SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) backup solutions are a specific subcategory of backup solutions that securely store data from SaaS applications—such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce—so you can restore data that is lost, corrupted, or stolen.
SaaS products are delivered via the internet, rather than needing to be downloaded and installed. In some cases, desktop versions of the applications are available too. You might also see SaaS solutions being described as “web-based software”, “on-demand software”, or “hosted software”.
The important distinction between SaaS and conventional software is that it does not run on your own servers. Instead, it is hosted by the product provider. You will usually pay a subscription fee to access SaaS software, but you will then be able to login from a range of devices, in a range of locations. While this is more flexible, scalable, and often more cost effective than on-premises software, it also means that many organizations using SaaS apps don’t know how secure the data is that they’re storing in those apps.
Many SaaS applications have their own integrated backup solutions, however, in these situations, there is often limited configurability and retention. This means that, in the case of a data loss incident such as a cyberattack or service provider outage, your company could lose the data stored in those apps.
SaaS backup solutions allow you to protect and store critical data, ensuring that it is not lost even if your SaaS provider suffers an attack. They do this by creating copies of your data and writing those copies out to a secondary storage environment that’s isolated from the original versions. Then, if your company suffers from data loss, you can easily restore the lost data using your backups.
Some SaaS backup tools are designed to only work with a specific SaaS product, others take a generalist approach and are compatible with multiple SaaS applications. Before deciding on a solution, it is worth considering what data you need to protect.
By implementing an effective SaaS backup solution, you can enhance the native security features, and take ownership of your data. In this article, we’ll list some of the top solutions that allow you to control how your data is stored, and ensure it suits your needs.
Spanning, a Kaseya company, has developed a number of backup solutions for the most used cloud applications and services. These include Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Salesforce, and they even have a solution that is designed for MSP usage. There are currently over 10,000 organizations and 2.4 million users relying on Spanning to protect their data.
Spanning Backup Features:
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing, contact Spanning directly. Spanning offers several plans, depending on your use case and the SaaS application that you need to cover. Spanning 360 – their advanced plan for Microsoft 360 and Google Workspace – gives you additional integrated phishing defence, dark web monitoring, and end-to-end email protection features.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Spanning is an effective solution that allows you to reliably store the data that you need and focus on other essential tasks. Users can receive notifications to confirm that their backups have been stored correctly and can easily restore their network to a specific point in time. Spanning protects over 10,000 organizations globally and we recommend them as a leading SaaS backup provider.
CloudAlly is an Opentext company that provides several backup solutions for the most popular SaaS solutions – these include Microsoft 365, SalesForce, G Suite, Box, and DropBox. Over 14,000 organizations trust CloudAlly to restore their data in the case of malicious or accidental loss.
CloudAlly Features:
Pricing And Plans: CloudAlly is priced at $3/user/month, with a discount being applied for full year subscriptions. Alternatively, the solution costs $30/user/year with discounts available for not for profit organizations and companies with fewer than 100 users.
Expert Insights’ Comments: CloudAlly is a robust backup and recovery platform that offers enterprise-grade functionality. Despite its advanced capabilities, CloudAlly remains easy to manage thanks to its clear interface, generous customer support, and series of out-of-the-box integrations. CloudAlly is a strong solution for SMBs looking for an efficient and seamless backup solution.
Acronis is a Swiss-based cybersecurity company that provides a suite of tools to backup data, secure your network, and manage endpoints. They have solutions tailored to individuals, businesses, and service providers, ensuring that there is an option for whatever your needs are. Advanced Backup is part of the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. For MSPs, Acronis’ Advanced Backup allows you to expand capabilities and provide customers with a customized service.
Acronis Advanced Backup Features:
Pricing And Plans: For more information on pricing, contact Acronis directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is a comprehensive and robust platform that solves a number of your cyber needs, as well as providing effective data backup. The solution allows MSPs to make the most of one comprehensive platform, rather than having to integrate multiple cyber products and manually identify vulnerabilities and gaps in coverage.
Barracuda is a leader in data security solutions. The company was established in 2003 and has built several robust and technically capable solutions that integrate closely with your work environments. Cloud-to-Cloud Backup is Barracuda’s tool for securing data from Microsoft 365 applications and restoring it when needed.
Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Features:
Pricing And Plans: Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup is included as part of Barracuda Email Protect Premium Plus. This is the most advanced of Barracuda’s three Email Protect plans: Advanced, Premium, and Premium Plus. Advanced provides advanced DLP tools to prevent malware from corrupting your data. Premium adds SIEM/SOAR/XDR integration, proactive threat hunting, and automated workflows. Premium Plus adds the cloud-to-cloud backup tools, as well as attack simulation and awareness training.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Barracuda is a widely used and trusted email security provider, with their backup solution being a natural extension of this. As the solution is reliable and easy to use, you can focus on other business operations, rather than worrying if your data is secure and backed up. As Cloud-to-Cloud is part of Barracuda Email Protect, it is the ideal solution for organizations that are already familiar with, or are already using, Barracuda’s email security products.
Cohesity is a data management and security company that was established in 2013. Their product suite is built around zero trust principles, is powered by AI, and remains simple to use. DataProtect is the company’s backup and recovery solution, that can secure your cloud and SaaS application data throughout its lifecycle.
Cohesity DataProtect BaaS Features:
Pricing And Plans: For information on plans and pricing, contact Cohesity directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Cohesity is a robust and reliable backup solution that is easy to set up, and easy to use. The solution is customer focused throughout, ensuring that you have the information and assistance that you need. The UI itself is intuitive and enables you to work efficiently. We would recommend Cohesity for small to medium organizations who need simple and effective data backup tools, but might not have experience of implementing a backup solution.
Since 2008, Druva has been finding innovative ways to protect data in cloud environments. Their SaaS Data Protection Platform – inSync – gives you 360° visibility of your environment, ensuring that you always have access to the data you need. Not only does inSync backup your data, but it is also designed with regulation in mind so makes it easy to prove compliance during audits.
Druva inSync Features:
Pricing And Plans: Druva offers three different plans, each tailored to a different type of user. Their Business plan is $2.50/user/month, provides 10 GB of storage, and covers solutions that include Google Mail and Drive, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and Teams. Enterprise, which costs $4/user/month, offers 50GB of storage, and extends coverage to public folders. This solution will store data for extended periods when an employee goes on vacation or leaves the organization. Druva’s Elite plan costs $7/user/month, and adds eDiscovery tools, federated metadata search functions, and Microsoft 365 GCC High support.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Druva inSync is an efficient and easy-to-use SaaS backup solution. Its compliance and search functions are valuable aspects of this solution. Users are permitted a good amount of storage, and the solution will scale as your organization grows. The focus on regulatory compliance and auditing makes this a good solution for organizations operating in regulated sectors.
Keepit is a Danish cloud data backup solution that provides a secure and scalable cloud data recovery service. They offer several solutions, each with a focus on securing some of the most popular SaaS solutions including Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Azure. The solution works on your terms and gives you the ability to control data retention periods.
Keepit Features:
Pricing And Plans: Keepit offers three levels of service for different use cases. Business Essentials is ideal for smaller organizations with limited retention requirements. This plan is priced at $2.95/seat/month and stores data for 1 year. At $4.95/seat/month, Keepit offers their Enterprise Unlimited plan. This plan has no time limit on data retention. Keepit’s Governance Plus plan is their most comprehensive – it stores data for an unlimited period, while offering advanced Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) and costs $7.95/seat/month.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Keepit integrates easily with the most popular SaaS solutions and works to enhance their native security features. The solution is praised for its usability and makes it easy for users to access information about the solution to get the most from it. With this in mind, we would recommend the solution for organizations who are new to BaaS solutions and looking for an efficient and user-friendly solution.
NAKIVO provides cloud backup and recovery solutions aimed at SMBs and enterprises. Since 2012, the company has grown to operate in 174 countries, with 24,000+ customers. NAKIVOs SaaS Backup solution is designed to store your Microsoft Office 365 data. The solution is flexible and intuitive, with a single pane of glass UI where you can manage, plan, and execute your data recovery procedures.
NAKIVO Backup and Replication Features:
Pricing And Plans: NAKIVO operates a flexible and customizable approach to pricing. You can use their online calculator to select you plan, deployment, number of users, and license durations to get a specific quote. NAKIVO offers 6 different plans: Pro Essentials, Pro, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus.
Expert Insights’ Comments: NAKIVO’s automated backups and flexible recovery options make backup restoration easy and ensure that this process requires as little intervention as possible from admins. This solution is ideal for smaller organizations who need a solution that they can set up easily, then forget about. Its flexible pricing structure make it a viable option for even the smallest of organizations.
OwnBackup is a leading SaaS data protection platform with advanced features such as data security, recovery, archiving, and even sandbox seeding. OwnBackup was founded in 2015, making it one of the newer solutions on the market, and it has since become known in the backup space for providing innovative and impactful backup solutions. OwnBackup is compatible with many popular SaaS apps, including Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and ServiceNow.
