CrashPlan

What CrashPlan actually is

CrashPlan is a cloud backup product for businesses, focused on endpoints — employee laptops and workstations — with additional coverage for Windows and Linux servers, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Its pitch is a narrow one done thoroughly: continuous, unlimited-version backup of company devices, centrally deployed and managed, with restore paths that end users can run themselves. If you are looking for a place to park a website, this is the wrong category entirely; see backup and storage tooling for what sits alongside it.

The product has real history behind it. CrashPlan launched in 2007 and spent most of its life inside Code42, the Minneapolis software company best known more recently for insider-risk tooling. In August 2022, Code42 carved the backup business out to private equity firm Mill Point Capital, and CrashPlan has operated as an independent company since — taking the product, its customers and the majority of the team that built it with it. The carve-out materials at the time cited protection for more than 900 enterprise organizations and over 120,000 small-business customers. That is a long install base for a backup product, and continuity matters more here than in almost any other infrastructure category: backup vendors that disappear take your archive with them.

Functionally, the client runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, captures new and changed data continuously (every fifteen minutes by default), and stores it with unlimited file versioning and no file size limits. IT teams deploy and configure centrally through a web console, push policies and restores to devices, and end users can restore files or migrate to a new machine without opening a ticket. The enterprise tier adds immutable copies, legal hold, retention policies, full audit logging, SSO and role-based access, and — the part we find most interesting — a choice of storage backends: CrashPlan's own cloud, Azure, AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze, or your own S3-compatible storage.

Pricing: what you really pay

Small-business pricing is published, which we appreciate in a category that loves quotes. Endpoint backup costs $7.33 per user per month billed annually at $88 per user per year, or $158 per user every two years — the two-year term works out cheaper per month. Monthly billing is offered at a higher rate (the endpoint product page quotes $8 per user per month). That price includes unlimited cloud storage and unlimited versioning for the endpoint, self-serve restore and device migration, and same-day protection after signup.

Server backup is priced per server: $15.75 per server per month billed annually at $189 per year, or $284 every two years, with 250 GB of pooled storage per server and additional storage in 250 GB increments at $90 per year. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace coverage each cost $3.67 per user per month ($44 per year or $79 every two years) with 50 GB of pooled storage per user. The 250-user line is the boundary: below it you self-serve at published rates; above it, or when you need your own storage, SSO, legal hold or a dedicated CSM, pricing is quoted per user against your environment.

CrashPlan's stated pricing philosophy is that you pay for the source data you protect, not for the copies it stores — retention length, version count and restore frequency do not multiply the bill. That is genuinely different from metered-backend vendors, where a long retention policy quietly doubles spend, and it makes cost predictable as policies get stricter.

One contradiction on the vendor's own pages deserves flagging. The small-business endpoint tier advertises unlimited cloud storage, while the pricing FAQ states that endpoint subscriptions include 50 GB of storage and describes pooled storage and add-ons across products. We could not reconcile the two from the public pages, and we would confirm in writing which applies to your account before signing — the difference between "unlimited" and "50 GB pooled" is the whole business case for the endpoint tier. (For servers and Microsoft 365 the pooled numbers are stated consistently.)

There is no free tier — a 14-day full-function trial is the only zero-cost option — and no personal plan; the product line is business-only.

Performance & infrastructure

Backup performance is less about raw throughput than about behavior over months, and CrashPlan's design choices are sensible for that job. Incremental, deduplicated transfers with compression keep bandwidth use down; backups run continuously in the background; and the single-instance storage architecture the company has run since the product's inception scales without per-archive size limits. Restore speed is the metric that actually counts in an incident, and here the practical answer is that self-serve restores happen over the same client and console — no support ticket, no waiting.

Retention semantics are worth understanding precisely, because they differ by product. Endpoint deleted files are retained for a maximum of 90 days by default, customizable downward. File versions are kept as far back as your backup policies specify — the marketing phrase "unlimited versioning" means policy-driven rather than a fixed count. For servers and Microsoft 365/Google Workspace, deleted-file retention is fully customizable. In ransomware terms this is a decent posture: immutable copies and legal hold exist at the enterprise tier, and version depth means you can usually roll back to before an encryption event.

