4 ms·

Author's here. A bit of a background on the project if I may. I wrote the original version several years ago. It was purely for myself, to automate the way I w

Author's here. A bit of a background on the project if I may. I wrote the original version several years ago. It was purely for myself, to automate the way I was doing the backups at the time. I also threw together a website and put it online, just because and with no hope that something this simple would be in demand. Then went on doing other things like having kids and what not. Fast forward to 2012 and there's a couple of thousand people on the mailing list and a trickle of emails asking when an update would come out. So I sat down and did a proper rewrite. I thought it would take 2-3 months, but it took almost a year. And a half. The breadcrumbs of the process are over on the /wip page [1]. You might've seen it as it was on HN some time ago. The app is notable for three things - (1) it has a single, simple purpose (2) it is light and very fast and (3) it has an excellent UI. Also of some interest - I ran a 12-month long beta. Started with just 100 people testing private builds for 6 months and then moved on to a public beta for another 6, altogether yielding about 15,000 installs. If there's a single takeaway from the project so far - a beta this long is incredible. It helps shaping the feature set like nothing else and it flushes the most obscure bugs that no formal QA could ever find. --- By the way of introduction - I come from the system programming background. I spent several years writing firmware for network appliances, I wrote a P2P VPN system from scratch and I generally prefer C to Java if you know what I mean. I also get a major kick from doing visual design for my projects and got 2000 followers on Dribbble to prove it :) --- In any case, there you have it - my take on simple backup software. Let me know what you think. Thanks! --- [1] http://bvckup2.com/wip http://bvckup2.com/wip

1_player 12y ago
Here's his Dribbble page: https://dribbble.com/apankrat https://dribbble.com/apankrat To the author: great work. I love your UI design.
hnriot 12y ago
not sure why you claim it has an excellent UI, it's a very simple UI with the usual toolbar (who has those anymore? I guess that's a Windows thing.) To me, it looks like one of the basic autogenerated MFC apps with a toolbar and list view that I made dozens of in the 90s. I guess I'm spoiled on a Mac and don't need additional tools (or UIs) on Linux.
- cuu508 12y ago
  "very simple" is one of the best compliments an UI can get! It's deceptively simple--looks like there's a lot of information and functionality packed in, and attention to details is apparent. Contrast this with the too common designed-by-programmer UIs of Windows utilities, and I'd say this looks great.
- kibibu 12y ago
  This IMO has a much better UI than TimeMachine's. It lets you see all your backup tasks in one spot, rather than having to "Select Disk", and it has 100% less space gimmick.
- andyhmltn 12y ago
  UI isn't just what's on the page. It's also what isn't. If you look at the authors WIP you'll actually see how much it's been refined over time :) Very simple but powerful is the intention
Sukotto 12y ago
Consider adding a Corporate tier to your pricing plan Corporate $499 per year - priority support email address - early access to new releases The features don't really matter that much. There are companies that will happily buy the more expensive plan simply because it has the word "corporate" in the title. That's just an initial guess at a price. For a corporate plan it could likely go much higher without you having to provide any real extra service beyond "I will give you the corporate plan email address and promise I always read those emails before the emails of the other plans". To take that a step further, you could rename the other plans to "Hobbyist", and "Small business". You could do these things without changing anything else about the app (everyone still gets the same app). You don't even have to worry about the annual fee beyond setting up a little system to track when a company's year is up and auto-emailing the buyer's address asking for more money. If the address no longer works or if they don't respond it doesn't cost you anything and you've already profited from the larger upfront charge.
locusm 12y ago
Ive been using bvckup2 since its release and also its predecessor, personally I backup to a Synology NAS then that pushes everything up to S3. This app has never let me down, it is also very lightweight and wont suck system resources.
gavanwoolery 12y ago
Question: if I select my Google Drive or MS Cloud Drive as a backup folder, will that work? (too lazy to test) I suspect it would since both of these have hooks into the default filesystem, but I am unsure.
- latitude 12y ago
  Yes, this works just fine.
norswap 12y ago
What would the advantages over a tool like FreeFileSync be if I don't care about real-time backups? (Note that I understand that it's designed to be very simple and usable, and there's real value in that, but I'm specifically asking about the features.)
- latitude 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027854

1_player 12y ago

Here's his Dribbble page: https://dribbble.com/apankrat https://dribbble.com/apankrat To the author: great work. I love your UI design.

hnriot 12y ago

not sure why you claim it has an excellent UI, it's a very simple UI with the usual toolbar (who has those anymore? I guess that's a Windows thing.) To me, it looks like one of the basic autogenerated MFC apps with a toolbar and list view that I made dozens of in the 90s. I guess I'm spoiled on a Mac and don't need additional tools (or UIs) on Linux.

cuu508 12y ago
"very simple" is one of the best compliments an UI can get! It's deceptively simple--looks like there's a lot of information and functionality packed in, and attention to details is apparent. Contrast this with the too common designed-by-programmer UIs of Windows utilities, and I'd say this looks great.
kibibu 12y ago
This IMO has a much better UI than TimeMachine's. It lets you see all your backup tasks in one spot, rather than having to "Select Disk", and it has 100% less space gimmick.
andyhmltn 12y ago
UI isn't just what's on the page. It's also what isn't. If you look at the authors WIP you'll actually see how much it's been refined over time :) Very simple but powerful is the intention

Sukotto 12y ago

Consider adding a Corporate tier to your pricing plan Corporate $499 per year - priority support email address - early access to new releases The features don't really matter that much. There are companies that will happily buy the more expensive plan simply because it has the word "corporate" in the title. That's just an initial guess at a price. For a corporate plan it could likely go much higher without you having to provide any real extra service beyond "I will give you the corporate plan email address and promise I always read those emails before the emails of the other plans". To take that a step further, you could rename the other plans to "Hobbyist", and "Small business". You could do these things without changing anything else about the app (everyone still gets the same app). You don't even have to worry about the annual fee beyond setting up a little system to track when a company's year is up and auto-emailing the buyer's address asking for more money. If the address no longer works or if they don't respond it doesn't cost you anything and you've already profited from the larger upfront charge.

locusm 12y ago

Ive been using bvckup2 since its release and also its predecessor, personally I backup to a Synology NAS then that pushes everything up to S3. This app has never let me down, it is also very lightweight and wont suck system resources.

gavanwoolery 12y ago

Question: if I select my Google Drive or MS Cloud Drive as a backup folder, will that work? (too lazy to test) I suspect it would since both of these have hooks into the default filesystem, but I am unsure.

latitude 12y ago
Yes, this works just fine.

norswap 12y ago

What would the advantages over a tool like FreeFileSync be if I don't care about real-time backups? (Note that I understand that it's designed to be very simple and usable, and there's real value in that, but I'm specifically asking about the features.)

latitude 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027854