View Poll Results: cPanel Backup, JetBackup or Acronis?

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  • Default cPanel backup system

    11 47.83%
  • JetBackup

    11 47.83%
  • Acronis

    5 21.74%
Multiple Choice Poll.
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  1. #1

    Question Do you prefer to use the default cPanel Backup System, JetBackup or Acronis?

    Do you prefer to use the default cPanel Backup System, JetBackup or Acronis? Maybe you even use a few of them side-by-side?

    I'm interested to know what web hosts and web hosting customers like the best?

    I ask because none of them does everything, and it can be a pain trying to manage different backup platforms at the same time.
    HostXNow - Shared Web Hosting | Semi Dedicated Hosting | Enterprise Reseller Hosting | VPS Hosting

  2. #2
    Just to add the pros and cons for each one that I have found over all the years I have been using all of them.

    Default cPanel Backup:

    Pros

    Uses the official cPanel directory structure which is safer, IMO.

    Cons

    • Cannot restore accounts from a remote location. Remote restore is not available for cPanel unless the data also exists locally (this is no good for servers with smaller drives which is the case for the majority of SMEs).
    • Only backup accounts. Full machine recovery cannot be done.
    • Really fiddly to use compared to JetBackup and Acronis
    • No centralised management system to manage backups for all servers within one control panel like you can do with Acronis (FREE), you have to pay an additional $20/month to do this with JetBackup
    JetBackup

    Pros

    • You can use rsync and restore backups from a local and remote location much faster.
    • Easier to use compared to the default cPanel backup system. JetBackup has a lot more customisable options that are not available within cPanel.
    • You can pay an additional fee of $20/month to manage backups for all servers within a centralised management system. No extra fee to do this with Acronis.



    Cons

    • JetBackup 5 uses its own indexing system which personally I do not like. The reason for this is if you have too many recovery points over too many days it can add hundreds or even thousands of backups and when it comes to restoring the backups without JBconfig it can take several hours just for it first reindex everything before you can even start restoring accounts. Very slow and annoying.
    Acronis

    Pros

    • Backup storage is already included with the service if not using your own storage servers. You can let Acronis handle the data storge by using their DCs or even host in Google or Azure if you prefer.
    • Simply the fastest at both backing up and restoring data hands down, due to it using block-level backup instead of file-based. Very handy if you have servers using a lot more inodes i.e lots of emails/individual files/images. Backing up lots of files with rsync using file-block backup is much slower.
    • There is a centralised management control panel Acronis Web Console which allows you to manage all servers/backups from the control panel.
    • It uses the official cPanel data backup structure which is better.



    Cons

    • Full machine restore does not work on all servers. I got it working with SoYouStart/Hetzner servers, but it does not work on certain OVH servers i.e the more powerful ones like Intel Xeon E-2388G or AMD 9 Ryzen 5900X due to various reasons Acronis/OVH can not or do not want to work out. That said, it can still be used in the same way the default cPanel backup system or JetBackup can in that server admin/end users can restore data for each cPanel account.
    • There is no way to generate full backups directly from the Acronis Backup Cloud storage which would be useful in case there is a hardware issue and the full machine restore is not working. You should be able to restore the cPanel accounts from the Acronis Backup Cloud storage to a different server. Better if you did not have to place the backups on the production server before you restore them as it would be quicker that way and uses less disk space.
    Those are just some of the things I can think of, but there are probably more.

    Because of the cons with each vendor, you end up having to use a mix of different ones to have alternative backups just in case, and that of course increases the overall workload and cost.

    I hope cPanel, JetBackup and Acronis see this so they can improve their software as best as possible.

    I think for what cPanel charges since 2019 their own backup system should be much better, never mind what they charge now. I did provide cPanel feedback that their backup system should be improved, and I hope they do it but not then charge even more. A better backup system should already be there at the current pricing.
    HostXNow - Shared Web Hosting | Semi Dedicated Hosting | Enterprise Reseller Hosting | VPS Hosting

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    We use JetBackup.

