MSP360 Backup to cloud storage: what a year costs at each vendor, and how many full copies you pay for
Prices checked · MSP360's documentation read
For a Windows computer with 1 TB backed up every night with MSP360, on MSP360's own example schedule (a full backup each month, restore points kept 3 months), OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access costs least: $207.46 a year with one full restore, that is $16.95 a normal month and $21.01 the month you bring everything back. That schedule keeps 4 full copies in the bucket, 4.175 TB for 1 TB of files. Forever Forward Incremental keeps one: with it, IDrive e2 costs $75.48 a year.
MSP360 keeps a full copy for every generation. "Every full backup starts a new generation", generations "have their own deduplication databases", and "the backup agent can purge only entire generations". MSP360's own example, a full backup each month with restore points kept 3 months, ends with "4 full backups (December 1, January 1, February 1, and March 1) and up to 87 incrementals" in the bucket. Forever Forward Incremental, on Windows, keeps "only one full copy of the data alongside incremental restore points", rebuilt inside the bucket, so it needs one of the 5 vendors on this page that MSP360 lists for synthetic full. MSP360, Backup Format Overview · MSP360, Retention Policy · MSP360, Forever Forward Incremental
Every vendor for an MSP360 backup, cheapest year first
One row per vendor: its cheapest class you can read back at once, on MSP360's example schedule, 11 normal months and the month you restore the latest 1 TB. The next column is the same class with Forever Forward Incremental and restore points kept 30 days, where MSP360 lists the vendor for synthetic full.
| # | Offer, and where it keeps the backups | Year with one restore | Normal month, 4 full copies | Forever Forward Incremental, a year | Month you restore | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OVHcloud Object Storage Infrequent Access France (Gravelines) Each monthly full uploaded again | $207.46 | $16.95 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $21.01 | |
| 2 | Tigris Archive Instant Retrieval Automatic location Each monthly full uploaded again | $214.54 | $15.55 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $43.49 | |
| 3 | IDrive e2 United States (Virginia) | $300.60 | $25.05 | $75.48 Holds 1.048 TB | $25.05 | |
| 4 | Google Cloud Storage Coldline United States (South Carolina) Each monthly full uploaded again | $304.99 | $15.55 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $133.94 | |
| 5 |  Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage United States (US West) | $347.40 | $28.95 | $86.64 Holds 1.048 TB | $28.95 | |
| 6 |  Storj Standard Distributed worldwide Each monthly full uploaded again | $357.76 | $29.23 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $36.23 | |
| 7 |  Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage United States (US East 1) | $364.08 | $30.34 | $98.16 Holds 1.125 TB | $30.34 | |
| 8 | DigitalOcean Spaces Cold Storage United States (New York 3) Each monthly full uploaded again | $386.64 | $32.22 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $32.22 | |
| 9 | Oracle OCI Object Storage Infrequent Access United States (Ashburn) Each monthly full uploaded again | $474.58 | $38.78 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $48.00 | |
| 10 |  Cloudflare R2 Infrequent Access Automatic location Each monthly full uploaded again | $619.90 | $50.75 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $61.65 | |
| 11 | Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval United States (Northern Virginia) | $624.89 | $43.51 Copying the full $27.94 | $264.89 Holds 1.125 TB | $146.28 | |
| 12 | Azure Blob Storage Cold LRS United States (East US) | $636.55 | $44.02 Copying the full $30.00 | $273.67 Holds 1.125 TB | $152.33 | |
| 13 | Filebase Object Storage Distributed worldwide Each monthly full uploaded again | $699.84 | $58.32 | Not on MSP360's synthetic full list | $58.32 |
"Copying the full" is what Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval and Azure Blob Storage Cold LRS bill for reading each GB of the monthly synthetic full as it is copied inside the bucket: MSP360 warns that synthetic full "usage for long-term (cold) storage tiers could result in higher storage costs". Where MSP360 does not list the vendor for synthetic full, each monthly full is uploaded again from the computer (for other S3-compatible storage MSP360 says synthetic full "depends on storage provider", so the table prices it without): 1 TB a month over your own connection, free to upload at most vendors but a day's transfer at 100 Mbps. Classes that make each file wait to be restored are left out. Each generation is purged at about four months old, past every listed class's minimum storage period, and Forever Forward Incremental's Intelligent Retention deletes nothing early. MSP360, Synthetic Full Backup
With Forever Forward Incremental, IDrive e2 costs least instead, $75.48 a year: the cheapest vendors on the four-copy schedule are not on MSP360's synthetic full list.
