Rules
Part of Backup and recovery: a grounded overview
A realistic take on backup and recovery pricing (2027 update)
What a backup quote is made of in 2027: the unit counted, retention tiers, archive retrieval delays, restore charges and the hours nobody prices.
A backup quote is set by two numbers most owners never measure: how much data the business holds, and how long any of it is worth keeping.
Figures below are illustrative 2027 ranges in US dollars for a 25-person United States business holding 2 TB.
What to take away
- Per-device pricing runs $12 to $18 per machine monthly. Per-user pricing runs $8 to $14 per mailbox.
- Per-gigabyte pricing runs $0.10 to $0.25 per GB monthly, so 2 TB is $200 to $500 before retention.
- Archive tiers fall to $0.01 to $0.04 per GB, but retrieval costs $0.01 to $0.09 per GB and can take hours.
- Restore egress is the line to check$0.05 to $0.12 per GB out makes a 2 TB restore cost $100 to $240.
- Managed backup adds $150 to $400 monthly in labor.
What each unit actually costs
Per user or per mailbox. At $8 to $14 per mailbox, 25 mailboxes run $200 to $350 monthly. Ask what happens to a leaver's mailbox. The departure checklist in identity and access covers the last day.
Per device or per machine. At $12 to $18 per machine, 25 machines run $300 to $450 monthly. It also counts the old server and the spare laptop.
Per gigabyte held. Two terabytes at $0.10 to $0.25 per GB is $200 to $500 monthly. Ask whether it is measured before or after compression.
Per gigabyte transferred. Inbound runs $0.00 to $0.02 per GB, outbound $0.05 to $0.12. The way out is the restore.
Per protected system, tiered. Servers run $25 to $60 monthly, workstations $10 to $20. Ask which tier your accounting system lands in, in writing.
A flat bundle. Simple until a fair-use clause applies.
Retention sets the multiplier
Recent copies are cheap. The bill is shaped by how far back the arrangement reaches and how many points it keeps. Thirty days of daily retention might add 15%; twelve months can add 60% to 120%.
Ask for both shapes priced side by side. The longer, sparser shape often costs barely more and survives an intrusion found late, the case made in backup and recovery.
Two retention shapes to price
Shape
- Shape you want
- Shorter
- Longer, fewer points
- Months further
Reach
- Shape you want
- More points
- Longer, fewer points
- Fewer points
Points kept
- Shape you want
- Often not
- Longer, fewer points
- Yes
Survives late intrusion
- Shape you want
- Longer, fewer points
Then ask whether retention is priced per point kept or per gigabyte held.
Archive tiers and the delay you are buying
Cheaper tiers make you pay to read, or wait to read. Archive storage runs $0.01 to $0.04 per GB monthly against $0.10 to $0.25 for hot storage.
Retrieval costs $0.01 to $0.09 per GB and takes one to twelve hours, or $20 to $180 in fees on a 2 TB restore.
That tier suits the long tail you hope never to touch. It is a bad home for the copy you would restore from on a Monday.
Get four answers in writing: which tier daily copies land in, the retrieval fee per GB, the time it takes, and any minimum storage duration.
Three archive answers in writing
- What retrieval costs
- How long retrieval takes
- Whether a large restore is throttled
- Which tier daily copies land in
The lines that are not on the quote
- Somebody's hours. Reports, failures, restore tests, explaining it to an insurer. Budget 4 to 10 hours monthly at $60 to $120.
- The second copy. One copy covers half an arrangement. A rotated drive costs $80 to $150; a cloud second copy adds 30% to 50%.
- Licenses on restored machines. A rebuild sometimes means re-licensing software on them. Ask that supplier, not the backup vendor.
- Testing. A quarterly restore test costs an hour and a scratch location. Cheapest line here, most often absent.
- Exit. Getting your data out at the end, in bulk, is a retrieval charge plus a duration.
Part of an arrangement needs no subscription. Start with CISA's no-cost cybersecurity services and tools list.
Example: pricing two quotes for the same business
Put both quotes into the same shape before comparing totals. Quotes that looked far apart usually converge; where they do not, the difference is almost always the unit counted or the retention shape.
Normalize / To what
- Term
- Three years, renewal price stated now
- Volume
- What you hold in year three
- Retention
- Same shape in both, with the long tail
- Copies
- Every copy needed, not just the vendor's
- Restore
- One full restore of the largest system, priced and timed
- Hours
- An honest monthly estimate at a real rate
For a real benchmark, ask three US vendors to price that shape on your volume, and ask two peers in your size band what they pay. The keep-and-drop list in backup and recovery setup for 2027 fixes the volume row first.
Deciding which systems earn the expensive arrangement
Rank systems by tolerable downtime and acceptable data loss. The image archive and the accounting database sit at opposite ends. NIST's contingency planning guide puts numbers on those questions.
Retention duties for regulated or customer data come from your sector and state, not the vendor. Health, tax and financial records each carry their own clock. Free guidance sits at the NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Corner.
