My primary use case for the N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial (BYOL) is to back up EC2 instances using AWS snapshots and manage those instances across approximately 70 AWS accounts. N2W was a critical factor in enabling efficient management of all the snapshots in those accounts.

N2WS has significantly improved our organization by simplifying and centralizing backup and recovery operations for AWS EC2 instances.

• Scalability: We manage backups across roughly 70 AWS accounts, which would be extremely complex without a unified solution.
• Efficiency: Using N2WS (formerly CPM) allows us to automate snapshot-based backups, reducing manual effort and minimizing risk of missed backups.
• Visibility & Control: The platform provides a single pane of glass for managing multiple accounts, which improves governance and operational consistency.

Without N2WS, managing backups across so many accounts would require custom scripts or manual processes, leading to higher operational overhead and potential compliance gaps.

N2WS provides a single pane of glass to view and manage over 70 AWS accounts, allowing us to drill down into EC2 instances, RDS databases, and EBS volumes being backed up.

This centralized visibility is invaluable for compliance and audits. The detailed logging and reporting features make it easy to demonstrate SOC 2, HIPAA, and other regulatory compliance across all accounts.

Key benefits and features:

• Single Pane of Glass: Dramatically improves efficiency. Previously, managing backups across accounts required a team of eight; now, one operator with minimal escalation support can handle the workload.
• Reporting & Alerts: Built-in reporting and email alerts provide nightly backup summaries, highlight failures, and flag accounts or policies needing attention. Reports are easy to export for audits and share with business leaders.
• Cost Optimization: Snapshot recovery, file-level recovery for EC2, and tiered storage transfers (EBS → S3 IA → Glacier) reduce costs significantly.
• Compliance Support: Logs and reports simplify audit preparation and ongoing compliance management.

Overall, N2WS has streamlined operations, improved compliance readiness, and reduced both labor and storage costs.

While N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS works very well, there are a few areas for improvement.
As an enterprise managing a large number of accounts, the main challenge we face is the rollout of new JSON scripts during upgrades. This process can be tedious and time-consuming.

If you have a strong AWS team, automating these rollouts internally helps, but I would recommend that N2WS provide built-in automation for JSON script deployment as part of the upgrade process. This enhancement would make upgrades smoother and reduce operational overhead.

At least 8 years. 

I give it a five because the system just works. It is efficient. Anytime you get an error code, they are descriptive enough for you to troubleshoot. Their support is amazing. They get back to you in a timely manner and work with you. The account representation is personable and works with you during times when you are renewing your licenses. They have just been a great partner to work with.

Positive

I previously used AWS Backup’s native tool.

I switched to N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial (BYOL) because of two key advantages:

• Single Pane of Glass: Centralized visibility and management across multiple AWS accounts.
• Cost Optimization: The ability to move EBS snapshots to lower-tier storage, which significantly reduces costs.

Deployment of N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial (BYOL) was very easy.

The configuration process was straightforward and wizard-driven. You simply need to provide basic details such as the target AWS account, security groups, and IP addresses. Once these items are set, the initial deployment is quick and hassle-free.

In my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I have seen a return on investment as there are definitely fewer employees required to manage the backups, and there is definitely a major time save due to the single pane of glass. We were able to reduce our staff generally with the ease of this product.

I purchased N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial (BYOL) through the AWS Marketplace.

Key Benefits:

• Ease of Restore & Disaster Recovery: The ability to take an EC2 snapshot and restore it to another availability zone or even another region has streamlined our DR testing. Restores are almost instantaneous—except when pulling from Glacier—but even then, it’s far faster than waiting for tape restores in an on-prem environment.
• Compliance Efficiency: Audits are nearly complete as soon as they begin. We can quickly provide historical data through automated emails and generate detailed reports, making compliance with auditors simple.
• Operational Savings: Our backup team has been reduced from five people at its peak to three, thanks to the efficiency N2WS provides. This tool has made our operations leaner and more effective.
• Cost Optimization: While EBS snapshots can be expensive, N2WS helps us move data to lower-cost storage tiers like S3 IA or Glacier, significantly reducing costs.

