Reliable backups are essential for anyone running a Shopify store (or any ecommerce business, for that matter.) Data loss can happen anytime, and its impact on business continuity, reputation, and revenue can be devastating.
There are plenty of Shopify backup apps and ecommerce business plugins you could add, but will they be sufficient? In this article, we’ll review the importance of backing up your Shopify data and compare two, BackupMaster and Rewind, to help you make an informed decision.
Data backups: a safety net
Given the wealth of personal and financial data that ecommerce sites store and process, they’re becoming an increasingly popular target for cybercriminals. Falling victim to a cyberattack can result in your data being compromised, corrupted, exfiltrated, or stolen. But cybercrime isn’t the only thing that can result in data loss – old-fashioned human error is the greatest risk. According to research from Stanford University, human error accounts for about 88% of data loss incidents. Other possible culprits of data loss include bad CSV files, and incompatible third-party apps or custom code.
If you don’t have a backup of your online store, when the worst happens, you could lose your data forever. Backups provide a safety net, allowing you to restore your site and data to a precise point in time.
Manually backing up data is one option, but people often forget to back up their files, especially the ones they don’t work with daily. Automated backups eliminate the time, effort, and complexity associated with manual backups. They also give you additional security and storage capabilities through your backup provider.
BackupMaster vs. Rewind: high-level comparison
Here’s an at-a-glance comparison of the respective features BackupMaster and Rewind. In the next section, we’ll drill down into some specifics.
| Rewind | BackupMaster | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Starting at $9/month | Starting at $19/month |
| Reviews | 1,000+ | 100+ |
| Rating | 4.9 | 5 |
| Employees | 95+ | 3+ |
| In the Shopify App Store since | 2016 | 2017 |
| Users | 25,000+ | 4,500+ |
| Location | Canada | Australia / Russia / Cyprus |
| Data storage locations | USA, Canada & EU | USA |
| Security & compliance | – SOC 2 Type 2 – SOC 3 – CCPA – CPRA – CSA STAR – GDPR – PIPEDA – Active cyber insurance | No listed security certifications or standards |
| Support | Email & live chat, available 7 days / week: Monday – Friday 8am-5pm, Saturday – Sunday 10am-8pm (EST) Enterprise support available | Email & live chat Support hours unlisted |
| Shopify Plus certified | Yes | No |
BackupMaster vs. Rewind: detailed feature comparison
| Feature | Rewind | BackupMaster |
|---|---|---|
| Backup data coverage: orders, customers, products, themes, collections, blogs, pages, metafields, and more. | ✅ | ✅ |
| Real-time product backups | ✅ | ❌ |
| Granular restores | ✅ | ✅ |
| Manual backups | ✅ | ✅ |
| Code change comparison | ✅ | ❌ |
| Backup retention | 1 year | 1 year |
| Unlimited restores | ✅ | ✅ |
| Unlimited storage | ✅ | ✅ |
| Bulk product change alerts | ✅ on Protection Suite plans | ❌ |
| Synced Staging store | ✅ on Protection Suite plans | ❌ |
| Downtime & site flow monitoring | ✅ on Protection Suite plans | ❌ |
| Audit log | ✅ on all plans | ✅ Plus plan ($79) and higher |
Security
Data security and compliance are non-negotiable when selecting your backup partner. Where exactly will your data be stored? Where is it going? Who will have access to it? How will you access it if you need it?
BackupMaster has limited information on its security processes, and the company stores customer data exclusively on a US-based server. For European-based businesses, this could put them at risk for not complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In contrast, Rewind stores your data on a server in the US, Canada, or the EU (Ireland) based on your business’s location. Rewind Backups offers comprehensive, enterprise-ready security:
- SOC 2 compliant
- GDPR compliant
- Security and compliance questionnaire ready
- Full Trust team on staff
Backup frequency
Most ecommerce store owners make changes to their sites several times a day, but BackupMaster does not automatically store backups in real-time as changes are made. Many changes can happen over 24 hours, especially when you’re actively adding or updating products.
