What do you dislike about Comet Backup?
As a long-standing customer of Comet Backup, approaching five years now, I feel compelled to share my experiences. Overall, we’ve been relatively satisfied. However, the support has been consistently slow and underwhelming. Critical issues, even those marked as urgent, often take several business days to address, with no support available over the weekends. Fortunately, our in-house technicians manage to resolve 90% of the issues, mitigating the need for Comet Backup’s sluggish support. In essence, don't expect much from Comet Backup's support team.
That being said, the backup product itself generally works well and is reasonably user-friendly for most of our clients. A small number of our server customers find it somewhat confusing or difficult to navigate. We've encountered multiple instances where clients, intending to restore a single website, inadvertently restore entire servers, leading to crashes due to insufficient disk space. The most frequent complaint revolves around the interface, which, to be honest, could use some significant improvements. But let's face it, nothing is perfect, and Comet Backup is no exception.
Performance-wise, it’s decent. Small backups take approximately 15 to 45 minutes, whereas larger servers can extend the process to 6 to 8 hours. While far from stellar, the performance is acceptable considering the cost.
Given the price point, coupled with our own backup hardware, Comet Backup’s solution has performed as expected. Like many others, we pay $2.00 per server per month, which is quite reasonable, especially since we use our own hardware. Comet Backup merely provides the software. If any hardware fails, we bear the replacement costs ourselves, as Comet Backup offers no hardware support. We have submitted merely 10 support tickets over the years, often resolving issues internally due to the glacial pace of Comet Backup’s support (which, as a reminder, is non-existent on weekends).
In light of the above, the $2.00 per server per month fee was acceptable.
However, Comet Backup is about to undergo a drastic transformation. Instead of remaining one of the most affordable backup solutions, it’s set to become one of the most exorbitantly priced. Starting in 2025, in addition to the $2.00 per server per month, we will also be required to pay an outrageous $199.00 per month. This colossal increase is unfathomable. Are we using Comet Backup’s support? No. Will there be changes to the products or services? No. Will Comet Backup maintain or replace our hardware? No. Will their support improve? No. The only change is a significant price hike, making the service excessively expensive.
It seems Comet Backup has decided to milk its customers for every penny. While we anticipated a price increase at some point, perhaps an extra $1.00 per server per month, this astronomical surge is simply unjustifiable. We will certainly not be paying the additional $199.00 per month. This translates to an extra $2388.00 per year, a sum we cannot justify to our clients. We have annual contracts with our server clients, making it impossible to pass this cost onto them, nor do we intend to.
Given the overwhelmingly negative reactions to this price increase on various platforms (social media, forums, etc.), I suspect Comet Backup is digging its own grave and may not survive in the short term. Like many others I’ve spoken to, we are actively seeking alternative solutions. We have tested 12 different backup solutions extensively and are currently considering four of them. We will definitely no longer do business with Comet Backup. They have become too unreliable, treating MSPs harshly despite their MSP-friendly claims.
I predict Comet Backup will either cease to exist after 2025 or sell out to a larger company. This apparent cash grab seems aimed at inflating their revenue to attract potential buyers. Such practices are far from normal. While price increases are expected in the hosting sector, this extreme hike is unacceptable! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
