11 posts tagged with "blogs"

Hello,

Today we are announcing new pricing plans. Comet has always been a flexible platform, and we want to make it easier for you to build out the backup environment that’s best for your business.

The Comet community is at the heart of everything we do. We’re committed to our mission of helping MSPs provide great backup services. We recognize that different partners have different needs. With that in mind, we have designed plans that fit various use cases and allow businesses to scale and grow.

We’re introducing five different tiers, with options to suit a variety of deployments. Plans are based on configuration and usage of management consoles, devices, and boosters. Only pay for what you use, with no hidden fees.

What this means for you?​

• You can choose your pricing plan in the billing section of the account dashboard here.
• If you need help selecting a plan, feel free to reach out to our team and we’d be happy to discuss your specific business requirements.
• If you want to migrate from Self-Hosted to Comet-Hosted, you can use our new migration tool with these step-by-step instructions. Or you can raise a support ticket for assistance with the process.

Our team is here to help if you have questions or need assistance selecting the best plan for your business. Get in touch with us at partners@cometbackup.com.

Thanks for being on this journey with us.

Thank you,
Josh

Josh Flores
General Manager
Comet Backup

FAQs:​

What are the differences between the pricing plans?​

The pricing plans are based on configuration and usage of management console licenses, devices, and boosters. These plans are designed to be flexible for different use cases and backup environments. You can read about the plans in more detail and compare them here.

I’m a Comet-Hosted customer, how does this change affect me?​

Our Professional plan is designed for most Comet-Hosted customers. On this plan there are no changes to your monthly costs or features.

If you use both Comet-Hosted and Self-Hosted, the Advanced plan is best suited to your needs. Check out this detailed comparison chart to learn more.

I’m a Self-Hosted customer, how does this change affect me?​

Our Starter, Growth and Advanced plans are all designed for Self-Hosted customers. Check out this detailed comparison chart to learn more.

Can I change my plan later?​

Yes, you can upgrade your plan in the billing section of your account at any time. If you want to downgrade your plan, please contact our team partners@cometbackup.com for assistance.

Can I migrate from Self-Hosted to Comet-Hosted?​

Yes, the migration tool is ready. The migration process will likely take about 10-20 minutes, with little to no interruption to your customers and services. You can either run the migration yourself with these step-by-step instructions. Or you can raise a support ticket for assistance with the process.

Do note that using a Comet-Hosted Server will incur a $49 monthly fee, and there are some differences in feature between a Comet-Hosted and Self-Hosted Server. Please check out the features parity in our product page.

What happens if I don’t select a plan?​

If you haven’t selected a plan, one of our account managers will review your account and move you onto the plan that best aligns with your usage. If you’d like to change your plan after that, you can upgrade your plan in the billing section of your account at any time. If you want to downgrade your plan, please contact our team partners@cometbackup.com for assistance.

What is the difference between Comet-Hosted (cloud-hosted) and Self-Hosted?​

Comet-Hosted is automatically configured and is cloud-hosted, with no system requirements, and has fully managed quarterly updates, so it is easy to maintain.

Self-Hosted is our more customizable option. It can be hosted anywhere including on-prem or in the cloud, which makes it more flexible in complying with regulatory requirements.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

It’s that time of year again, the leaves are changing color, pumpkin spice lattes are back on the menu, and Halloween is approaching. October is also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an international initiative that educates people about online safety and empowers individuals and businesses to protect their data from cybercrime.

History of Cybersecurity Awareness Month​

Cybersecurity Awareness Month was launched by the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in October 2004 as a dedicated month to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity. October 2024 marks the 21st Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

How MSPs and IT Providers Can Observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month​

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a great opportunity for MSPs and IT Providers to remind end users and clients about how they can stay safe online. It’s also a great time to audit and review your clients’ security situations and educate them on the importance of cybersecurity and a strong backup solution.

Secure Our World​

The enduring theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month is Secure Our World. This theme recognizes the importance of taking daily action to reduce risks when online and connected to devices. Below are the simple actions we should all take not only during October, but every day throughout the year to stay safe online.

