks, attackers attempt to breach their victims’ backup repositories, resulting in 75% losing at least some of their backups during the attack.
What does this mean for you? It means that not only should your organization be backing up your critical Microsoft 365 data, but you also need to make sure that you’re using a strong cloud backup and recovery solution to do so—one that can create immutable, tamper-proof backups that can’t be compromised by an attacker.
Microsoft 365 is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application suite. SaaS applications are built on a shared responsibility model: Microsoft is responsible for the infrastructure, such as the data center, network controls, applications, virtualization, and operating system; you (the customer) are responsible for protecting your data. That includes securing your endpoints, accounts, and data, and implementing data backup, business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), and access management.
So, Microsoft will solve any issues related to software failures or downtime, but you have to protect your own data against loss or damage caused by human error, threat actors, or programmatic error.
While Microsoft does offer its own cloud backup and recovery tool, this is not included as part of a standard Microsoft 365 subscription and must be purchased separately or as an add-on.
When it comes to Microsoft 365’s native backup and restore capabilities, Microsoft does create regular backups of your 365 data, but this is only to keep your data accessible in line with the 99.9% uptime promised in their service level agreement (SLA). So, these backups exist only to safeguard Microsoft; your organization, admins, and end users cannot access them.
Within Microsoft 365, different applications offer different retention periods for data, but these only offer protection for an average of 30-90 days:
- Inbox data is stored for two years before being archived
- Recycle Bin items are stored for one month before being permanently deleted
- Deleted SharePoint Online and OneDrive items are stored for up to four months before being deleted
- The data of a user who has left the company is stored for one month before being deleted
If you want to be able to access and restore your lost data in the event of accidental or malicious loss, you need to create backups of that data yourself. The best way to do that is by using a third-party backup and recovery solution, like the ones listed in this guide.
In November 2023, Microsoft announced the launch of their own backup and recovery product, Microsoft 365 Backup. Like other Microsoft 365 backup tools, Microsoft 365 Backup creates copies of your M365 data, but it writes those copies out to a secondary storage facility that still resides within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. This means that you can manage the security of your backups in the same place that you manage your live Microsoft 365 environment.
Microsoft 365 Backup offers full backup and point-in-time restoration for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Exchange mailboxes. It also enables users to search or filter their backup archive to find specific files, using metadata such as the file owner, subject, and creation/modification dates. Microsoft 365 Backup doesn’t currently offer backup and recovery for Microsoft Teams chat data, and its file recovery features are not as granular as some other Microsoft 365 backup solutions; however, Microsoft has announced that these features are a part of their roadmap post-general availability.
While all Microsoft 365 backup solutions will offer slightly different feature sets in order to meet different use cases, there are some features that you should look for in any Microsoft 365 backup tool. These are:
- Compatibility with all the MS365 apps your business is using.
- Daily backups that are automated to free up your IT team from the responsibilities of running, monitoring, and managing backups.
- Granular search capabilities that enable admins to easily to locate individual pieces of data and restore or export them.
- Restoration options for both individual files and full systems.
- Retention periods and backup storage limits tailored to meet your organization’s needs. For example, HIPAA compliance may necessitate varying retention periods for different data types and a substantial or unlimited storage capacity.
- Security features such as encryption, role-based access, and multi-factor authentication for added protection.
Written By
Caitlin Harris is Deputy Head of Content at Expert Insights. Caitlin is an experienced writer and journalist, with years of experience producing award-winning technical training materials and journalistic content. Caitlin holds a First Class BA in English Literature and German, and provides our content team with strategic editorial guidance as well as carrying out detailed research to create articles that are accurate, engaging and relevant. Caitlin co-hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, where she interviews world-leading B2B tech experts.
Technical Review
Craig MacAlpine is CEO and founder of Expert Insights. Before founding Expert Insights in August 2018, Craig spent 10 years as CEO of EPA cloud, an email security provider acquired by Ziff Davies, formerly J2Global (NASQAQ: ZD) in 2013, which has now been rebranded as VIPRE Email Security. Craig has extensive experience in the email security industry, with 20+ years of experience helping organizations to stay secure with innovative information security and cyber security solutions.