Question Polar Backup Reviews?

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
67
91
I've been trying to get a sense of how legit this company is and was hoping someone here could help.

Polar Backup has been running a deal for 1, 2, and 5 TB of online storage for life for a few days and I've been considering pulling the trigger.

I'd be backing up family photos/videos and some documents. I currently use Carbonite and am happy with them, but the price for Polar and a lifetime, one time cost vs. a subscription has me on the fence.

Anyone have experience or insight into this company?
 

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
67
91
I've never heard of them. Personally I'd just get a good hard drive and back up my data on that.

Thanks. Here's my current backup strategy:

1) I have a NAS running OpenMediaVault that I use. I back that up to using RSYNC to a Raspberry Pi that also runs OMV and a USB hard drive.

2) Monthly backups of the main OMV storage to a fireproof/waterproof hard drive. This is left disconnected unless it's running the backup.

3) Cloud storage through Carbonite.

I was just thinking this might be a good option to save some money, but I'll stick with Carbonite unless I hear otherwise from anyone else.

Thanks for the responses so far!
 

cfenton

Senior member
Jul 27, 2015
277
99
101
They seem to be an AWS reseller. I imagine that makes it quite easy for them to close up shop, delete all their customer's data, get a new name, and make a new website. Then they can sell lifetime subscriptions all over again. I'm not saying it's for sure a scam, but it is very difficult to make money selling lifetime anything, much less lifetime storage that they have to pay Amazon for.
 

RepairIT

Junior Member
Oct 9, 2019
1
0
6
Here is my experience with Polar Backup: Installed their client, and started the backup of my media server (around 4TB). After 4 days of continuous running, managed to backup just 100GB(!). When the PC needed to be rebooted (for another reason) the application would not restart. When I wanted to see some of the files that were backed up - I can only do it online, since the client would no longer work. The files showed up as "Cold Storage", and to be able to see them, a request needed to be made, and then an email would be sent 1-3 days after when they would be avaialble for download. Not a viable solution for a restore process. Looks like they use inexpensive cold storage and selling it as a Backup solution, which it cannot support effectively. I reached out to their contact email, and to the reseller - does not look like anyone will be replying shortly. Thank goodness for PayPal purchase protection.
 

Modular

Diamond Member
Jul 1, 2005
5,027
67
91
Why do people put any faith in the 'for life' claims?

If they were relatively well known and were offering a lifetime subscription I would expect that if/when they closed shop, I'd have a 30 day notice to move my files. In this case, since they aren't well-known at all I'm going to play the cautious route and not use them. I do think that lifetime subs can be a good thing, but probably not in this case.

They seem to be an AWS reseller. I imagine that makes it quite easy for them to close up shop, delete all their customer's data, get a new name, and make a new website. Then they can sell lifetime subscriptions all over again. I'm not saying it's for sure a scam, but it is very difficult to make money selling lifetime anything, much less lifetime storage that they have to pay Amazon for.

Good call. They are an AWS reseller and I could certainly see the scenario you came up with happening. Thanks for the responses. I'm going to stick with Carbonite.
 

chrisjoy5

Junior Member
Oct 10, 2019
1
0
6
I've been trying to get a sense of how legit this company is and was hoping someone here could help.

Polar Backup has been running a deal for 1, 2, and 5 TB of online storage for life for a few days and I've been considering pulling the trigger.

I'd be backing up family photos/videos and some documents. I currently use Carbonite and am happy with them, but the price for Polar and a lifetime, one time cost vs. a subscription has me on the fence.

Anyone have experience or insight into this company?
I've been trying to get a sense of how legit this company is and was hoping someone here could help.

Polar Backup has been running a deal for 1, 2, and 5 TB of online storage for life for a few days and I've been considering pulling the trigger.

I'd be backing up family photos/videos and some documents. I currently use Carbonite and am happy with them, but the price for Polar and a lifetime, one time cost vs. a subscription has me on the fence.

Anyone have experience or insight into this company?

I don't think its safe and secure, i got i friend telling that you get only 5GB cloud and he is watching for the rest of period, whether the company will run off with your money and files.

If you ask me i think don't upload every files to them. Watch for 2 years and proceed.

The only company that survived this lifetime deal is from Windscribe ( a VPN provider).

Also if you need truly unlimited backup with only 740GB daily uploading limit then go with Google Drive for business its truly unlimited and safe :).

Also don't choose pCloud, they just banned my account for uploading the Windows 10(i have genuine license) file from disk, i contacted them but no use.
 

Myself_Gr

Junior Member
Oct 13, 2019
1
0
6
Why do people put any faith in the 'for life' claims?
The concept of "life" always triggered an alarm to me, i always prefer deals like lets say 10 years or so forth, not like there's any guarantee they will honor that, actually can go off business at anytime.
And like they say...

