Editorial Process

BackupVerdict was founded by Craig MacAlpine, who has spent more than twenty-five years working in email security, cybersecurity, and IT infrastructure. Cloud backup is a category Craig has been close to throughout that career — and one that suffers from a recurring problem: vendors over-promise on capabilities such as restore speed, granularity, immutability, and cross-tenant recovery, but those claims are rarely tested under real-world conditions before a buyer commits.

BackupVerdict was built to close that gap. We test cloud backup products hands-on, document what we find, and publish reviews that are honest about strengths, weaknesses, and real operational behaviour — so that IT teams can make confident decisions without relying on vendor marketing.

BackupVerdict is operated by Expert Insights Tech Ltd, an independent cybersecurity research and review business that has been serving the IT and security community since 2018. Expert Insights provides the editorial team, technical infrastructure, and operating model that BackupVerdict runs on.

BackupVerdict does not currently take advertising revenue, sponsored placements, affiliate commissions, or referral fees. Every review and recommendation on the site has been produced independently, with no commercial relationship between BackupVerdict and the vendors covered. For full details, see our Advertiser Disclosure.

If our funding model changes in the future, the principles below will not.

Editorial and commercial functions operate independently. No commercial team member at Expert Insights has the ability to assign, approve, delay, or alter editorial content on BackupVerdict.

Our editorial team has final say on all published content. This includes which products are included in our research, what scores they receive, how they are described, how they are ranked, and whether they are recommended for specific use cases.

Vendor relationships do not influence editorial judgement. Our team meets regularly with backup vendor leadership at conferences, briefings, and product calls. We value those relationships, but we draw a clear line between them and editorial assessment. When commercial and editorial interests do not align, editorial judgement takes precedence.

BackupVerdict is currently in an early phase. We are evaluating two possible directions for how the site will be funded longer-term: sponsored placements (similar to the Expert Insights model), or becoming a reseller of selected products covered on the site. No decision has been made.

When and if we introduce any commercial relationship, the same firewall Expert Insights operates under will apply.

What advertising will be permitted to affect

Paid placements may affect where a vendor’s sponsored content appears on BackupVerdict — for example, promotional placements within newsletters or featured positions in dedicated advertising units. Within buyers’ guides, sponsoring vendors may appear in a clearly marked promoted position. All sponsored placements will be clearly labelled, and all links to vendor websites from sponsored listings will be marked as sponsored. Default ordering for non-sponsored listings is alphabetical or score-based. If a vendor ends a sponsorship, their listing remains in the guide — they were included on editorial merit before the sponsorship began, and that does not change.

What advertising will never be permitted to affect

Product inclusion. Every product included in our reviews and shortlists has been evaluated and approved by our editorial team based on product quality and relevance to the category. Advertising cannot buy inclusion. If a product does not meet our editorial standards, it will not appear regardless of any commercial relationship.

Scores, reviews, and recommendations. Our scores, review content, Pros and Cons, and “Best for” recommendations are determined solely by our editorial team based on hands-on testing. These will never be influenced by advertising. A sponsored listing will not receive a higher score, a more favourable review, or a different recommendation than the same product would receive on its own merits.

Review content. Our analysis — including Pros, Cons, Strengths, Cautions, and Final Verdict sections — is based on independent hands-on evaluation. Vendors cannot review, approve, or modify editorial content before publication.

Rankings and shortlists. Any rankings, shortlists, or “Best of” lists on BackupVerdict are based solely on criteria set by our editorial team. There is no pay-to-play element. BackupVerdict does not currently run an awards programme.

For the current commercial position, see our Advertiser Disclosure.

BackupVerdict is produced by two teams that work together: a technical research team that conducts hands-on product testing, and an editorial team that covers the broader cloud data protection market, maintains vendor relationships, and produces our published content. The two teams complement each other — our technical researchers verify whether a product does what the vendor claims, while our editorial team provides market context, industry relationships, and journalistic rigour.

Technical Review — Craig MacAlpine, Founder and CEO

Craig MacAlpine leads the technical review side of BackupVerdict. He evaluates products through the lens of a technical buyer: does the product work, is it fit for purpose, and does the ecosystem around it — pricing, support, integration, documentation — hold up in practice.

Craig’s career in IT security began in 1996 at ElectricMail, a UK systems integrator that connected enterprise email systems to the internet for the first time. Working with blue-chip clients including British Airways, EMI Music, and Channel 4, the team quickly evolved from connectivity into security — becoming the first European reseller of Check Point’s firewall range, deploying RSA SecurID remote access solutions, and developing managed email gateway services using MIMESweeper.

