A month ago I started using Carbonite on my primary computer at home. Carbonite is a dead simple, turn it on and forget it remote backup service. A tiny client runs on your machine and automatically keeps your important files backed up to Carbonite’s remote servers, which provide an unlimited amount of storage.
Carbonite solves one of the most important problems with backup software, which is that it’s too easy for a person to make a mistake or forget to run a backup. With Carbonite, all you have to do is install the client and relax.
Still, it’s a young product and there are areas where it has a lot of room for improvement. Luckily Carbonite’s CEO, David Friend, puts his email address right on the company’s contact page. I sent him the following email.
Hi Mr. Friend,
Carbonite is a wonderful product that finally gets right what so many others have gotten wrong. It’s the simplest desktop backup software I’ve used, and I’ve tried lots (I even wrote my own before discovering Carbonite).
That said, I do have a few suggestions that I think might make Carbonite better:
1. Windows Vista support.
I’m sure your team is already working hard on this, and I know it doesn’t do anyone any good when you try and rush software development, but I thought I’d let you know that you’ve got at least one enthusiastic customer for whom Vista support is a must (I upgraded just last week).
2. A cleaner, more professional user interface and website.
I know you’re probably aiming at less technical users and I’m not really your core demographic, but one of the things that initially turned me off about Carbonite was the silly, cartoony style used throughout the website and application UI. Once I started using the application and realized how well it worked, I was able to put that aside, but it very nearly made me assume that Carbonite wasn’t powerful or reliable enough for my needs.
As a UI engineer myself, I feel that a clean, simple, professional (but not boring) interface is almost always better than an interface that tries to be too pretty or too colorful. In my opinion, Carbonite’s UI falls into the latter category, with the exception of the system tray icon and the intuitive use of the colored mini-icons that indicate the status of a file in Explorer (both of which are rather elegant).
I’m no marketing guy, but my advice is to ditch the bright colors and cartoony sketches and go for something a little more professional, along the lines of Strongspace (http://www.strongspace.com/).
3. Give advanced users the ability to store their own private encryption keys, so that even Carbonite employees can’t decrypt the data.
I notice in your technical FAQ that this feature is planned for a future version of Carbonite, which I’m looking forward to. I hope it will be implemented in such a way that I can be reasonably certain that my data is secure even from Carbonite employees themselves, not because I don’t trust Carbonite, but because the easiest way to bypass any security system is via a subpoena.
If the only copy of the key is in my possession, I could fight a subpoena to protect my data, but with the key in Carbonite’s possession, I doubt you’d be willing to go to very great lengths on my behalf. I’m not particularly paranoid on this count, but I’d still feel just a little safer knowing that not even Carbonite can access my data without my permission.
4. Allow Carbonite to be used on multiple computers without requiring multiple subscriptions.
I suspect the reason you currently require one subscription per computer is that Carbonite provides unlimited storage space. This makes economic sense for you, but it’s frustrating for me. I have several computers I’d like to back up, but each computer only contains 50MB or less of actual data that needs to be preserved. Thus, it just isn’t worth it for me to spring for the additional Carbonite accounts.
While the unlimited backup feature is a huge selling point, you might want to modify your terms slightly to allow unlimited backup for 1 computer, and perhaps a quota of 500MB to be shared by additional machines. You could then sell additional storage space in blocks so that customers could buy only as much additional space as they need, rather than being forced to purchase additional subscriptions for each machine.
In the meantime, I’ll probably just write a script to have my additional computers copy their important files over to the computer I have a subscription for, which isn’t very convenient.
Thanks for taking the time to read my suggestions. I wish you the best of luck with Carbonite, and I hope to see it become an even better product as I continue to use it.
—
Ryan Grove
ryan@wonko.com
http://wonko.com/
I haven’t received a response yet, but I’m really hoping Mr. Friend or someone at Carbonite reads emails like this one and takes the feedback seriously. Carbonite has tons of potential.
Comments
They must live up to the fact...
(does your data get hibernation sickness if you have to restore?)
Backup Smackdown
Online Backup Smackdown
Carbonite vs. SystemSafe
Here it is...
The Backup Smackdown! (click)
CEO Email Sham
That email for David Friend goes to a woman named Rosanne "Rosanne [david.friend@carbonite.com]"
Tired of shoddy support!
