Every business has a backup story, and most of them share a plot: software was installed years ago, a green tick appeared, and everyone moved on. The green tick is still there. Whether the backups behind it would actually restore, whether they cover the systems that matter now rather than the ones that mattered in 2021, and whether they would survive a ransomware attack: nobody knows, because knowing is a job, and the job belongs to nobody.
Backup as a Service exists to give that job an owner. Instead of buying backup software and hoping, you buy the outcome: your data, backed up correctly, watched daily, tested on a schedule, and restorable within an agreed time, for a fixed monthly fee. This page covers what BaaS includes, how it differs from the DIY arrangement you probably have, and what it costs.
What Backup as a Service actually includes
The infrastructure. Automated backups of your servers, machines and cloud data to encrypted offsite storage, structured to the 3-2-1 rule: local copies for fast everyday restores, cloud copies for disasters, and an immutable copy that ransomware cannot reach even with stolen admin credentials. That last layer is the one DIY arrangements almost never have, and it is the one that decides whether an attack is an inconvenience or a ransom negotiation.
The watching. Every backup job monitored daily, with failures investigated and fixed rather than accumulating silently. The most common finding when we audit a new client’s existing backups is a job that has been failing for weeks while the green tick lied; monitored backup makes that scenario structurally impossible, because a failed job is a ticket, not a secret.
The testing. Scheduled test restores, logged with durations, because the only meaningful property of a backup is that it restores, in a time you can live with. The duration matters as much as the success: discovering during a crisis that your full restore takes four days is a continuity failure discovered at the worst price. Test times feed straight into your recovery objectives.
The coverage decisions. What gets backed up, how often, and how long history is kept, decided deliberately and reviewed as the business changes. Retention gets set to your obligations (accounting records, client files, sector rules) rather than the software default, and new systems join the backup scope when they arrive rather than after the first scare.
Microsoft 365 included. Mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams data need their own backup; Microsoft’s retention is not one, a distinction most businesses discover at the worst moment. Our Microsoft 365 backup guide covers why, and any serious BaaS arrangement covers the 365 estate as standard.
BaaS vs doing it yourself
DIY backup is not doomed; it is just usually unowned. The honest comparison:
- Software and storage: similar either way; the tools are commodities.
- Configuration: DIY inherits defaults; BaaS inherits design (immutability, retention, scope) done by people who restore for a living.
- Failure detection: DIY discovers failures at restore time; BaaS discovers them the morning after they happen.
- Testing: DIY testing happens never, approximately; BaaS testing is contractual.
- Cost: DIY looks cheaper monthly and often is, right up until the incident where it turns out to have been decorative. The BaaS fee is effectively insurance priced in tens of pounds against losses priced in tens of thousands.
The businesses genuinely fine with DIY are those with a competent person who owns backup as a named responsibility with time to honour it. If your honest answer to “who checked the backups this week?” is a job title rather than a name, you already know which side you are on.
What it costs
UK BaaS pricing is typically built from a small per-device or per-user monthly fee plus storage volume: for a typical SME (a server or two, 10 to 30 staff, Microsoft 365), realistic totals run from roughly £50 to £300 per month depending on data volumes and retention depth. Within our managed support plans, backup management is part of the standard service; standalone BaaS suits businesses that want the backup problem solved without changing anything else yet. Either way the fee is fixed and known, which is the point: recovery capability as a utility bill rather than a project.
One pricing caution transfers from every other IT purchase: the quote that looks cheapest usually omits either the immutable copy, the M365 coverage or the testing, and each omission is invisible until it is expensive. The itemised-inclusions rule from our cost guide applies here with force.
Frequently asked questions
What is Backup as a Service?
A managed service where a provider runs your entire backup arrangement (software, offsite and immutable storage, daily monitoring, scheduled test restores and retention management) for a fixed monthly fee, taking ownership of the outcome rather than selling you tools.
How is BaaS different from cloud storage like OneDrive?
Sync services replicate current files, including deletions and ransomware encryption, within minutes. Backup keeps independent, versioned, point-in-time copies you can restore from. Cloud storage is where data lives; backup is how it survives.
Does BaaS protect against ransomware?
Properly designed, yes: the immutable offsite copy cannot be encrypted or deleted from your network even with administrator credentials, which removes the attacker’s main leverage. Arrangements without an immutable layer protect against everything except the attack most likely to hurt you.
What does Backup as a Service cost in the UK?
Typically built from per-device fees plus storage: £50 to £300 per month covers most SMEs, scaling with data volume and retention. Within managed IT support contracts it is generally included rather than additional.
How often should backups be tested?
Restores tested at least quarterly, with results and durations logged. In a BaaS arrangement that schedule is the provider’s contractual job, which is precisely the difference from the untested green tick.
Can you take over our existing backup setup?
Yes; the usual first step is an audit of what you currently have, which doubles as the most revealing document most businesses have seen about their own recoverability. Good elements get kept; gaps (usually immutability, M365 and testing) get closed.
Find out if the green tick is telling the truth
One question settles whether this page applies to you: when did someone last restore a file from your backups, and how long did it take? If the answer is confident and recent, you are ahead of most. If it is not, our free IT health check includes exactly that audit: what is covered, what would survive ransomware, and what a restore actually takes. Get in touch and find out while it costs nothing. Our data backup and recovery service covers the wider discipline this sits inside.
