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Ask HN: Would you pay for an online, restore-only Gmail backup?

12 points by rubyrescue ↗ HN
in light of this story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2794529

i'm wondering what people would pay for simply an encrypted (cloud-based) gmail backup - no UI, just $X (USD)/year - and you can restore it to another account, to another email provider, or to physical media (for an additional fee)... $5/year? $10/year? I know some say this is a terrible place for pricing advice, but... any thoughts?

21 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 98.9 ms ] thread
paulasmuth
I'm wondering how you're going to encrypt the backups? Maybe you could do it in a way that you wouldn't be able to access the files yourself after they've been written? But yes, I'd definitely pay for it (~10$/mo).
4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs
Why would I do this when I can transfer all incoming mails to other email account? Simplicity? but I doubt restore will be matter of click'n'go. if advanced user find demand in such feature, they can solve it for themselves.
kenneth_reitz
Backupify.
rubyrescue
wow... i didn't know about this. I guess that's exactly what people would pay... thanks.
timmyd
yep +1 - [clickable - http://www.backupify.com/]

p.s - "Backups for your Google Apps Domain users' Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Sites data. - $3 per user per month"

xm1994
Since moving everything to google this has always concerned me. You can run your own mail server or use their outlook sync tool to keep your own copy locally, but both of those solutions have their drawbacks. Definitely something I would pay $20 - $50/yr for. How about a service that would store it on dropbox or another provider?
divtxt
For a cloud-to-cloud backup service like this, my biggest worry would be about finding out the hard way that the backup provider has bugs.

How do I solve this as a user? Look for reviews and stories of successful/failed user restores?

divtxt
Would anyone buy a simple desktop app to backup gmail to the desktop?

I thought of adding features like search and mail viewer. Then I realized I could just use a full email client. :P

lukeschlather
Which one would you use? There are a lot of flags to be configured, and whenever I set up Thunderbird, I'm unconvinced it's done a thorough job. I've also seen it re-download an entire mailbox for no apparent reason. And it doesn't actually support tags.
divtxt
Yes - it's not simple to make sure you've done the right thing to make email clients backup correctly.

I used to be a regular Thunderbird user on Windows because the mail file format would be open, but haven't touched desktop email since GMail.

If I were to make a choice now, I'd look at those with conversation support i.e. Postbox or Thunderbird for Windows, Sparrow or Lion's Mail.app for Mac.

rg
Windows Live Mail, included free in Windows 7, does a perfect job of backing up a Gmail account, including sent mail. Configure Win Live Mail to pick up via POP3 all Gmail every couple of hours and save it (copy 1), then every night backup the Live Mail message store to a local Windows Home Server (copy 2) and to a cloud backup service (copy 3). Has worked for me for five years.
petervandijck
No. I trust Google more to get backups right than I trust you.
rubyrescue
me too but the point wouldn't be trusting someone more than google, it would be to have an alternative if google locks you out...
divtxt
There are two issues with that logic:

1. Yes, probability of gmail data loss is less than probability of desktop mail data loss.

But that's for the average user. An individual desktop mail user can improve his probability to a higher level than gmail if he chooses.

2. Google may lose your data due to unexpected account termination as mentioned in the story above.

DanielRibeiro
I'd pay for a search with regex of my Gmail data. It would be even nicer if it could do aggregates and graphs.

On another note congrats on making a great MVP on such little time.

cleverjake
if it is cloud to cloud, it really doesn't solve that much, and honestly I trust google more than any individual, including those /at/ google. if it would be a desktop based backup, I can do that with a imap client and zero fee.
lukeschlather
Backups are worthless if you don't test them regularly.

Consequently, this service would be worthless without a UI for me to read my emails and see that you've successfully backed them up. Really, I think a desktop app that lets you browse a tagged archive of emails, with an integrated Gmail downloader, would be ideal.

numlocked
I would pay for an OFFLINE restore-only backup. Not really sure that even makes sense, but if I'm worried about Google losing my data, I'm not sure I'm going to feel better by just chaining together additional 3rd parties to backup my data. I want a copy.
jdjdjd
Take a look at MailStore Home for offline backup. The personal version is free. http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx

It can work with a variety of mail sources, including gmail. It also builds a full text index so that you can search offline.

I have no affiliation with the company but I am using it to backup my gmail.