Cloudberry Backup by MSP360 Review

CloudBerry Backup from the recently renamed MSP360 is very different from all our other backup providers in that it allows you to store files on a cloud storage system of your choice, and provides an easy to use interface to manage all your backups in one place. Read our full CloudBerry Backup review for the details.

By Aleksander HougenEditor
— Last Updated:
2020-08-04T08:54:41+00:00
(Editor)
Starts from $ 4999 for 5000 GB

Most backup services focus on providing the actual server space for your files, but CloudBerry Backup takes a different approach. Instead of offering its own servers for storage, it gives you the option of different storage providers so that you can manage all your accounts and backups from one place. Keep reading this CloudBerry Backup review to find out if this unique approach to backups is worth your time.

The software was initially created and managed by CloudBerry Labs, but that company has since changed hands and rebranded itself as MSP360. Somewhat confusingly, the software retains the old CloudBerry Backup name, despite the website using the new branding.

CloudBerry Backup comes packed with a multitude of options and tools, making it a great piece of software for power users who prefer a DIY approach. However, if you’re just looking for a streamlined backup, CloudBerry probably isn’t the solution for you. Although the interface is well organized, its design feels like something straight out of the early 2000s.

Nonetheless, its security, privacy and speed are all excellent, provided you partner CloudBerry Backup with the right storage provider. Luckily, there’s a lot of options, ranging from Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier to Microsoft Azure. We’ve reviewed most of these options, so check out our lists of the best online backup services and best cloud storage providers.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

  • Packed with features
  • Provides a lot of control
  • Compatible with many storage providers
  • Great security & privacy
  • Good speed
  • Responsive customer service

Weaknesses:

  • User interface feels ancient
  • Not for basic users
  • Questionable annual maintenance fee

Alternatives for Cloudberry Backup by MSP360

  1. 1
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Only on Ultimate Plan Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    5 TB - Unlimited GB
    $ 4999
  2. 2
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • Yes but not on Basic plan (all other plans) External Drive Backup
    • Yes but only on Safe Backup Pro plan NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    Unlimited GB
    $ 600
  3. 3
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    5 GB - 12.5 TB
    $ 579
  4. 4
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    Unlimited GB
    $ 458
    Save 24 %
  5. 5
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    1-1000 GB
    $ 299

Features

80 % – Good

CloudBerry Backup comes with a lot of features, with everything from image-based backups and multithreading to hybrid backups and plans for disaster recovery. Backups can be scheduled and throttled, and its powerful versioning means that you’ll never lose track of deleted or changed files.

CloudBerry Backup is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, and it also offers mobile apps on both Android and iOS, though these are just for managing your desktop backup rather than providing a backup solution for mobile devices. If you want a service to backup your mobile devices, check out our IDrive review.

If you’re looking for server backup, CloudBerry Backup provides this with its more expensive plans, which support the Windows server, Microsoft SQL server and Microsoft Exchange server.

CloudBerry Backup supports both image-based and hybrid backup, which can be performed manually, on a set schedule or continuously (meaning it scans your files and runs a backup whenever a change is detected). You can also enable throttling based on memory usage, bandwidth or available disk space.

CloudBerry-Throttling

Your backup is performed by default using multithreading and a block-level algorithm, meaning you won’t waste network capacity reuploading entire files when only a small part of them have been changed.

Whenever you change or delete files, CloudBerry Backup’s versioning lets you retain the old versions and deleted files for as long as you want, and there’s no limit on how many of these you want to keep.

CloudBerry-Versioning

Aside from the backup features themselves, you can use CloudBerry Backup to create a bootable USB drive or ISO file from your system image, which is a great thing to have in the case of system failure.

There’s also a disk capacity tool which lets you analyze what files and folders are taking up most of the storage space on your computer. The client also supports proxy servers.