BackupMaster performs a manual or daily backup at the same time each day. If you restore to a previous point in time, you could lose many hours of work and sacrifice losing sales or development time while you wait to get back up and running. In addition to manual and automatic daily backups, Rewind backs up some store changes, such as product images and descriptions, in real time.
Backups beyond Shopify
Backing up your store is important, but it’s not the only tool that makes your business run. Losing data in other tools, like your email marketing platform, could be detrimental to your store’s revenue. Most backups apps in the Shopify App Store, like BackupMaster, are entirely focused on backing up your Shopify data. Rewind backs up 10+ different SaaS platforms, including Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and is adding more platforms on a regular basis. More backup coverage means more protection for your Shopify store.
Visibility
Another consideration when evaluating a backup solution is how granular you want to get when investigating any changes made to your store. BackupMaster allows you to choose a date to restore to but doesn’t show you exactly what changed, meaning you have to compare the two versions yourself. With Rewind, you can compare both text and code versions, including highlighted lines of code to see exactly what changed and when.
Market reputation
When you entrust a third party to manage your ecommerce site’s backups, you want to know exactly who you’re working with and have confidence that they’ll still be around to support you in years to come.
BackupMaster chooses to remain anonymous so little is known about them. The names of their management team are not publicly available, but we were able to confirm that they have a distributed team with staff located in Cyprus, Russia, and Australia.
The oldest backup app for Shopify, Rewind is supported by a 95-plus person team. Its apps are recommended by some of the largest Shopify development agencies and you’ll often find Rewind represented at leading ecommerce events. Rewind is the only backup app that is a Shopify Plus certified partner and is the backup app most frequently recommended by Shopify Gurus. It’s also:
- The most recommended backups app for Shopify
- The most reviewed backups app in the Shopify app store
- Backed by investors, including Atlassian Ventures
- Fully focused on protecting SaaS data
- Trusted by some of the biggest names in ecommerce, including Olaplex, Rothy’s, and Stanley 1913
Customer support
If you’re experiencing an issue with your backups or simply have a query, you need to know you can contact a knowledgeable and responsive customer support team.
BackupMaster provides customer support via email or live chat, but it doesn’t share its support hours. Rewind is available by live chat or email seven days a week, and the company’s team of support answers and on-call data restoration specialists is based in EST and PST.
Cost
Data security and the costs of that security always involves a tradeoff. Faster data recovery times (or a lower Recovery Time Objective, or RTO) typically involves a higher running cost. Of course, the cheapest option of all is to have no backups at all, and cross your fingers and hope for the best. Since you’re investigating backup options, you probably already decided not to take the ‘head in the sand’ approach to data security (good call).
Choosing a backup provider (like all security procedures) is a matter of balancing the cost of investing in backups vs. the business value that data creates. If the ability to restore granular items of data in minutes to prevent downtime is essential to your bottom line, you may decide to invest in a data recovery system that can suit your needs. Conversely, if your store isn’t edited or changed often, perhaps weekly backups that take a little more time to restore are sufficient. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for”, and you’re the only one qualified to decide the business value of your data.
BackupMaster starts at $19/month for stores with up to 300 orders per month, while Rewind starts at only $9 per month for the same number of orders. Both platforms offer a free 7-day trial. Customers can cancel at any time. Rewind’s pricing includes all data storage costs, and you’ll never “run out” of storage in the Rewind Vault with all backups stored for 365 days.
Comprehensiveness and proactivity of product suite
When it comes to data protection, forewarned is forearmed. While BackupMaster offers strictly store backups, Rewind, also offers proactive tools to prevent data loss. Rewind’s Protection Suite combines backups with three additional apps – Monitor, Staging, and Alerts– to ensure merchants are always the first to know about potential issues with their store so they know when they might need to restore from a backup.
Selecting the right Shopify backup provider
Backing up Shopify is a sound strategy for protecting your ecommerce business from devastating data loss incidents. Choosing the right backup provider can save you plenty of stress in the future!
We trust this article helps you make an informed choice regarding backing up your Shopify store. If you have additional questions or want to learn more about leveraging Rewind to protect your business, get in touch.
Larissa Hildebrandt">
