5 Best Online Backups For Photographers

Data management is a huge PITA for every photographers. It’s not the same case as regular folks’ growing collection of holiday photos and daily snapshots. For photographers, the issue is serious. It is not just about losing memories anymore. Losing photos they have taken could mean losing their business and precious portfolio pieces.

If you aren’t a photographer, we will explain. For non-photographers, they will only have JPEGs. At highest resolution today’s cameras offer, file sizes would be most likely around 12MB per file. That’s all. But for photographers, they have to shoot in RAW format which contains a lot more information and details than JPEGs. At 12 megapixel, RAW file sizes can be 18 – 25MB, depending on how much details are there. And RAW files aren’t final production. So they have to edit the RAW files in Lightroom or whatever RAW editing software of choice, and then export the images in TIFF format in order to do further editing in Photoshop. After the whole process, you will have RAW, TIFF, PSD and final output JPEG files for one photo. Yup, that’s just for one photo.

So imagine how much data it uses for photographers. It is not just growing need for storage space that troubles many photographers. It’s also about backups. When you are a photographer with 1,000 photos, your storage need is enormous, so as backup. After all, without backups for all your work, when disaster strikes, your business is in jeopardy.

When we choose online backup providers for photographers, we have to take all those things into consideration. Uplink speed is essential, so as affordable price per GB. Versioning is also critical. With all that in mind, we present you five best online backup solutions for photographers.

Summary

Rank	Provider	Starting Price	Review	Link

1	Special Offer: Anytime moneyback	$4.95/mo	Read Review	Visit Site
2		$5/month	Read Review	Visit Site
3		$5/mo	Read Review	Visit Site
4		$6/mo	Read Review	Visit Site
5		$4.58/mo	Read Review	Visit Site

Take a look below to see slightly more detailed views about each provider.

Winner – ZipCloud – From $4.95/month

ZipCloud is a UK-based cloud backup solution provider with one promise: simplicity. Sure, there are other providers with better features, cross-platform compatibility and whatnot. But ZipCloud wins in simplicity with its client software. There are no bells and whistles, to the point that sometimes we wish there are a bit more advanced features. All your data are stored on Amazon S3 so they are pretty safe, and ZipCloud uses 256-bit AES encryption for your backups. ZipCloud’s starting plan will cost only $4.95 per month but you only get 75GB of storage. That’s nowhere near enough for photographers but just for $6.95 per month, you can get unlimited storage space. If you subscribe for 1-year or 2-year billing cycle, you can also get discounts. For photographers who aren’t technically inclined to perform more advanced online backups, and for those of you who just want a solution that just works. Here is our full review about ZipCloud.

What’s more, they will stand 100% behind they product, and offer an anytime moneyback guarantee. Whether its 2 weeks from now, or 2 years from now, you can claim a refund if you are unhappy.

Click below to sign up now!

Visit ZipCloud »

2. CrashPlan – From $5/month

Who here doesn’t know CrashPlan? Okay, okay… we are just kidding! All of you already know how much we love it. But one warning before you delve into it – it can be confusing a bit for first time users. Why? Simply because CrashPlan is loaded with a lot of powerful features. You can download the client software for free and backup to external hard drives, NAS or even your own computer at another location over the Internet. Or you can pay $5 per month and get unlimited storage at CrashPlan. The software has features like unlimited versioning (which you can control to fullest), advanced scheduling, multiple backup sets and multiple backup destinations, bandwidth throttling, setting how much system resources it should use and many more. Even if you don’t want to use all those advanced features, you can still enjoy CrashPlan online backup without diving into them. And it will run on virtually any platforms, including photographers’ main choice, Mac OS X. You can read here in comprehensive details about CrashPlan.

Visit CrashPlan

3. Backblaze – From $3.96/month

Backblaze is built by ex-employees of Apple. You don’t have to go through the hassles of choosing suitable pricing plan for yourself with Backblaze, simply because they only have one price and one plan. For $5 a month, you get unlimited storage for one computer and really fast, straightforward backup. If you subscribe for two-year billing cycle, you will be charged only $95 which is roughly about $3.96 per month. Now, that’s hard to beat. One really good thing about Backblaze is that it doesn’t set any upper limit on individual file size so that you can upload a file at any size (yes, even 8GB Lightroom database files). For restoration, you can choose to download ZIP files or ask Backblaze to send you external USB filled with your backup for a reasonable fee. There is a detailed review we published awhile ago here if you want to know more about Backblaze before you sign up for it. Seriously, give it a try if you want to have unlimited storage and no-limit on file size features of CrashPlan, but really simple to use client software of ZipCloud. Backblaze will be a perfect fit for you.

Visit Backblaze

4. Livedrive – From $6/month

This is for photographers who also want syncing service along with backup so that they don’t have to subscribe to two separate services, and LiveDrive is really solid cloud backup solutions with support for both Mac and Windows. For $7.95, you get unlimited backup for one computer. But if you also want syncing on top of backup, then you should subscribe to their Pro Suite plan ($24.95 per month), which includes 5TB of Briefcase space for syncing, as well as ability to backup up to 5 computers. So if you own multiple computers such as one Macbook Pro and one iMac at office, then LiveDrive is the one you should consider. Software is a bit less than stellar but still quite solid. It also offers impressive array of features too. At Pro Suite, you will get FTP, SFTP and WebDAV access to your files as well. And the uplink speed is quite fast in our tests.

Visit Livedrive

5. Carbonite – From $59/year

One reason Carbonite is at the last place here is because of its shoddy platform support for Mac, a platform of choice for most photographers. However, if you can live with basic backup software for Mac (advanced features are only available for Windows client) and want unlimited storage on top of solid customer support from Carbonite team, then you will enjoy paying $59 per year (which is about $4.91 per month). Seriously, we don’t really see a need to pay higher price for other plans if you are a Mac user, since those features aren’t available for Mac anyway. Here is our full review about Carbonite. One thing we can assure you is that you will really like their attentive customer support. That’s certain. If you are Windows user, then you will actually enjoy all advanced features offered at higher level plans.

Visit Carbonite

Honorable Mentions

There are honorable mentions such as SmugMug, Flickr and BitCasa but we feel that the five providers above are better for backing up files of professional photographers.

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