Four Easy Ways to Stay Safe Online​

Here are some simple tips to remind end users and clients how they can protect themselves and their data online.

• Use Strong and Unique Passwords – A strong password should be long, random, unique, and include all four character types, including uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols. Password managers are a powerful and useful tool to help you create and maintain strong passwords for reach of your accounts.

• Turn on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – MFA refers to the separate methods of verifying one’s identity in order to access an account. This may include logging into an account with a password and then re-confirming with an authentication code. Enabling MFA offers an extra layer of protection.

• Recognize & Report Phishing Scams – Learn how to stay alert for phishing attacks, which refer to the attempt to trick people into sharing valuable data or visiting malware-infected websites.

• Keep Your Software Updated – Updating your software regularly ensures that you have the latest security patches, bug fixes, and updates on your devices and apps. Having outdated software may be a vulnerability that a cyber-criminal could exploit.

Bonus Tip: Have a Solid Backup Solution​

One critical aspect of cybersecurity that MSPs should highlight is the importance of having a reliable backup solution. While cybersecurity efforts focus on preventing breaches, attacks such as ransomware or phishing incidents can still happen, and when they do, a strong backup system can be a lifesaver.

MSPs should use Cybersecurity Awareness Month to remind clients that a proactive cybersecurity plan must include both defensive measures and a strong data backup strategy. By having secure and frequent backups, organizations can mitigate the worst effects of an attack and bounce back faster, saving time and money.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

History of National IT Professionals Day​

National IT Professionals Day, or IT Pro Day, is celebrated annually on the third Tuesday in September and recognizes the technical experts and the critical role IT plays in our modern world. National IT Professionals Day was originally created in 2015 by SolarWinds, an IT management software provider. This year IT Pro Day falls on Tuesday, September 17, 2024.

What are IT Professionals and what do they do?​

IT Professionals are the technical experts who make sure our networks and systems run smoothly and play a crucial role in managing and securing technology environments within businesses and organizations.

Whether it’s desktops, laptops, mobile devices, servers, networks, databases, applications, or cybersecurity, IT professionals keep our organizations going.

These are some common roles within the IT industry:

• Systems Administrator
• Network Engineer
• Help Desk Technician
• Systems Analyst
• Database Administrator
• Information Security Manager
• Software Developer
• DevOps Engineer

How to observe and celebrate #ITProDay​

Here are some ideas on how to celebrate and acknowledge the everyday IT heroes in your life:

• Remember your password and use the password manager
• Submit a support ticket instead of sending a DM or emailing IT directly
• Restart your computer and make sure the software is up to date before asking IT for help
• Complete the cybersecurity trainings and do not click on phishing emails
• Do your best to avoid spilling coffee on your laptop or keyboard

In all seriousness, we appreciate all the hard work that talented IT professionals do every single day. IT professionals and technical experts are essential to the success of every part of an organization, no matter how big or small.

To celebrate IT Pro Day, you can also give a shout out to your favorite IT person, buy them a coffee (or a snack), and thank them for keeping our systems operating and running 24/7.

Thanks to all the IT professionals out there!​

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

History of SysAdmin Day​

System Administrator Appreciation Day, or SysAdmin Day, is celebrated on the last Friday in July and recognizes all the IT professionals who keep our organizations up and running around the clock. SysAdmin Day was created in 2000 by Ted Kekatos, a system administrator, and has been celebrated around the globe since. This year SysAdmin Day falls on Friday, July 26, 2024.

What is a SysAdmin and what do they do?​

SysAdmins are the everyday IT heroes who keep our hardware and software running smoothly, manage our organizations’ IT environments, and keep our networks and systems secure. They are critical to supporting all your organizations’ IT operations in various areas, including:

• Data backup
• Managing users (permissions, troubleshooting, etc.)
• Configuring and updating systems
• Network security
• Cybersecurity protocols
• Hardware and software troubleshooting

Backups for System Administrators​

Backing up data is an important part of a SysAdmin’s role in safeguarding organizations and businesses. Backups help protect data against human error, hardware failure, ransomware, and natural disasters.

