Acronis True Image vs CloudBerry Backup (MSP360) Battle

Backing up your data is practically mandatory if you want to ensure that you don’t lose access to important documents or any other critical files you may have. Picking the right service can be a slog, though, so we’ve taken two popular backup solutions and pitted them against each other in this Acronis vs CloudBerry comparison to help you choose.

Although both services achieve the same purpose, namely backing up your data, the way they go about it is completely different. Acronis True Image is a traditional backup service that provides both the software to perform a backup and the storage itself.

CloudBerry Backup, on the other hand, doesn’t actually provide you with any cloud storage. Instead, you have to link it up with a separate storage provider, which gives you a few different options. Although this used to include consumer-facing storage like Google Drive, CloudBerry discontinued support for these back in 2019.

This means that the options you’re left with fall into the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) category of storage. Essentially, these services are mainly geared toward businesses and offer storage on a “pay as you go” basis. 

For a more in-depth explanation of the different types of digital storage, you can check out our guides to understanding cloud terminology and cloud storage vs online backup.

There are 18 different options for services to pair with CloudBerry, but for this comparison we’ll be using Wasabi. The reason for this is that Wasabi is among the cheapest cloud storage providers that are compatible with CloudBerry Backup, and it doesn’t charge you for accessing your data through backup and recovery.

1. Value

We’ll start our Acronis vs CloudBerry Backup comparison by looking at value. To determine this for each service, we take a look at the functionality they offer and contrast it with their pricing to see which one gives you the most bang for your buck.

Acronis offers a wide range of features, including disk imaging, unlimited backup (for your hard drive clone) and unlimited versioning, as well as support for hybrid, NAS, mobile and server backup.

Given all of this functionality, you’d expect it to be on the expensive end of things, but it isn’t. The cheapest plan costs only $49.99 per year, which comes out to $4.16 per month. This is cheaper than most other backup services, including ones we generally view as affordable, such as Backblaze, Carbonite or IDrive.

Things are a bit more complicated for CloudBerry, as you have to pay separately for the software and your actual storage. CloudBerry Lab — the company behind the software — has been rebranded as MSP360. Confusingly, both names are still used interchangeably for the software itself, but they still refer to the same product.

Instead of a recurring subscription, you’re charged a one-time fee that varies depending on what operating system or device type you want to backup. For Windows computers, the license costs $49.99, while the Linux and Mac versions are cheaper at just $29.99. There’s a free version available as well, but it limits you to just 200GB of backups.

On top of this, you’ll have to pay for some storage. If you use Wasabi, like we’re doing for this comparison, it will cost you a minimum of $5.99 per month. This price point assumes that you don’t need more than the minimum amount of storage, which is 1TB. Each GB of storage costs $0.0059 per month. So for example, if you need 2TB, you’ll have to pay $11.98 per month instead.

Although this makes for a more expensive service, most of the difference is up front due to the price of CloudBerry Backup itself. You also get a whole bunch of features and an incredible level of flexibility for the price, so it’s by no means a bad deal.

These features include disk imaging, detailed scheduling and throttling settings, as well as hybrid, server and NAS backup. When you set up your initial backup, you’re given a staggering number of settings to tweak, including detailed scheduling and throttling, notifications, pre- and post-actions and more.

All in all, while both services offer great value, Acronis does better here. This comes mainly from the fact that it’s cheaper but still offers a similar feature set to the more expensive MSP360 Backup.

This is especially true if you need more than 1TB of storage, as CloudBerry Backup with Wasabi can quickly become a lot more expensive once you start adding more than the minimum amount of storage.

Round: Value
Point for Acronis True Image 2020

	Visit Acronis True Image Cloud	1
	Visit Cloudberry Backup	0

2. Security

Next up for our CloudBerry Backup vs Acronis comparison is security. Providing proper data protection and privacy is crucial for any online backup service. This goes double if you’re looking to backup potentially sensitive material that you can’t risk falling into the hands of cybercriminals or nosy government agencies.

Acronis really shines here, as it offers strong AES 256-bit encryption and two-factor authentication, as well as data centers that are hardened against natural disasters and unauthorized access. You can also manage your own encryption key if you don’t trust the company to not decrypt your files and hand them over if ordered to do so by the authorities.

Although most backup solutions offer only a single server location (usually located in the U.S., which with its terrible cloud privacy laws is not the ideal place to store your files), Acronis instead lets you pick between eight different countries. This includes places like Switzerland, which tops our list of the countries with the best digital privacy laws.