Customer Support: I would rate their support a 10 out of 10.

Billing Experience: Metering and billing are straightforward. The ability to optimize storage costs is a major advantage.

Advice to Others: Definitely give N2WS a thorough trial. It simplifies complex tasks and makes backup and recovery much easier.
Overall Rating: ★★★★★ (5 stars)

N2W serves as our go-to solution for backing up our critical AWS infrastructure, which we have consistently used over the last three to four years. We protect our EC2 instances, EBS volumes, RDS databases, and VPC configurations.

Within our use case, we use N2W for backing up our S3 and taking snapshots, as well as for the automated orchestration of our disaster recovery drills. This helps us validate the state of our disaster recovery playbook, and it is something we rely on for our day-to-day activities.

N2W has positively impacted our organization by assisting us in areas of cost savings when compared to other tools available, and it has also given us an extra layer of protection. We are comfortable believing that we have a tool that can easily bring us back in time. This has minimized our recovery time objective, which is one of the things we love about N2W backup tool.

Since using N2W, we have seen approximately a 20 to 30% reduction in cost savings compared to other tools. In terms of the time we have saved from drills we have conducted, we estimate it has provided us with 80% savings in terms of coming back online quickly. Although we have not had any outages, we have carried out several drills that leave us in a state of comfort and readiness.

The best feature N2W offers is the backup tool, which we use every day in our daily business, and it is something we cherish greatly.

What we appreciate most about the backup tool is the speed, reliability, and the cross-account, cross-region disaster recovery capabilities.

N2W currently offers a rich feature set, but we believe a few enhancements could make it even more powerful, especially for enterprises. One area where we would appreciate improvement is support for additional AWS native services, such as Lambda function backups and S3 beyond archive. This would help secure a broader range of workloads without custom scripting.

We have been using N2W for five years.

We would rate the customer support of N2W a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, as they are very easily accessible, friendly, and absolutely knowledgeable.

Positive

N2W fits into our daily workflow as we automate the backup and monitor it to ensure everything functions properly. For our day-to-day business, it is a reliable tool in the area of our business continuity posture, which has strengthened significantly since we started using N2W as a backup enterprise solution. This provides us with near-instant recovery capabilities, allowing us to restore entire instances or individual files quickly. It has assisted us in minimizing our Recovery Time Objective.

We leverage the report generation and file-level restore to recover exactly what we need without running a full system restore. We find this very useful because it acts as a granular recovery tool that helps us maintain uptime, minimize disruptions, and quickly bring us back to near-instant recovery time in case we need to restore from our backups.

Our advice for others looking into using N2W is that if anyone is considering a backup tool or company, N2W would be their best option. We suggest starting with the 30-day free trial to test backup frequency, retention, and disaster recovery workflow. Once you determine your needs from the tests, especially for more than 200 instances, make sure to go for the enterprise version. We gave this review a rating of 10 out of 10.

As an MSP managing healthcare and enterprise clients, I use N2W Backup & Recovery to simplify and automate cloud backup and restore workflows.

Previously, when I was using native services, managing snapshots and retention policies across multiple accounts was time-consuming and inconsistent. With N2W Backup & Recovery, I centralized this process into a single dashboard, allowing me to automate policies, monitor backup compliance, and execute cross-account restores with ease. My backup administration workload has dropped by more than 45%.

The intuitive interface and automated reporting have freed up engineers to focus on higher-value client projects instead of performing daily backup checks. Because many of my clients operate under HIPAA and SOC 2 requirements, N2W Backup & Recovery provided the documentation, reporting, and backup immutability that I needed to satisfy auditors.

One of the most valuable features is the reporting. When I compare my previous experience with native backup tools, I find that N2W Backup & Recovery offers a better variety of reports on success and failures, along with other cost savings analysis, all consolidated into a single report digest across all managed accounts.

