Wondershare UBackit review: Wonderfully simple and effective backup

Best Prices Today: Wondershare UBackit

All things being equal, simple and effective are what you want in backup. At least if you’re not running an IT department backing up a fleet of hardware.

Simple and effective describes Wondershare’s UBackIt to a tee. It’s easy to use, doesn’t confuse the issue with myriad trivial options, and proved 100 percent reliable in my testing.

Alas, the program lacks a boot disc, so it’s not for disaster recovery. It’s also rental software, which makes it expensive over time.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best backup software to learn about competing products.

What are UBackIt’s features?

UBackIt offers both plain file and folder (files are copied as is), and full drive and partition backup. It will also clone disks, i.e. duplicate them. It doesn’t offer a lot of hand-holding other than a dedicated Outlook email backup job, but it’s easy to select files on your own.

The program offers its own restore functionality, however, it lacks a boot disc so there’s no way to run the program in case your system goes belly up. In fact, in a first for me, the help page at the Web site actually recommends another program (Aomei Backupper) for the system backup/disaster recovery role. A worthy contender alongside our top-rate R-Drive Image.

UBackIt made a clever choice in using Windows’ own VHD (Virtual Hard Drive) format for image containers. It means you can use Windows disk manager to mount (Attach) and browse your backups — even without UBackIt installed. It also means one less feature to implement and stress over.

To say UBackIt doesn’t offer a lot of options is an understatement. You can schedule backups to go off daily, weekly, monthly, or continually (nice!), and encrypt with a password, but that’s about it. If you’re looking for something with email notifications, run after completion, etc., UBackIt isn’t your deal.

In UBackIt’s defense, I rarely if ever use those options, so the simplicity doesn’t faze me in the least. It does the job, and does it well with a minimum of fuss.

How easy is UBackIt to use?

The short answer to this is: very. That said, the interface, while visually uncluttered and good looking, had some issues. Drives was spelled “Drivers,” the main window wasn’t resizable except for full screen or minimize, and there’s a weird scrolling mechanism for jobs with options that are hidden (click on either end — there are no visible controls) depending on the level of Windows display zoom you’re using.

Also, the tool tips were super small and difficult to read on my 4K display. Additionally, the encryption and rename functions were under the “…” menu while scheduling was under its own small icon that looked suspiciously like a settings icon. All these should be under one umbrella.

Regardless, as there aren’t a lot of options, and only two steps: choosing the source, and choosing the destination, both of which are super facile, I won’t complain about UBackIt’s ease of use. Poke around a little bit and you’ll be up to speed in no time.

How much is UBackIt?

Full confession, I understand companies need revenue stream, but I hate the concept of rental software. Programs are a product, and you should be able to buy them outright. Therefore the $10 monthly, $20 quarterly, and $30 yearly options for UBackIt leave me cold. Given the lack of disaster recovery and small number of options, I was thinking $30 perpetual would be about right.

Ameliorating that somewhat… As file and folder backups aren’t encrypted or in containers, and images use the standard VHD format, you can restore your data even having abandoned your subscription.

I wasn’t particularly happy about having to create an account to run the trial software either. But I’m old school, and most users are used to giving away their info on a regular basis, so that’s a mild complaint. At least they didn’t ask for payment info, or I would’ve waited for the media relations folk to get back to me.

How fast and reliable is UBackIt?

To be honest, I was having a run of backup programs misbehaving and suffering numerous operational glitches. As of late, however, thanks to Macrium Reflect 8, and now UBackIt, I feel back on solid ground.

That’s my roundabout way of saying that UBackit completed every task I threw at it with nary a stutter or hint of malfunction. It also was rather speedy. That folks, is what we want to see in backup programs. Kudos.

Note that UBackIt will remain in operation until you explicitly exit using the context menu for its system tray menu. This keeps you from accidentally interrupting a backup by closing the main window.

Should you buy UBackIt?

If it weren’t rental software, I’d be all over UBackIt. I love that it uses VHD containers, I love the simplicity, the continuous backup is a great feature, and I love that it’s glitch-free operationally.

But as much as it pains me to say it, having to continually pay to back up doesn’t seem financially prudent given that Windows delivers its own free solutions. Not to mention that more powerful programs with disaster recovery such as R-Drive Image and Macrium Reflect 8 are available for a lot less over the long haul.