No matter how good the bait is, the hook still a hook!
 

jsalo

Junior Member
Oct 15, 2019
3
0
11
I tried this and it took several days to backup a single photo. The application they provide did not work on MacOS 10.15 and the console log gets spammed with faults and errors while it is running.
 

gman863

Junior Member
Oct 20, 2019
1
0
6
I made the mistake of buying it two weeks ago.

Where do I start?

  • Does not automatically run at startup (unlike Carbonite and OneDrive).
  • When manually restarted, it forgets where it left off and has to totally re-analyze what has and hasn't been backed up yet.
  • If left running overnight (PC set to not sleep or shut off hard drive), the amount of RAM it uses creeps up to 6GB of the 8GB installed in the PC, essentially freezing up everything else.
  • Zero help files on the website.
  • No reply on an email I sent regarding the memory usage issue (noted above) sent a week ago.
I would be banned from the board if I posted the words I'm thinking to describe Polar Backup. For now, all I can do is contact PayPal and open a claim for a refund.

Stay away - you have been warned.
 

jorgeher24

Junior Member
Oct 24, 2019
1
2
6
Hello; Polar Bakup is a complete froude; I bought on stacksocial.com; and both refuse to return my money. Moreover, Stacksocial indicates that in its terms there is a concept of final sale, and that is totally false. Polar backup does not allow direct download, it is necessary to send an email to recover files! Do not buy it is a big scam.
 

watson58

Junior Member
Oct 31, 2019
1
0
36
Stay away from Polar Backup. I bought the lifetime storage and after running the program for over three days, I have still over 64,000 files pending. This is in Turbo Mode. When I inquire about the problem to Polar Backup tech support, I was told to reinstall using the repair option. Another two days and same results. They asked for logs and I sent it but they responded that I have not. Basically delay tactics every day. They finally said to uninstall and reinstall all the MS Visual C++ redistributable and this is when I said "enough" since no other program using the Visual C++ redistributable have problems. So I requested a refund and they deflected it to PC World where I purchased the package. PCWorld said they're contacting the vendor, etc. etc. To make a long story short, I have a USELESS product which I spend $59 and now I can't even cancel and get a refund. Do not use PCWorld shop /stackcommerce since apparently they will just talk you out of getting a refund and basically has no reasonable refund policy.
 
Last edited:

Antoni

Junior Member
Nov 9, 2019
1
0
6
I've been trying to get a sense of how legit this company is and was hoping someone here could help.

Polar Backup has been running a deal for 1, 2, and 5 TB of online storage for life for a few days and I've been considering pulling the trigger.

I'd be backing up family photos/videos and some documents. I currently use Carbonite and am happy with them, but the price for Polar and a lifetime, one time cost vs. a subscription has me on the fence.

Anyone have experience or insight into this company?
THIS OFFER IS A SCAM ... DON'T PAY THEM ... I PAID AND THEY DIDN'T SEND ME THE PRODUCT AND THEY DIDN'T RETURN THE MONEY ....
 

YossX

Junior Member
Nov 12, 2019
1
1
6
Here is my experience with Polar Backup: Installed their client, and started the backup of my media server (around 4TB). After 4 days of continuous running, managed to backup just 100GB(!). When the PC needed to be rebooted (for another reason) the application would not restart. When I wanted to see some of the files that were backed up - I can only do it online, since the client would no longer work. The files showed up as "Cold Storage", and to be able to see them, a request needed to be made, and then an email would be sent 1-3 days after when they would be avaialble for download. Not a viable solution for a restore process. Looks like they use inexpensive cold storage and selling it as a Backup solution, which it cannot support effectively. I reached out to their contact email, and to the reseller - does not look like anyone will be replying shortly. Thank goodness for PayPal purchase protection.
Paypal will not help you out. The story was the same with me. I claimed a refund but Paypal denied it, reason: "We have reviewed this transaction(s) and are denying your claim(s). This decision was made because if an item is materially similar to the seller's description, we do not consider it to be significantly not as described. "
 
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MikeMinh

Junior Member
Nov 18, 2019
1
1
41
This looks to me (a lot) like Zoolz.com. Same director, same rather silly lifetime offer via Stacksocial, same reports about the very poor performance of the backup client software, same 'backed by AWS'. Even both websites look strangely similar in style.

I bought a Zoolz lifetime offer in Nov 2018 via stacksocial and the performance after several weeks of trying to upload was so poor I had to give up. My properly powerful Mac became close to unusable when this software was running. Their (i.e. Zoolz’s) support only repeated the same “shouldn’t be like this” answer. No refund possible whichever way I tried, £60 wasted.

Polar Backup was only incorporated on 22 Oct 2019, has not yet filed any accounts (because too new) and has the same director as Zoolz. This is all public information in the UK, easily accessible from Companies House.

Zoolz (founded in 2013) is legit, and so may be Polar, but this doesn't say much about the quality. A usable product Zoolz does not have. Polar Backup just seems to be the very same thing, run by the same people.

