SOS Online Backup

SOS Online Backup is an Infrascale company. Founded in 2001 by Ken Shaw, Infrascale has its headquarters in El Segundo, CA, USA. It has eleven data centers in total, located in Los Angeles, CA; three in Dallas, TX; two in Houston, TX; Louisville, KY; Toronto, Ontario Canada; London, England; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Melbourne, Australia. It has office locations in Los Angeles, CA; Athens, Greece; Kiev, Ukraine; Chennai, India; and Sydney, Australia.

Infrascale has partnered with over 1,000 service providers, and protects data for more than a quarter of a million companies. They sell service under their own name and under white labels. Their products have a management console that integrates information from multiple components into a unified display, also known as a “single pane of glass.”

SOS Online Backup Pricing and Services

Most Popular Plan:

100 GB, $69.99/mo no contract, $699.99 1 year prepay, $1,259.99 2 year prepay:

• 100 GB to be shared with an unlimited number of computers and mobile devices
• Unlimited versioning history
• Backed up files that are deleted locally can be manually deleted from SOS or kept forever
• Loss-less compression during transfer to minimize bandwidth use
• No limits on file types or file sizes
• Network-attached storage backup
• External drive backup
• Can be backed up continuously, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly

SOS Online Backup comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, but does not offer a free trial. They take major credit cards and PayPal. Yearly plans are prepaid. When setting up, SOS will find important files automatically and set a schedule. File backup is based on file type, including either common or custom file types. Can manually back up any file.

Highlighted Features:
All features included at every pricing tier

• HIPAA certified
• SOX compliant
• Military-Grade encryption
• No file size limit
• If Internet connection is lost during transfer, transfer will begin where the upload left off
• Can be backed up continuously in real time with LiveProtect
• Can back up files that are still open, such as Word documents
• Service can be used to back up to local external drives in addition to the cloud

All Available Plans & Services:

• Personal Cloud 1, $7.99/mo no contract, $79.99 1 year prepay, $139.99 2 year prepay: Infinite storage for one home PC or Mac and unlimited mobile devices.
• Personal Cloud 5, $39.95/mo no contract, $399.95 1 year prepay, $699.95 2 year prepay: Infinite storage for up to five home PCs or Macs and unlimited mobile devices.
• 10 GB, $9.99/mo no contract, $99.99 1 year prepay, $179.00 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 25 GB, $24.99/mo no contract, $249.99 1 year prepay, $449.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 50 GB, $39.99/mo no contract, $399.99 1 year prepay, $719.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 100 GB, $69.99/mo no contract, $699.99 1 year prepay, $1,259.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 250 GB, $149.99/mo no contract, $1,499.99 1 year prepay, $2,699.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 500 GB, $249.99/mo no contract, $2,499.99 1 year prepay, $4,499.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.
• 1 TB, $399.99/mo co contract, $3,999.99 1 year prepay $7,199.99 2 year prepay: Centralized management; unlimited PC and Mac Backup; unlimited Android & iOS Backup; ForeverSave archive & version history; NAS backup; external storage backup.

Awards & Recognition:

• Four time PC Magazine Editor’s Choice Award Winner, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011
• Recommended by the New York Times
• Recommended by The Wall Street Journal

Help & Support Options:

• Live Chat M-F 6AM-6PM PT, S/S 7AM-3:30PM
• 24×7 email support

Editor’s Bottom Line of SOS Online Backup

SOS runs quietly and automatically in the background on PC, Mac, and Android, but iPhones and iPads must be backed up manually. It can protect USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt, and eSATA drives, and network-attached storage from any PC, Mac or Linux computer.

SOS owns all their own data centers. Many competitors partner with service providers, like Amazon and Google, but SOS keeps it all in house. Their twelve data centers are spread throughout the world on five continents. Data on each server is redundantly backed up to a secondary server daily.

SOS UltraSafe is HIPAA certified for medical data, and compliant with Securities and Exchange Commission, Sarbanes-Oxley, also known as SOX, for financial data. The data is encrypted locally, encrypted during transit using SSL, then encrypted a third time within SOS’s servers. With UltraSafe MAX, the encryption keys are not stored on SOS servers; the data will be so secure that if you lose your password it cannot be recovered. SOS is a good service to look into if you have sensitive data that needs to be backed up.