CloudBerry-Bootable-USB

CloudBerry Backup Features Overview

  • Backup

    • Backup Scheduler
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • Image-Based Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Server Backup
    • Hybrid Backup
    • Mobile Device Backup
    • Only on Ultimate Plan Unlimited Backup
    • Unlimited Devices
    • Speed Throttling
    • Block-Level File Copying
    • Multithreaded Backup
  • Restore

    • Courier Recovery Service
    • Browser Access
    • Mobile App Access
    • Versioning
    • Deleted File Retention
  • Security

    • Private Encryption
    • At-Rest Encryption
    • In-Transit Encryption
    • AES 256-bit Encryption Protocol
    • Two-Factor Authentication
    • n/a Hardened Data Centers
    • Proxy Server Settings
    • HIPPA Compliant
  • Support

    • 24/7 Support
    • Live Chat Support
    • Telephone Support
    • Email Support
    • User Forum
    • Knowledgebase
  • Misc

    • File Sharing
    • Device Sync
    • 15 Free Trial

Pricing

70 % – Decent

Backup services usually have monthly or annual subscription options. However, because CloudBerry Backup doesn’t actually provide any storage space, the bulk of its cost comes in the form of a one-time purchase up front. 

There is still an annual maintenance fee, though, and unless you opt for the most expensive edition, there are some rather odd limitations.

Despite CloudBerry not actually having to pay for the servers that host your data, the only version of CloudBerry Backup that allows you to perform unlimited backups is the Ultimate version. Costing $299.99, this will be far more expensive than most users are willing to stomach. 

Instead, the Desktop Pro version limits you to 5TB of data, which is probably more than enough in most circumstances. If you’re looking for unlimited backup for your business, then CrashPlan is a great option. Carbonite also offers unlimited storage space and is a great CrashPlan alternative for private users. Check out our Carbonite review for more information.

The Desktop Pro version doesn’t allow for server backups. If this is what you’re looking for, you can opt for one of the Server plans instead. Although these are still pricier than the Desktop Pro plan, they’re not as outrageously expensive as the Ultimate edition.

Desktop Pro
  • Annual Maintenance Fee: $10 Details
  • 5000 GB Storage
Windows Server
  • Annual Maintenance Fee: $24 Details
  • Unlimited GB Storage
MS SQL Server
  • Annual Maintenance Fee: $30 Details
  • Unlimited GB Storage
MS Exchange
  • Annual Maintenance Fee: $46 Details
  • Unlimited GB Storage
Ultimate
  • Annual Maintenance Fee: $60 Details
  • Unlimited GB Storage

Given the range of features offered by CloudBerry Backup, we think the one-time purchase price is pretty reasonable, but adding an extra $10 annually on top of whatever you’re paying your storage provider isn’t great, considering CloudBerry doesn’t actually have to pay any server maintenance to host your files.

CloudBerry Free Plan

There is a free version of CloudBerry Backup available, but it comes with some pretty significant limitations. With the free version of Desktop, you won’t be able to backup more than 200GB of data, regardless of how much storage you have from your actual backup provider. Additionally, image-based backups, encryption and customer support are also not available.

CloudBerry-Free-Trial

You can also sign up for a free 15-day trial, which gives you access to all the features of the Desktop Pro edition so that you can give it a try before spending any of your hard-earned cash.

Ease of Use

70 % – Decent

Ease of use and features are criteria that are often negatively correlated with each other, as the more features you include, the more difficult it usually becomes to use the software, as can be seen with Acronis (read our Acronis vs CloudBerry comparison). 

Although the look of CloudBerry Backup makes it feel like it was designed for Windows XP, it bucks this trend by providing a simple layout that’s easy to use, even if it’s packed to the brim with tools and settings.

Despite the antiquated design, everything is well-organized and easy to find. The main “welcome” panel gives you an overview of your settings and plans, as well as your most recent backups and restores.

CloudBerry-Welcome-Panel

Along the top of the screen you have several buttons to set up various types of backup and restore plans, create a bootable USB and search your backup storage.