    But I have a to say something about reliability. We never had any issues with cPanel backup. But we had issues with JB 4, and more with JB 5. If it is only about reliability, cPanel backup is miles ahead.
    █||||[ MechanicWeb.com - Shared Hosting | Reseller Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Server ]
    █||||[ NVMe SSD | cPanel | DirectAdmin | LiteSpeed | CloudLinux | MailChannels | Since 2008 ]

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by MechanicWeb-shoss View Post
    We use JetBackup.

    But I have a to say something about reliability. We never had any issues with cPanel backup. But we had issues with JB 4, and more with JB 5. If it is only about reliability, cPanel backup is miles ahead.
    Hey Shoss, spot on! I agree 100% with that.

    I think JetBackup 4 worked better when using the official cPanel data structure, but I wanted to stop managing my own backup server for various reasons (keep on reading) and so I switched to JetBackup 5 so I could use Hetzner StorageBox but it was very unreliable (though the issue likely because it was BETA version of JetBackup at the time; not an issue with Hetzner StorageBox), and so I switched to Wasabi (again, BETA version which worked fine to start with), but then had the same issue as with StorageBox. But when I found Hetzner StorageBox released Stable version, I switched back to that, and again, it worked fine.

    Hetzner StorageBox now works much better than Wasabi, but JetBackup with Hetzner StorageBox has issues from time to time too, just nowhere near as much as when using Wasabi. For some reason, Wasabi caused massive high CPU usage. That must be issue with the JetBackup 5 software causing that, and I found Wasabi is not fast at handling lots of small files as fast as Hetzner StorageBox does. Hetzner StorageBox seems better.

    But you cannot beat backing up cPanel accounts with Rsync via SSH to a dedicated server. But the trouble is then it's just a standalone server and no Cloud, so if serious issue could lose backup data and have to start them again; cost too much to back up the backup data. And using server with Cloud storage for TB's costs way too much! So that's a no go.

    That's why I love using Acronis with their storage, but it has some of the issues I mentioned. None of the current solutions are perfect.
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  5. #5
    TL;DR, I'm having to use all three options.

    I hope cPanel improve their own backup system asap.
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  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    I hope cPanel improve their own backup system asap.
    When it comes to backup, reliability precedes over features for me. Because if it becomes buggy in trying to bring more features, I imagine we would write our own backup scripts just to have a reliable backup.

    For features you have JB or Acronis. They are affordable, too. As far as storing backups on the cloud, they are similar to hosting sites on bare metal vs cloud.

    If you are in control of your infrastructure, and know what is going on underneath, simple is better and safer for backups. Because there are fewer things to break. After all, backups are the last line of defense, and you would need them at your worst time.

    Edit:
    If you want cPanel to bring more features, consider encouraging them to create something similar to CloudLinux and LiteSpeed WordPress plugin. That's how they can charge more while saving our costs
    █||||[ MechanicWeb.com - Shared Hosting | Reseller Hosting | KVM VPS | Dedicated Server ]
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
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    London, UK
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    1,635
    None of the above. Strictly speaking, they're not alternatives anyway, because they do different things. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them - any backup is better than none and you can't have too many.

    I don't use cPanel but if I did I would use that backup (sftp not ftp though), because a built-in control panel backup is usually the best way of backing up individual sites in a way that can be quickly restored, complete with mailbox passwords and other control-panel specific settings. The problem is they're often slow to restore individual files and fairly crude (no incremental backup, for example).

    I don't use Jetbackup (again because I don't use cPanel) but at least it works with more destinations that the cPanel backup. It's not a block-level backup though (if I understand correctly) so it will be slow and space-hungry. I prefer Duplicacy for this sort of backup to cloud destinations, because it's block level and hence faster, secure and reliable. It allows quick restoral of individual files or folders.

    I don't use Acronis for server-level backups because hypervisor "snapshots" provided by the host are more reliable and faster. (I do use Acronis for Mac backups and the similar Macrium Reflect for Windows.) Server-level backups typically only restore reliably to similar hardware. I've had trouble with Acronis in the past but that doesn't mean it's not a useful option.

    You don't mention UpdraftPlus or similar PHP plugins - they are sometimes useful (e.g. if you don't have access to a control panel backup) but I avoid those as well because I find them generally unreliable and they affect site performance.

