Mozy and Carbonite Reaching Out To Abandoned HP & Yahoo Customers

In the last few weeks, two online backup services, HP Upline and Yahoo Briefcase have both announced that they are closing.

While some have said that this is a sign that the online backup market is not sustainable, both Mozy and Carbonite have been clever and used it as an opportunity .

Nate from Mozy has posted a blog post entitled “Hey Upline Users, We Love You!” giving a discount code to ex-Upline users.

Dave Friend, co-founder and CEO of Carbonite, has posted two blog posts: one on Yahoo Briefcase and one on HP Upline, discussing the decision to close both.

By the way, I really appreciate the fact that Dave personally blogs and shares his insight. It’s great.

What do you think, is Upline and Briefcase a sign of things to come, or is it just separating the wheat from the chaff?

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About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 9 comments

exchangerates - December 13, 2010 Reply

I tried Mozy and after I uploaded all my files. Next time I run a backup, it started from zero. I was in contact with support for nearly two months and after sending logs and getting patches they never solved my problem. Each time a scheduled or manual backup started it erased all my files on the servers and uploaded them all over again. I actually went into my account and it said 0kb, confirming that my files were erased. At the end I had to cancel my account.

briefcases - October 30, 2009 Reply

Thank you for the post, I appreciate it.

Jenny - May 23, 2009 Reply

In the online backup and online storage business, you cannot trust the big name companies, first XDrive was shut down, then HP upline is offline, Gdrive is still nowhere. To be fair, it is not about big companies, rather companies entering the space with no real profit model.

Offering unlimited storage for a fixed annual fee of only $50/year? unless storage, bandwidth, server power and IT operations are all free in this world! For a business customer, never trust there is free lunch, certainly don't expect free lunch will be there for long time. Our company, VOSI.biz (http://www.vosi.biz/) offers true high-end services that are designed to save your company money and solve your business problems. We offer advanced remote backup services, remote file server, FTP Server Hosting, web/email hosting services and email backup services, all for a low price. Better, you can use our services on any number of computers from anywhere for no extra charge.

Jenny
Customer Support Department
http://www.vosi.biz/

Brooks Duncan - March 27, 2009 Reply

Nice find Will. I hadn't come across Nivio before. Thanks!

Will - March 27, 2009 Reply

Similar to Mozy: Nivio (recently awarded the Technology Pioneer Award at the 2009 World Economic Forum (WEF)) are offering 10gbs of free online storage to all HP and Yahoo customers whose accounts close at the end of March, link to sign up is http://www.nivio.com/storageoffer

An obvious opportunity for them and a great offer for those who are affected by the closures

Brooks Duncan - March 17, 2009 Reply

@Sarah Thanks for the note on Backblaze! I’ll definitely check it out. As for Mozy, like most things I have heard both positive and negative. Sorry to hear you had a bad experience.

Sarah Banko - March 13, 2009 Reply

I have been using backblaze and love it. I didn’t have much luck with Mozy. Basically they were slow and their support told me its because they are not meant to backup all your data, just important docs but no music, photos, or video. Backblaze is super fast and painless and is the same price. I have never tried Carbonite though

Mozy Promotional Code - March 12, 2009 Reply

I am not sure why HP got into the online backup service to begin with. They don’t sell anti-virus software or an OS. They make good computers and printers. With the downturn in the economy it was probably a good idea for them to focus on what they do best and leave the online backup to the people that do it best, Mozy, Carbonite, IDrive and others. HP’s leaving online backup is a great benefit for users that are looking to backup with Mozy, since they are offering 20% off. That is a good deal and one of the best discounts you can get from Mozy.

Online Backups Review - March 11, 2009 Reply

Goes to show that just because there’s a big name & bankroll behind a product, doesn’t mean it’ll be successful. Mozy and Carbonite both understand the business and are passionate about it – Yahoo and HP were just looking for another buck.

There are a few promotional codes exclusive for HP Upline users from Mozy and others. Good for them on picking up where HP left off.