(And before you wonder, yes, I reg'd on AnandTech just to contribute to this discussion)
 
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killster1

Banned
Mar 15, 2007
6,208
475
126
I don't think its safe and secure, i got i friend telling that you get only 5GB cloud and he is watching for the rest of period, whether the company will run off with your money and files.

If you ask me i think don't upload every files to them. Watch for 2 years and proceed.

The only company that survived this lifetime deal is from Windscribe ( a VPN provider).

Also if you need truly unlimited backup with only 740GB daily uploading limit then go with Google Drive for business its truly unlimited and safe :).

Also don't choose pCloud, they just banned my account for uploading the Windows 10(i have genuine license) file from disk, i contacted them but no use.
uploading windows 10? that sounds silly, doesnt amazon and google upload photos for free? not sure about videos,. i sure wish i had faster than 1mbit upload so i could get in on this cloud storage ;P i just use a diff house with a nas to use as cloud.
 

lovetruth

Junior Member
Nov 24, 2019
1
0
6
This looks to me (a lot) like Zoolz.com. Same director, same rather silly lifetime offer via Stacksocial, same reports about the very poor performance of the backup client software, same 'backed by AWS'. Even both websites look strangely similar in style.

I bought a Zoolz lifetime offer in Nov 2018 via stacksocial and the performance after several weeks of trying to upload was so poor I had to give up. My properly powerful Mac became close to unusable when this software was running. Their (i.e. Zoolz’s) support only repeated the same “shouldn’t be like this” answer. No refund possible whichever way I tried, £60 wasted.

Polar Backup was only incorporated on 22 Oct 2019, has not yet filed any accounts (because too new) and has the same director as Zoolz. This is all public information in the UK, easily accessible from Companies House.

Zoolz (founded in 2013) is legit, and so may be Polar, but this doesn't say much about the quality. A usable product Zoolz does not have. Polar Backup just seems to be the very same thing, run by the same people.

(And before you wonder, yes, I reg'd on AnandTech just to contribute to this discussion)

I was planning to pay up and try, your informational post saved me many hours and $$. Thank you :)
 

JFsmith

Junior Member
Dec 1, 2019
1
0
6
I can confirm most negative things on this thread. Zoolz is definitely in the heritage of this outfit because while their support people were messing with files in terminal I saw them edit out a zoolz line of code.

It's been a complete waste of money. The desktop app and site rarely seem to show anything similar. It won't back up music project files. It shows things uploading, but they never seem to appear anywhere. No help files or manual or anything.

I'm giving up, and I'll try for a refund with paypal and or stacksocial, but I'm not hopeful.
 

ishirininatano

Junior Member
Dec 2, 2019
1
0
6
The interface looks like zoolz, which I have a TB for life, they seem to share the problems to backup (zoolz works fine as a file vault). Was about to purchase it as it had a price drop, and on top of that a 40% discount (cmsave40) and 4 stars with 200+ votes. I don’t think it is going belly up if they’re the same company and they will eventually have a decent backup software and interface.

Regarding lifetime deals, I’ve purchased everything under the sun and only had problems with a torrent cloud downloader, but it was pretty obvious as it was unlimited everything (file size, torrent fetching, file downloads from your account, files and GB on your account, no expiration for files on your account). I used it for more than a year so it was a good deal overall.
 

cfbcfb

Junior Member
Dec 6, 2019
3
1
41
Well I'm glad I saw this as I was tempted, and lots of info says they've been around a long time and are reliable. So much for THAT BS.

And yes, paypal sucks rocks. Deleted my account after I got a couple of badly packed cases of pet food that arrived dented to heck and the seller said feeding my pets food out of smashed cans was okay. Paypal did an "Ole!" on my refund request and I deleted my account. My credit card company does a great job of problem resolution. Paypal stinks!
 

jsalo

Junior Member
Oct 15, 2019
3
0
11
Also note that PayPal will not refund your money either because "the product does not significantly differ from the description". Other than it does not work at all. There is no buyer protection from Polar Backup, Stackcommerce or PayPal.
 

F. Siuraneta

Junior Member
Feb 21, 2020
1
0
6
[QUOTE = "Modular, publicación: 39952196, miembro: 174261"]
He estado tratando de tener una idea de cuán legítima es esta compañía y esperaba que alguien aquí pudiera ayudar.

Polar Backup ha estado haciendo un trato por 1, 2 y 5 TB de almacenamiento en línea de por vida durante unos días y he estado considerando apretar el gatillo.

Estaría haciendo una copia de seguridad de fotos / videos familiares y algunos documentos. Actualmente uso Carbonite y estoy contento con ellos, pero el precio de Polar y el costo único de una vida en comparación con una suscripción me tiene en la mira.

¿Alguien tiene experiencia o conocimiento de esta empresa?
[/CITAR]
A fecha de hoy, la página web no está accesible. No puedo entrar en mi cuenta, no puedo restablecer la contraseña y ni siquiera puedo borrar mis archivos que no están seguros con ellos.