OwnBackup Features:
Pricing And Plans: There is an Unlimited Backup and Recovery for Microsoft 365 plan which is priced at $3.65/user/month. On this plan, daily backups are stored for 10 years, while monthly backups are stored for 99 years. There is no storage limit, although there is a minimum contract size of $500/month. This works out at 137 users. For use with SalesForce, OwnBackup offer Governance Plus as well as Unlimited which is the same as the Microsoft plan. Governance Plus costs $6.65, increases data retention times, and has additional features such as blockchain verification and (AWS) key management.
Expert Insights’ Comments: OwnBackup is a highly regarded and widely used cloud backup solution. The granular approach to automated backup configuration ensures that human error isn’t responsible for data loss. The solution provides regular backups, and stores these for a significant length of time. OwnBackup is used across sectors, and we would recommend it for organizations who need consistent, reliable, and automated backups.
Skyvia is an all-in-one service for cloud data integration, backup, and management. The solution is “no code”, which means that users of all experience levels can feel the benefits of the solution. The solution runs effectively in the background, with as much or as little oversight as you feel is necessary.
Skyvia Features:
Pricing And Plans: In addition to offering a Free plan, Skyvia offers three paid plans with more advanced features. Standard is priced at $7/month, provides 20GB of storage, data search function, backup comparison, and automatic cleaning. If you need more data storage, the Professional plan gives you 200GB for $79/month. The Enterprise plan offers all of the features already mentioned, but increases your storage limit to 1TB of data. This plan costs $399/month.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Skyvia is a solution that focuses on details. For example, you can export data in a file format that suits you – this may sound like a small thing, but that’s one less task for you to do. Skyvia readily integrates with over 45 commonly used applications including Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Workspace, QuickBooks, and Shopify. Because of these integrations and the “no code” philosophy, Skyvia can be readily adopted by organizations in a range of sectors, with a range of business aims and procedures.
Veeam, founded in 2006, provides a global data backup, recovery, and management platform to protect your most valuable asset: your data. Their products have 230,000 downloads and protect 13 million users. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is a flexible BaaS solution that covers your Microsoft based tools such as Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. You can choose the management level of the service from hands-on to a fully managed service.
Veeam Backup For Microsoft 365 Features:
Pricing And Plans: The Community Edition is appropriate for up to 10 users and is free. Contact Veeam directly for details on the Paid Subscription which runs on 1–5-year plans. Veeam also offers BaaS for Microsoft 365 which is a managed service, again, contact Veeam directly for details.
Expert Insights’ Comments: The Veeam platform is comprehensive and flexible; it has a customizable Recovery Point Objective (RPO), meaning that you can customize the length of time between backups to suit regulatory requirements. The solution’s adherence to the 3-2-1 rule (store at least three copies of your data, in at least two formats, with at least one copy offsite) ensures that data is secure and can always be recovered. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is a solution that you can set and forget, or take a much more proactive, hands-on approach if you want that granular visibility over the service.
Backup and recovery is the practice of making regular copies of all of your data, and storing it securely for later. If your network is attacked and you lose access to your data, you can restore from one of these records. Unless you are backing up in real time, you can only restore to the nearest backup – this could be a few days, to a few weeks ago, depending on how your organization operates.
The 3-2-1 rule describes the best practice for storing backups of your data. The strategy suggests that you should have three separate copies of your data, stored in two different formats, with one copy being held offsite. This strategy balances the need for security and reliability, whilst remaining practical and reasonable.
There are three main ways to backup your data:
Full Backups offer a complete backup of every piece of data on your entire network. This is a very comprehensive process and results in a total separate copy of your data. It is, however, a time consuming and storage intensive process.
Incremental Backups result in a complete backup, so this is still a comprehensive option. The difference, here, is that anything that hasn’t changed since the last backup will not be recorded. That way, you will have a very recent version of a file that is frequently changed, but a file that has not been edited might be from a few backups ago. This results in a patchwork, but comprehensive, account of your entire network. These backups are much faster to carry out, and significantly reduce the amount of data needed.
Differential Backups are like an incremental backup, except that rather than using the previous “patchwork” backup as a baseline, it will use the last full backup. If, for example, you carry out a full backup on the 1stof the month, then a differential backup on the 5th, a backup on the 10th will capture everything from the 1st, not the 5th. The benefit of this type of backup is that it is faster to restore than incremental backups.
With differential backups, you can restore your entire network from two backups (the original, and the subsequent one). With incremental backups, however, you may have to pull data from many different backups to regain a complete copy of your data.
Alex is an experienced journalist and content editor. He researches, writes, factchecks and edits articles relating to B2B cyber security and technology solutions, working alongside software experts. Alex was awarded a First Class MA (Hons) in English and Scottish Literature by the University of Edinburgh.
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.