    I sometimes use rsync for specific backups because you can quickly re-sync (or reverse sync) to refresh or restore.

    I realise I'm not answering the question (sorry) but I thought a bit of context might be helpful.
    Phil McKerracher
    I do server maintenance and troubleshooting

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    360
    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    TL;DR, I'm having to use all three options.

    I hope cPanel improve their own backup system asap.
    Reading this makes me wonder what is your percentage cost of backups of the base server cost?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2014
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    Cardiff
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    A bit off topic.

    I use DirectAdmin.

    I do DA backup to sftp storage, as you can restore directly from it in case of server failure.

    Acronis is installed for client level restores

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Aug 2021
    Posts
    507
    Historically, I've built my own, using lftp from a VPS to each shared hosting account, then using Duplicity on the VPS to do incremental forever backups to cheap Cloud object storage.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    Australia
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    131
    I'm surprised not many people mention ClusterLogics (formerly known as Bacula4). I switched to that from R1Soft some time ago.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by jayjayuk View Post
    A bit off topic.

    I use DirectAdmin.

    I do DA backup to sftp storage, as you can restore directly from it in case of server failure.

    Acronis is installed for client level restores
    I think the best solution seems to be to use Acronis to back up the entire machine and set that to be used for client level restores as it is much faster at backing up and restoring data but keep separate cPanel backups on a dedicated server for internal use from time to time in case there is an issue with Acronis.

    I also had/have JetBackup 5 backing up to Hetzner StorageBox but I do not find it efficient at backing up a lot of data using rsync with file-level backup. It is much slower at backing up and restoring data compared to using Acronis or simply restoring a fully compressed cPanel backup from a dedicated server.

    It wouldn't be so bad if JetBackup included their centralised management console in the cost of the license. $5.95/month for each backup license is quite a lot and should include their centralised management console in the cost of the license, IMO. Maybe then it is not as difficult to manage, but I have not tried it as can't justify paying extra cost when Acronis include a centralised management console in the cost of the license and Acronis is so much faster at backing up and restoring data.

    Quote Originally Posted by jonburnaby View Post
    Historically, I've built my own, using lftp from a VPS to each shared hosting account, then using Duplicity on the VPS to do incremental forever backups to cheap Cloud object storage.
    Cheap Cloud object storage such as? I have tried BackBlaze, Wasabi, and OVH archive storage but they are not good at backing up servers due to speed issues. I also tried rsync.net but found issues with that too (it does not have jailed SSH login for one). JetBackup 5 with AWS S3 was the fastest that I tried but it is a lot more expensive when backing up TBs.

    I used to use storage from Online.net which was fast and included jailed SSH so you could use JetBackup 4 or default cPanel backup but Online.net discontinued the service and wanted everyone to switch to their new S3 which I tried but I found it has the same issues as BackBlaze, Wasabi type services.

    Quote Originally Posted by Localnode View Post
    I'm surprised not many people mention ClusterLogics (formerly known as Bacula4). I switched to that from R1Soft some time ago.
    I remember that from years ago, but I did not go ahead with it for reasons I cannot fully remember, but I think it was complexity or pricing.
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  13. #13
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
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    Quote Originally Posted by WindsOfChange View Post
    Reading this makes me wonder what is your percentage cost of backups of the base server cost?
    Yea, I often wonder this when I read of some provider's backup strategies.

    How often are you having to restore from backups?

    How many customers do you have?

    How much disk space are these customers using?

    I mean, if you have 50 customers each using 3GB of disk space - then yea you can scatter 2 years worth of backups all over the place.

    But if you're talking about 10,000 customers and 20TB of disk space - you can't really scatter backups all over the place.


    We use a customized backup solution that uses rsync to store backups onto another server. We also have a system in place where each account can be restored individually to any of our other servers.

    This makes disaster recovery a bit quicker - at least in my opinion. If one of our servers dies for whatever reason, then we can push these backups and restore accounts to any of our servers, usually running multiple restores at the same time (on different servers), and that allows us to get these accounts back up and running quickly.

    Having never used some of these other products being mentioned (I like our system, never had a reason to test another backup system), but it would seem that some of these restore procedures require a new, clean server and then you're writing all of that data back from the backup server to the new server and it may not be accessible until the last of the data has been restored.