I am extremely disappointed in the level of customer service that I received. I recently had a “live chat” to only have the person disconnect me. Might not be so bad but the previous person after 15 minutes sent me an article that didn’t help. My reference Session ID: 169164. I am not sure what type of policy they have for customer service, but surely it can’t be this. I only want to get my system backed up, I have already paid my yearly subscription (I’m glad I didn not pay for more than one year) and still have been receiving sub-par service. Please check your records and see how I have been thrown in circles over a small matter, all I want is to install Carbonite. I decided to go with Carbonite company over a local company (Mozy) but I am seriously regretting that decision. All I want is to back up my computer…
Please help
How do I download the files that you have been saving for me? My files were erased so I need them back from you. Your ads say data back in a few easy strokes but don’t tell exactly what to do. Plase help.
Carbonite deleted my backup
I had a computer crash and needed to access some files before restoring all data to my new computer. In trying to access those files, I started a system restore my mistake. When I contacted customer support, I was told that since I exited during a system restore, my data was purged from their system. Now I’ve lost all the data and can’t restore it to my new computer. What’s the point of the backup if they are just going to delete my files? I don’t recall receive a warning that exiting before the restore was complete would purge the rest of my files. I am still waiting to hear back from an email I sent.
Carbonite refuses to refund money
If they’re backup stops working for you, good luck getting a refund. Now doing a chargeback through my credit card. Beware.
Why doesn't Carbonite backup my Quicken accounting records and my family tree program?
The only reason that I signed up for Carbonite was to backup my Quicken accounting program and my family tree program with thousands of hours of research behind it. My computer crashed. Everything else was backed up except for those two programs. I am devestated. I lost five years of accounting records in addition to all of those hours of genealogy research.
Carbonite has lost my trust
I didn’t realize so many others have had problems & complaints with Carbonite.
At first I thought they were a top notch company & I started selling for them after I became their affiliate.
Now after being their affiliate for 2 years I suddenly learned that just shy of a year ago they ditched the affiliate company – One Network Direct (Digital River) that they were with, & both parties never told me, so that’s almost a year later that the link on my site hasn’t been going to the right place. You count how many lost sales that could have amounted to not to mention it made me look totally unprofessional.
Now Carbonite refuses to switch me over to Commission Junction citing they ONLY take high level affiliates. They also claim that Digital River (also TONS of complaints online) won’t let them put me on CJ b/c I’m THEIR affiliate NOT Carbonite’s. What BS this is. I would have NEVER signed up iwth One Network Direct in the first place had Carbonite not been doing business with them.
I’M the affiliate, I get to decide where I sign up & with whom.
After I had to e-mail a few times & talked to the affiliate manager in charge (Heather), she then started ignoring my e-mails. I wrote to the one contact who had been returning my e-mails (Jeffrey Robison) & he ignored my last e-mail too.
I decided to give them one last chance to rectify this problem as my sister wants to sign up now & I have a business to run & a reputation to uphold, so I contacted someone higher up named Tom Stearns. He called me about an hour ago & while he offered an apology, he said his hands are tied, CJ has their rules.
He says he will get back to me by Friday, so we’ll see what happens.
For me everything I’ve hard so far is NOTHING BUT EXCUSES. They seem to like to blame everyone else & while others do make mistakes, it’s up to Carbonite to rectify the problem, not just wash their hands of an affiliate AND customer.
Carbonite can also break their own rules & THEY can decide who is their affiliate & who’s not. That’s even if they structured their account in some specific way on CJ.
To be both an affiliate & customer of theirs for 2 years this coming June & for them to treat me in this way is totally disrespectful.
I wasted a lot of my time on this & lost who knows how much money.
At this point it really feels to me that Carbonite is trying to sweep this issue under the rug.
On another note, my bookkeeper had the SAME problem Richard had with his QB files. Had I known Carbonite was unreliable, I would NEVER have signed up with them in the first place nor recommended them to anyone else.
Michelle
getting started.
I have signed up for the trial prior to purchasing and am all aboard but i can’t get it started back up. How do I do that? thank you James boren
If you don't
Know what your doing don’t blame the vendor. I hav 3 partishions on my computer. i back up files from all 3. Go to a file you want backedup and right click on it. Chose carbonite and chose back this up. Even a caveman can do it.
oops
sorry about the spelling!
Vista problems
I have had Carbonite on a couple of my PCs at home for several years. It worked find. But, this year, both have remained “pending backup”. Both PCs have Vista. If this is a problem, Carbonite has not bothered to rectify it so far. I have sent several emails to their support as well. I have already prepaid till 2012. Any idea if I should move to Mozypro?
Gen Bleck
Hi I don’t understand why a company with a good product would have ads by GB.
I will not use your software because of the lack of understanding the feeling about GB.