Moving on, although CloudBerry itself supports private encryption, it doesn’t matter for this comparison because Wasabi doesn’t offer this functionality. This means you won’t be able to enable it in CloudBerry, either, and results in the combination of the two not being zero knowledge.

That said, CloudBerry offers the same level of encryption as Acronis, as well as multi-factor authentication and data centers with strong physical security. It also gives you the option of multiple data center locations — the U.S., the Netherlands and Japan — though the options aren’t as great as those that Acronis offers.

Unfortunately for CloudBerry, this means that private encryption and the number of possible server locations become the deciding factors in this round, which lets Acronis score another point.

Round: Security
Point for Acronis True Image 2020

	Visit Acronis True Image Cloud	2
	Visit Cloudberry Backup	0

3. Speed

Speed is by far our simplest round, as it all comes down to raw numbers. To judge how fast backup services are, we uploaded and downloaded a 3.51GB folder twice and averaged out the results. For our tests we used a connection with a download speed of 120 Mbps and upload speed of 20 Mbps located in Oslo, Norway.

Like with the two previous criteria, CloudBerry’s speed depends entirely on what service you pair it with. Since we’re pairing the service with Wasabi for the purposes of this comparison, users who opt for a different service provider will probably experience different backup and recovery speeds.

That said, CloudBerry’s results with Wasabi are excellent. Our second download did take a bit longer than we’d like, but not catastrophically so.

Testing Acronis’ speed is comparatively straightforward, since there’s no variation in terms of storage provider. The service is lightning fast, with both backup and recovery results landing firmly at the high end of all the backup software we’ve tested.

As you can tell from these results, there’s very little difference between the two backup solutions when it comes to speed. However, Acronis managed to download our data a few minutes faster on average, so we’ll give it the point for this round, albeit by an incredibly slim margin.

Round: Speed
Point for Acronis True Image 2020

	Visit Acronis True Image Cloud	3
	Visit Cloudberry Backup	0

4. Ease of Use

Now that Acronis has scored three wins in a row, it’s time to see if it can manage a clean sweep by running the two solutions through our final round, which is focused on ease of use.

Although CloudBerry is far more complicated than your average cloud backup product, its intuitive design still makes it easy to pick up and learn. Everything is where you’d expect it to be, buttons have a clear purpose and the client is responsive.

As for Acronis, this is where the product struggles. Although the client is certainly usable, it’s design is far from intuitive. The different menus are laid out confusingly, and the purposes of the different buttons aren’t always immediately obvious. Although this isn’t great from an ease of use standpoint, it’s not the end of the world, either, as it just requires a bit of extra effort to learn.

The far bigger problem is how unresponsive and laggy the Acronis client can be. Clicking buttons or changing menus can often result in a very noticeable delay before anything happens, which quickly becomes frustrating, to say the least.

Because of these factors, CloudBerry Backup manages to snatch the win in our final round, preventing a complete wipeout. Even though it’s a complicated piece of software, especially when you add in the complexity of Wasabi or other storage providers in the same category, it’s still designed in a way that makes it easy to use.

Round: Ease of Use
Point for Cloudberry Backup by MSP360

	Visit Acronis True Image Cloud	3
	Visit Cloudberry Backup	1

5. The Verdict

With that, our CloudBerry vs Acronis backup comparison has reached its conclusion. Despite the latter winning three out of four points, there’s not an obvious winner here, as the first three rounds were all incredibly close. That said, Acronis Backup still achieves the overall victory, but by the slimmest margin possible.

If you’d like to learn about some other Acronis backup competitors, make sure to read our list of the best online backup providers. If you’d like more comparisons like this one, you can read our IDrive vs Backblaze and Carbonite Backup vs CrashPlan battles, as well.

On the other hand, if you’re more interested in CloudBerry Backup competitors, you can check out our Duplicati review (which is a very similar backup solution), our CloudBerry vs Carbonite comparison or our CrashPlan review to get an idea of how a Cloudberry vs CrashPlan comparison would go.

Winner: Acronis True Image

What did you think of our CloudBerry Backup vs Acronis True Image comparison? Do you agree that Acronis Backup wins by virtue of its excellent value, security and speed? Or do you think that we were too harsh on MSP360 backup? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

Acronis True Image Cloud Review

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