Summary
ZipCloud was built for Macs, by Mac users, and this means it is the Apple of online backups. It’s simple, elegant, and works. Mac users expect high quality, and ZipCloud delivers. The price is one of the best in the industry, and you can get unlimited space if you need it.
Zipcloud are so confident about their product, they offers a anytime moneyback guarantee. This means that you can get a refund any time, even a year from now. There is no risk!
Your data is backed up to Amazon S3, which is the same place where Netflix and Reddit are hosted. If they trust their data with Amazon, do you think you can too?
Read our detailed review below, or if you want to, try ZipCloud now.
“ZipCloud makes light work of backing up, sharing and retrieving your files either automatically or manually. The promise of unlimited data back-up, at a reasonable price, is also appealing, one that should ensure all your important files are safe from harm and accessible anywhere.”
MacWorld
Boasting 15 million files on their network, ZipCloud is a cloud storage company from UK which heavily promotes simplicity of its services and software. Data is stored at Amazon S3 (huge data center provided by Amazon), and utilizes pretty sophisticated grid infrastructure to handle the data. They currently offer 3 Personal plans, 3 Business plans and 3 Reseller plans. The free trial offers 2 weeks of storage, and they also offer an “Anytime” moneyback guarantee. So there is pretty minimal risk when you sign up. Signing up is as easy as 1 2 3 since they literally don’t ask for anything more than your name, email, and password. Their Unlimited storage plan is worth the price, and have we talked enough about the simplicity of their software?
One thing you need to be aware of, a lot of features on ZipCloud cost an extra fee. In other words they do a lot of “upselling”. However, since their basic price is very low, and the software is very good, even with these occasional fees you will get a good deal compared to other services.
Video Review
Pricing Plans
For Personal accounts, pricing plans are pretty straightforward. You can enjoy 14-days free trial on any plans.
- Home – 75GB Storage. From $4.95/month
- Premium – 250GB Storage. From $5.95/month
- Unlimited – Unlimited Storage. From $6.95/month
If you commit to Zipcloud for 1 or 2 years, then you get a discount of monthly rates, this is worth thinking about since most users will use an online backup service for a long time, so locking in a good price for the future makes sense.
For Business accounts, you have to signup by entering your name, email and password in order to reach the pricing plan where you have to choose one
The business account pushes 1 year upfront payment for each plan, with 35% discount across all accounts.
- 100GB Plan – $9.60/month if you pay for one year upfront. $12.79/month if you opt for monthly plan. Backup up to 4 computers
- 250GB Plan – $16.80/month if you pay for one year upfront. $22.39/month if you opt for monthly plan. Backup up to 4 computers
- 500GB Plan – $24/month if you pay for one year upfront. $31.99/month if you opt for monthly plan. Backup up to 4 computers
For either Business or Personal, you can sign up using PayPal or credit card. Both are applicable for “Anytime” moneyback guarantee as well.
For Reseller accounts, there are three plans.
- 500GB – $24.95/month
- 1TB – $44.95/month
- 2TB – $74.95/month
Additional storage is available at varying prices per GB for all three plans. It seems if you want additional storage, 500GB plan gets the most expensive one at $0.08 per GB, while 2TB plan gets $0.06 per GB. We still don’t understand why they won’t make it a flat rate, apart from subtly pushing the customers to sign up for 2TB plan. For each user (your customers) you sign up, you will have to pay $0.99/year flat fee. There is also a $0.50 per additional service fee as well, but we cannot find out what those services are. You can use their Reseller control panel demo to get a feel of what you will get.
As this is a white label reseller service, you can rebrand everything to your own logo, texts, color scheme and offer your own customized plans with own pricing as well as same plans from Zipcloud. Zipcloud will not be mentioned anywhere, and you are basically going to look like you are running everything on your own.
Features
Zipcloud’s main selling point is its simplicity. It is so simple that we fear it might be a double-edge sword, making it its advantage as well as its downfall. Advanced features you usually see in other online cloud backup services like Carbonite, Mozy and SugarSync won’t be here, but you won’t be disappointed unless you are a huge geek and power user of backups. All “standard” features are there.
- Unlimited multiple devices syncing (just like Dropbox). You get 1GB free syncing storage for paid accounts. However, you can upgrade up to 20GB at an additional cost
- 100% automated
- Scheduling options up to once per hour
- Web portal (optimized for mobile browsing), iOS and Android apps. Blackberry app coming soon
- Private or public sharing options
- Works on both Windows and Mac
Yes, the features are quite simple. But like we already stated numerous times before, the main selling point is in “downright simplicity”, not “boatloads of feature you may not care about”. Basically, Zipcloud caters to a specific niche, mostly Mac users, since Mac users do appreciate simplicity and things “just working”. After all, that is what Steve Jobs tried to do with every Apple device. So ZipCloud is catering to these users, who don’t want to “hack” their online backup software with lots of random features.
Reseller accounts get features for rebranding, plan customization options, account monitoring and usage statistics, online invoicing and billing, and so on. It seems that there is a Linux software for Zipcloud that is being developed, but is not ready yet.
Security
Zipcloud uses Amazon S3 for their data storage, and utilizes their own sophisticated grid infrastructure for handling storage requests. 256-bit encryption is used for all transmission and backups, and given that data will be stored on Amazon S3, we feel that it’s more or less secured, relatively speaking to other contenders in this space. Half the internet is currently hosted on Amazon Data centers, so they are reliable and secure.
Customer Service
Customer service is an interesting topic for ZipCloud, since they do not offer phone support. Maybe this is to do with the simplicity motto, or they just don’t want to be bombarded with calls. They responded to our email query within a few hours, so they are quick to help customers, but only in writing.