    Again, this may work fine if you're talking about 50 customers and 150GB of data. But if you're talking about upwards of 1000 customers and 2TB of data, that's less than ideal.

    Not to mention, the only extra overhead we have is the cost of the server to store the backups on.

    This definitely sets us apart from most other providers - which isn't necessarily a good thing, customers are used to seeing all of this licensed software that other web hosting companies provide - but it allows us to keep our prices down while still carrying a profit.

    Our approach definitely isn't for everybody. And not to harp negativity on some of the licensed software other hosting companies use. But sometimes I wonder how hosting companies make any money when they're using every piece of licensed software under the sun.

  14. #14
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    I think the best solution seems to be to use Acronis to back up the entire machine and set that to be used for client level restores as it is much faster at backing up and restoring data but keep separate cPanel backups on a dedicated server for internal use from time to time in case there is an issue with Acronis.
    This is along the lines of what we do. Gives us a good mix of performance for frequent backups as well as flexibility for off-server and off-site storage. More importantly, if we find that one method failed we still have another. The cost is not significant in the grand scheme of things and worth every penny.
    Dathorn, Inc. - Premium cPanel/WHM Hosting since 2002! Check Out Our Blog!
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  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    Cannot restore accounts from a remote location. Remote restore is not available for cPanel unless the data also exists locally (this is no good for servers with smaller drives which is the case for the majority of SMEs).
    You can restore cpanel backups from remote location if FTP method is used.
    NetDynamics LLC - One-stop Solution for Hosting Needs
    We love Backups! Backup storage for your server backups

  16. #16
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    Mar 2006
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    I find it strange that people use Acronis only for client file-level restores where cPanel's File and database restore works perfectly and fast as it needs incremental backups on local machine. To us Acronis Cloud is useless given the cost when it's only for client's file-level restores. We prefer to add a 2TB SATA or larger to keep the cPanel incrementals on localhost for the purpose. Given that when disaster strikes we'll be using the cpanel cpmoves from offsite for restores and not the local incremental nor the acronis cloud

  17. #17
    We are using two methods together: one is panel built-in backup to provide users with the interface to backup/restore by themselves, and other is our own backup script. It is Rsync-based, with data deduplication and linking, so it allows to store data in regular dirs on backup server, with no need to download and extract huge backup in order to get a single file. Both options are good for different cases.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    Cheap Cloud object storage such as? I have tried BackBlaze, Wasabi, and OVH archive storage but they are not good at backing up servers due to speed issues. I also tried rsync.net but found issues with that too (it does not have jailed SSH login for one). JetBackup 5 with AWS S3 was the fastest that I tried but it is a lot more expensive when backing up TBs.

    I used to use storage from Online.net which was fast and included jailed SSH so you could use JetBackup 4 or default cPanel backup but Online.net discontinued the service and wanted everyone to switch to their new S3 which I tried but I found it has the same issues as BackBlaze, Wasabi type services.
    I have not detected any speed issues with BackBlaze's B2 cheap Cloud object storage, but that is not surprising since it is nearly impossible for me to separate Duplicity execution time from the S3 transfer to B2, which Duplicity is doing.

    But, when I set things up initially when B2 first came out, I did have to resolve some timeout issues with the following Duplicity settings:
    --timeout 120
    --num-retries 12
    --backend-retry-delay 90
    --allow-source-mismatch
    --no-encryption

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by NetDynamics LLC View Post
    You can restore cpanel backups from remote location if FTP method is used.
    Yes, but the backups need to be on a local drive for it to work, and I use high-spec Cloud instances and Dedicated Servers with NVMe SSD. I cannot also have drives just for backups, and if I did they would be SATA like most other web hosts use for storage, but SATA is slower than SSD/NVMe SSD. So I cannot use that option.

    That is why I want cPanel to allow remote backups to be done without the backups being stored temporarily on the server until they have been transferred.

    Afaik, the way JetBackup does it is better i.e it rsyncs the difference in data from the live account directly to the remote location which uses far less space. cPanel default backup system should do it that way too.