In the “tools” tab located in the top left of the application, you can access the CloudBerry Backup options, launch the disk capacity tool mentioned earlier and import or export your configuration if you want to set up the same backup settings on a separate computer.

CloudBerry-Tools-Tab

Below these buttons you have the tabs for the main view of the application, where you can switch from the “welcome” screen we detailed earlier to your backup plans, restore plans, backup storage and history.

In the “backup plans” section, you’ll find a list of all the plans you’ve set up, as well as a few that come preconfigured by default, such as your documents, bookmarks and picture folders. By expanding a plan, you can see all of its details, including the schedule, encryption and results from the last run, plus various buttons that allow you to edit, delete or clone the plan.

CloudBerry-Backup-Plans

The next tab over gives you a very similar overview of your restore plans, with all the same details and actions available in the previous tab.

CloudBerry-Restore-Plans

The “backup storage” tab provides you with an overview of all your linked accounts and the data stored with each cloud storage provider. You can choose to display your backups in a standard tree structure or have them organized by size.

CloudBerry-Backup-Storage

Finally, in the “history” tab, you get a detailed log of all the backups and restores you’ve performed, which includes the file size as well as the result of the operation, the time that it occurred and its duration.

CloudBerry-History

Although there’s no web interface included with CloudBerry Backup, there is a mobile app. As mentioned earlier, the app doesn’t let you backup your mobile devices, but it does provide an easy-to-use mobile portal to manage your backups and even remotely initiate them if you can’t do so directly on your desktop device.

File Backup & Restoration

90 % – Excellent

Backing up and restoring your data with CloudBerry may seem complicated at first, but the process itself is actually quite straightforward. It also gives you a whole lot of settings to fiddle with to ensure that your managed backup behaves exactly the way you want. 

You can backup to the cloud or a local device, implement various throttling and scheduling settings, and enable multiple types of notifications.

CloudBerry Backup lets you set up multiple backup plans that run independently of one another, so that you can easily store your data with multiple providers, such as Amazon S3 and Google Cloud.

CloudBerry-Provider-Options

To create a backup plan, you first have to choose what storage service you want to use and connect your account to CloudBerry Backup. There are a lot of options here, including Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier, Google Cloud (not to be confused with Google Drive), Wasabi, Rackspace and more. 

Which option is the best depends entirely on your needs. For example, if you’re looking for cold storage, then Amazon Glacier is a great choice.

CloudBerry-Add-Account

After you’ve added the cloud backup account of your choice, you can click on either “files” or “image based,” which will open up the setup wizard for your backup plan. The first step is choosing between “local or cloud backup” or “hybrid backup,” followed by selecting the storage service you want to use for the plan, if you’ve added more than one.

CloudBerry-Backup-Local-Or-Cloud

Next, set a name for your plan and choose between “advanced,” “simple” and “custom” mode. “Advanced” mode lets you apply encryption and block-level backup, while the “simple” alternative lets you access your backup with your storage provider’s dedicated client, rather than just the CloudBerry Backup software itself.

CloudBerry-Backup-Mode

The next window gives you access to some advanced options, such as fast NTFS scans (speeding up scans for file changes at the cost of increased memory usage) and forcing the use of volume shadow-copy service (which allows you to use files while they’re being backed up).

CloudBerryBackup-Advanced-Options

If you’ve decided on the “advanced” settings, you can select the files you want to backup. If you’re doing an image-based backup, this window shows you a list of partitions on your system, rather than your files and folders.

CloudBerry-Backup-Select-Files

Once you’ve selected everything you want to backup, you can choose what filters you want to apply to the plan. This includes skipping system files, filtering out certain file types and more.

CloudBerry-Backup-Filters

The next window lets you enable compression (which reduces the amount of cloud storage space used) and encryption (provided that your cloud backup provider supports it).

CloudBerryBackup-Compression-And-Encryption

Next up is your retention policy, which decides how long deleted items are kept on the server and how many old versions of changed files you want to have.

