I was tempted by the amazing deal, and by the shiny website that makes it seem legit, but after doing a bit of research while writing this up I’m giving it the same pass I give to all too-good-to-be-true lifetime subscription offers on Boing Boing Store.
There is a lot to like about this offering. It’s upfront that it’s using AWS. The $69.99 price for a lifetime of 5TB of storage is amazing. I’m tempted to purchase this plan, even though I think that such plans tend to be Ponzi schemes that go belly up. Not only is there the $69.99 Boing Boing Store offer, Polar Backup are even offering a buy one get one free deal on their website to get you two lifetime 5TB plans for $99.
However, I do wonder how they are going to pay for their infrastructure costs for $69.99 knowing that they are likely paying between 30-50% of that to Stack Social. Can they really afford to pay Amazon $20/mo for 5TB of Glacier cold storage for years with the remaining $35-50? They say yes:
Polarbackup will not run away with your money and data.
How can they do it? Among other vagaries, they cite magic technology "that runs up to 100x more efficiently than AWS’ cloud ‘out-of-the-box’ "
However, this company’s website was first registered just five months ago, and the LLC only last month.
And even though they say they won’t run away with your money and data, their terms of service say they can:
"Polar Backup reserves the right at any time to modify, suspend, or discontinue providing the Service, in whole or in part, without notice. "
Not only that, you agree to indemnify Polar Backup, and no breech of the agreement on your part is needed for you be required to pay them and/or their vendors:
YOU AGREE TO INDEMNIFY, DEFEND AND HOLD Polar Backup, AND ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, SHAREHOLDERS, AFFILIATES, SUPPLIERS AND LICENSORS HARMLESS FROM AND AGAINST ANY AND ALL LOSS, COST, DAMAGE, LIABILITY AND EXPENSE (INCLUDING ATTORNEYS’ FEES, EXPERT FEES AND OUT-OF-POCKET EXPENSES) ARISING OUT OF, RESULTING FROM, OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR BREACH OF THESE TERMS, YOUR USE OF THE Polar Backup PRODUCTS, OR YOUR BACKED-UP DATA.
You take on near infinite liability to Polar Backup by using their products.
And: “Uploads are limited to maximum 4GB file size with the basic plan, but users can upgrade to unlimited upload size by purchasing an upgraded plan.”
What counts as a “basic” plan, and how much does this upgrade cost? Good luck finding that out. A Google site search on polarbackup.com for “4gb” or “basic” or “upgrade” shows only that one bare mention in the FAQ. But here’s a good guess: the 5TB monthly plan is $119 a month.
How do you get people to pay $119/mo when you sell 2-for-1 $99 lifetime plans? I’m thinking 4GB+ file size “upgrades” are involved - prices that are orders of magnitude higher than the lure price of the $99 lifetime subscriptions. We’ve seen such schemes in previous BoingBoing Store cloud storage offers, where one Zoolz-based back up plan used small print in the TOS to define the personal account offered in the deal as being restricted to having only a small percentage the backed up files be media files (less than 500GB of a 2TB account). You would be “upgraded” to a much more expensive “business” account if you had too many media files in your fully paid allotted storage.
Additionally, their FAQ says restores take 3-12 hours, so chances are when they say “AWS” they mean “Amazon Glacier”, Amazon’s cheapest storage product, their slow retrieval cold storage. One person talking about their experience with Polar Backup said it takes even longer than that:
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.
Another poster confirms you have to email Polar Backup to download files - something the FAQ apparently “forgot” to mention.
Researching the company isn’t simple because StackSocial is so effective at SEO spamming that I stopped even clicking “next page” on the search results because they were all stack social offers rather than the info on the company I wanted to find. However, the Anandtech thread on Polar Backup was enlightening:
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.
Remember Zoolz on BoingBoing? They are the service that was used by a sketchy re-seller offering lifetime backup in a previous Boing Boing Store/Stack Social offer.
So, ultimately, I’m going take this too good to be true pricing as being too good to be true. If you are thinking of trying it because “how bad could it be?”, remember it is non-refundable.
I’d be curious to hear other people’s take on it.
