End of the (Up)line for HP’s Backup Service

By on February 26, 2009 in Uncategorized

Today’s big news comes from HP who have announced the decision to close down their online backup service, HP Upline.

An email sent out to existing customers of the service reads as follows:

Thank you for your interest in HP Upline.

HP continually evaluates product lines and has decided to discontinue the HP Upline service on March 31, 2009.

HP will no longer be backing up your files to the HP Upline servers as of Feb 26, 2009 at 8 am Pacific time. HP will keep the file restore feature of the Upline service operational through March 31, 2009 Pacific time in order for you to download any files you have backed up to Upline.

If you have a paid subscription to HP Upline, you will be refunded the full amount of the fees you paid for the service. That refund will be credited to the credit card account or PayPal account that you used to subscribe to the Upline service. If you do not receive the refund prior to March 31, 2009, please contact our customer service team at https://www.upline.com/support/email.aspx.
HP looks forward to offering you additional technology products and services in the future.

Thank you.
HP Upline team


We’re hoping that our recent review of the service didn’t jinx things for HP (!), but the thought occurs – if a huge organisation like HP can’t make money from online backup, can anyone? Or is cloud storage just going to be given away for free in the future….

If you’ve been using HP Upline, let us know your thoughts on this decision.


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • Robert H

    I signed up for upline primarily because it looked as though it could work as a backup solution for my WHS, however it never worked fully and the software was clearly the first version. I have used three other online backup services and was only using upline because it looked as though it would work on WHS.

  • Paul

    I don’t think I ever really understood Upline’s distinction from other cloud storage services, aside from the fact that it wasn’t intended to be used with my MediaSmart, which I thought was dumb.

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  • Steve O

    HP, and all US based companies are undergoing extreme cost cutting measures. I assume that European firms have similar pressures.

    I would assume that any group/division/service that cannot pull its own weight, will be cut, and just breaking even is not adequate.

    HP is trying to keep ahead of its competition by reducing costs as much as possible.

  • http://www.safecopybackup.com Troy Hickerson

    HP Upline is shutting down.

    SafeCopy Backup, http://www.safecopybacup.com, is offering a 10% discount to HP Upline customers. Keep in mind SafeCopy is already 1/3 the cost of the HP Upline Family Plan which is limited to 3 users.

    With SafeCopy you can purchase ONE account for ALL your computers. Works on Mac, PC, iPhone, Smartphone. SafeCopy also allows you to easily share files over 1GB.

    Promo code of “upline” is good through April 15th.

  • Hank

    It did seem odd for HP to be offering an online back up solution when the new MediaSmart Servers come out of the box with Amazon S3 support.

    I mean, if the next time I buy an HP computer, they offer to sell me an Epson printer, it wouldn’t take much to connect the dots there.

  • moon_t

    It’s always a shame to see a service fail, the more choice we have for our servers the better. However take heart upline users there are some good alternatives in the add-ins section. I personally use jungleDisk and find it excellent, but give the others a whirl too before deciding upon your replacement.