CloudBerry-Backup-Retention

As you’re nearing the end of the process, you get to decide the schedule, which can be set to specific dates, on certain days of the week, in real time or manually (meaning you have to initiate the backup yourself).

CloudBerry-Backup-Schedule

Finally, the last two windows let you set up certain actions that run automatically before a backup initiates or after it finishes, and then whether or not you want to be notified in some way at the completion of a backup.

CloudBerry-Backup-Notifications

Once you’ve gone through all of that, CloudBerry Backup gives you a summary of your plan for you to look over, after which you’re done.

CloudBerry-Backup-Summary

Setting up a restore plan is slightly less complicated. You start by clicking the “restore” button in the main taskbar and then selecting what cloud storage provider you want to restore from.

CloudBerry-Restore-Provider

You can then choose whether you want to run the restore just once or to also save the plan for future use.

CloudBerry-RestoreOnce-Or-Save

Next you pick whether you want to restore files and folders or do a full system image.

CloudBerry-Restore-Files-Or-Image

The next window lets you pick whether you want to restore the latest version or restore from a specific point in time.

CloudBerry-Restore-Point

Next, you pick what files (or what system image) you want to restore from your backed up data list.

CloudBerry-Restore-File-Selection

Moving on, you get to choose the destination. This can be in a new location or in the data’s original location. Here, you can also specify whether you want to restore deleted files and if you want to overwrite the files at your destination.

CloudBerry-Restore-Destination

The following window lets you decide whether you want to decrypt the files. Bear in mind that if you encrypted the files during your backup, you’ll have to decrypt them now. Otherwise, you’ll have to manually decrypt the files later for them to be accessible once downloaded.

CloudBerry-Restore-Decrypt

Finally, you can set up notifications for when the restore finishes, which can be delivered either as an email or an entry in the Windows event log.

CloudBerry-Restore-Notifications

Speed

90 % – Excellent

CloudBerry doesn’t provide the actual server space you’ll be storing your files on, so its speed is highly dependent on the secondary service you choose to partner it with. 

Since initial backups are often huge, it’s critical for a backup service to provide speeds as close to the theoretical limit as possible. From our tests, we’ve determined that CloudBerry Backup can go as fast as the storage provider lets it.

For our tests, we uploaded and downloaded a 3.51GB folder containing various types of files, such as video, pictures and text files. We used a connection with an upload speed and download speed of 50Mbps, which in theory means that the backup and restore should finish in 10 minutes, but more realistically we hope to see them finish in about 15 to 20 minutes.

 First attempt: Second attempt:Average:
Upload0:15:240:14:550:15:09
Download0:12:530:12:460:12:49

As you can see, these results fall squarely within the range we were hoping for and, in the case of the uploads, actually exceeded our expectations. For these tests, we connected CloudBerry Backup to Backblaze B2, which is the version of Backblaze intended for business users. If you’d like to learn more about the version for private use, check out our Backblaze review.

Security

100 % – Excellent

You’ll be entrusting your backup provider with potentially sensitive data, so the security it provides is of crucial importance. However, because CloudBerry doesn’t provide the server space itself, there are significant limits to the security it can provide on its own, as it relies heavily on the measures taken by the company that controls the actual data centers.

That said, CloudBerry Backup does an excellent job of facilitating secure transfers to your storage provider of choice. As long as the secondary service supports it, CloudBerry Backup offers up to AES 256-bit encryption, which is more than enough to keep your data out of the hands of cybercriminals or even the authorities.

CloudBerry-Encryption

The encryption can be set as private, meaning that only you possess the key required to unlock it. When your files are in transit, they’re protected by TLS, meaning they’re not vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks as they travel to their destination. 

If you’re not quite clear on what all this encryption talk actually means, be sure to read our description of encryption for a crash course on the terminology.

CloudBerry Backup supports two-factor authentication, which greatly improves your security by requiring additional verification before you log in, though you have to set this up with your storage provider. The service also used to offer ransomware protection, but this was removed after CloudBerry Labs determined that it provided little benefit to users.

