SpiderOakONE Review (Updated June 2017)

SpiderOakONE is an online backup service with tons of great features, not the least of which is a level of security not seen in many other cloud backup services.

Four online backup plans are offered by SpiderOak, all of which are identical except for the amount of storage you're allowed to use.

This model of pricing cloud storage space usually makes choosing the right plan pretty straightforward.

Below you'll find the details on the plans SpiderOakONE offers the features you'll get when you sign up, and lots of things I appreciate about the service, as well as some things I don't. My SpiderOakONE Tour might be helpful for you, too.

SpiderOakONE Plans & Costs

Valid June 2017

Any user can sign up for a free 21 day trial of any of the four plans shown below. Be sure to check out my list of Free Online Backup Plans for even more services that offer free backup, especially if you need the plan for longer than just a few weeks - some are even free "forever."

SpiderOakONE is available in these four tiers:

SpiderOakONE 100 GB

The smallest of the four SpiderOakOne plans gets you 100 GB of online storage space. This space can be used for backup from an unlimited number of devices, all of which share in the 100 GB limit.

This plan can be had for $5.00 /month if you pay month to month or for $4.92 /month if you pay for a whole year at once, which comes in at $59.00 /year.

SpiderOakONE 250 GB

SpiderOakONE 250 GB is the exact same as the other plans offered except that it lets you use up to 1 TB of space for backup from unlimited devices.

Prices are structured like the 100 GB plan: $9.00 /month for month-to-month service or $99.00 /year ($8.25 /month) if you prepay for an entire year up front.

SpiderOakONE 1,000 GB

The third level you can choose with SpiderOakONE is the 1,000 GB plan, which also gives you access to that much space for, you guessed it, an unlimited number of devices.

SpiderOakONE 1,000 GB is $12.00 /month if paid month to month and $129.00 /year ($10.75 /month) if paid yearly.

SpiderOakONE 5,000 GB

The last option with SpiderOakONE is a 5,000 GB plan for $25.00 /month, or $23.25 /month if it's purchased for a whole year at once, at $279.00.

See my Price Comparison: Multi-Computer Online Backup Plans table for a clear view of how SpiderOak's prices compare to other cloud backup services that let you backup from multiple computers and other devices.

All of SpiderOak's plans also come with a sync feature, which lets you keep two or more folders in sync with one another across all your devices. This feature counts towards your plan storage just as the regular backup feature does.

SpiderOakONE also offers SpiderOakONE Enterprise, which includes additional features like Active Directory integration, unlimited storage, and multi-user account access.

SpiderOakONE Features

Like any good backup service, SpiderOakONE keeps your data backed up automatically.

Even more, the program never lets you accidentally delete your backed up files because it keeps them in your account until you manually remove them, which is a feature all backup services should provide.

Here are more features you can expect when you sign up for one of SpiderOak's plans:

File Size Limits	No, but you can set limits yourself
File Type Restrictions	Yes, a few; plus exclude your own if you want
Fair Use Limits	No
Bandwidth Throttling	No
Operating System Support	Windows (XP & newer), macOS, and Linux
Native 64-bit Software	Yes
Mobile Apps	Android and iOS
File Access	Desktop software, web app, and mobile app
Transfer Encryption	SSL
Storage Encryption	2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES
Private Encryption Key	Yes, required by default
File Versioning	Unlimited
Mirror Image Backup	No
Backup Levels	Drive, folder, and file
Backup From Mapped Drive	Yes
Backup From External Drive	Yes
Continuous Backup (≤ 1 min)	Yes
Backup Frequency	Continuous to weekly; very customizable
Idle Backup Option	No
Bandwidth Control	Yes
Offline Backup Options(s)	No
Offline Restore Option(s)	No
Local Backup Option(s)	Yes
Locked/Open File Support	Yes
Backup Set Option(s)	Yes
Integrated Player/Viewer	Yes, but only for photos (mobile and web app)
File Sharing	Yes
Multi-Device Syncing	Yes
Backup Status Alerts	No
Data Center Locations	US
Inactive Account Retention	Forever (data is never automatically removed)
Support Options	Email, Twitter, self-help, and forum

My Experience With SpiderOak

Any great backup service should be secure, reliable, support great features, and ideally be inexpensive. In my opinion, SpiderOakONE does a wonderful job tackling those areas.

What I Like:

SpiderOakONE advertises as being a "zero-knowledge" provider. This means you and you alone can access and read your files, which is a big concern for anyone who wants to back up sensitive information. SpiderOakONE employees have no way to see what files you've backed up, and neither do governments or anyone else who tries to look at your files.

SpiderOakONE elaborated on this somewhat when I asked them Who Can See My Files?, one part of a multi-part Online Backup Q&A that they participated in.

On top of their strong privacy environment, SpiderOakONE boasts some awesome features that you'd naturally expect to have a good backup service.

