A baseline automatic backup solution might cost $100 – $200 a year. Or you can buy your own equipment for $150 or so, and backup locally yourself. Sort-of expensive. Maybe.
(Also remember, 2 forms of backup are included in the Freedom club, just $20/month.)
But consider the risks:
- Computer hard drives (where data is stored) are the #1 failing component.
- The hard disk is also often the first component to fail.
- New computers, while less prone to drive failure, are not exempt.
- Data recovery (when possible, perhaps 50% of the time) can be incomplete, and expensive. Modest repairs start at $300—$500, where complex data recovery in a lab’s clean room can cost $1500—$2000.
The options without a backup are not good—either pay $500 – $2000, or lose everything. This is the importance of backups. If you care about your data, back up! 
Backups are fairly simple—just make sure important files are stored in at least two places. For example, keep documents on your hard drive and on a USB flash drive. Moving files to an external hard drive but deleting them on your PC doesn’t count.
The tricky part is A) keeping all your files current, and B) keeping the backup system functioning properly.
Cloud providers like Carbonite offer cloud backups at $100/year for the average user, but can take time to restore files and don’t protect your operating system. Local systems using an external hard drive work better, but you risk local disasters like power surges, floods, theft, etc.
Here’s why the Freedom Club backup solution is so good. It’s a two-stage backup, so you get the benefits of both a system image backup (your operating system is protected), and files are backed up as soon as you save them. The cloud backup covers up to 3 computers and 3 mobile devices, and includes up to 100GB of data.
But best of all, we monitor the backups for you, and make sure everything stays current and working. So you don’t have to worry about losing data any more!