We arm ourselves with an ever increasing arsenal of powerful web applications, which almost always tend to include some form of personal data storage. The large majority of web travelers use email, store and share photos and video, and interact on at least social media network. With all this information flowing into the web, we’ve learned to expect two things. One, there’s always the possibility of data loss — whether from hackers, service failure, data corruption or something else.. And two, service providers must maintain a perfect system without a single mistake, which just isn’t possible.

From the time people started storing data on computers, there’s always been backup solutions appearing shortly after learning the hard way. Unfortunately online services like Twitter, Flickr, Gmail and others, don’t typically offer easy data backup and what services are available are scattered or difficult to use. Backupify changes that. With a single service you’re able to setup and manage backups for many of the major online services, with many more on the way.

In this review we’ll take a look at Backupify and what it has to offer in preserving our digital existence.

The Purpose

You probably already have a pretty good idea of Backupify’s purpose and why it’s definitely worth considering. However, it’s worth mentioning that there are many reasons one would want to backup services from Gmail and Flickr to Twitter and Youtube.

Backupify

Here’s a few risks our online accounts face, which seem to happen to some of us at one point or another.

• Data loss
• Data corruption
• Account hacked
• Account locked, suspended or closed
• Accidental deletion

There are more risks like these, but you get the idea. Backing up your data is good — we all know that. Backupify can do data restoration as well, for the services that allow it. The team at Backupify are fully aware of the fact that data backups can be of little use if you’re unable to restore or do anything with the data that’s been backed up. They talk about this point via their blog post, Backups aren’t the point; restores are.

In short, Backupify does everything they can to provide restoration options for the services that allow it. Twitter, for instance, doesn’t allow any sort of restoration currently.

Usage

Setting up and using Backupify couldn’t really be much easier. It’s a pretty basic service that doesn’t clutter the user interface with unnecessary or complicated options. Currently signup is free until January 31st too.

Free Signup

Setup

Once signed up, you’re presented with your “My Settings” page, which lists available services for backup, services in beta, and services that are on the way.

My Settings

Backup Settings

I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more backup options here but for the simplicity of the service, it [probably] isn’t necessary and most people wouldn’t use additional options.

Account Setup

To setup an account, click the “Manage” link next to the desired service. You’ll be presented with a simple gray box, in this case including a link for Twitter authentication.

Twitter Backup Setup

Other services such as Gmail might require that you enter your username and password for setup and authentication. I’ve setup three of my Gmail accounts here.

Gmail Backup Setup

It also appears some service backups offer a few additional options, such as Facebook.

Facebook Backup Setup

As you can see, it’s pretty simple and very straight forward. Select a service, authenticate your account and select any additional options if they’re available — and you’re good to go!

Service Archives

In the event something does happen to one of your accounts or some of your data, you’ll visit the Archives page to download or restore your data. The page initially presents you with a drop-down menu to select the service you would like to see archives for. After selecting the desired service, you’re given a list of files that were previously backed up.

Twitter Archives

The list of links provide downloadable files. For example, Gmail backups allow you to download individual emails but there are no options for automated data restoration at this time. The same problem applies to all the services I had setup, which had all been backed up. However, reading Backupify’s FAQ page explains that data restoration capabilities depends on the service (as previously mentioned).

For example, they can restore a Flickr account but it hasn’t been automated yet so you’ll need to contact them to have their programmers do it manually. They request that you email them for questions pertaining to specific services, as data restoration really just depends on each service.

History

Visiting the history tab displays a list of our backups and the dates they were performed, from most recent onward. As you can see, I entered the incorrect credentials for two of my Gmail accounts. I should’ve recognized this earlier as I hadn’t received successful backup notifications for these accounts and the history lets me verify that.

Backup History

Security

Backupify’s privacy policy, in regards to your data, is that once it is backed up, they don’t do anything with it — no viewing, analyzing, modifying or anything of the like. While this is somewhat reassuring, we should all be aware that while a company may say things like this, they still have access to your data. Facebook is a prime example of privacy abuse. This isn’t to say Backupify is doing anything like that though.

They state that your data is usually backed up in the form it is received, which is usually XML. XML may not be easily readable by people, but the data is none-the-less readable. Many data backup and storage companies encrypt your stored data, and some even state that the user is the only one with the master password and able to view the data. In my opinion, data backed up with Backupify should be no different.

However, having said that, I don’t feel as if Backupify is trying to abuse my data. I do feel as though the service is still in its infancy and has a lot of maturing to do before it would be considered a viable service by mainstream users.

Final Thoughts

Backupify, while a fantastic idea, still has some improvements that need to be made. The overall service is still worth checking out as you’ll still be able to download data should it be needed. I really like the capability of backing up all (or most) of my online services in one location that’s easy to setup and manage.

As much as I would like to keep my online service’s data backed up in the event I should need it, I would much rather loose the data forever than have someone abuse it. This is an area of concern that Backupify will need to improve upon before it will really be ready for heavy usage.

Another area of improvement for Backupify is the overall web app interface. While it is simple, it isn’t very pretty (we all like a little pretty right?) and doesn’t utilize the power of today’s web technology such as JavaScript, in order to create a more seamless and pleasant user experience. Waiting for page reloads in order to view a few service backup settings isn’t acceptable in today’s web application standards.

Overall, the service has a great idea going and although it does need several major improvements, it’s still very new and will take some time to really reach a level of maturity to convince the crowd of more serious digerati.