Macrium Reflect Free Product - End of Life (EOL)

Preview:

Macrium Reflect is ending their free version and raising their prices. I still recommend it. Here are your options and my recommendations.

Many of you have asked me about Macrium Reflect since Macrium has declared that they will stop supporting it after January 1, 2024. Whether you have the paid or free version, you can continue using it as long as you like. What's the risk? Not much really. Sooner or later a significant security flaw could occur, but it's unlikely. Windows might make changes in time that will prevent it from working. I don't think you will have any problem with either the paid or free version through 2024.

An Alternative

I've been actively looking for a free alternative and failing to find anything I trust. The issue isn't, "can I make a backup?" It is, "Can I restore the backup in case of emergency?" Macrium is, hands down, the one that seems best at restoring drive images.

Paid Options

Business Workstation
Workstation costs $113.80. One license per PC. This is a perpetual license, but if you want to be eligible for support and free upgrades, annual support agreements are recommended. They've raised their prices, so I can only guess at the annual subscription fee, but last May I paid $28.30 for the annual fee, it might be a bit above that in the future. This is their description.

Home

Reflect Home 8 - One-time purchase. Price: $69.95
The difference between business workstation and home is pretty much non-existent. The features I use are available on both. Small businesses can use the home product. However, support is of lower quality (I've never needed support), and you can't purchase an annual maintenance plan. So, if you buy a home license for version 8, you'll need a new license to get version 9, though you can continue to use version 8 as long as you like.

Reflect Home - Annual Plan $49.99 a year and you'll always be kept up to date and have support if needed.

Their description.

My Recommendation

If you are using the free version, then I suggest you continue with that until a few months after version 9 comes out. Then, buy the Reflect Home One-time purchase and hope it isn't much more expensive than the version 8 one. It'll probably be a couple of years at least before version 10 comes out.
If you are using the paid workstation, just stick with it and maintain your service contract.
If you are using the paid home version, wait a year then buy version 9 home.

Note! I'm making these recommendations without seeing version 9 prices, I'm assuming they will be similar to version 8.

Date: July 2023

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