Privacy

100 % – Excellent

Much like security, privacy is mostly in the hands of the company in charge of your actual storage location. Because CloudBerry Backup doesn’t possess a copy of your data, its ability to compromise your privacy is inherently limited. That said, its concise privacy policy makes clear what data it collects and when it is shared.

In essence, the only information CloudBerry collects on you is what you provide when you register an account, meaning your name, email address and payment details. The company also collects certain anonymized information, such as your IP address and device details, but these are not tied to your name or identity in any way.

CloudBerry-Privacy-Policy

The privacy statement clearly states that this information is shared in only two ways. First, with trusted third-party partners that enable CloudBerry to provide its service (think PayPal for payment information, etc.) and to comply with laws and regulations, at the request of law enforcement.

In terms of privacy regulations, CloudBerry complies with GDPR and HIPAA, but this is once again completely reliant on the secondary cloud storage you connect the service with.

CloudBerry-GDPR

Customer Service

85 % – Very Good

Since you generally entrust backup providers with potentially critical data, it’s important that they have a robust customer service department that provides quick and quality answers to any queries. 

Even though CloudBerry isn’t really handling your data, we still wanted to check how good its customer support is, and the company does well here, sporting several avenues for contact as well as rapid responses.

CloudBerry-Email-Form

If you need assistance with the software, you can either send a support ticket through the email form or contact the company by phone. Unfortunately, there are phone numbers available for only three countries — the U.S., the UK and Brazil — so if you’re calling from anywhere else, it might cost you quite a bit.

CloudBerry-Phone-Support

We sent a query through the email form and received a response within a few hours, which is excellent. When we didn’t reply right away, the support department even reached out to us via phone as well as by sending an additional follow-up email.

CloudBerry-KnowledgeBase

You can also search through the company’s extensive knowledgebase, or put your question or issue to the user forum.

CloudBerry-Forum

The Verdict

That’s it for our review of CloudBerry Backup. All in all, this is a powerful tool for managing multiple backups to different providers, which gives you plenty of control over every aspect of your backup. 

CloudBerry Backup might not be the best solution for someone just looking for a simple way to backup some data to the cloud. However, for power users, it provides a great degree of control and flexibility.

Although the free version comes with some serious limitations, it’s still very usable, provided you don’t need to backup more than 200GB and don’t need to do any disk imaging. 

We do think paying an annual maintenance fee for a service that doesn’t provide any server space is a bit uncalled for, but all in all, the price is not outrageous in the grand scheme of things.

Pricing aside, CloudBerry Backup provides excellent speed, security and privacy, as well as a very responsive customer service department if you encounter any issues. When you pair all this with its wealth of features and ease of use, you get an excellent piece of software for those who are looking to get as much as possible out of their backup process.

What did you think of our CloudBerry Backup review? Do you agree that this is a powerful tool for advanced users but might be a lot more than the average person needs? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

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12 thoughts on “Cloudberry Backup by MSP360”

  1. Thanks for the well written and comprehensive review.
    With Crashplan Home being discontinued I’m interested in moving my mere 500GB into a more assured long term storage.
    I “guestimate” my storage costs around $35/year based on S3 Glacier but probably need to allow for an additional $10-20 in retrieval charges (is upload really free?)
    My question – Would this be a realistic and pragmatic solution for a personal backup plan?
    Keen for other options/recommendations
    Thanks

    Reply
    1. Cloudberry backup allows you to backup to local storage then it can automatically backup that to the cloud for disaster protection. Using S3 with the Glacier option is cheap, $0.005/GB/month and yes no upload charges. It’s the best both worlds. Local backup for quick restore and the cloud if the house burns down. It supports efficient block level incremental, but allows file restore. I’ve looked at a lot of back programs. This is the best by far. Be warned though, it does require some effort to learn how to configure and use. Previously I used Crash Plan and it was too inefficient

      Reply
  2. Just as Rem I’m a Crashplan Home user on the lookout for a new setup and after trying Arq Backup for the 30 days trial I was not that impressed despite the good opinions it has around the web.

