Livedrive for Business is a cloud backup and storage solution that’s targeted at small companies and teams. While its price is a little high for an entry-level business cloud backup solution, Livedrive does offer some convenient features. This makes it a solid small to midsized business (SMB) solution overall, though it suffers from a lack of features around collaboration, and its security capabilities are fairly basic when compared to its competition.
Livedrive for Business also stands out because despite being a cloud solution, and therefore theoretically capable of global reach, its focused on the UK and EU. All of this, combined with a relatively high price prevent Livedrive from beating Editors’ Choice winners Microsoft OneDrive for Business and Egnyte Business among the cloud storage contenders we’ve tested. And while it has the ability to act as a cloud-based business backup tool, Livedrive for Business ranks below our top pick in that category, Arcserve UDP Cloud Direct.
(Editors’ Note: Livedrive is owned by J2 Global, the parent company of PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.)
Aimed at European Small Businesses
As a business cloud backup starter, Livedrive for Business fares well, though it’s best suited for teams or small businesses located in the UK or EU. The servers comprising Livedrive’s storage resources are located in the United Kingdom, which means you’ll get the best backup/restore performance on that side of the pond. Additionally, the company fully supports the strict requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is a European Union (EU) law governing data protection and privacy. Livedrive is expanding to other countries in the EU, though it currently supports Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish businesses.
On the US side, Livedrive is a viable SMB backup option, though it’s a little pricey for what it does. Strictly from a backup perspective, competitor MSP360 costs $10 per endpoint and can not only create a full operating system (OS) backup that can be relied on as a data snapshot when you’re recovering from hard drive failures or malware attacks, it can also backup virtual machines and infrastructure. Livedrive does neither. However, because it’s not intended as just a backup solution, Livedrive for Business does have some collaboration tools that MSP360 doesn’t. But even here, it can’t quite compete with top-tier file storage and collaboration solutions, like Box (for Business).
That said, for basic backup as well as file sharing and syncing, Livedrive does well enough even across mobile devices as it has dedicated apps for Apple iOS and Google Android. And for businesses that need it, the service also supports both SOC2 and SOX regulatory compliance. If you’re a US healthcare business, however, know that it still doesn’t support HIPAA.
Linux users will also be disappointed as there’s no support for that OS, despite it being fairly popular in Europe. And, while Livedrive for Business can back up network attached storage (NAS) devices, it doesn’t support backing up servers, even those based on Microsoft Windows Server. If you’re adept at scripting, though, you’ll likely be able to get around some of these omissions, since Livedrive for Business supports the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Secure FTP (SFTP), and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV).
Since we last tested it, Livedrive for Business has added two-factor authentication (2FA), which has become a standard feature for most competing products and therefore a must-have in the current market. Livedrive has also improved its mobile apps and added the ability to scan documents using a smartphone camera, which it can automatically store as a document file in the cloud.
There’s a free 14-day trial available from the company’s website. While that trial period is a bit short, at least you’ve got some time to evaluate the platform before committing, unlike some competitors, notably iDrive Team, which has no evaluation period at all and requires payment up front.
Getting Started With Livedrive for Business
Livedrive for Business is priced across two tiers. There’s the Business Express tier, which starts at $50 per month for up to three users and 2TB of storage. This is ideal for entrepreneurs and startups who want to cover basic storage and backup needs. If your business requires larger storage headroom, there’s a second option, the Business Standard tier, which runs $160 per month, but it’s good for sharing between 10 or more users and offers a larger 10TB worth of cloud storage and backup.
As stated above, when compared to other competitors, these prices are on the high side, especially when you consider the overall feature set. When compared to Backblaze Business Backup, for example, that service costs $60 a month. That’s for backing up only 10 computers, but it offers unlimited storage and a 30-day rollback capability that offers additional protection from ransomware attacks. Backblaze also offers a wider variety of restore options all the way to shipping subscribers a backup on a hard drive, and that’s free, provided you mail them back the drive.