They do have video tutorials and a huge knowledgebase with questions, so most queries can actually be answered just by searching through their tutorials.
The Process
After you sign up to Zipcloud using your email, name and password, it will bring you to Dashboard as well as immediately prompting you to download the software, which is only about 500Kb or so. The dashboard is where you control and monitor your account activities, as well as purchase additional storage or upgrade your account plan.
Installation of the software is a breeze, it’s quick and non-resource intensive. When you first run it, it will ask for your account logins, and afterwards, you will see Setup Wizard.
You can either just backup your Documents folder, or do a manual backup selection, where you can filter the file types, and even filter files based on file sizes. This lets you exclude unnecessary files hogging your bandwidth, like films, while letting you back up documents if they are all in the same folder.
There is a nice visual bar showing how your backups are going.
You can also browse your backed up files via Zipcloud file browser as well. It works a lot like Windows Explorer so you will be in familiar environment, except that it works online. Which is great since you can access your files anywhere where there is an internet connection.
Zipcloud sync feature works much like Dropbox, with a dedicated sync folder. You just put files into that folder, and it will sync across all other computers and mobiles that you logged in using same Zipcloud account. You get 1GB free sync space with every paid account but you can upgrade up to 20GB.
Once you’ve been using ZipCloud for a while, they will prompt you to upgrade your account to a quicker account. There are also some other features that they will ask you whether you want to buy. It is up to you whether you decide to buy these, they are worth the price. As we said before, due to their good starting price, with unlimited storage, ZipCloud still offers a good deal even with these upgrades.
Conclusion
Zipcloud is another cloud service company that adopts “dead simple that even your great grandfather can use” philosophy. The setup is easy and simple. Backing up is a breeze. Yes, it lacks a lot of advanced features that many power users will yearn for. But then, if you are a power user, you will not be looking at Zipcloud for sure (but perhaps you would be running linux not OSX). So if what you want is a simple cloud backup that just works without tweaking, affordable and offers unlimited storage, Zipcloud is for you. Otherwise, you have to look elsewhere.
5 months ago, when I asked ZipCloud to cancel my account, due to loss of service, due to technical problems that their tech support was UNABLE to resolve, and due to them LOSING 2- years-worth of my files — they went ahead and charged my credit card IMMEDIATELY, ON THE SAME DAY I CANCELLED, instead of waiting till my February renewal date.
When my CC bank contacted them they said no refund would be issued since “he cancelled in less than the 30 days mentioned in the contract.” Then, when I talked to their agent, they AGREED TO CANCEL MY ACCOUNT AND ISSUE A REFUND. When no refund was showing in my CC account, I called them again. This time they claimed the refund will be issued in 90 days.
When 90 days passed I called again. They claimed the money should be refunded soon. OK, you guessed it, no refund.
Couple weeks later I called again. This time they simply said NO REFUND. Why? because I filed a dispute with my CC bank before contacting them. Meanwhile, since they promised a refund, my CC bank closed the dispute file, and can’t open it again, which ZipCloud must have planned it well ahead.
So no product, no refund, Ciao, baby.
Stay away!
The backups are difficult to navigate, with no way to search for duplicate files (which are common since moving a file on the computer means it ends up in both locations on the backup) and no way to determine which folders contain updated files was the up to date one (the modified date of the folder does not reflect files being added to it). Deleting apparent copies of the folders made all of the files in all folders disappear! So far, customer service has been completely unhelpful.
In addition, each time I delete a file manually, I get a message asking if I want to upgrade, and selecting “Please don’t ask again” has no effect. Basically they seem to be trying to force me to pay more money to continually upgrade.
DONT trust Zip Cloud – try to go into your folders ‘backed up’ by Zip Cloud – and see how often, trying to download a file, will give you this: ‘The file could not be downloaded right now. Please try later’. And ‘later’ is just a figure of speech – I have hundreds of files responding like this and ZipCloud support just give me a song and dance about some connection going wrong – with no warning message – meaning that my files ARE NOT BACKD UP! Nothing to do, my data is NOT safe for ever – but LOST forever. So if you want to use Zip Cloud, remember, after each ‘back up’ to go in and check every single file to see if it really IS backed up…
Worst product/service of any kind. After signing up, I receive constant warnings like “Account Expired” and “Out of Backup Space” – Upgrade Now”. My constant complaints about this scam receives a response from support, but it still occurs.
When I needed to restore my files to a new computer after my old one failed, the restore process failed to work. Support did nothing to fix the problem. Many of my files (about 20%) are also missing. After 4 weeks of no satisfaction with my failed restore, I’ve cancelled my account.
I had a 2 year agreement with zipcloud for an “unlimited” plan. I have recently found out that my usage which is 800 GB is apparently more than unlimited and that I either have to upgrade to a business account (I do NOT use my account for business) or my account will be deleted. I have no way to talk to anyone in person as they have no call center and they have so far only sent me generic emails. A very unethical company. I wish I had known sooner!! If 800 GB in todays day and age is too much to back up then this company has some serious issues. My computer’s hard drive is 1 TB and it was made in 2010!!!
When you’ve signed up for what seems like a reasonable price you find you have to pay extra for a load of things you would’ve expected to have been included so in the end you find you’re paying considerably more than the advertized price. And then there are aspects of the service that just don’t work, their customer support is terrible and when you ask for a refund, since they claim they have an “any time money back guarantee” they quote some small print in their terms and conditions that blatantly contradicts their advertizing.
It ws alright up and runing in 30 mins. Files backed now.
I’ve been using them for a month at it works fine, I like the unlimited space, that’s the one I went for.