Comet Backup is an all-in-one backup solution built for IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs) to help protect businesses and prepare them with a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Comet Backup is highly configurable, supports a broad range of backup types, and has flexible storage options.

Top 5 Tips for SysAdmins using Comet Backup​

Here are some tips and best practices for SysAdmins using Comet Backup:

1. Configure and check user permissions – user profiles are used in Comet’s encryption and key management, and therefore, act as a security boundary.

2. Enable MFA (multi-factor authentication) for admins and end users – secure backups and logins with strong passwords and MFA for an additional layer of security.

3. Set a retention policy – to save storage space and ensure required data is kept for compliance and business continuity.

4. Automate backups on a regular schedule– to ensure consistent data protection, improve business continuity, and reduce recovery time.

5. Set up custom email reports – to ensure that unsuccessful jobs and warnings can be investigated and addressed as soon as possible.

Thank you to all SysAdmins & IT professionals!​

While SysAdmin Day is a great reminder to express thanks to your organizations’ system administrators that keep everything running 24/7, we think they should be celebrated every day as our IT heroes.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

We're proud to announce our partnership with cloud storage provider, Impossible Cloud. As a European-based company, this is a great option for IT Providers with GDPR compliance requirements. All data is securely stored within a European Cloud Provider in top-tier, GDPR-compliant, and ISO-certified data centers, eliminating the need for additional investment in data storage compliance.

Who is Impossible Cloud?​

Impossible Cloud is Europe’s premier cloud storage solution, designed to provide businesses with secure, scalable, and cost-effective data storage.

Their platform features built-in ransomware protection, unlimited hot storage, and 100% S3 API compatibility. Advanced security measures and significant cost savings makes Impossible Cloud an ideal choice for businesses looking to enhance their data storage capabilities.

How the Integration Works​

Comet’s user-friendly integration with Impossible Cloud allows you to easily select Impossible Cloud as your storage solution.

The integration includes Storage Template support for provisioning direct-to-cloud buckets for individual end-users. This feature can use Impossible Cloud's IAM functionality for end-user support, as well as their partner API for MSPs who are looking to start reselling Impossible Cloud storage.

Object Lock for Protecting Data from Ransomware​

Another great feature we have with Impossible Cloud is Object Lock integration for creating immutable backups. Object Lock puts the data in an immutable state—it’s accessible and usable, but it can’t be changed or deleted. This provides complete defense against ransomware attacks, giving you peace of mind for data stored in the cloud.

Impossible Cloud IAM Storage Template with Object Lock

Cost Savings​

Another aspect that makes Impossible Cloud competitive for IT Providers is their price €7.99 per terabyte per month, with no egress or hidden fees. Impossible Cloud’s has a pay-for-what-you-use pricing structure which is designed to be transparent and predictable. This price is competitive with Wasabi, Backblaze and our own Comet Storage offering, with the benefit of allowing you to pay in Euros if you wish.

More Resources​

Find out more about the Comet Backup and Impossible Cloud partnership in our documentation and on Impossible Cloud’s website.

Webinar​

If you want to learn more about our integration partnership, join us for our joint webinar on Premier Cloud Storage & Backup for Europe’s MSPs on Wednesday, July 17th at 11am CET (Central European Time). If you can’t make it live, you can still register to get the recording sent to you after the webinar.

Register for the webinar here.

Written by Michelle Wong - Marketing Specialist

Last week we held our fourth CometCon event, a company-wide internal conference where both local and remote team members gather at Comet HQ for a week of collaboration, workshops, speaker talks, and connection.

As usual, our General Manager, Josh, kicked off the week with a fun team activity – this time splitting everyone into teams for an interactive quiz. After the winners were presented with their prizes, we launched into the conference sessions.

Here are some highlights from the week:

Speaker Series​

At each CometCon, every department is welcome to submit a topic for the speaker series. This week we had three technical deep dives from our developers, a website workshop with the Marketing team, customer insights from the Sales team, and a Q&A session focused on our European distributor market. It’s always valuable to learn from different departments and discuss how we can improve the product and experience for our customers.