I believe onboarding could be easier. While the platform supports multi-account architectures, the initial process for new customer accounts could be more automated. Currently, adding and configuring each new AWS account includes setting up IAM roles, policies, and replication targets, which requires several manual steps.

An automated account enrollment or bulk import feature integrated with AWS Organizations or Control Tower would save significant time and reduce administrative overhead.

I have used the solution for more than 5 years.

I previously used the AWS Backup service. It did not have the granularity and reporting I was looking for.

The pricing model works well for my current MSP structure. I was able to integrate it into my current pricing structure with little friction.

If anyone is looking for an AWS-focused backup and recovery product, I would not hesitate to recommend N2W Backup & Recovery.

I use N2WS Backup & Recovery for the daily backup of our AWS and Azure Enterprise and Fastlane Customers.

Implementing N2WS Backup & Recovery improved our backup automation workflows in AWS. I now have centralized management for EC2, RDS, EFS, and DynamoDB backups, with granular scheduling and lifecycle management. The ability to recover instances or volumes within minutes has improved our RTOs dramatically. Integration with IAM and tagging policies made it easy to scale across environments while maintaining security and compliance.

Automated Backup & Recovery is a feature I have leveraged in my organization, and it is quite stable using N2WS Backup & Recovery for this purpose. Recovery speed is excellent with N2WS Backup & Recovery, which allows for instant recovery of virtual machines, databases, or files. The support of cross-region or cross-account recovery is an added benefit, protecting us if one data center or AWS region fails. This feature helps prevent data loss and ensures business continuity. I am able to replicate backups across AWS regions or even to different AWS accounts for disaster recovery. I can restore entire instances or specific files, folders, or volumes from snapshots. Cost optimization is achieved by automatically deleting outdated snapshots or moving older backups to Amazon S3 or Glacier for cheaper storage. Backup Policies and Lifecycle Management allow me to create flexible backup policies and retention rules.

I am quite satisfied with N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS backup and disaster recovery. However, it could be improved to include disaster recovery in cross accounts for Azure in upcoming releases.

I have been using N2WS Backup & Recovery for over 5 years.

I use N2W Backup & Recovery to manage my AWS backups more efficiently and utilize S3 to store these backups.

Traditionally, AWS doesn't allow snapshots to be stored in S3, but this product is able to perform that function.

Having multiple policies and schedules handled for me takes the burden out of managing backups across multiple departments.

I am able to have backups that are automatically managed.

Restores are much simpler to perform due to the easy-to-use interface.

The most valuable features are EC2 and RDS backups, as well as VPC capture.

It is able to encapsulate the important AWS services I need to have backed up via the product.

They could expand their offering to include Lambda function backups and other native AWS services, as these can be recreated through CloudFormation or Terraform.

This would help those who are not familiar with Infrastructure as Code to back up and restore these services without the overhead of understanding IaC configuration.

I have used the solution for 5 years.

Not all features are available in the cheaper plans, so I recommend reviewing what features are needed and planning accordingly.

Our primary use case is comprehensive, automated backup and disaster recovery for our core production environment on AWS. We rely on N2W to protect our fleet of EC2 instances, which run our main applications, and our RDS databases, which store all critical customer data. Before N2W, we managed backups with a combination of manual snapshots and custom scripts, which was both time-consuming and prone to human error. Our goal was to find a reliable, 'set-it-and-forget-it' solution that could guarantee our data was protected and provide a clear, rapid path to recovery in a disaster scenario.

N2W has significantly improved our operational efficiency and our confidence in our business continuity plan. The biggest improvement is automation. By using tag-based policies, any new EC2 instance or database launched by our development team is automatically included in the correct backup schedule without any manual intervention from the operations team. This has saved us countless hours and eliminated the risk of a critical server being left unprotected. Furthermore, it transformed our disaster recovery strategy from a theoretical plan into a tested, practical reality. The one-click cross-region recovery feature is incredible. We’ve run disaster recovery drills in a fraction of the time it used to take, allowing us to validate our Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective with management. This peace of mind is invaluable.

