Acronis vs Spanning Backup

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.

Spanning Backup is a cloud-to-cloud backup service for Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. The company started in Austin, Texas, and is now part of Kaseya, which sells it alongside its other backup products for IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs).

Spanning takes automated daily backups, with on-demand backups available, of Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts and Shared Drives; of Exchange Online mail, OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365; and of Salesforce records, metadata and attachments. Point-in-time restore brings back individual files, emails or records, or whole accounts, to their original location, and end users can restore their own items without opening a support ticket. Audit logs, status reports and encryption help with compliance and ransomware recovery. Pricing is per user, typically bought through resellers and MSPs, with separate products for each platform.

Spanning fits IT teams and MSPs that want proven, low-maintenance protection for the main productivity suites. It is limited to these three platforms, the interface feels dated and restore speed varies with data volume. Native retention and version history in Google and Microsoft cover simple cases for small teams but are not true backups, since they do not protect against every deletion or sync error. Alternatives include Backupify (also owned by Kaseya through Datto), Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, AvePoint and Afi, while Own, now part of Salesforce, specializes in Salesforce data.