Developer Sprint​

During CometCon, our developers worked in pairs on a dedicated week-long sprint. It was great to partner the devs up with someone they don’t usually work with to generate fresh ideas and smash out specific projects.

Open Discussions​

In addition to the speaker series, we also had several open discussions about the product roadmap and our company direction, facilitated by Callum, our Product Engineering Manager, and Josh, our GM. Everyone was welcome to ask questions and contribute to the conversation in a town hall style discussion. It’s important to us to hear different perspectives and thoughts from all the teams on Comet’s journey.

Time for connection​

One of the most valuable parts of CometCon is the unstructured time to connect and chat with everyone in person, especially for our fully remote team members. Even for those who work at Comet HQ – our company has a hybrid model where a couple days are remote each week – it is valuable to have everyone together for a full week. We find that the conversations and innovative ideas that get tabled over a shared plate of tacos or a pint at the pub, it something you just can’t replicate over Slack.

That’s a wrap​

This was our best CometCon yet! The energy and buzz of having everyone together was amazing. Huge thanks to the event organizers for another successful CometCon! We can’t wait for the next one.

Written by Callum Sinclair - Product Engineering Manager

We're pleased to announce the Syncro integration with Comet is now available. This has been a popular feature request and we are pleased that partners can now monitor their backups through Syncro's RMM platform.

Who Is Syncro?​

Syncro - Helps you scale your MSP buisness with efficiency and ease.

Transform how you manage customers and your business with RMM, PSA and remote access in a single platform. The streamlined workflow allows you to focus your time and energy on what you're an expert in – providing solutions for your clients.

How The Syncro Integration Works​

With the Syncro integration, you can access RMM alerts in Syncro's platform when a Comet backup job fails or doesn’t run. This allows you to see your alerts in one place, rather than logging into Comet, and troubleshoot before you lose any business critical data.

If you are interested in configuring this integration, you can read our guide here.

What To Expect​

When a backup job fails, a new RMM alerts will be created. You can see this on the Open RMM Alerts page in Syncro. An example of how this will look is:

If the failure is due to an intermittent issue, Comet will clear the alert when the backup job succeeds again.

This means you no longer have to login to your Comet Server to check if backup jobs are running successfully or not.

Dear Partners,

We announced a change to our Self-Hosted licensing this week, and I’d like to take some time to provide more context. We have received feedback, both positive and negative, with many constructive insights – thank you to those that have been in touch.

Since launching in 2017, Self-Hosted has evolved into our enterprise solution which allows you access to features such as:

• Setting up tenant accounts
• Multi-server replication
• Support for on-prem storage
• Access to our full API
• Scalable solution for resellers and distributors

Comet-Hosted does not support these features, which is why its price remains $49/server/month. Please check out our product pages for Self-Hosted and Comet-Hosted for a full comparison.

We’re committed to helping MSPs provide great backup services. In order to fulfil that mission and to grow the product, we need to adequately support and resource our development team. As our business grows to meet your needs, our pricing model needed to change.

Increasingly, we’re finding that more end-users are skipping their MSP and are buying Comet directly. We have always supported a Channel-first approach. We stand behind the value that we know MSPs offer their clients. It’s important to us to honor that commitment and drive business to our MSP partners.

With our previous pricing model, we were seeing a disproportionate number of signups choosing Self-Hosted, based solely on price. They spent a lot of time setting it up, and we spent a lot of time helping them configure a product that didn’t necessarily suit their use case. The purpose of this price realignment is to match customers with the product that best fits their needs based on feature set rather than a default price.

We understand that for some of our partners this is a big change. We are here to help you navigate this transition and figure out what is right for your business. Whether you want to stay with Self-Hosted, migrate to Comet-Hosted, or work with one of our trusted resellers or distributors, we are here to help you. Feel free to reach out to us at hello@cometbackup.com to discuss your options.

