The left sidebar shows your user folders (like Desktop, Documents, Music, and so on), providing an easy one-stop shop for backing up your personal data. Here’s how they work.įor file backups, you’ll want to head to the Backup tab, where you can select which files to back up. SpiderOak One has a pretty big feature set, and it splits each of these features up into tabs along its top row: Backup, Manage (which should probably be called “Restore”), Sync, and Share. And apart from a confusingly placed button or two (like the “Run Now” button, which appears even if you aren’t on the Backup tab), everything is intelligently laid out. You pick which files you want to back up, how the program integrates with your system, and how many layers of security there are.

That’s SpiderOak One in a nutshell: it gives you lots of control without being convoluted.

The Dashboard keeps you up to date on any backup or sync jobs that are running, and while you can drill down and see an entire list of files waiting to be backed up (or a log of past jobs), they’re kept out of the way in other tabs so you don’t get overwhelmed with information. It’s clearly designed with more tech-savvy users in mind, and it’ll be pretty intuitive for those users. The desktop program is pretty well-designed, striking a great balance between information density and ease of use. That’s right about in the middle of the pack as far as the cloud backup services we tested, and it also allows for unlimited devices. However, SpiderOak’s higher tiers are a bit better: its 2TB plan is $12 per month or $129 per year, and 5TB is $25 per month, or $279 per year. SpiderOak One’s cheapest plan is $6 per month ( See pricing and plans on the SpiderOak website), and that’s for only 150GB of space, which is rather expensive when compared with similar services. That security comes at a higher price point than the more affordable backup services, though. Even if they wanted to, their “no knowledge” system prevents them from accessing your data unless you give them permission. It says you don’t have to worry about them using your data for nefarious purposes, or handing it over if the government comes knocking. It encrypts all your data from end-to-end, starting on your own machine, so SpiderOak can't “see” your data when it’s on their servers. SpiderOak One isn’t the only cloud backup service with good security, but it is the only one with security as its banner feature. SpiderOak One – Design, Pricing, and Features

Since cloud backup has become increasingly necessary for peace of mind and data security, I thoroughly evaluated SpiderOak One along with several other leading packages based on three main criteria: pricing, features, and performance.

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