However, Livedrive has some pricing options that its competitors usually don’t have, namely it provides extra flexibility when it comes to adding users or storage space. Tacking on an additional 1TB of storage costs $6.87 per month, and new users can be added for another $13.73 per head per month in either business tier. Again, those figures are a little high, but the capability is actually a nice touch, since it gives you the flexibility to add users or storage incrementally without having to enter a whole new tier that may be too large or too expensive.
For this review, we signed up for the more affordable Livedrive for Business Express tier. Once we entered our name, company information, email address, and password, we were directed to a dashboard page. From here, several competitors simply catapult you into a live dashboard. Livedrive, however, delivers an introduction that explains the service’s basic capabilities so you can decide what you want it to do. That could include backup for all the computers in your company, providing employees with Livedrive Briefcase (an online drive with up to 2TB of secure storage for $16 a month) to sync or share files, create team folders to organize and share files, or something else.
Once past this initial page and fully signed into the web client, you’ll find download links to desktop apps for Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows 10 as well as the aforementioned Apple iOS and Google Android apps. We downloaded the Windows 10 client and set it up on our test laptop. A QuickStart Guide walks you through the finer points of setting up the software and getting the most out of the service.
Business Cloud Backup Features
The backup portion of Livedrive for Business is based on an incremental, file-based architecture. That means backups are continuous and the software scans for changes once per hour. If new files or changes to existing files are detected, Livedrive only transmits these changed items, not entire files or folders. This keeps bandwidth requirements low. Left at its default settings, Livedrive for Business backs up the most common desktop system folders, such as Desktop, Documents, Music, and Videos, but you can add others, and most IT staffers will want to do just that since the defaults are fairly consumer-oriented. Files backed up to the Livedrive Briefcase can be encrypted.
Once our client was fully configured, Livedrive for Business automatically started backing up all the designated folders in one large job. The initial seeding took some time, but it’s the same basic process we went through on most of the other backup clients we’ve tested. For IT staff administering a large number of newly remote users, this ease of installation and proactive backup are convenient, though we’d like to see better support for automated deployment.
Additionally, note that the seeding backup will happen as soon as the client is activated. That may be fine for some users, but if a user hasn’t specified the files and folders they want backed up, seeing a “Backup in Progress, Your Files are Being Uploaded” message might be confusing. While you can see the percentage of files being backed up, there’s no indicator of which files or folders are being backed up at any given time. We do, however, appreciate the estimated time remaining indicator, as well as the always-displayed data upload rate.
Once you’ve figured out the basic controls for managing bandwidth usage and backup priorities, which requires some time with Livedrive’s documentation, you’ll be able to get the most from the software. If some types of files are more important than others, they can be selected as priority backup targets. There is also a handy integrity checker that compares your offline files to the ones stored in the cloud for additional piece of mind. And even though Livedrive says its servers are in Europe, we found backup times to be reasonably fast and downloading the contents of backed up files and folders to our test machine also didn’t seem impacted by the extra distance.
Desktop and Mobile Clients
While many cloud backup and file sharing services put their best design foot forward in their web clients, Livedrive’s desktop apps appears more developed than its web counterpart. The Livedrive desktop app has sections for Dashboard, Settings, Restore, Support, and Web, which give you full feature functionality for the service, while the web client is limited and seems geared more toward verifications and emergency restores.
The desktop dashboard gives a simple overview of when the last backup was performed and how much storage space you have available. The Settings section shows key backup target folders for that PC, and you can alter these easily by simply ticking or unticking checkboxes. You can’t drill down to subfolders to enable or disable individual folders and files, though, which could be an issue for some users. It’s also easy to manage backup schedules from the Settings section by selecting how often folders should be scanned and by choosing what time of the day to run backups.
The Restore menu has three key source buttons. With these, you can restore from the cloud, from the Livedrive Briefcase, or from specified team folders. The Support and Web sections simply kick users over to corresponding sections of the Livedrive website. While this sounds a bit barebones, the flip side is a quick learning curve for novice users.
