Novosoft Plans Free Handy Backup Software in 2013

Novosoft LLC announced the plan to release a line of software products featuring integration with online hosting services.

The new solutions will harness the technology of Novosoft’s software Handy Backup and cloud storage provided by the company’s partners, and will be distributed free of charge starting in 2013.

"We’ve always been open and looked for partnership opportunities with businesses from very different fields of the IT industry," said Nataly Sigaeva, head of Novosoft Marketing Department. "This is one of the reasons why Handy Backup has a modular architecture: it can be quickly customized for the needs of each specific partner. The new products will provide an easy way to back up files to popular storage services, through the use of plug-ins that we are working on right now."

Earlier, Novosoft has released Handy Backup 7.3.0 with a new plug-in for backing up and synchronizing data with remote servers over WebDAV protocol, which is provided by many Online hosting companies.

"While the cheapest edition of Handy Backup with WebDAV support costs $39, its customized versions will be available free of charge," added Sigaeva. "The first product we are planning to release will allow backing up to CloudMe, a popular file sharing service from Sweden, and this will be the only storage option available in the program. To use other plug-ins, users will have to upgrade to paid versions of Handy Backup."

The idea of providing free software with paid options is not new for Novosoft. Its own storage service, Novosoft Remote Backup, is promoted in a similar way: there is a free edition of Handy Backup with an Online Backup plug-in, that can be upgraded to Home Standard edition to backup to other destinations, such as FTP or WebDAV.

Handy Backup is a professional backup and recovery software for Windows and Linux OSs. It is available in three editions for individual PCs: Home Standard, Home Professional and Small Server, each with its own set of functions and targeted at its own market. Supported functions include file-based backup, disk imaging, database backup (MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle and other), and more. Also, there is a Network Server edition that is an enterprise-level client-server solution that allows backing up to 5 networked computers or servers from one control point.

Prices of the software range from $39 for Home Standard to $599 for Network Server edition.