As of 13 August 2026, AI can choose offsite backup software for your business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open an inventory of your business systems and record the devices, servers, cloud services, databases, data volumes and applications that must be backed up.
   2. Ask the person responsible for IT or operations to provide the maximum acceptable data loss, maximum recovery time, priority systems, retention needs, data location requirements and any UK GDPR or contractual constraints.
   3. Collect the current vendor documentation for the products you are considering, including coverage, retention, encryption, administrator controls, ransomware protection, restore procedures, support and termination terms.
   4. Paste the completed business and systems details, followed by the supplied vendor documents or links, into the prompt and ask the chatbot to produce the weighted comparison and vendor questions.
   5. Send the generated questions to the shortlisted vendors and replace every unknown or unsupported claim in the comparison with a written vendor answer or a clearly marked gap.
   6. Ask an IT colleague to check the comparison against the original inventory and confirm that the proposed service covers every priority system, recovery target and retention requirement.
   7. Run a pilot on non-critical data, check that scheduled backups complete, delete or alter test data, perform a restore to a separate location and record whether the restored data opens and the recovery time meets the requirement.
   8. Choose the product only after the pilot and written answers pass the agreed checks, then document the backup owner, alerts, restore procedure and regular test schedule.

   Prompt

   Act as a cautious UK business IT buyer. Help me shortlist and choose offsite backup software, but do not pretend to know current prices, features, certifications or retention terms that I have not supplied.
   
   Business context:
   - Business type: [business type]
   - Staff and users: [number and types of users]
   - Location and data residency needs: [requirements]
   - UK GDPR or other contractual requirements: [requirements]
   - Budget and buying constraints: [budget and constraints]
   
   Systems and data to protect:
   - Devices: [Windows, macOS, servers, laptops, mobile devices]
   - Cloud services: [Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, SaaS applications]
   - Servers and applications: [details]
   - Databases or specialist systems: [details]
   - Data volume and expected growth: [details]
   - Current backup method: [details]
   
   Recovery requirements:
   - Maximum acceptable data loss: [time period]
   - Maximum acceptable recovery time: [time period]
   - Files, systems or services that must be restored first: [details]
   - Need for immutable, offline or air-gapped copies: [requirements]
   - Need for a separate administrator account or multi-person approval: [requirements]
   - Testing and reporting requirements: [requirements]
   
   Use only the product information, vendor links and documents I provide. First list any missing requirements that could change the recommendation. Then produce:
   1. A weighted requirements table.
   2. A shortlist of suitable products, with each claim linked to the supplied source.
   3. A comparison of backup coverage, restore options, retention, ransomware resilience, encryption and key control, access controls, audit logs, support, data location, integrations and likely operational effort.
   4. A list of questions to send to each vendor, including questions about deletion protection, compromised administrator accounts, failed backups, restore testing, hidden limits and contract termination.
   5. A provisional recommendation with the reasons it wins and the conditions that would change it.
   6. A safe pilot plan using non-critical data, including how to check that backups complete and how to perform and record a test restore.
   Do not recommend a product solely because it is well known. Do not say that a backup is secure or compliant unless the supplied evidence supports that wording. Mark unknowns clearly. The final choice must remain subject to an IT review and a successful restore test.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.