Acronis vs IDrive

Acronis is a Swiss-headquartered cyber protection company founded in 2003, known for its True Image disk imaging software and, today, mainly for a multitenant platform that managed service providers use to back up, secure and manage their clients' systems. EQT agreed in 2024 to take a majority stake, and Acronis says more than 20,000 service providers and 750,000 businesses use its platform.

The business offering, marketed as the Acronis Cyber Platform and sold to service providers as Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, combines backup of servers, PCs, VMs and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with disaster recovery, EDR and MDR, email security, data loss prevention, patching, RMM and PSA-style billing and service desk tools. MSPs pay per workload for actual usage; IT departments buy one to three year terms. The consumer line, Acronis True Image, is sold per year: Essentials for local backup and cloning, Advanced with cloud storage and anti-malware, and Premium with 1 TB or more of cloud storage.

Acronis fits MSPs that want one console for backup, security and RMM, and home or small-office users who need full-disk images and cloning. Backblaze is simpler and cheaper for plain cloud backup, Afi.ai focuses on SaaS backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Veeam is the usual choice for large virtualized data centers.

Buying tip: True Image prices rise with each extra computer and terabyte, so a 3 or 5 computer pack is better value for households. MSPs should check which security modules they already license elsewhere.

IDrive is a cloud backup service from IDrive Inc., a privately held company in Calabasas, California, whose roots go back to Pro Softnet Corporation, founded by Raghu Kulkarni in the 1990s. Its core job is backing up many computers, phones and servers into one encrypted account instead of paying per machine. The company says it serves more than 4 million customers.

Backups are incremental and continuous, keep up to 30 previous versions per file, and add snapshots for point-in-time recovery against ransomware. An optional private key keeps 256-bit AES encrypted data unreadable to IDrive. One account covers Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, with entire-machine backup, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup. IDrive Basic is free with 10 GB; Personal plans serve one user with unlimited devices from 5 TB, Team plans bundle users and storage, Business adds servers, NAS, Exchange and SQL, and IDrive e2 is separate S3-compatible object storage.

IDrive fits households, freelancers and small businesses with several devices who want one inexpensive account. The desktop app is cluttered, restores of very large sets can be slow, and first-year promo prices rise on renewal. Backblaze is simpler with unlimited backup for one computer, Duplicati is a free open-source client that writes to storage you choose, and Sync.com or pCloud are better for file sync and sharing than for backup.

Pricing tip: new sign-ups see discounted first-year prices, such as $6.99 a month for Personal 5 TB billed yearly against a regular $9.99, and standard rates apply from year two.