New companies are always popping up on the cloud storage radar. And whether it’s by expanding into it or starting an entirely new service, most of them go unnoticed unless their names start with a G and end with an Oogle (ok, to be fair, big names like Sony usually turn some heads too). Today two new cloud storage and backup companies loosed their services on the North American continent, one by expansion, the other by opening its doors for the first time.
AltDrive Announces Expansion of Cloud Backup Services to North America
AltDrive, a Backblaze, Carbonite and Mozy competitor overseas, has decided to expand their services to North American Shores. A secure online backup service, AltDrive claims and (we hope) does what most cloud backup services do: it offers you a simple way to store your files in the cloud. That way, in case of a critical system failure or a hard drive crash, you won’t be left out in the cold — AltDrive will have a full restore waiting for you just as soon as you get your new HDD up and running.
What’s more, this expansion covers both their home and business offerings, so nobody is left out. Without getting into too much detail, AltDrive offers:
- Unlimited remote storage for only $3.71 per month (Home customers)
- Inexpensive utility style plan for businesses
- Installation and Configuration Wizard
- Versioning
- Backups send only changes rather than re-uploading
- Files are compressed and encrypted before they are sent
- Optional E-Mail Notifications
- And much more
As you can see (and I only covered a fraction of what AltDrive offers) their service sounds a lot like Carbonite. If you’re interested in giving the service a try now that it’s in North America, head over to their website to start your 60-day, no credit card required free trial, or read all about its competitors — Carbonite, Backblaze and Mozy — in our reviews section.
New Kid on the Block CloudElephant.com
It might not seem like too smart a move to break into the cloud storage market just now, especially given AltDrive just added their name to the North American roster of companies vying for your attention, but CloudElephant.com is doing it anyway. Their new service, which celebrated its worldwide release today, allows businesses and private users alike to buy the storage capacity they need (all the way up to unlimited), install their software, and just go.
Much like Backblaze the whole thing runs in the background hopefully undetected. The software that goes along with CloudElephant is called CloudFile, and from what I can tell it’s on par with the higher-end services out there. Your files are encrypted to the AES 256 standard, updated files are uploaded instantly and automatically, and the whole thing works without you having to do anything to keep it going.
Of course we’ll need to review the service before we can pass judgement, but for now feature wise it seems to hold up. And for a limited number of customers, celebrating its release into the world, CloudElephant‘s services are also 50% off. Just use the code BACKUP50 and you can get their most popular plan (the unlimited plan) for a whole year for only $80. Granted, even at half off it comes out more expensive than much of the unlimited backup competition, but the new kid offers a package with sync… I know… we’re excited too. We’ll just have to wait till we get our hands on it to see if it’s worth the extra cost.
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A tech writer with a vested interest in Cloud Backup and Storage, Dragos loves to keep a close eye on this ever changing industry, and pass the sights on to you.
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