    Rsync is just too slow for lots of files/data, at least for me, and because I cannot use JetBackup 5 to create full compressed cPanel backups using the official directory structure I can/will not use it.

    Acronis + Compressed cPanel backups look to be the way to go, again, at least for me.
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  20. #20
    The advantage of using Acronis Backup Cloud is they have blazing fast network connections far above the speed used at typical backup storage servers, i.e. Hetzner, which has 1Gbit/s.

    Also, Acronis has fast storage (no SATA drives). With 5Gbit/s or whatever Acronis allow, you can backup lots of data from different servers simultaneously, and it handles it flawlessly. With the block-level backup method, you can see why it is better.

    I am trying a Hetzner server to store compressed cPanel backups, but the 1Gbit/s/SATA drives can only handle so much!

    I was looking at other providers who offer low-cost backup storage servers with 10Gbit/s (A shared connection is okay), and using SAS/SSD or NVMe SSD would be a bonus.

    I found FractionServers (UKServers parent company) at WHT, which offers competitive pricing for a 10Gbit/s connection. Still, the CPU/processor is low spec, and SATA would have to be used unless you pay more. I wouldn't want to waste their time to see if the setup was better than Hetzner's. I will look around to see what others there are, but let me know if anyone knows of any others to check.
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  21. #21
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    The advantage of using Acronis Backup Cloud is they have blazing fast network connections far above the speed used at typical backup storage servers, i.e. Hetzner, which has 1Gbit/s.

    Also, Acronis has fast storage (no SATA drives). With 5Gbit/s or whatever Acronis allow, you can backup lots of data from different servers simultaneously, and it handles it flawlessly. With the block-level backup method, you can see why it is better.

    I am trying a Hetzner server to store compressed cPanel backups, but the 1Gbit/s/SATA drives can only handle so much!

    I was looking at other providers who offer low-cost backup storage servers with 10Gbit/s (A shared connection is okay), and using SAS/SSD or NVMe SSD would be a bonus.

    I found FractionServers (UKServers parent company) at WHT, which offers competitive pricing for a 10Gbit/s connection. Still, the CPU/processor is low spec, and SATA would have to be used unless you pay more. I wouldn't want to waste their time to see if the setup was better than Hetzner's. I will look around to see what others there are, but let me know if anyone knows of any others to check.
    I get your focus on speed, but give a thought to the usage of speed. Only by clients when they need to do restore and not you when you face major disaster!?

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by HostXNow View Post
    Yes, but the backups need to be on a local drive for it to work
    No! The backups can be on a remote FTP location. This is what I said.
    I have restored mutiple times from remote FTP location. Easy and fast!
    NetDynamics LLC - One-stop Solution for Hosting Needs
    We love Backups! Backup storage for your server backups

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by NetDynamics LLC View Post
    No! The backups can be on a remote FTP location. This is what I said.
    I have restored mutiple times from remote FTP location. Easy and fast!
    Ok, Michael, they must have changed it, because you could not used to do that.

    FTP service is disabled on new cPanel installs due to security issues with passwords in plaintext etc, but it is faster than SFTP, and if FTP supports remote backups then that's great!

    Why don't cPanel do that for Rsync and SFTP, too? Be better if they did.
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  24. #24
    I tested Remote FTP, and it works fine @NetDynamics LLC

    It does have to store the data temporarily before sending it to a remote location, though!

    If you have a 600GB drive and three accounts take up 100GB each. It would generate backups locally of up to 300GB, and if backups are not sent to a remote location quick enough, the drive can run out of space.

    You need spare drives for backups if you want to use Remote FTP.

    That is an advantage to using Rsync with JetBackup as it looks to rsync the data on the fly using far less disk space. But again, Rsync is way too slow for lots of files/inodes.

    But thanks for letting me know that Remote backups work with FTP. It did not use to. cPanel must have updated it at some point.

    Cheers.
    HostXNow - Shared Web Hosting | Semi Dedicated Hosting | Enterprise Reseller Hosting | VPS Hosting

  25. #25
    We didn't have any problem with normal cPanel backup, yes JetBackup provide you many settings, and you can control more that the default, but I can say also the default backup reliable

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