Policy-based automation is the most powerful feature. The ability to define backup schedules, retention periods, and disaster recovery policies and have them apply automatically based on resource tags scales perfectly with our environment and enforces a consistent data protection strategy across the organization. File-level recovery has been a lifesaver on several occasions when a user accidentally deleted an important file. The ability to mount a snapshot and recover a single file or folder in minutes—without having to restore an entire 2TB volume—is incredibly efficient and minimizes disruption. Cross-account and cross-region disaster recovery gives us true resiliency. Knowing that our entire application stack, including its VPC configuration, can be rebuilt in a different AWS region with a few clicks is the ultimate safety net against a region-wide outage or major security event.

While the product is excellent, there are a couple of areas for potential improvement. The process for version upgrades, which sometimes requires deploying a new instance, could be streamlined to allow for a more seamless in-place update. It would be extremely useful to have the ability to set a retention period on manual backups. Occasionally, we take a manual snapshot before a major deployment, and currently, these can be forgotten, leading to unnecessary storage costs. Adding an 'auto-delete after X days' option to manual backups, similar to scheduled policies, would be a fantastic addition for cost management and general housekeeping. The EKS backup module should be a great feature, and it would have been a useful functionality to have for cluster backup management.

Before adopting N2W, we managed our backups internally using a combination of AWS's native EBS Snapshot Lifecycle Manager and a series of custom Lambda scripts. While this approach was inexpensive, it quickly became complex and brittle as our AWS environment grew. The scripts required constant maintenance, there was no central dashboard for monitoring success or failure, and performing a full recovery was a complicated, manual process. We switched because we needed a solution that was more reliable, automated, and less dependent on our internal engineers' time to maintain.

My advice regarding pricing is to look at it in terms of total value and return on investment, not just the license cost. While N2W is a paid product, the cost is easily justified by the significant reduction in engineering hours spent on managing and troubleshooting custom backup scripts. The pricing model, which is based on the number of instances you protect, is straightforward and predictable. The real value comes from the drastically reduced risk of data loss and the speed at which you can recover. The cost of a few hours of downtime would far exceed our yearly N2W license fee, making it a very worthwhile investment for any serious business running on AWS.

We evaluated two other main options before choosing N2W. The first was AWS's native service, AWS Backup. While it is a solid service and integrates well, we found N2W's user interface to be more intuitive and its disaster recovery orchestration to be more powerful and straightforward at the time of our evaluation. The ability to recover an entire instance, including its network configuration, into another region from a single console was a major differentiator. We also briefly looked at another third-party vendor but found N2W's deployment and billing through the AWS Marketplace to be much simpler and more transparent.

My main advice to anyone considering N2W is to start with the free trial. Set it up for a small but critical part of your environment and test a full recovery scenario, including a cross-region disaster recovery drill. Seeing how quickly and seamlessly you can bring a complex application back online is what will truly sell you on the product. It is a solution that delivers tangible peace of mind. The support team has also been very responsive the few times we've had questions. Overall, it is a robust, reliable, and user-friendly product that does exactly what it promises.

I use N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL for backups, recovery, and disaster recovery testing. It makes it easy to automatically start and stop processes, simplifying the overall management of backup and restore operations.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL has helped improve our organization by simplifying backup management and recovery processes. It reduced manual intervention, provided faster recovery times, and ensured compliance with our data retention policies.

The automation features and cost-optimization options also allowed us to manage backups more efficiently across multiple AWS accounts.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL’s automated backup scheduling and policy-based management are the most valuable features. They enabled us to protect multiple AWS workloads without manual intervention.

The recovery speed was impressive, particularly for EBS snapshots, which helped reduce downtime during testing.

The cost-control features, such as snapshot lifecycle management and tiering to Amazon S3, were also useful in optimizing storage costs.

