Zoolz offers a cloud backup service that comes with support for unlimited users, external drive backup, and server backup. There’s also policy control, strong data encryption, and 24/7 live support. It lets you upload all types of files and of any size, assuming you don’t go over your maximum allowed backup space. Several plans are available that offer anywhere from 1 TB up to over 200 TB of space. There are, however, some limitations that you should understand before you purchase one of these plans. More on those below. Continue reading our review of Zoolz for all the details on the plans they sell, a pretty extensive list of the features they offer, and some comments we have about the service after trying them out.
Zoolz Cloud Plans & Costs
Valid December 2022 These plans are paid for on a yearly basis.
1 TB: $199.99 /year2 TB: $399.99 /year5 TB: $999.99 /year10 TB: $1999.99 /year20 TB: $3599.99 /year50 TB: $8999.99 /year
To get more than 50 TB of space, you can contact Zoolz for all the details. Each Zoolz Cloud plan, regardless of the length you choose, provides backup for unlimited external drives and servers, supports unlimited users, and has file versioning. There’s a 14-day free trial when you sign up. See our list of Free Online Backup Plans for some truly free online backup options.
Zoolz Features
A backup service should be amazing at their core job: to always make it a priority that your files are being backed up as often as possible. Fortunately, Zoolz automatically monitors your files for changes and can start backups as often as every 5 minutes without any intervention on your part. Below are a number of features found in most other backup services along with more on how well, or not well, they’re supported in one of the Zoolz plans: What We Like: All of the Zoolz plans use Cold Storage to store your files, which is in opposition to Instant Storage (which is available through Zoolz Business only). Files stored this way are designed to be kept forever, which means even if you delete a file from your computer, it will not be removed from your backups unless you explicitly trash them from the web app. However, Cold Storage has some drawbacks (see below) when compared to Instant Storage. See this comparison table on the Zoolz site for more that. Hybrid+ is a feature you can enable in the desktop program that will back up your files to a hard drive on your computer in addition to your online account. The process happens automatically and you have complete control over the file types that are backed up locally, where the files are stored, and how much disk space Hybrid+ is allowed to use. One reason to use Hybrid+ is if you’re wanting to restore a file but don’t have an Internet connection. If your Hybrid+ location is accessible, and the files you want to restore are located there, you don’t even have to have an Internet connection to get your files back. The Hybrid+ files can be stored on the local drive, an external one, or even over your local network. Backing up your files is really easy with Zoolz because you have two ways to pick them. You can choose a category, like Bookmarks or Videos, to have all of those types of files backed up, as well as select the exact hard drives, folders, and files that you want included, giving you precise control over what you upload. Context menu options can be enabled so you can also back up your files from the Windows Explorer right-click menu. We were able to back up files to Zoolz using both of these methods and at no time did we experience any problems, neither with our overall computer performance nor with bandwidth usage. Here are some other notes we took when using Zoolz that you might find helpful: What We Don’t Like: By far, the biggest drawback with Zoolz is that files backed up using Cold Storage take 3-12 hours to restore. On top of that, if using the web app, you can only restore 1 GB of your data within a 24 hour period. This makes restoring all your files out of Cold Storage take a really long time—much longer than any other backup service we’ve used. When restoring files from Cold Storage using the web app, you’ll get an email with the download link. Restoring from the desktop app starts automatically. Something else that bothers me about this is that if you’re using the desktop app to restore your files, given that the process takes 3 hours at minimum, you can’t choose to restore anything else during that time because the Zoolz Restore utility is busy waiting on the other files to restore. One workaround for this, however, is to use the web app to restore additional files while waiting on the others to finish processing. In addition to the above, you can’t restore one file from one folder and another file from a different folder both at the same time. Zoolz will not let you restore anything but the files contained within one folder or the folders contained within one drive. As you can imagine, it could take a very long time to restore your files with Zoolz. Because of this, it’s recommended you use the Hybrid+ feature if you think you’ll be restoring files often and if you have the available storage for it. Using Hybrid+ will completely bypass the wait time of the Cold Storage restore because Zoolz will check that folder for the file first before attempting to access it from Cold Storage. Some backup services will let you make an unlimited number of changes to your files and have all of those versions of the files backed up and stored on your account. This is a great idea because you can rest assured that any change you make to your data isn’t a permanent change - they can always be undone by restoring an older version. With Zoolz, however, only 10 of these file versions are stored. This means once you’ve made the 11th change to a file, the very first iteration of it is destroyed from your account and unavailable for restore. Something else to realize about these plans offered by Zoolz is that they are relatively expensive when you compare them to the prices offered by similar backup services. For example, Backblaze lets you store an unlimited amount of files and will keep file versions for everything for 30 days (Zoolz keeps 10 per file), and costs substantially less than the higher storage plans Zoolz offers. That said, lots of backup services let you pay by the month, but this one only has yearly options.
Zoolz Small Print
Rules and restrictions imposed by Zoolz that aren’t easily accessible on the website, but are still very much enforced, can be found tucked away in Zoolz’s Terms. Here are several things you should be aware of before creating an account:
Zoolz has the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue its services without providing you with any notice (though they will use reasonable efforts to do so) If you avoid renewing your paid account, if your account expires, or if it’s terminated, Zoolz reserves the right to automatically delete all your backed up data If you cancel your Zoolz account, your personal data may be kept in their backup records Credit card information is the only personal data that’s disclosed to third parties and that’s done only to process your payments Your IP address may be recorded when backing up data Zoolz doesn’t view any data that you back up, but they will disclose your information in compliance with a government request You agree that you won’t use Zoolz to transmit any malicious or harmful computer code Zoolz will terminate any account that uploads or stores files that are infringing on copyrights held by third parties
Final Thoughts on Zoolz
Frankly, and probably already obviously, Zoolz isn’t our favorite service. Other services offer better prices, even for unlimited backup plans. That said, maybe there’s a feature or two that really speaks to your situation. In that case, Zoolz might be the best fit for you.
