How Much Does Data Backup Cost for Small Business?

If disaster were to strike your small business, would you be able to recover?

Without any data backup solution in place, your answer to this question is probably going to be “no.” This leads directly into the next question: how much will it cost your business to get the level of data backup that it needs?

With over 20 years of experience serving the technology needs of small businesses in the DC Metro area, we’ve fielded question after question about data backup, and what companies can expect to invest on a monthly basis. Since there are few things more important to operations than maintaining and protecting your company’s data, these are questions that we’re always happy to explore.

Below we’ll walk through the factors that most closely influence costs, along with the average price range for data backup solutions within the context of your industry.

What main factors influence the cost of your data backup?

We discussed these two factors in another article, but they are precisely the factors that dictate what kind of backup solution your company would need:

1. RPO (Recovery Point Objective). What, in quantifiable terms, is your tolerance for lost data? Would you be okay if you lost a week’s worth of work? Or would losing much more than 30 minutes’ worth be serious cause for concern?

2. RTO (Recovery Time Objective). What, in equally as quantifiable terms, is your tolerance for downtime? Are you comfortable being unable to access your network for a few days? Or do you want a solution that will get you back up and running in less than an hour?

Your answers to these questions will help indicate the type of backup solution that is the best fit for your business. As you can probably guess, the lower your tolerance, the higher the price tag.

What is the average price range for small business data backup?

After all is said and done, your organization can expect to pay the equivalent of $2 to $4 per GB per month for more comprehensive backup solutions, and closer to an average of $1 per GB per month for lower-level data backup.

We, for example, provide a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution to a 30-person business in Virginia. This solution takes full images of each server at customizable increments, and has both on- and off-site virtualization capabilities within roughly ten to thirty minutes of the disaster. They are protected at all levels of disaster (from file loss to complete office destruction), and they invest over $1,000 per month to get there.

On the other end of the spectrum, we provide file-level cloud backup, which runs just a touch over $1/GB all-inclusive. File retrieval is a breeze with this solution, but in the event that a server actually goes down, we will need to rebuild the device, get the server’s data shipped to us from our datacenter, and then put that data back onto the new server. Many businesses are comfortable with this level of risk in exchange for the cost savings.

In the end, the most important question to ask yourself is what level of protection you’re looking to achieve with your data backup, and doing the best you can to fit the appropriate solution into your budget.

And if it all seems overwhelming, don’t worry—there are plenty of experts out there who can help you work through your RPO, RTO, and match them to the right technologies. All you need to do is ask!

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