In 2003, Craig founded EPA Cloud, a UK-based email security provider. Over the next decade, EPA Cloud grew to serve more than 1,000 clients before being acquired by Ziff Davis (formerly J2 Global, NASDAQ: ZD) in 2013 and rebranded as VIPRE Email Security. Craig then served as a Product Manager at FuseMail (now VIPRE) from 2013 to 2015, managing their email security product line. In 2017, he spent six months in an interim role at EveryCloud Tech, the exclusive UK and US distributor for Hornetsecurity — a company Craig had known since it was a 40-person operation and which has since grown to over 900 people and become part of Proofpoint.

Craig’s technical experience spans email security, email encryption, endpoint protection, cloud backup, DNS filtering, web filtering, and the broader stack of security and data protection products that IT managers and managed service providers work with day to day. He is also actively involved with several MSPs, giving him direct, current experience of the operational challenges teams face when deploying and managing backup and recovery products for client environments.

Technical Research Team

Craig’s technical research team includes cybersecurity engineers and analysts, all with degrees in cybersecurity and hands-on experience in deploying, configuring, and testing security and data protection products. The team conducts the hands-on product evaluations that underpin our reviews and buyers’ guides, working through real deployment scenarios, configuration workflows, and day-to-day administration.

For BackupVerdict specifically, this includes connecting backup products to live Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace test tenants, running full backups across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Gmail, Drive, Shared Drives, Calendar, and Contacts, and testing restore performance, granularity, and resilience under realistic conditions.

Editorial Team — Joel Witts, Director of Content

Joel Witts has led the Expert Insights editorial operation since co-founding Expert Insights in 2018. Joel holds a First Class BA (Hons) in Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies from Cardiff University and has focused exclusively on cybersecurity journalism for over eight years. He has reviewed hundreds of cybersecurity solutions and interviewed hundreds of industry leaders across identity and access management, email security, zero trust, DevSecOps, and cloud data protection.

Joel and the editorial team cover the cybersecurity market at an industry level: attending major conferences, interviewing vendor leadership, tracking product roadmaps, and maintaining relationships with the companies and people shaping the market. The same editorial team supports BackupVerdict, providing the market context and editorial rigour for the cloud backup category.

Joel hosts the Expert Insights Podcast, which has published over 85 episodes, and co-writes Cyber Weekly, the weekly cybersecurity newsletter for IT leaders.

How Our Teams Work Together

When a backup vendor claims a new capability — for example, faster restore times, finer-grained recovery, immutable storage, or better cross-tenant migration — our editorial team captures that claim through direct conversation with the vendor’s leadership. Our technical team then verifies whether the product delivers on that claim through hands-on testing in our M365 and Google Workspace test environments. This combination of high-level industry relationships and ground-level technical verification is central to how BackupVerdict operates.

We often find that vendors overstate or understate their product’s behaviour in real conditions. Our job is to filter that out so that IT decision-makers get a clear picture of what actually works.

Every piece of editorial content published on BackupVerdict meets the following standards before going live:

Named authorship. Every review and article carries the name of the author who wrote it and the senior reviewer who verified it. Author credentials are displayed on the author profile page.

Date transparency. Every review and article displays its original publication date and the date of its most recent update. We do not publish undated content.

Methodology disclosure. Every product review includes a “How We Reviewed” section documenting what was tested, when, in which environment, and against which criteria.

Technical review. Before publication, all content undergoes technical accuracy review by a second analyst, followed by editorial review for clarity, consistency, and adherence to our style guide.

Fact-checking. Pricing, feature claims, and vendor details are verified against the most current sources available. Where we have been briefed on unreleased features, this is clearly disclosed.

We hold ourselves to high standards of accuracy, and we are transparent when we get something wrong.

Corrections. If a factual error is identified in published content, we correct it promptly and note the correction on the article. We do not silently alter scores, rankings, or editorial conclusions.

Product removals or revisions. If a product is removed from a buyers’ guide or a score is revised, we update the published content to reflect the change with an explanation.

Vendor engagement. Post-publication, vendors may contact us to report factual inaccuracies. Any corrections are made at our editorial discretion. Vendors cannot request changes to opinions, scores, or editorial conclusions.

Reader feedback. We actively incorporate feedback from IT professionals who use the products we review. If your operational experience differs from our published assessment, we want to hear about it.

BackupVerdict is operated by Expert Insights Tech Ltd, which has been publishing independent cybersecurity research since 2018. Our research is read by over one million businesses annually, with a global audience spanning IT leaders, cybersecurity professionals, and managed service providers across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Our business model — both at Expert Insights and at BackupVerdict — depends on maintaining trust with our audience. We prioritise long-term credibility over short-term commercial gain. Every editorial decision we make is guided by a single question: does this help someone make a better backup decision?

If you have questions about how BackupVerdict maintains editorial independence, how we work with vendors, or concerns about any published content, please contact us at [email protected].