I’ve been using Google Apps for many years. In fact, it’s one of my initial steps in domain creation. Recently, however, I stumbled upon a disturbing post where a Google Apps account was banned.
4 Reasons You Should Use Google Apps
- Web based access from anywhere
- World class spam protection (perfect for help desks)
- Relieving your server resources and letting Google do the heavy lifting
- Deliverability. If Google has your email, the trust factor is increased when delivering to Gmail
Back to the scary post. A Google Apps user was banned for an unknown reason. Google finally responded a day or two later and reinstated their account…but what if they didn’t? He would have lost years of emails, contacts, purchase info, photos and more. Losing your email is like losing a chunk of your digital life.
This got me thinking. You see, I back up nearly everything to the cloud. At first, I was using Mozy, but since they retired their unlimited plan this month, I moved over to CrashPlan’s 3-year $129 deal. That works out to only $3.33 per day. 🙂
So my PC is backed up on a daily basis. Meanwhile, all my websites are backed up to my PC and Amazon S3 using the free plugin BackWPUP.
So that only leaves my email. I’ve completely neglected this area and have taken Google’s reliability for granted. I never prepared for a “I just got banned” clause. So what are my options? I have 2:
- Thunderbird: I can install Thunderbird and sync my email. But that’s a pretty manual, painful process. I don’t want to get up everyday, open Thunderbird, hit Send/Receive and wait. Luckily, I found a better, automated solution.
- GmailKeeper: This is what I need. Full, automated Gmail and Google Apps backup. Lets investigate a bit more, shall we?
GmailKeeper Review
GmailKeeper is a one-click lightweight Gmail backup & restore tool specifically designed for Gmail and Google Apps
Built-in Backup Automation: Automatically backup your account daily, weekly or monthly. Once a backup profile is setup, Gmail Keeper takes care of the rest. A real timesaver.
Backup & Restore All Gmail Folders: Backup & restore all folders including Inbox, Sent Mail, All Mail, Starred & Drafts.
Backup & Restore Gmail Labels: Backup & restore not only emails but also labels associated with each email.
Migrate Gmail or Apps Accounts: Move/transfer emails & labels between any Gmail or Apps accounts
Open File Formats: Your can open backup archives with Outlook Express, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.
Backup Multiple Accounts at a time: With Gmail Keeper you can backup as many Gmail accounts as you wish.
Secure and Safe: High encryption protects the backup data and Internet connection to Gmail server.
This is the perfect solution for me. After installation and a 30 second setup, it took GmailKeeper around 4 hours to download my 7gb account with over 19,000 emails.
Next time, though, I think I’ll download all my 2008, 2009, 2010 emails into a separate archive. This will keep the file size smaller and make backups for 2011 faster.
Now that I have a local backup, CrashPlan can backup to the cloud.
GmailKeeper Feature Requests
- I would like to see some kind of incremental backup feature.
- If the above can’t be done, I’d like to create a scheduled backup on Friday that backs up the past 7 days or month. It currently has a “back up since xx/xx/xxxx” feature, but I want it to intelligently backup the last x amount of days.
- I’d like to see some type of FTP or Amazon S3 integration where you can upload your backup to Amazon S3 or FTP for people that don’t have CrashPlan or Carbonite.
Overall, I’m very happy and highly recommend GmailKeeper. If you’re currently using Google Apps, grab a copy now. Don’t let Google catch our business off guard.
To your success,
Jesus Perez