    Cloudberry looks good BUT, I’ve got around 750GB of family DSLR photos from ~10 years, HD video (~7 years of iPhones), ripped music collection (FLAC) and regular “My Documents” (office, pdf archive, scripts, source code, wife’s full professional documents and so on). Nothing out of the ordinary I think. But what this and most other reviews failes to mentioned is the artificial 1TB storage limit CloudBerryLabs has on all but the $299 Ultimate version..I will probably reach this limit in 1-2 years having small kids and using iPhones with HD or even 4K cameras..

    Strangly, the site have two limits (1TB and 5TB) depending on the page you look at (scroll down to Compare Editions) :
    https://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup/windows.aspx has the Desktop Pro (Windows) with 5TB and
    http://backup.cloudberrylab.com has the Desktop with 1TB. 5TB sounds much better in 2017 IMHO.

    Reply
  3. The 1TB limit is a show stopper for me.

    I have over 6TB of DSLR photos and HD video which increases with each holiday or long weekend.

    The reviews should clearly mention this limitation on what is otherwise a quite good piece of software.

    I won’t be buying it purely because of the 1TB limit … more external 6TB HDDs for me.

    Reply
    1. Thanks for commenting, Mike. The 1TB limit has actually been bumped to 5TB. There’s actually a link to apply for more capacity, too. The page doesn’t mention any extra cost for increasing that limit, but I’m going to reach out to see if I can get clarification. You’re correct, anyway, that we should mention that in our review, so I’ll make the updates once I get word from CB. Thanks again! https://www.cloudberrylab.com/backup/windows.aspx

      Reply
  4. The 1TB limit is a real problem for me also. Too bad, CBB looks pretty good otherwise.

    Any word on the 1TB vs 5TB question?

    Reply
  5. I use Cloudberry Ultimate for Linux to backup over 2TB of data to Backblaze. Monthly cost for Backblaze is less than $5. Annual support for Cloudberry is a bit expensive. But, I also backup to a local FreeNAS server as well and am recovering my home directory as I write from a lost disk. Cloudberry has been robust on backups and my data is being restored without a problem. The transfer rate is high, but pauses when the Cloudberry worker thread starts doing some operation that takes 100% of a core. I think it might be doing housekeeping or checksums. I’m not sure. So restores are slower than I’d like. But, backups are fast.

    Reply
  6. I use to like the ticket support of Cloudberry Labs. I have been a paid maintenance customer since 2013. In the maintenance plan they offer upgrades and support.
    Even though they enjoy my annual maintenance fees on 9 licenses they refuse to honor the upgrade clause in the agreement.

    I use to recommend the software and praise the support but in the past year it has went downhill fast. They don’t even read the issue in the support ticket and respond otherwise.

    I don’t not recommend them any more now based upon my real life experience now.

    Reply
  7. What your not reviewing is the support after the sale. On CloudBerry you need to by the annual maintenance for support and upgrades. I have 9 licenses since 2013 with paid annual support till now and this year they refuse to upgrade but yet they are advertising on their website that maintenance fee includes the upgrade.
    The support use to be great up until this year 2019. Something has changed on their end so please review the support and maintenance after the sale.

    Reply
  8. I would like to give a big warning for using Cloudberry with AWS. It is an extremely cost inefficient solution. When backing up to S3 Glacier, it moves files first to S3 and uses S3 to transfer to Glacier. Doing this causes a huge amount of Glacier requests. For just a few Gb it led to 57 dollars in “Amazon Simple Storage Service S3-GlacierTransition” costs. I would strongly recommend not to use CloudBerry with AWS.

    Reply
  9. I have been working with them for a while and their support is pretty bad. You can’t reach them via phone (even though they have a phone number) and it really depends on who picks up your ticket as to whether or not you’re going to get a satisfactory response.

    Reply
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