The best backup software
Reliable desktop backup software for Windows and Mac, with scheduled backups, file sync, website backup and one-click restore, all running natively on your machine.
WHY SHOREZELLA DESKTOP
What the best backup software gets right
A backup only matters on the day you need it. The best backup software is the kind you set up once, that keeps running quietly, and that restores without drama.
Restore, not just backup
A backup you have never restored is a guess. Test restores are part of the design here.
Native, not a web wrapper
Real Windows and macOS applications using the system file APIs, so big jobs do not crawl.
No subscription lock-in
Buy the version you use. It carries on working whether or not you decide to renew.
Your files stay yours
Back up to your own disks and your own cloud storage. No account needed to run one.
HOW WE PICK
What the best backup software gets right
A backup you have never restored is a guess. These tools are built around the restore rather than the schedule, because the only measure that matters is how long it takes to get a working machine back.
In practice that means readable archives, a restore you can rehearse on a spare drive, and a plain answer to where the files live. The best backup software is boring on purpose.
QUESTIONS
Questions about backup software
Three things, in this order: it restores reliably, it runs without being told, and it does not slow the machine while it works. Everything else is packaging. Scheduling and compression matter far less than knowing the restore path works before you need it.
Host backups protect the host, on the host schedule, with the host retention. They are a good second copy and a poor only copy. If the account is suspended or the provider has a bad week, the backup is behind the same door as the thing it was protecting. Keep one copy somewhere you control.
Wherever you point them: an external drive, a NAS on your network, or a cloud bucket you already pay for. There is no ShoreZella cloud in the middle, no storage to rent from us, and no transfer limits to trip over.
Not noticeably. Jobs run at low priority and back off while you are working, then use the machine properly once you are not. The first full backup is the only slow one, because after that only the blocks that actually changed get moved, which on a normal working day is a very small fraction of the whole. If you would rather it never competed with you at all, schedule it for the small hours and it will pick up whatever it missed the next time the machine is awake.
They are in development and not on sale yet. Nothing on this page is available to buy today. The WordPress plugins are shipping now, and joining All Access before the apps land means they arrive in your account at no extra cost.
Daily for anything that changes daily, weekly for everything else, and always keep more than one generation. The WordPress backup handbook makes the same point about sites: a single copy that gets overwritten every night is one bad sync away from being worthless.
Three copies of anything you would hate to lose, on two different kinds of storage, with one of them somewhere else entirely. It sounds excessive right up until the day a drive and the machine it is plugged into fail in the same week. The apps are designed so the off-site third copy is not the difficult one to set up.
That is the plan. Site backups and local file backups are the same problem wearing different clothes, and running both from one place means one schedule to think about and one restore process to learn rather than two.