You’ll find the same ease of use in Livedrive for Business’ mobile apps. The apps make it easy to backup photos and files from users’ mobile devices and they also let you preview certain file types. Since we last tested these apps, the Android backups are smoother and less prone to errors. The iOS app has added the ability to scan documents with the device’s camera, which are auto-converted to PDFs and stored in the Livedrive cloud. This can be a very convenient way to take meeting notes, scan expense receipts, or make a quick copy of an important office document and then have that file automatically stored in the right folder.
Small Business Collaboration Tools
While collaboration is part of the Livedrive for Business service, it’s a little weak here compared to the competition. Mainly because it doesn’t offer live document editing features, which all the top cloud storage vendors do, notably Dropbox Business and Google Drive Enterprise. Then again, while this is a popular feature from a competitive standpoint, in real life, it’s not an absolute need for everyone, especially small businesses.
Livedrive for Business does a better job with file syncing using the Team Folders concept. This allows folders to be synchronized so affected users always have the same folders and files stored both locally and in the cloud. Version control and conflict management can handle up to 30 iterations of a file or folder. That’s good, but it would be nicer to have more configuration features here, such as time to live (TTL) for older versions and manual replace. Right now, someone saving repeatedly can overwrite previous versions that will eventually have no way to be recovered.
Sharing is handled well enough, too, though again, there are some minor lapses. Aside from sharing among internal users, there are two options available. You can share via a public link or you can share links to a list of email recipients. The downside is that there isn’t a way to apply a password or a maximum number of downloads to shared files, like you can with ADrive. Granting access to external users becomes something of an all-or-nothing proposition.
Ramped Up Security
Livedrive for Business offers encryption in transit through the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which should be expected of any business-level data sharing app. But after that, data at rest is protected by military-grade, 256-bit AES encryption on Livedrive for Business’ servers. While some competitors offer more advanced encryption and additional security features, Livedrive’s current measures should do well enough for most small businesses.
Livedrive for Business does support tiered user permissions, but currently, they can only be set as read/write or read-only. This is also limited only to team folders, eliminating the possibility of setting up permissions on a hierarchy of folders, for instance. As such, Livedrive for Business can really only be considered for small teams that will have read and write access to a static layer of folders. One nice feature, however, is that any feature in the stack can be enabled or disabled for specific users. Access to mobile apps, web apps, and the Livedrive Briefcase desktop client, as well as the ability to add team folders, can all be controlled from the web dashboard.
In the future, it would be nice to see this extend to the other transfer protocols such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). In particular, FTP should be restricted, since passwords are transmitted in plain text, which is a major security risk. While the Livedrive for Business team recommends that SFTP be used whenever possible, it’s often not practical to enforce this restriction without software controls.
The recent addition of two-factor authentication (2FA), which is fast becoming a requirement for many businesses, bolsters Livedrive for Businesses’ security posture. 2FA is timely, too, since many of Livedrive’s intended users are likely remote workers, which means they’ll be constantly accessing critical files in the cloud.
Solid Basics, But Needs Work
Currently, Livedrive for Business doesn’t offer either a public application programming interface (API) or any pre-built integrations with other popular business apps, such as Google G Suite or Microsoft 365. That will be a disappointment for many small businesses who have standardized on one of the two. There’s also no native option for integrating with Microsoft Active Directory (AD), although some third-party directory products, such as OneLogin, offer a Livedrive for Business connector. For an entry-level solution, this may not be a problem, but if the company intends to grow this platform beyond the very small business market, these needs will have to be addressed.
Livedrive’s pricing, lack of integration options, and its fairly basic security features will likely have some small companies and certainly midsized businesses looking for an alternative. But if you’re in the UK or EU and your needs are modest, Livedrive for Business is very easy to implement and it’ll cover your European compliance needs, too.
