Crashplan drops its cloud backup service for home users

If you rely on Crashplan as a remote backup for your computer, you're going to have to find an alternative in short order. Code42 is phasing out its Crashplan for Home service as it switches its focus to business users. The company has stopped offering new or renewed Home subscriptions as of August 22nd, and the service will shut down entirely on October 23rd, 2018. If you haven't moved your files elsewhere by then, you're out of luck. The team is trying to make the transition as gentle as possible, at least. It's extending all Home subscriptions by 60 days to give people time to find alternatives, and it's offering discounts for both its own Small Business tier and a preferred alternative, Carbonite.

You don't have to go to either of those options, of course. Alternatives like Backblaze exist if you need to safeguard absolutely everything, and you can use free or low-cost services like Google Drive if you're just interested in protecting a limited number of can't-lose files.

The move isn't entirely shocking, especially in an era where ISP data caps make it impractical to upload the entire contents of your PC. Businesses are more likely to need that absolute protection, and their tendency to subscribe in bulk makes them tempting targets. However, this does underscore the risks of trusting your backups to a cloud service -- there's no guarantee that the service you need will always be available. If you need to recover files no matter what, it's still wise to lean on other services and local backups.