Price your own MSP360 backup Price it with Forever Forward Incremental
Backing up many computers? Each computer's backup sits under its own prefix in the bucket, so every bill above is for one computer with 1 TB of files: ten like it cost about ten times as much. The MSP360 licence is not in these bills. It is assigned to each computer in the Management Console and paid to MSP360, "on a monthly or yearly basis"; a Mac takes only the Desktop licence, Linux only Server or Ultimate. MSP360 also sells storage of its own, "MSP360 disk space powered by Wasabi" or on Amazon S3, billed by MSP360; this page prices a bucket of your own. MSP360, Backup Agent License Types · MSP360, Assign License to Computer · MSP360, MSP360 (Wasabi)
The calculator opens on this backup with the stored total entered as protected data (4.175 TB, or 1.048 TB with one full copy): when you change it to yours, multiply your data the same way. It does not count reading the copies, which the table above adds.
Vendors not ranked, and why
- Akamai Cloud Object Storage: not confirmed. It costs $1,002.00 a year before any minimum-stay charge, but its pricing names no minimum storage period, so what purging a generation at four months old costs is not confirmed.
- Hetzner Object Storage: not confirmed. It costs $438.00 a year before any minimum-stay charge, but its pricing names no minimum storage period, so what purging a generation at four months old costs is not confirmed. If it has none, it would rank 9th here.
- Scaleway Object Storage: not confirmed. Standard One Zone costs $460.60 a year before any minimum-stay charge, but its pricing names no minimum storage period, so what purging a generation at four months old costs is not confirmed. If it has none, it would rank 9th here.
- Telnyx Cloud Storage: not confirmed. Regular Storage costs $279.24 a year before any minimum-stay charge, but its pricing names no minimum storage period, so what purging a generation at four months old costs is not confirmed. If it has none, it would rank 3rd here.
- Vultr Object Storage: not confirmed. Standard costs $901.80 a year before any minimum-stay charge, but its pricing names no minimum storage period, so what purging a generation at four months old costs is not confirmed.
What MSP360 asks of the bucket in a month
| Request | Monthly fulls, kept 3 months | Forever Forward Incremental |
|---|---|---|
| Uploads of each night's changes, in parts of up to 1 GB | 60 | 60 |
| Parts of the full, copied inside the bucket or uploaded again | 1,000 | 1,000 at each rebuild |
| Listings by the check before each backup | 60 | 60 |
| Data the bucket holds | 4.175 TB | 1.048 TB to 1.125 TB |
Data goes up in parts: "a new data part is formed every 5 minutes" or at "1 GB", so requests stay few and cost cents at every vendor; what the bucket holds is the bill. The check before every backup lists the current generation: "A file list is requested along with metadata", and it reports objects that are missing or whose sizes or dates do not match. If it finds one, "MSP360 Backup runs a full backup automatically", which starts one more generation, and one more full copy, until it is purged. MSP360, Backup Format Overview · MSP360, Backup Consistency Checks
Forever Forward Incremental and minimum storage periods
- Where the class has no minimum storage period, the full copy is rebuilt "every time a backup plan is executed", so the bucket holds one full copy and 29 nights of changes, 1.048 TB here.
- Where it has one, the full is rebuilt only "after an early deletion period for the previous full backup expires". Changes pile up meanwhile: at a 90-day class, from 30 to 120 nights, 1.125 TB on average. That is Intelligent Retention, and MSP360 says: "In order to avoid early deletion fees, it is strongly recommended not to disable Intelligent Retention."
- Each rebuild copies the full inside the bucket. At a class that bills each GB read, that copy is billed as a read: the table counts it.
