Online backup specialist Carbonite announced Carbonite Pro, a version of its online backup service specifically designed for small to medium-size businesses. The company, which is offering a free trial of the solution via its Website, uses a tier-based system that charges customers a monthly fee for backup space.
Pricing starts at $10 a month for up to 20GB, with 300GB to 499GB of data costing $250. Carbonite Pro is only available for Windows-based computers, the company noted.
Carbonite claims it backs up data for more than 100,000 small businesses via its Carbonite consumer product, which offers unlimited backup for $54.95 per year per computer. With Pro, business files are encrypted before they leave employees’ computers, where they are stored offsite at the Carbonite data centers. If an employee leaves the company, the administrator can disable his or her access to backups.
There are no licensing, setup or per-computer fees. The data center facilities offer RAID 6 technology, proprietary monitoring software and a firewall using technology from Juniper Networks.
If disaster strikes, the Restore Wizard guides customers step-by-step to recover lost or damaged files. Priority phone support, live chat and e-mail support are also in place.
Carbonite Pro customers can also log into their accounts on CarbonitePro.com from any computer with an Internet connection and download any file in their backups. Administrators are able to use the dashboard to add users and other administrators to their account; view the total storage summary and backup status for all users; learn of any account alerts that signal unusual backup activity; send users instructions for specific tasks such as reinstalling Carbonite Pro; freeze backup activity for any user; prevent users from logging into their accounts; delete users or specific computers; and reassign computers to new users.
“Small businesses don’t always do a very good job of backing up their office computers,” said Carbonite CEO and co-founder David Friend. “So many of them have been turning to Carbonite as a way to easily and inexpensively back up their laptop and desktop computers. Now we have a version of Carbonite that incorporates everything that these small-business users have been asking for: no per-PC fees, administrative tools that are simple enough for any office manager to use, the ability to back up external drives and priority support. Nobody wants to spend a lot of time or money backing up computers, so we’ve made Carbonite Pro a simple and affordable online backup service for businesses.”