Retrospect

Perfect backup solution for small businesses

Comments: Easy grouping of client machines
Filtering out certain file extensions for space utilization
simple reporting
Effective alerting

Pros:

The software was very easy to deploy. The cost was lower than most big brands providing backup solution. The system was highly reliable, i cannot remember we ever had the application crashing. Client app does not consume a lot of processing and memory which prevents client computers from experiencing degraded performance. The dashboards are clear & helpful Filtering certain file extensions feature is very powerful & beneficial in terms of disk utilization.

Cons:

The software performs best for personal & small business usage. It is not an enterprise level solution.

Best customer support I've ever had

Comments: Fantastic! There are negative reviews and I honestly think these are due to impatience or misunderstanding from admins, although their documentation isn't the best. The configuration does take a little getting your head around because it is so powerful, but once correctly configured Retrospect is bug free and works. You can leave it for months, then come back to it and restore files deleted by office staff months ago - I've done this in anger many times and it's never let me down yet!

Pros:

Used Retrospect Disk to Disk for years, it's not expensive, it's never failed to restore when needed and if correctly set up it works perfectly. Just logged a tech support request (free) on the website and got a call from an engineer literally seconds later, he walked me through every step to correct my missing SSL in the client and sorted a few of my configs out (basically a free one to one tune-up) I honestly cannot say any other company offer that level of customer support (especially when it's free). - Hence leaving this review today cos I'm so chuffed!

Cons:

It's not super intuitive so expect to spend a little time getting to know it. That said, the click here to backup software just can't match Retrospect on extremely useful features once you dig a little deeper.

The only reasonably-priced client-server backup app for Macs, also runs on Windows & backs up Linux

Comments: My one disaster recovery was successful, and I sleep soundly. Also several years ago I wrongly installed a couple of updaters on my older "client" machine; Retrospect was able to back out the updaters.

Pros:

My home office is in an apartment 2 floors below a "junior master of the Universe", who does plumbing/AC upgrades but doesn't know how to maintain them. I therefore have to backup to HDDs attached to a "backup server" machine in a _separate_room_ 50 cabling feet from my "client" machines. So long as all machines are on my LAN Retrospect has no problem—and there would have been one with Time Machine (which my older "client" couldn't run) because WiFi between rooms is very slow in my apartment.

Cons:

A couple of major releases ago, because of impending Apple changes to macOS, Retrospect lost the ability to back up Macs so old that they could only run the 32-bit Client software. I solved this problem by backing up my older "client" machine with an older version of Retrospect, backing up directly to an old tape drive.

Works 100% of the time to restore a variety of things.

Pros:

I have the professional version and it is SO incredible. Works 100% of the time to restore a variety of things. Once a laptop got a virus, I hired a company to get rid of virus, but the virus destroyed many of the base system files. I did a rollback restore and it worked perfectly. I have had hard drive crashes, yet had all the data backed up perfectly. Most recently, a desktop would not shut down so I hit the power button (never a good thing), screen booted up 100% haywire and many programs did not function. I just did a registry and system file restore, and was back up 100% in 1/2 hour - with ZERO loss in any data. I had tried other programs in the past - but NONE of them work! They do very, very poorly on restore. Only Retrospect has NEVER failed me!!!

Cons:

A person needs to learn how it works (terminology), but the tech support people are VERY helpful! Other than that (100 char min for this field) cannot think of another con ...

Retrospect is great backup software for a fraction of the price of their competitors

Pros:

Easy to configure. Very intuitive interface and terminology makes setting up scripts a breeze. The built-in assistants make it even easier. Built-in smart filters makes it easy to see what clients have backed up and what clients have not backed up.

Cons:

Catalog management can be cumbersome if not organized well. Capturing clients across multiple subnets can be burdensome.