- Forever Forward Incremental is for Windows only. On macOS and Linux the new backup format is in beta and lacks synthetic full, the retention policy and Forever Forward Incremental, so this page prices Windows.
MSP360, Forever Forward Incremental · MSP360, Backup Format Overview
Test a restore on another computer
- Write down two things now, away from the computer: the backup prefix of its storage account and the encryption password. Restoring elsewhere means setting "the same backup prefix on the storage account that was used on the original computer", which MSP360 calls "the most important step of the procedure", and "if the backup data is encrypted, you will be prompted to specify the decryption password".
- On a second computer, install the backup agent, authorize it with the original computer's user, set that prefix and synchronize the repository: it reads what the bucket holds.
- Restore one folder to a new location and open a few files. Bringing everything back is the month-you-restore column above.
On Windows, Mac and Linux
MSP360's backup agent runs on Windows, macOS and Linux; the note under the table says which licence each takes. The bills above are the same on each: the bucket receives the same backup.
On Windows, tick "Force using VSS" in the backup plan for files that are open in other programs: the agent then backs them up "from a snapshot to avoid any access conflicts". It is ticked for you when "Use fast NTFS scan" is on. The snapshot cannot cover "network shares and mapped network drives", nor FAT32 drives.
MSP360, Files Backup Plan in Backup Agent · MSP360, Backup Agent License Types
The storage account MSP360 takes at each vendor
MSP360's list of storage providers has an account type for Amazon S3 (Amazon Web Services), Azure Blob Storage (Microsoft Azure), Backblaze B2, Google Cloud Storage (Google Cloud), IDrive e2 and Wasabi. Akamai Cloud Object Storage, Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces, Filebase, Hetzner Object Storage, Oracle OCI Object Storage, OVHcloud Object Storage, Scaleway Object Storage, Storj, Telnyx Cloud Storage, Tigris and Vultr Object Storage take an S3 Compatible account with the vendor's own endpoint.
Synthetic full, and so Forever Forward Incremental, is listed for Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, IDrive e2 and Wasabi, except the Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Deep Archive classes and Azure Archive; for other S3-compatible storage MSP360 says it "depends on storage provider".
MSP360 Backup 8.7.1 for Windows, released . MSP360, Storage Providers · MSP360, Synthetic Full Backup · MSP360, What's New
How the bills are worked out
A Windows computer with 1 TB of files backed up every night with MSP360 Backup's new backup format, each night's 1.7 GB of changes uploaded in two parts. A full backup on the 1st of each month starts a new generation, and restore points are kept 3 months, MSP360's own example: the bucket holds 4 full copies and on average 3.5 months of incrementals, 4.175 TB, and each generation is purged at about 4 months old. Each monthly full is about 1,000 parts, copied inside the bucket or uploaded again; the check before each backup lists the current generation. With Forever Forward Incremental the bucket holds one full copy and 29 nights of incrementals where the class has no minimum storage period, or 30 to 120 nights, 75 on average, where it has a 90-day one. The month you restore, the latest 1 TB comes back over the internet.
Each bill comes from the vendor's own published rates through the same engine as the calculator, checked on the date beside it. How generations are kept and purged, the part size and the check come from MSP360's documentation; the size of the nightly change is an example. Copies inside the bucket are counted at each vendor's upload rate, and as a read where the class bills each GB read.
Related: other backup tools and their storage · storage for Veeam · storage for a small office · minimum storage periods explained
MSP360's pages behind this one
- Backup Format Overview, MSP360 documentation, read
- Backup Consistency Checks, MSP360 documentation, read
- Retention Policy, MSP360 documentation, read
- Synthetic Full Backup, MSP360 documentation, read
- Forever Forward Incremental Backup, MSP360 documentation, read
- Storage Providers, MSP360 documentation, read
- Backup Agent License Types, MSP360 documentation, read
- Assign License to Computer, MSP360 documentation, read
- MSP360 (Wasabi), MSP360 documentation, read
- Restore to Another Computer, MSP360 documentation, read
- Files Backup Plan in Backup Agent, MSP360 documentation, read
- What's New, 2026, MSP360 documentation, read