ConnorV said:

we have a lot of data to backup and I don't want to be paying $200 / month.

In a quick web search for "Online Backup Canada" I was able to find $12 / month for a workstation, $20 for a server, unlimited file backups.  There are also peer-to-peer backups that you could use to keep the backups at another office, or in a secure location at someone's home.

There are likely local computer stores, resellers, and consultants who either resell these services or provide them.  $200 isn't crazy expensive for a few workstations and a server if they also provide other services like technical support or some branded firewall / antimalware / consulting services along with that.  If not, it might be.

The 'two portable hard drive' solution where two drives get swapped daily can work, but there is a risk of a true disaster during the workday making all the company's data and backups inaccessible.  It's almost certain that with only two pieces of media, both will be in the building - the day before yesterday's brought in to swap for tonight + last night's still sitting in the office waiting to go home at day end.  To be safer, you need daily, weekly, monthly, and perhaps yearly backups.

$20/month is reasonable, $200 just for backup is just crazy. Agreed that if we had an IT company including that with support and other services that might be OK. 

Sorry, should have mentioned we do have an onsite backup, from experience I know we also need to get a copy out of the office as well. We were victims of the flood in Calgary a few years ago and with our server being in the basement of the office.... well you get the picture. :( data recovery was very expensive and we were very lucky to get the simply database back, never did get our photos recovered though so I don't want a repeat of that. 

i think we will combine a daily backup that we keep at the office to a portable hard drive and use an online backup as last resort in case the one at the office dies.  

eazybackup looks like they keep data in Canada, price is reasonable for our server, bit more than we were paying before but honestly I like to support Canadian business whenever I can. I'll give this a shot and report back in a few days when we've tried a few options. 

Thanks for the feedback. 

$20/month is reasonable, $200 just for backup is just crazy. Agreed that if we had an IT company including that with support and other services that might be OK. 

Sorry, should have mentioned we do have an onsite backup, from experience I know we also need to get a copy out of the office as well. We were victims of the flood in Calgary a few years ago and with our server being in the basement of the office.... well you get the picture. :( data recovery was very expensive and we were very lucky to get the simply database back, never did get our photos recovered though so I don't want a repeat of that. 

i think we will combine a daily backup that we keep at the office to a portable hard drive and use an online backup as last resort in case the one at the office dies.  

eazybackup looks like they keep data in Canada, price is reasonable for our server, bit more than we were paying before but honestly I like to support Canadian business whenever I can. I'll give this a shot and report back in a few days when we've tried a few options. 

Thanks for the feedback. 

Hi Connor -- I'm in Calgary, too -- we are in the process of switching all our working files to a NAS (Network Attached Storage--for the sake of this conversation, think kind of an external hard drive) and then using a cloud service for backing-up our files from the NAS. Since we have a subscription to Microsoft's Office365, we are using the cloud portion of space with that subscription for our back-up from the NAS.

Office365 Home is like aprox. $109.00 per year (depending on the exchange rate), and accommodates 5 users--each user getting 1TB of cloud space.

This week I have a phone appointment with QNAP (brand of the NAS) with regards to other cloud-based back-up services--FYI, the NAS gives access to, rather than provides, back-up cloud services. (The NAS has a desktop-like interface displayed in browser window where it lists various apps for things like back-up... for example, Google's Cloud Platform, Amazon's S3 or Glacier, etc. I found all of these WAY TOO COMPLICATED, hence my scheduled phone call with QNAP this week.)

Alternatively, one can have two NAS units--one in the office and one off site, say, at home. The one at the office can then be set up to back-up to your NAS at home. I haven't tried that, but one of the guys in our office swears by the method for off-site back-up.

Here's essentially what we have: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/ts-251a 

Best of luck, I feel your pain as I literally had a headache from this very matter last week LOL

Kristine