Elephant Drive Review
Most online backup providers have a long story about how they started and who they are. However, one established brand took a creative approach in expressing who they are, all in one sentence. In fact, we have never seen another online backup provider sum up their service like this until we came across Elephant Drive and their unique backup methodology. In a shorter version of an already well-articulated message to potential customers, Elephant Drive is dedicated to providing businesses and individuals alike powerful but basic tools for guarding and retrieving/recovering their files. We put them to the test and their service lived up to every bit of their reputation.
Features
Elephant Drive did a better job explaining to potential customers what they are going to get over the competition, even before taking a look at the features. As noted above, Elephant Drive offers powerful but basic tools. We have seen countless other backup services offer some features that are unnecessary and ultimately cause confusion. This is not the case with Elephant Drive as you get standard but dominant features that will put other online backup providers to shame. Here are just some of their features that you will receive when you start using them as your backup service provider:
- Up to 2TB of space (upgraded plan)
- Automatic backup
- Web & mobile access
- File sharing
- Sync devices; secure & easy sending
- File archiving
- Integrated software for NAS
- File versioning
We would like to expand on some of these features. While you should download the software that comes along with the plan, the web based access assures you that no software is required to download your files. Many times software significantly slows the backup process so we were pleasantly surprised to see lightning fast speeds with Elephant Drive’s web access. Further, another helpful feature we found is the ability to share multiple files via the website application.
Ease of Use
Online backup companies understand that the majority of their customers are not technically savvy. A huge portion of their advertising efforts goes on how easy it is to use their service yet many of them flat out fail to meet those expectations. However, Elephant Drive excels at ‘making life in the cloud simple.’ The download and installation process can be completed in under one minute. More importantly, we had particularly positive experiences with their web and mobile applications. The control panel is custom built but far more intuitive than we expected. We had one of our interns, who has no experience with online backup, use the control panel and try some basic backup tasks. She was able to login and backup some files in a matter of minutes.
Elephant Drive Manager
Pricing
Elephant Drive offers a wide range of payment plans designed to attract both individuals and businesses. The most basic individual plan starts at $9.95/month for 100GB of storage space while the most basic business plan is $25/month for 50GB.
Moreover, you can save 16% on individual plans or 33% on business plans by opting to pay yearly instead of monthly.
One important price point we feel is necessary to mention: it seems Elephant Drive is looking to compete with backup giant Dropbox. If you don’t need much storage space, Elephant Drive offers customers 2GB of storage space absolutely free of charge.
Security
The security offered by Elephant Drive is tops among its peers. Even a company like ZipCloud, who invests a significant amount of their resources to ensuring maximum security, does not compete with Elephant Drive’s security measures. We often hear about successful hack jobs and people wonder how these hackers pulled it off. We forget that while data is secure once in the cloud, it is susceptible during the transfer process. Elephant Drive has that covered as not only are your files protected by 256-bit AES encryption once in the cloud, but your files are also secure pre transfer by an added layer of 128-bit SSL encryption. Lastly and most importantly, Elephant Drive employs an ‘Open Design’ which allows security experts to openly assess and exploit theoretical vulnerabilities which is the best feedback a company can receive.
Customer Support
If we had to choose one area in which Elephant Drive truly succeeds, it would be customer service, even more so than their top of the line security measures. You can speak to a service representative via a toll free number or via their web contact form. Phone response times were historically fast while email response took under an hour. We would also like to note that we wrote in during off hours and therefore the response time truly surprised us, as we were expecting a response the next morning at the earliest. Moreover, Elephant Drive offers a very supportive helpdesk and a nice tutorial section which comes in video format.
Summary
As their tagline is advertised, Elephant Drive looks to make life in the cloud simple for both individual and business users. You can expect high quality customer support and security along with an easy to use interface for people of all technical backgrounds. Additionally, their simplistic features are the icing on the cake for anyone seriously looking at a backup solution.
