The Best Online Backup Services for 2016

As much as we take them for granted, PCs are incredibly complex, and any number of things can render them useless at any moment. Hard drives crash. Operating systems become corrupted. And then there are more traditional disasters like fires, floods, and earthquakes that can spell the end of your digital media and documents. Of course, the organized among us diligently perform backups at regular intervals, but for the rest of us, an online backup service may be the best way to protect those digital goods.

Online backup services have you install software on you PC that scans your storage for files worthy of backup, encrypt them for security, and send them up to the cloud—that trendy word that just means powerful, secure, and high-storage-capacity server computers attached to the Internet with fast connections. Once your files are stored on those cloud servers, they're accessible for you to restore to the same PC, should a file go missing. In many cases, the service lets you access your files from Web browsers and mobile devices.

Sounds simple, right? Select some files, upload them to a server. But the plot thickens, with many, many variations on this basic theme.

For this roundup, we tested 13 online backup services, most of which didn't make the cut to be included here as the best players in the game. (You can find the rest on our File Syncing and Backup page) Below, I'll go through each of the details in which the devil of online backup consists, and what you should look for when you're choosing a service.

Pricing Plans
Since you're probably going to be paying for a backup service for years, you should know from the start what you're getting into in terms of money. They're all subscription-based, and there are many ways the vendors slice and dice the fees to make them seem appealing. Some backup services list prices by the month, but those prices often only apply if you commit to a one- or two-year contract. Some prices only cover one PC, while others specify a number of machines you can use in one account. Still others cover unlimited PCs, but limit the amount of data you can back up to the cloud server storage. To level the price playing field, we list the vendor's stated plan for one year of service at the top of each review.

Choosing What to Backup
How a backup service lets you choose which files to protect wildly varies, from the totally hands-free Backblaze, which selects the likely files you'd want to have backed up and immediately starts encrypting and uploading them, to OpenDrive and its ilk, which simply let you choose whatever files you want from your PC's folder tree. But different services allow different types of files from differing sources. Some don't let you protect system and program files. Others don't let you back up files and folders on external or network drives. If you have any of those needs, make sure the services you choose support them.

Security
Most services encrypt your files with strong systems such as AES 256 or Blowfish before sending up to their servers. But how the encryption keys are generated is a big differentiator. Several services offer a security-and-privacy option in which you alone possess the password, which is never stored on the services server computers. Others, such as SOS Online and CrashPlan can have you use a separate password from your main account password for the encryption. The caveat for these higher levels of security/privacy is that, if you forget your passphrase, not even the provider's employees will be able to restore your data. Even if compelled by law enforcement, they won't be able to decrypt your files.

Choosing When Backup Happens
There are two main ways a service can determine when files should be sent up to its servers for safekeeping. The first is by using a fixed schedule, such as once a day, week, or month. The second, which we find preferable, is to upload file changes as they're saved on your computer, in a continuous backup setup. With this system, most providers only transfer the changed part of the file, so it's not like your Internet connection is being unduly taxed.

Performance
The speed with which a service can prep your files (usually involving encryption and compression) and transfer them to their servers doesn't only impact how long it will take to get large amount of data—often numbering many gigabytes—up to the servers. The speed also affects how much of an impact on your computer its processing will have. Make sure to check out our speed test results in the review of any service you're contemplating purchasing.

Restoring Folders and Files
An online backup service isn't much good if it makes it hard to restore the files you've lost. Look for a service that offers a search tool to find a particular backed-up file. It's also desirable for a service to be able to replicate an entire folder tree structure, so that it can deal with bigger data losses. One consideration in restoring is that if you bought a plan that covers just one computer, you may have to transfer the account to a new PC if you want to restore everything and use the service for that computer.

Versioning is another capability offered by many of the services. This lets you see earlier versions of a file in case you made some unwanted edits. Services vary widely in the number of versions saved and how long they're kept. Some, like SOS Online Backup and CrashPlan, save every version forever. SOS even permanently saves files you've accidentally deleted from the source PC.

Web Clients
The Web is everywhere these days, and so should your backed up files be. What's the point of having your documents and media in the cloud if you don't have Web access to them? Just about every online backup provider lets you get at your files from a Web browser, but they vary in capabilities offered in that medium. Many simply let you download the files, but some let you view documents and photos and play music and videos. File sharing is another feature you'll find in online backup service Web clients, and some even let you specify a password for access and a timeout period for the shared file.

Mobile Clients
The same comment that applies for Web access applies to mobile: You should have access to cloud-stored files no matter where you are and what device you're using. Most online backup services offers Android and iOS apps, and some even offers Windows Phone apps. Like the services' sites, these apps may just offer simple document and media file download, but many can also display the documents and photos and play the video and music. Many also offer the same file-sharing capabilities of their browser-based counterparts.

Extras
Above you've seen the features generally available in most online backup services, but some vendors offer extra goodies. Some let you send an external disk full of your data to save you from uploading a massive number of gigabytes. Others will restore files using that same physical disk method. For extra and closer-to-hand protection, some services offer backup to local storage as well as remote. File syncing is another common feature offered by a number of the players. This lets you keep folders duplicated in real time on multiple computers. A couple of the services even can locate your devices and remotely wipe them in case they're lost or stolen.