I am a current S.O.S. customer because I prepaid for a year to get better pricing. My name is Ed Camp owner of an I.T. company located in the midwest. The bottom line is that the promises of support, trainning, and marketing resources is based on a websites content and an absolute lie! I have recieved zero support and could not tell you my account reps name or if I even have one. The software is more complicated than anything I have ever seen in 17yrs. In technology. Support is horrible and response time is slow. Before you consider this company give me a call at xxxxxxx and get the facts and a look at there so called world class marketing materials. Empty promises, dismal product, lousy support, and overall a huge mistake!


Update posted by Admin.

Ed has asked for the following to be amended to the post, but feel that for openness, the original post should stay.

"I wrote this review and would like it removed, I have since changed my mind and SOS has changed as well"

I would like to pretty much contribute by supporting all negative comments mentioned above. Their support is a horror story, and pretty much none existent. SOS is simply not available for their partners. I am still with them, but very active in search of an alternative. Anything good that I may want to mention is completely obscured by their lack of support, and ice cold shoulder.

I am an active user of SOS (coming up on my 1st year in April 2013). I'm backing up about 50 computers with a total of almost 5TB of data.

First things first. I'm truely disappointed in their channel program. While they claim to be at your side 100% for MSP, they really aren't. My "channel manager" was/has never been there for me. It would take 3-4 phone calls or 3-5 emails to get his attention. Maybe I was a low on the list for asking for some help for a small 50GB client. Nevertheless, 10GB or 1TB, they should be there for me when I need some help. Their "360 marketing" is nothing but pre-defined PDF files...canned stuff that you can just slap your logo on.

Let's talk about their software:
- NO native Exchange of SQL backup. They give you a license for the Storage Craft Shadow Protect software and you must do full bare metal backup. That's how you backup exchange with SOS. A full bare-metal backup.

You must configure the software manually - one by one. Their management console does not provide any such way to create backup sets and apply them across the board to computers. You have to touch each and every computer you want to backup. And installing is no joke. They don't have any GPO you can apply to install through AD. They offer no URL you can email to clients to download/install. You just get an exe or msi and you're on your own.

Their software does not run as a server, but rather just a scheduled task and you must provide user credentials if you want to backup and the user isn't logged in. I had huge problems w/this setup because half the time, the software wasn't accepting credentials and the backup would fail. My fix was to set the credentials by editing the scheduled task. Even their support didn't know this. Software is buggy too. I ran into many different issues. All well documented in my countless emails with support. The interface on the client software is very poor. It's featureless basically. It's easy to use, but it's just ugly and lack key features you'd want in a solid client application.

Their support. Very poor. They might be fast, but they are not all that knowledgeable. They love to tell you to go read some KB article instead of helping and solving problems. In less than a year with SOS, I have well over 200 emails back and forth with support. Some issues, I just gave up chasing for a solution. I've even had conversations with the CEO and after promises and promises from him - failed to deliver.

Backing your data. Imagine this: You have a 15GB PST file and another 5GB of random files you want to back up. Ok, 20GB takes a while on your first backup. That's expected. But how about your 50th or 75th backup and it's still doing full backups nightly? Whoa! Where is the delta checking? Where are my incrementals? Ohh...they don't exist! I get full backups night. No wait..I take that back. Let's say there are 5000 files I'm backing up. Well, it taking about 8-9 hours....but wait. My report says it only backed up 100 files. Wow...did we really need to check all 5000 files during backup? Can't figure out how to delta checking better? Archive bit? Who knows. My point is their backups take a long time, regardless of the # of the files. And forget about restore, unless you want to loose your sanity. Summary of restore: You must know the file name or extension. You must know the date of the backup you want to browse through. This is strange. Many other backups apps I've used give you searching along with an Windows Explore type look and feel. SOS just provides you with a search box. Makes it all the more difficult to find something you want to restore.

When I signed up with SOS, I though it would be a wonderful partnership. After about a month, I've felt nothing but the cold shoulder from them and truely let down as a partner. Their 12-month commitment is steep too. Their per GB prices are fair (lower than industry average), but hey...you get what you pay for. And I got nothing but a headache from them.

I can't wait to leave them when my contract expires.

Worst experience of my life. Everyone has a horror story about some phone company, some restaurant, some taxi driver, whatever. SOS is my horror story.

My needs in the beginning were:
rebranded backup
exchange, sql and virtual plug-ins
high level of support, to help me learn the ropes

Pretty simple, right?

First problem: the method used for caching means that the cache store is almost as big as the backup itself! Massive problems with storage on large backups.

Second problem: noone available to help me/ not getting back to me soon enough to resolve issues.

Third problem: "Oh, you need additional software for brick level exchange backups"

Summary of many problems since then: 20GB upload limit. Big uploads can take days, interfering with work. No option for manual seeding. No option for emergency HDD recovery....

Maybe it's better if you actually LIVE in america, but this is not suitable for australia.