On storage location, enterprise customers can hold data in CrashPlan's cloud or in their own Azure, AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze or S3-compatible bucket, which settles data-residency questions that a fixed-cloud vendor cannot. The small-business tier stores in CrashPlan's cloud, and public documentation of the underlying regions is thin — we found no published data-center map or region list to cite, so treat residency for the SMB tier as something to confirm directly.

Reliability of the service itself is backed by fifteen-plus years of continuous operation and a large customer base, but we found no published uptime SLA for the SMB tier. For a backup service that is less damaging than for a production host — backups retry — but it is still a gap worth naming in procurement.

Where it falls short

Cost scales linearly with headcount, and the ceiling on value is real. Ten users at $88 per year is trivial; five hundred users is a line item that competes with broader platforms. Enterprise pricing is custom, which means negotiation, and the feature split puts the governance tools — SSO, legal hold, immutable copies, audit logging, dedicated CSM — above the 250-user or "talk to sales" line. Small teams that need SSO will find that frustrating.

Storage mechanics carry the other cost risk. The server tier's 250 GB pooled storage per server and $90 per year per 250 GB add-on is the kind of stepped pricing that grows quietly with data volumes, and the endpoint storage ambiguity described above needs resolving before you rely on "unlimited." Retention policies also have a floor: endpoint deleted-file retention caps at 90 days, so a file deleted four months ago is gone regardless of version depth.

The product scope is narrow by design. There is no disk-image or bare-metal restore story in the SMB tier, no personal or household plan, and no attempt to be a general file sync or collaboration tool. Teams expecting one vendor to cover endpoints, servers and SaaS data at enterprise governance levels can get there — but the price and the sales process are enterprise ones.

Finally, a private-equity-owned, spun-out vendor deserves the usual diligence: check the roadmap, the support model and the contract terms on data export. The product's track record is strong; ownership changes are the moment to read the fine print.

Who should pick this

Our pick for IT departments at companies under a few hundred employees that need centrally managed, unlimited-version backup of employee laptops without building anything. Law firms, agencies, clinics and engineering shops with compliance obligations around device data fit especially well: the self-serve restore story removes the ticket burden, and per-user pricing with unlimited versioning is predictable.

We would also shortlist it for organizations with data-residency requirements at the enterprise tier, where bringing your own S3, Azure or AWS storage is a real differentiator versus fixed-cloud backup vendors.

We would not pick it for individuals (there is no plan for you), for teams that want endpoint backup bundled into a broader security suite, or for anyone whose primary need is bare-metal server imaging. And we would resolve the endpoint storage question with the vendor in writing before rolling it out as a company-wide standard.

Key takeaways

• Business-focused cloud backup since 2007; independent since the 2022 carve-out from Code42 to Mill Point Capital, with 900+ enterprise and 120,000+ small-business customers cited at the time.
• Endpoint backup is $7.33 per user per month billed annually ($88/year, or $158 per two years) with unlimited storage and unlimited versioning; monthly billing at $8 per user per month.
• Servers: $15.75 per server per month (annual), 250 GB pooled storage per server, add-ons at $90 per year per 250 GB; Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace at $3.67 per user per month.
• Priced on source data protected, not stored copies — retention length and restore frequency do not change the bill.
• Enterprise tier adds SSO, legal hold, immutable copies, audit logging and bring-your-own storage (Azure, AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze or your own S3).
• No personal plan, no free tier (14-day trial only), no published uptime SLA, and an endpoint storage definition (unlimited vs 50 GB pooled) that we would clarify before signing.

Sources

• https://www.crashplan.com/pricing/
• https://www.crashplan.com/products/endpoints/professional/
• https://www.crashplan.com/computer-backup-for-small-businesses/
• https://smb.crashplan.com/smb-pricing/
• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220803005730/en/Mill-Point-Capital-Completes-Carve-Out-of-CrashPlan-Group
• https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220803005147/en/Code42-to-Accelerate-Insider-Risk-Management-Solutions-with-CrashPlan-Spin-Off
• https://www.crashplan.com/news/crashplan-receives-investment-from-mill-point-capital