Thank you,
Josh

Josh Flores
General Manager
Comet Backup

We’ve had some questions, and I’d like to address a few of these here:

Q. Have there been any external influences on this decision?​

A. No, we’re a privately owned company. Our only influence has been to reflect the true value of Comet’s Self-Hosted enterprise-level features and benefits as well as the time and effort of our excellent support and onboarding team.

Q. Could you have verified / confirmed MSPs and businesses before they could access Self-Hosted?​

A. We have heard it loud and clear that having to book a sales call to access a product isn’t well liked. This is why you can start a free trial with Comet at any time.

Q. Are you wanting to migrate users to Comet-Hosted to then put up the price there?​

A. We have no plans to change the price for Comet-Hosted.

Q. Could you have just charged users for support?​

A. This has the effect of discouraging people from reaching out to us. We’re here to help, and we want our partners to succeed. Our support remains free.

Q. Are any other areas of Comet’s pricing affected?​

A. No, this pricing change only affects Self-Hosted Server licensing.

Last month we premiered our inaugural Research & Development Week. Previous to this, developers worked on independent projects during Comet’s quarterly Hackathon. We changed up the format in Q1 to instead have a consolidated focus on high impact initiatives. Our developers split into three teams to collaborate on improving your user experience.

The three projects were scoped and designed by our CTO and Product Engineering Manager. Each team presented initial ideas, proof of concept, findings, and next steps. We utilized this collaborative, team-based approach to mix developers with differing specialties, who don’t normally work together, for synergistic problem-solving sessions to improve the software.

The three topics were:

• Can we make an awesome experience restoring data from the Comet Server web interface?
• Can we upgrade how Comet uses memory when running backup / restore jobs?
• Can we improve how we backup / restore data to and from S3 storage vaults?

R&D week was a great success. We made great progress in all three areas. Some of the research and development work is making its way to become production ready code, and others need a bit more time to become features for Comet customers.

It was rewarding to challenge our team in areas outside their traditional expertise and get some wins on the board over the course of a few days to improve Comet.

World Backup Day serves as a timely reminder to review your backup strategies and to educate your end users and partners on the importance of data backup.

While World Backup Day is observed annually on March 31st, MSPs and IT providers play a critical role in protecting businesses and organisations every day of the year.

History of World Backup Day​

World Backup Day was created in 2011 and started with a post on Reddit where a user wrote about losing their hard drive and wished someone had reminded them about how important it is to backup data. World Backup Day highlights the importance of securing and protecting data.

Why is data backup important?​

In today’s digital age, data backup and data protection is critical for businesses and organisation to help protect against:

• Ransomware
• Cybersecurity attacks
• Human error
• Data loss
• Hardware malfunction
• Power failure
• Natural disasters

Having a robust backup solution and solid restore process will help safeguard against these threats and help minimize downtime for your end users and clients.

Reminders for World Backup Day​

Here are some top tips:

• Review your backup strategy and solutions for different data types, backup types, storage solutions and destinations
• Regularly test your backup and restore processes
• Check backup schedules to confirm they are running as intended
• Automate and streamline processes to save time such as email reports and job log alerts
• Make sure your servers and databases are backed up, not just your endpoints

Comet Backup for MSPs, IT Providers & Businesses​

A secure and reliable backup platform is essential to MSPs & IT Providers’ backup and disaster recovery (BDR) strategy to maintain business continuity in the event of a security incident.

Here are some of the core features & benefits of Comet Backup:

• Easy to use: Comet Backup has an intuitive, easy-to-use web console where you can remotely manage and protect devices. Comet is fast and easy to set up – start running backups and restores in less than 15 minutes.

• Flexible: Choose Comet Storage powered by Wasabi for an all-in-one storage solution, or utilize your own storage, whether that’s an on-prem solution or a S3 compatible storage provider (including AWS, Backblaze, Wasabi, Azure, and more). You’re in control of where your data sits.

• Fast, efficient chunking technology: Advanced backup algorithm packages data into small blocks for faster uploads and downloads, saving valuable time.

