AOMEI Backupper
AOMEI Backupper is a software package for backing up and restoring Windows computers and is available for both home and business use. In our AOMEI Backupper Backup review, we’ll be assessing whether the company’s claim that it is the best disk cloning software available holds true. In the process, we’ll cover its pricing, features, support, and ease of use.
- Want to try AOMEI Backupper? Download it here
Plans and pricing
AOMEI Backupper is available for home and business use. For personal users, there is a completely free version and then the Professional plan, which costs $49.95 per license (a license can only be used on a single PC). The latter’s name is a bit misleading, though, because it isn’t appropriate for business use. It includes the lifetime upgrade option, which means you’ll always be able to upgrade to new versions of the software for free and access free technical support. Without the lifetime upgrade, the cost of the software is $39.95.
The Professional version comes with many more features than the free version. These include the ability to clone systems, merge, split, and encrypt backup images, and have scheduled backups triggered by events.
For business, there are four plans that range in price from $59.95 for a single workstation, up to $899 for the Technician Plus plan, which can only be used by a single technician, but on unlimited PCs and servers.
All the business plans also include the lifetime upgrade option, and prices are lower without it. For instance, the Workstation plan is $10 cheaper, while the price of the Technician Plus plan comes down by $200.
Features
As you would expect from any good disk cloning tool, AOMEI Backupper can be used for disk backup, restoring, and cloning. It also has a number of utilities for managing disk images.
It supports all versions of Windows from XP to Windows 10 and all the usual file systems, NTFS, FAT32, etc. A wide range of storage devices is also supported, including HDD, SSD, and SSHD, as well as external drives like flash and thumb drives, hardware RAID, NAS, and virtual systems.
Backup features include the ability to do full disk, partition, or system-only backups. If you need to back up only specific files or folders, you can do that too, and you can also choose to synchronize files between different locations.
Backups can be set to a schedule and can be triggered by certain events like system shutdown. Once you have created your backups, restoring them is just a case of selecting the correct backup to restore.
AOMEI Backupper can also be used for cloning disks if you need to upgrade a PC to a faster drive or one with more storage space.
Interface and in use
AOMEI Backupper has a very clean, easy-to-navigate interface with the main functions listed with large icons down the left side of the app window. The app is ideal for novice users, with very few steps required to complete tasks.
Backup speeds during our tests were slightly above average, but restore speeds were almost twice as fast. The amount of data compression during backups was also impressive, with performance better than many similar apps we tested.
We did have a couple of minor issues with AOMEI Backupper. One was that some files with really long file names wouldn’t back up until the names were shortened, and we sometimes found that some buttons that launched Explorer windows had to be clicked more than once to open the Explorer. There was also some unnecessary animation of text that was more annoying than useful.
Support
AOMEI Backupper is developed by AOMEI Technology, which is based in China, and quite a bit of the copy on the Backupper website and documentation has been poorly translated into English. You can still understand it, but it’s obvious it wasn’t written by a native English speaker.
Support channels offered include documentation for the product, forums, social media, FAQs, and email addresses for sales, technical support, partnerships, and complaints. There are no phone numbers or live chat widgets, but the company seems active on its social media channels.
Security
AOMEI Backupper gives you the ability to encrypt your backups, but it is fairly limited. There is only a single choice of encryption methods, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and you can’t change a password after a backup has been created.
The competition
There is certainly no shortage of competition in the disk cloning software market and some alternatives you might want to consider include MiniTool Partition Wizard and Clonezilla.
MiniTool Partition Wizard has a similar pricing structure to AOMEI Backupper, with free and paid plans for home users and a range of business plans. Business users can cover a single computer for $159, and adding a lifetime upgrade brings the cost up to $259. Plans for multiple PCs or servers range from $399 to $699.
Clonezilla is a completely free disk cloning alternative that can clone single computers as well as large networks of servers. It supports a wide range of file systems and AES-256 encryption. It does have some limitations, however, including not supporting differential or incremental backups. What’s more, disk images can’t be mounted or explored, meaning you can’t restore single files from an image.
Final verdict
AOMEI Backupper has a lot going for it. The free version includes a lot of features that will make it ideal for most home users. For those who need more features, and for businesses, it’s competitively priced. It is designed well and is very easy to use, particularly for novice users. It also boasts good performance when backing up, but even more so when restoring disk images.
If we were to make any criticisms, it would be a lack of encryption options and direct support methods, as well as documentation that is written in stilted English, but these are relatively minor points.
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