Yesterday, Cambridge based Backupify released some incredible numbers on their 2010 growth. Numbers that when you see them, will make you say “How did they do that?” Well, we found out. But first — the numbers.

Backupify’s user base grew from 30,000 early in 2010 to over 122,000 by year end. They are responsible for the storage of over 66 terabytes of user data — that’s up from 2 terabytes on January 1, 2010. In 2010 they have backed up 136 million Tweets, 713 million emails, and 92 million pictures.

“This past year we witnessed widespread validation of our service as users increasingly embrace the importance of protecting and controlling their sensitive cloud-based data,” said Backupify CEO, Rob May. “Backupify is well-positioned to capitalize on this momentum and to continue to provide users with the most comprehensive cloud data management solutions on the market.”

I had the chance to catch with Backupify’s marketing analyst (and BostInno writer) Kristin Dziadul and VP of Marketing Charlie Ungashick to get a little insight into what has been behind their explosive growth.

Here are a few of the company’s milestones that led to the explosive growth:

  • We “dropped the paywall” and offered a free option
  • Initial seed funding announcement in early 2010: it seems this is the first time Backupify became mainstream in the minds of the early-adopter tech community
  • Auto-tweet capability on Twitter made Twitter the most popular service on Backupify until it was overshadowed by Google Apps
  • Kristin coming on board and driving the company’s social media presence helped immensely
  • We can directly attribute about 10,000 users to an iPad contest + invite incentive program that we ran for a few weeks in the summer
  • The announcement and launch of Google Apps led to a lot of press and resulted in many sign-ups

Here are a few other tidbits of information from Charlie Ungashick:


BostInno: What are you expecting in terms of growth in 2011?


Ungashick: We grew our user base by over 400% in 2010, and today the rate of growth is steady and increasing. We attribute that both to the rapid expansion of cloud computing and the amount of businesses who are looking for services like Backupify that protects critical data in the cloud. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be announcing a number of new capabilities that expand the reach of Backupify to other cloud services and adding other capabilities for users why want to do more with their data. Stay tuned.


BostInno: What contributed to the growth?


Ungashick: A few factors have drive our user adoption. Most has been due to steady, viral user adoption. Over 50 percent of our inbound sign ups come from Twitter, blogs and social media sites that come from users sharing their experiences about Backupify. Second, we’ve seen large increases in user adoption as we launched new services. For example, we saw big spikes in sign ups for Google Apps when we launched that in September and our Facebook Fan Page Backup service we launched in November. Some of our promotions have contributed too, for example when we dropped our paywall at the beginning of the year.  Finally, Backupify’s exposure in the news has contributed to user adoption — for example, our funding announcements and product reviews.


BostInno: Do the 2010 numbers include TweetBackup?


Ungashick: The number of users includes approximately 20,000 users from TweetBackup, but not the Tweets from that service.


We have extremely high hopes for Backupify and expect even bigger things from them in 2011. Learn more about Backupify by checking out their blog, and don’t forget to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

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