• Reliable, Safe & Secure: Data is encrypted during backup, transit, and rest. Comet is also HIPPA and GDPR compliant.

• Client-side deduplication: Reduces redundant data, ensuring more efficient storage usage and therefore cost savings.

• Incremental forever without full re-uploads: After the initial backup, only changes are uploaded, conserving bandwidth, and accelerating the backup process.

• Compression and encryption: Client data is compact for storage efficiency and secured against breaches, ensuring peace of mind.

Protect your data this World Backup Day​

World Backup Day is a great time to educate and remind your end users and partners of the importance of data backup. Your goal as IT Providers and MSPs is to provide the best support and solutions to give your partners peace of mind and confidence that their businesses’ data is safe and protected.

Test drive Comet Backup with a 30-day FREE trial, or book a discovery call with our team to learn more about how Comet can help your business.

We get asked often by our users what can they do to sharpen up their backup marketing and overall messaging in the face of rising competition. To answer this best I turned to Nicola Devine over at Tanker Creative to not only answer how you can improve it and attract more customers but for actionable steps that any busy backup provider could undertake. Below is part 1.

The Tanker Universe… it’s not that complicated

Tanker WEBSITE Tips: Online and Feeling Fine 101​

By Nicola Devine, Tanker Creative

Blogs, Websites, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, MailChimp, Facebook, Instagram – woah Nelly! So many channels, so, sooooo time consuming simply to work out which one/s to use and how to wield their weapons of choice whether hashtags, boosts or meta tags – it’s enough to cause a collective rumble of global eye rolling.

Chunk It Down​

Let’s make it simple right now and focus on the most important online channel when it comes to marketing your business, building credibility, awareness, educating visitors on your offering and providing a way for them to engage your services or purchase your products. Your website.

Why is YOUR website the ultimate shiz?​

Websites are awesome for most businesses for many reasons: First up because your content is not in an channel such as FaceBook or Instagram that you have little control over when it comes to the content, imagery, functionality, random upgrades… your website is your best opportunity for an awesome gig.

To get things running smoothly when it comes to websites consider a few things. Number #1 – get something up! Even if it’s one page with your logo, contact details and an email, and build from there. #2 people are nosy – make sure you have an About page, start loading up your products or services, and add a News page.

News or Blog pages are great on a couple of levels and worth committing to. You know that thing about people being nosy? Well they also like the latest goss, so adding a news post at least once is a great idea, that way, when people come back to your site they know there always be something new to check out. Google also loves it when you’re adding new content to your site – it’s helping your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

More nifty tips for news posts:​

• Install an SEO plug-in like YOAST and fill out your snippets and keywords. And make sure you incluse your keyword in your text a few times too.
• There’s a lot of talk about how much content to write, but aim for a minimum of 300 words. Other studies say anything from 1500 to 3000 is optimal!
• Consider design. Don’t make your news post a wall of words. Break it up with some different elements such as graphs, images, bullet points, bold text, italicised text, text in a coloured or framed box, quotes. Bring a hierarchy of information to the page so that even if someone only has a minute to look at it they’ll see the most important take aways.
• Add a call to action at the end. You’ve provided some information, inspiration even some badass attitude. Invite the reader to continue the conversation – whether it’s to contact you for a cuppa, come back again soon or sign up for a service or product.
• Get the hook ups to Google Analytics and check out what your visitors are doing. That data is cool and it’ll help you refine your website further.

And that’s a wrap for today. Make sure you head back here next week for when I’ll be giving the downlow on MailChimp.

See y’all then​

About Nicola Devine​

Originally trained as a graphic designer in the 1990s, when iPhones were still a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, Nicola has been involved in both print-based and interactive media since her time studying at Wanganui School of Design.

Tanker Creative, Nicola’s design and marketing her business, was founded in 2003, and works with a mix of corporate, luxury and creative clients on strategy, development, implementation and reporting.

Nicola is an avid follower of new technology in marketing, design and communications. She is also a contributor to Design Assembly, an organisation promoting conversations in graphic design. Her claim to fame is being on a train in Spain, on the plain, in the rain.