Using an online backup service is a good way to ensure you don’t accidentally lose access to important files. Livedrive is a straightforward backup option that offers unlimited storage along with strong apps across desktop and mobile platforms. However, you’ll pay a high monthly fee to get all of its features, and Livedrive doesn’t offer several standard backup scheduling and encryption options. We do, however, appreciate that it now supports two-factor authentication.(Editors’ Note: Livedrive is owned by J2 Global, the parent company of PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.)
How Much Does Livedrive Cost?
Livedrive offers three consumer subscription plans, with a segmentation of features that is atypical for the online backup space. The least expensive tier, called Backup, costs $8.99 per month (or $89.90 per year). It gives you unlimited storage space that can be used for one PC or Mac.
The Briefcase plan costs $16 per month ($156 per year), but it doesn’t include any backup capabilities. Livedrive’s Briefcase lets you access, edit, and sync files across devices and on the web; it works similarly to a Dropbox folder. This plan includes 2TB of storage and apps for both desktop and mobile platforms. No plans restrict the number of regular external drives you can back up, but you must pay extra for NAS backups.
The most expensive personal subscription option, Pro Suite, costs $25 per month ($240 per year). You can use it on up to five PCs or Macs as well as an unlimited number of tablets or mobile devices. This plan includes unlimited backup storage and 5TB of Briefcase storage. Livedrive offers free 14-day trials for all of its plans, but you have to enter credit card information to take advantage of them. There’s no free plan (outside of trials) like those offered by competitors, including iDrive and OpenDrive.
Compared with other backup services, Livedrive is expensive. For example, IDrive costs $69.50 per year for 2TB of storage across an unlimited number of devices. Backblaze offers unlimited storage for only $60 per year for one device. Most services, including SpiderOak One and OpenDrive, don’t charge extra for folder syncing, either.
Livedrive also offers a $50-per-month Business Express and the $160-per-month Business Standard plans, which support three and 10 users, respectively. These plans offer collaboration and backup tools for organizations, with the ability to add more users for a fee. We’ve separately reviewed Livedrive Business (the collective name for its enterprise plans).
Canceling a Livedrive account is more involved than we’d like. To do so, users must call the UK-based Cancellation team, submit a ticket, or use the account cancellation form. Ideally, there would be a single Cancellation button in the web interface.
Livedrive apps are available for Windows and macOS systems, as well as Android and iOS. Livedrive has migrated its apps to more modern development platforms since the time of our last review, which a representative says should help improve performance. You can also download a version of Livedrive from the Microsoft Store for both Xbox consoles and Windows 10 devices, though this version does not offer all the service’s capabilities: The Store version does not let you set up and run backups; it does let you view uploaded and shared content as well as add files to your Briefcase.
Privacy and Security
Livedrive says it transfers files to its servers using TLS 1.2 encryption, but it does not encrypt regular backup files locally before upload or at rest on the servers, which is something the vast majority of other services do. We much prefer the added security benefit of end-to-end encryption, rather than just during the upload. Livedrive notes that “individual customer data is split across multiple independent systems with no single system containing enough to retrieve an individual file via any unauthorized methods.” All of Livedrive’s data centers are based in the UK and are monitored to prevent intrusion. One important change since our last review is that Livedrive now supports two-factor authentication.
Users do have the option to enable encryption for the Briefcase (the online folder drive feature we discuss in more detail later), but, again, not for regular backups. Our Livedrive contact explained that this option encrypts the local copy of all Briefcase files using a method that complies with the AES-128 standard. However, you do not get to set a private encryption key for even these files. IDrive and SpiderOak One allow you to protect your entire backup set with a private encryption key.
Livedrive does not offer any bulk mail-based backup or recovery services. Backblaze and Carbonite can send you an external drive with your backed-up data after you’ve lost data locally. They also can send you a blank hard drive that you load up with your data and send to them to save you from long upload times.
Livedrive’s privacy policy states that it may collect and process data you provide (such as contact info), data you make public (if you post about the company on social media, for example), and data you generate from using the app or site, as well as from other sources. Livedrive uses this information to operate and improve its services; communicate with you; and to comply with legal requests. It also says that Livedrive may disclose personal information to any number of third parties, including “providers of advertising, plugins or content used on our Sites or our Apps.” The policy is long and not particularly easy to understand. For reference, Livedrive is based in the UK.
Desktop Interface
Livedrive’s desktop app is similar to Backblaze’s in its compactness and straightforwardness. It’s not as striking as Acronis True Image’s or SpiderOak One’s interfaces, but we had no issues navigating the app or changing preferences. Livedrive organizes information and settings across five tabs in a left-hand menu: Dashboard, Settings, Restore, Support, and Web. The Dashboard shows you the status of the latest backup task, along with when the next one is set to run—you can run it manually—and how much storage you have left. This section also displays the status of your uploads and downloads from your Briefcase.
The Settings section breaks down into three modules: Backup Selection, Security Settings, and Advanced. By default, the Backup Selection screen shows common folders like Desktop, Documents, and Pictures, though you can add any other individual folders via its built-in file browser. Livedrive does not integrate with Windows’ File Explorer or macOS’s Finder as other services, such as Carbonite and IDrive, do.
Once you make your selection, you can control how often (as frequent as every hour) or at what time the program scans your backup folders for changes. We prefer the more sophisticated approaches of other services. IDrive and Carbonite, for example, implement a truly continuous backup option. Acronis True image offers the same capability and lets you set up separate backup sets with individual upload schedules. This might be useful if, for example, you want to back up your Documents folder every day but only need to run a full disk backup every month. Livedrive doesn’t have a disk image backup option either, a feature IDrive and Acronis True Image offer.
