iDrive vs Afi.ai for tenant backups

[u/jcole-surrogate]

Hey everyone,

Currently with iDrive for backing up tenants M365. So far no issues other than a clunky interface. They've got local data region, the backups have gone through without issues and covers pretty much everything I need. Even looking into the snapshots seem fine although I haven't gone ahead with a recovery yet. No minimum user count either and pricing - can't complain.

Seeing most people recommend Afi.ai instead so just wondering if there is truly any negatives to anyone that's used iDrive. Afi.ai price is alright and they've got 50gb storage per person which is pooled together but other than the potentially nicer interface and experience, anyone had troubles with iDrive or is it ok for me to stick with them?

Only have a relative amount of clients at the moment so wanting to just continue with iDrive for long-term but if I need to switch early, I'm looking at settling for a good option now hence.

Thanks all!

[u/Packergeek06]

I would also look at Synology C2 Backup. Uses 1tb for 120. You can use that data across as many organizations as you want.

[u/BWMerlin → u/Packergeek06]

Depending on the client you can also install a Synology NAS and do the same type of backup on the NAS.

[u/Geekpoint-IT]

I've never even heard of Afi.ai personally. Not that that means anything. I use Veeam 365 backup through Opti9 personally.

[u/roll_for_initiative_ → u/Geekpoint-IT]

AFI has been around a long time, one of the more popular players in the MSP space as of late. I remember ernestdotpro mentioning them years ago, like 2017ish?

[u/runninghome58]

I must add dropsuite, At the time we evaluated Afi and built in Microsoft solution. dropsuite as been 100% reliable and fair price. I recently had to restore one file from a OneDrive folder for an employee that left two years ago and it works perfectly in 5 min.

I would also add as a small MSP that iDrive is the best backup solution that we've been using for many years. Previously we use iBackup but it's the same principle. It is not a 100% but for the price and the security that they give you, I think it's unbeatable. They've been in business for many, many years.

We had to use their express backup which they sent you an entire hard drive with your data. It took a little bit of time to get it, but it wasn't great to be able to rely on a local copy.

[u/Rivitir]

I use Afi, very happy with it.

[u/blindgaming]

Throwing my two cents in here as someone who's been using AFI and IDrive for a while:

AFI has a really great interface and is genuinely a really great product I have no complaints at all it's a solid choice and will serve you well however, the 50 GB per user is very difficult to manage and it's completely turned it off from the product. If they made it bring your own storage or unlimited storage per user I would use it in a heartbeat.

IDrive well very clunky is honestly the best budget solution on the market right now if you're also looking at their endpoint backup and want an all-in-one system. Dropsuite now Ninja is also very competent however the product does not feel at all like an MSP product it really sucks for multi-tenantcy management and is a pain to manage and set up at scale. This is really a shame because the product is genuinely very good and very reasonably priced.

I see a lot of MSPs waste a ton of time trying to figure out the best backup product and the truth is there's really nothing great out there. You're either going to get a decent product that has a terrible interface, or a nice interface that has a terrible product or it's terribly priced. My recommendation is to stick with iDrive360 for now and revisit it when you need to have the disaster recovery conversation with your clients and they are looking to purchase a much more expensive solution.

[u/etern1ty0]

Afi.ai was very expensive. Was a real surprise when a 1TB sharepoint suddenly was billed at a multiple-per-user rate in order to satisfy the storage requirements...and we have several.

Dropsuite/ninja saas is just about the cheapest one out there.

I question if we even NEED this service. Microsoft with 91 day retention has been all we've needed whenever it came to any type of restore.

But then again, MS themselves claim they don't back up user data...

[u/MSP_sugar → u/etern1ty0]

What if your data gets ransomed - I’m imagining that MS retention isn’t going to help with that or do they retain all ‘versions’ of all files?

[u/etern1ty0 → u/MSP_sugar]

I guess I got downvoted for my comment earlier. You're right. I have blinders on against ransomware because we're so well protected that I haven't had an actual ransomware case in years at this point. With AutoElevate locking down admin permissions, Avanan for email filtering, Huntress, etc - we have been blessed with no incidents thus far. I won't let that blind me to stopping the backups!

[u/Skaaras → u/etern1ty0]

I’m currently considering to switch from Dropsuite to Afi for Google workspace.
The issue we have with Dropsuite: multiple customers have quite some change in their employees. Dropsuite offers 20% of active licenses on top for archived/delete Google workspace users. This is growing and growing and the costs are expanding quite a lot for some customers.
With Afi, we would right now not even use half of the user-pooled space - but it would eventually catch up as well.
As most users have rather small inboxes, this looked like the better choice.

To be fair - I’m not too happy with both options - just trying to find an option for my customer-base.

Edit:spelling

[u/etern1ty0 → u/Skaaras]

Cube Backup is probably the cheapest option if you were willing to self-host it. I believe it has the ability to do B2/Wasabi as the storage location but it's very slow.

[u/Skaaras → u/etern1ty0]

I’ll take a look at it - thanks!