• Allow users to define backup policies based on AWS  tags for better automation and scalability.
• When we create manual backup policies (especially for AMIs during patching cycles), there's no option to set a retention period. As a result, these backups are not deleted automatically, and we have to log in manually to clean them up. This process is error-prone, often missed, and leads to unnecessary storage costs.
• Suggested Enhancement: Introduce a retention setting for manual backup policies, similar to scheduled policies. This would allow users to:

• Set a retention period (e.g., 7, 30, 90 days) at the time of manual backup creation.
• Ensure automatic deletion of backups after the retention period.
• Avoid manual intervention and reduce the risk of missed cleanups.

I have been using N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL for 5 years.

Before evaluating N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL, we primarily relied on native AWS backup scripts and lifecycle policies. We switched due to the need for a centralized, automated solution that reduced administrative overhead and minimized the risk of human error.

The Free Trial/BYOL model is helpful for initial testing, but organizations should plan carefully for scale. Pricing can increase as backup volumes grow, so it is important to balance the level of protection with cost-optimization strategies such as tiering snapshots to S3 or Glacier.

I recommend running a cost analysis before committing long-term.

I evaluated AWS Backup, Veeam for AWS, and CloudBerry (now MSP360). N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL stood out because of its tighter integration with AWS infrastructure and its proven track record with enterprise workloads.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL is a strong solution for AWS-centric organizations that want reliable and fast backup and recovery with minimal operational burden.

However, teams should invest time in tuning backup policies and monitoring cost growth. It is best suited for enterprises with compliance or high-availability requirements.

I use the product for backing up all data for EC2 instances as well as FSX volumes.

The ease of use is the biggest advantage. It is simple to recover a whole machine, a volume, or just a file from a specific volume.

It is very simple and easy to use.

Being able to easily restore machines is a valuable feature. We had a ransomware event in 2023, and we were able to recover every machine with minimal effort.

This ensured we got up and running quickly.

The reporting engine could be easier to use, but it does a good enough job for what is needed.

I have used the solution for 5 years.

I did not use any previous solutions before this.

The pricing is very reasonable for what the product can do.

We looked at AWS Backup, but it does not have the level of flexibility and simplicity of N2WS.

This is a product worth using. It is simple and does what it says on the box very well.

It is set and forget backup and disaster recovery.

I use N2WS to back up EC2 instances as well as VPC.

N2WS is a perfect backup solution for AWS EC2 instances and VPC backups. It has made our backup process and monitoring simple and effective.

Policy creation is straightforward, with automatic backups of new resources enabled through tagging. Instance recovery is seamless, whether within the same VPC or across different VPCs.

File-level restores are intuitive and easy to manage, while full VPC backups provide critical protection and peace of mind in the event of a disaster. In addition, lifecycle management and automated transitions to lower-cost storage tiers have been instrumental in optimizing costs while meeting compliance and retention requirements.

The ability to create immutable backups further strengthens our business continuity strategy by ensuring an additional layer of protection against accidental or malicious data loss.

Improved disaster recovery options and expanded multicloud support are two areas where N2WS has already made significant advancements in the latest version. I am eager to upgrade and take full advantage of these enhancements.

I have used the solution for 6 years.

I previously used native AWS Backup, but N2WS provided me with a better platform and features.

I believe N2WS offers a highly competitive pricing model, delivering excellent value. It is certainly a worthwhile investment, providing a strong return on investment (ROI).

Aside from native AWS Backup, I did not evaluate other cloud backup vendors. N2WS came highly recommended, and I am confident in my decision to select them as our backup and recovery solution. As it turns out, it was one of the best decisions for the organization.

N2WS is a powerful solution with a rich set of features designed to address even the most complex backup and disaster recovery requirements. I have tested it across multiple recovery scenarios, and it has consistently delivered as promised.

I am excited to explore the new features as the platform continues to expand its capabilities. In today’s world, where data protection is more critical than ever, N2WS provides the reliability and confidence I need.