I get asked all the time by smaller service businesses what they can do to protect their critical business documents, and luckily there is an easy answer: Dropbox.
I’ve searched high and low for a good, reasonably priced online-backup tool for folks in small business, and Dropbox is the only one I can recommend. It’s easy, it’s fast, it’s inexpensive (it’s free to start, up to 2GB), and it backs up your documents to both their data center and other PCs you may have — giving you multiple layers of data protection.
Furthermore, Dropbox can facilitate sharing large files with collaborators within your business or beyond. Dropbox can even replace cumbersome and complex file servers, if your environment is small enough.
The one drawback, if you can call it that, is that Dropbox does require some amount of discipline. You have to save all of your important files to the Dropbox folder on your computer in order for them to be protected. However, this solution works a lot better than any other software I’ve tried. Others attempt to backup all files in your home directory, but tend to be quirky and slow. Compared to others Dropbox can also seem on the small side, topping out at 100GB for $20/mo, but most service business around four to five folks should have less data than that.
Dropbox is only for document protection and only for desktops/laptops. If your business includes servers of any kind, you need further protection.
So there it is, a very simple thing you can do yourself to protect your important business documents now, probably in less that five minutes. What are you waiting for? Get started now.
Note that Red Wire is in no way involved with Dropbox, nor do we receive any compensation for mentioning their name.
If you need more help, feel free to contact us. Stay safe out there.