Data Backup Digest

Livedrive was established at the end of 2008 by Andrew Michael and has been going strong ever since, with more than half a million paying customers. It is a cloud backup and storage service that offers users unlimited space for their data. The company has won awards such as the Computer Active Best Online Backup Buy It award and the Web User Gold Award. This article will explore the features of the service and see whether it’s worth using – is it worth those awards?

Livedrive’s vision is that users will not have to store any files on their computer, but instead they’ll all be on your Livedrive account. You can purchase the service in three different plans: Backup, Briefcase and Pro Suite. These all come with a free trial period, allowing you to test the service yourself before committing.

The Backup plan comes with a complete back up of all your files, with no limit on space. This backing up is all done in the background, meaning that it doesn’t bother users. You can also restore any of your files at any time with a single click and view them from anywhere, whether on your browser, tablet or phone. All of this is available for a single PC for £3 a month.

The Briefcase plan comes with personal cloud storage space. This means that you can store files online without them having to be on your computer. The plan comes with 2TB to start, but you can pay an extra £5 per TB. You can also edit files in your browser, share files and make local network transfers. This plan costs £7 a month.

Finally, the Pro Suite is the most complete personal package available for £11 a month. This is available for up to five computers and you get 5TB of cloud storage space. This comes with all of the features listed in the previous plans.

Livedrive is also available for business users, for PC and Mac. You just have to install the program to every system in the network and it’ll work in the background to back everything up to the cloud. The administrator can see all backed up files and restore them using the software. All of the same files can be seen across the same network, allowing you to co-work on files and see which user made what changes. Your business will also get a web portal that allows you to share files easily, meaning there’s no steep learning curve for employees. You can also get full FTP, SFTP and WebDAV access to everything on your Livedrive account. With all of this starting at £22 a month, it certainly sounds like a great bargain.

Livedrive is proud of their claim that they provide outstanding support. Support is available 7 days a week by email and you will get an answer within 24 hours. There is also 24x7 monitoring of your service by their technicians, meaning that if something goes wrong then they’ll soon be on the case to sort everything out.