Security settings are a bit sparse. You can, as mentioned, encrypt your storage Briefcase or set the program to require your account password every time you launch it. Livedrive organizes other settings in the Advanced section. The Bandwidth option, for example, lets you limit the bandwidth the program uses for uploads or downloads. Another option is to exclude folders or file types from your backup and set upload priorities for specific file types.
The last security feature of note is Livedrive’s Integrity Check, which verifies each one of your files online against those saved on your hard drive, to ensure that everything is consistent. The amount of time it takes to verify all of these files depends on the total size of your backup, but be aware that running this check temporarily locks out the rest of the application.
The Restore tab lets you retrieve the latest versions of your files—and previous versions, too—from either your online backup or from your Briefcase. Under the Backup Selection section, it organizes items based on the original computer from which you uploaded it. You can easily restore everything in your Briefcase with a single button. You choose the time period you want to restore from, the destination folder, and how it deals with duplicate files. Livedrive keeps up to 30 previous versions of files from your backup selection or your Briefcase for an unlimited period. It also keeps deleted files for 30 days before permanently getting rid of them. The versioning feature worked fine with a text file that we uploaded to the Briefcase and edited at intervals.
For comparison, IDrive offers the same file version retention (previous 30 versions forever), but OpenDrive keeps the past 99 versions of a file indefinitely. SpiderOak One can keep an unlimited number of versions forever.
Both the Support and Web tabs redirect you to the website. Livedrive’s help resources are easy to browse and available in several languages aside from English.
Web and Sharing
Livedrive’s web interface features a clean and consistent design. You navigate the console via a series of menu links: Devices, Latest Files, Photo Gallery, Briefcase, Account, Download, and Support. Devices and Latest Files work as you expect; you can drill down into individual devices or folder structures to get to specific items. The search functionality works well, but Livedrive’s web interface does not allow you to filter or sort files in the browser, which is something you can do in Livedrive’s Microsoft Store app. Right-clicking on a file lets you download it directly (though you can’t select multiple files at once to download) or view its properties.
Livedrive’s Photo Gallery functions like any other web gallery, but it’s a nicer way to view folders than a typical file menu. It sorts photos in reverse chronological order, but there’s no way to organize them any further. Folders or some sort of geolocation data attribute would vastly improve this area.
Livedrive’s new two-factor authentication works with an authenticator app of your choice (popular options include Authy, Duo, Google Authenticator, and Microsoft Authenticator), which we greatly appreciate. In testing, this implementation works as expected. You can view your plan information and update personal data, as well as changing the web address at which friends and families can download your publicly shared files.
Speaking of sharing files, you can only share files stored in your Briefcase. With Livedrive, you either make files available at a public link or share them directly with individuals via email. In the latter case, Livedrive sends the recipient a one-time access link as well as a username and password for subsequent access attempts. We dislike that Livedrive requires recipients to sign up for an account. Other online backup services, such as Acronis True Image and OpenDrive, allow you to protect shared files with a password and limit the number of a times a file can be downloaded.
The Download link in the side menu brings you to the correct installer for your device and platform, while the Support tab displays an odd mixture of service information, knowledgebase links, the Livedrive Blog, and your account’s universal File Exclusions preferences.
Livedrive’s Online Backup Speed
We tested Livedrive’s performance by timing how long it took to upload three separate 1GB folders of mixed file types. We then took the median of those results. For the test, we connected our test machine to a home Ethernet network (16Mbps upload). Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we have limited access to PCMag’s office—we’re working from home like so many other people—so we could not use the corporate network’s much higher upload speed for our testing. Our test device is a Dell Inspiron tower running Windows 10 with a 256GB SSD and 32GB RAM.
Livedrive uploaded the file sets in an average time of 16:54 (minutes:seconds), which is slightly worse than average. Still, Livedrive compares much more favorably to other services’ performances than it did in last year’s tests. IDrive leads to the pack this year with a time of 12:29 and ElephantDrive is not far behind that with a time of 12:44. Livedrive took about six minutes less time than our last-place performer NovaBackup (22:14).
An online backup service with fast upload speeds will certainly make initial and subsequent backups more convenient, but if you are just planning to have the software running in the background, these test results may be less consequential in your choice of online backup provider.
Mobile Backup
We had no trouble installing and signing in to Livedrive on an Android 11 device. As with the desktop and web applications, the mobile app has a clean design and performs well. The hidden left-hand menu lists options for viewing your backups, accessing the briefcase, setting up mobile backups, and sharing files. Livedrive’s iOS app offers the same functionality, plus a Dark mode and a document scanner. A representative from Livedrive noted that the Android app is being redesigned.
Livedrive can automatically upload all of your phone’s photos and videos to your online storage in the background. This is useful for shutter-happy mobile photographers or even those who just want redundant copies of their files. Other services, such as IDrive and Acronis True Image allow you to back up even more data types, including contacts and calendars.
The Upload Files option allows you to browse through your local device folders and upload images, videos, and audio to your Briefcase. The Music & Playlist section organizes all of your uploaded media files into a cloud player of sorts, though note that in order for music files to show up, you need to add them to a playlist from your Briefcase. This process feels convoluted to us. More importantly, it’s not as seamless as streaming music services like Spotify, or even playing locally stored audio files.
Improved, But Still Missing Key Capabilities
Livedrive handles the basics of backup fine, and we like its unlimited storage allotment and effective apps. We also appreciate that Livedrive has added support for two-factor authentication since our last review. That said, Livedrive costs a lot, lacks a truly continuous backup option, and only allows you to encrypt files in the Briefcase (and not with a private key). For more advanced online backup options, look to our Editors’ Choice winners in the category: IDrive, for its value and speed, and Acronis True Image, for its top-notch UI and combination of backup and security features.
If you’d rather keep your backups out of the cloud, take a look at our roundups of the best external hard drives and the best local backup software.