For starters, like I mentioned in the table above, all of your files are backed up automatically after you've made changes to them. This is extremely important considering the whole reason you're using a backup service is to keep your files safe. There's really no other scheduling preference you want to use if you want to be absolutely sure that your files are being saved. However, SpiderOakONE does provide many different scheduling options so you can backup your files exactly when you'd like to.

Also, I love that you can backup from an unlimited number of devices. So long as you stay within your plan's storage limits, you can back up any number of computers you like, regardless if they're Mac, Windows, or Linux machines. This means you can get a large plan for your entire family and not have to worry about maxing out your device usage.

One of my favorite features of SpiderOakONE is that it supports deduplication. While not that unique in the cloud backup space, it's good to see. This means duplicate files will never be stored in your account, and therefore can never cause excess storage usage.

For an example, if you have a video on your desktop computer and the same exact video on your laptop, both of which are backed up to your SpiderOakONE account, the video will only take up space as if it were there once. If it's a 2 GB video, no matter how many devices you're backing it up from, it will only use 2 GB of space in your account. This is true for any number of files no matter their file type.

A similar function is worked into the file versioning feature that SpiderOakONE supports. Say you have a document on your computer that you're backing up. If you open that file, add a few lines to the bottom of it, and save it again, the whole file won't be reuploaded to your account. Instead, only the changes that were made will be backed up, and the original file will be considered a "Historical Version." This saves time, bandwidth, and storage, and therefore money so you don't have to upgrade to a larger plan as quickly as you otherwise would need to.

Because SpiderOakONE keeps just the changes and not the entire file, it can store many, many versions of a file without taking up a lot of space. This means you can make changes to a file over and over again without the worry that you will be forever stuck with a file you've made an accidental change to. You can always just go into the "Historical Versions" section of the program and restore the version you want.

I also like that SpiderOakONE supports bandwidth control. I let it consume as much bandwidth as it wanted so my files would upload as fast as possible and didn't notice any hiccups or slowdowns while my files were being backed up. If you do, however, it's nice to know there are some options here.

Please understand that the speed at which SpiderOakONE can upload files will vary from situation to situation because not all network and computer hardware and connections are identical. See How Long Will the Initial Backup Take? for some more information on this.

Here are a number of other things I liked about SpiderOakONE that I thought I should mention:

SpiderOak's support page explains tons of important information regarding security and features, and answers lots of common questions you may have
Files you're backing up and files that have been deleted can not be permanently removed from any device except for the one they were originally backed up from
Interrupted backups resume where they left off once the network connection or program returns to regular functionality
Backed up files that you delete from your computer are never deleted from your SpiderOakONE account unless you manually remove them from the "Deleted Items" section of the program; These files do, however, count toward your used storage.)
Individual versions of a file can be removed from your account to save space
Files can be easily restored to their original location or you can choose a different folder to save them to
Synced folders can be created so any file that changes on one computer will be reflected on the other(s) in your account
Drives, folders, and files can be backed up via the right-click context menu in Windows
Your files can be downloaded from the SpiderOakONE website no matter what computer you're using
Files and folders can be restored to a computer even if they were originally backed up from a different one
Backups can be configured to skip anything larger than a particular size and/or files older than a certain number of hours/days/months/years
Entire folders can be excluded from backups if they have a certain name in them
You can build a list of file extensions that SpiderOakONE should ignore when backing up your data
Not only can individual files be shared, but whole folders can be shared and password protected with anyone, even if they aren't SpiderOakONE users
The mobile app lets you view and share your files on the go, as well as save any file you want for offline use
Your backups can be optionally saved to a local folder or FTP site as well as backed up online so that restoring files are even faster

What I Don't Like:

As you can see by the sheer volume of the last section, there's a lot I like about SpiderOakONE, so there isn't much that I have to say in regards to my disappointments.

I do think that the price is a bit high considering they don't offer an unlimited backup plan. When you look at other popular services, like Backblaze for example, you can see how expensive SpiderOadk is. That service offers an unlimited plan that's around the same price as SpiderOak's 100 GB plan.

However, as with any software or service you subscribe to, it's important to compare every aspect of them. When you do so, you'll see that the features are very different. Backblaze, for instance, doesn't support unlimited versioning or unlimited devices, two big pluses in SpiderOak's plans.

I like that the mobile app lets you view your files, share them, and save them for offline use, but you can't actually back up anything. Some backup services support backing up data from smartphones, but SpiderOakONE, unfortunately, does not.

SpiderOakONE lets you limit bandwidth usage so you're not overwhelming your network with file transfers, but only for the upload bandwidth. You're not able to define a limit for how fast SpiderOakONE can download files which, while not a huge deal, is too bad.

My Final Thoughts on SpiderOakONE

SpiderOakONE is a fantastic choice, especially if you have a number of computers to back up from and you don't have several TBs of data among them.

If SpiderOakONE doesn't check all the boxes you were after with a cloud backup plan then I highly recommend you read reviews of some of my other favorites.

In particular, I'm a big fan of SOS Online Backup, CrashPlan, Backblaze, and Carbonite.

SpiderOakONE Review