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AWS Backup vs N2WS: the alternative built for real recovery
N2W is a third-party alternative to AWS Backup that runs as an EC2 instance inside your own AWS account. It adds orchestrated failover, file-level recovery across backup generations, cross-cloud restore from AWS into Azure, and incremental archiving that cut AWS Premier Partner Zero & One's backup costs by 85%.
| Capability | N2W | AWS Backup |
|---|---|---|
| One product across AWS, Azure, Wasabi | Yes | No |
| Recovery in 4 clicks (Recovery Scenarios) | Yes | No |
| File & folder-level restore, no pre-indexing | Yes | No |
| Compute scheduling (Resource Control) | Yes | No |
| Native multi-tenancy for MSPs | Yes | No |
| Incremental archiving to any Glacier tier | Yes | No |
AWS Backup has its limitations
Limited to a single AWS Org, in a single cloud
The “free” backup tool gets expensive, fast
If your control plane is down, so is your DR
N2WS vs AWS Backup: full feature comparison
AWS Backup vs N2WS: “Free” is the part that gets $$$
The real cost hides in how it stores your data. Three defaults inflate the bill and N2W reverses all three.
- It archives fulls. Every archive is a complete copy. N2W archives incrementally, storing only what changed.
- It keeps the original. You pay for the source and the archive. N2W ZeroEBS deletes the snapshot once the archive is verified.
- It doesn't let you choose. The default archive tier costs more than Glacier yet restores about as slowly. N2W lets you pick any S3 or Glacier tier (plus Wasabi and Azure Blob).
- No compute savings. N2W Resource Control powers down dev/test and non-critical compute on a schedule. Most teams can cut compute about 50%.
When AWS is down, don’t bet DR on AWS
AWS Backup is a native AWS service. So, in the event of another AWS outage, the console, APIs, and the sign-in you’d use to start a restore are in the same control plane that’s down.
- Fail over to another cloud. Restore AWS workloads to Azure (or a different region), so a single failed region doesn’t take you down.
- Recovery already orchestrated. Recovery Scenarios run in 4 clicks from N2W’s own console, not improvised under pressure.
- Isolated, air-gapped DR account. Backups and the permission to recover them sit apart from production, with alerts if anything touches them.
AWS Backup vs N2WS: frequently asked questions
Is AWS Backup free?
AWS Backup has no license fee, and the cost lands in what AWS charges to keep the data. Its cold tier stores a full point-in-time copy of each snapshot rather than only the incremental blocks, so on a daily-delta workload archiving can cost more than leaving the data warm. N2W licenses at one flat monthly rate per instance, archives incrementally into the tier you pick across S3, Glacier, Azure Blob or Wasabi, and can delete the source snapshot after a successful archive. Gett cut about $60,000 a year.
What does N2W do that AWS Backup doesn’t?
N2W adds the recovery and cost layer AWS Backup leaves out. Recovery Scenarios run an orchestrated failover in four clicks, file-level recovery reaches back across multiple backup generations, incremental archiving moves data into S3, Glacier, Wasabi or Azure Blob, and Resource Control switches off idle compute. Cross-cloud restore puts AWS volumes into Azure.
What happens if AWS itself has an outage?
AWS Backup runs inside the same AWS control plane that fails during an outage. The October 2025 and March 2026 events took down the console and sign-in along with customer workloads. N2W runs as an instance in your own account, backs itself up under a preconfigured policy, and fails over into another region or into Azure.
Can I keep AWS Backup and add N2W?
Yes. N2W runs as an EC2 instance in your own account, and AnySnap Archiver ingests the snapshots you already have, so nothing restarts from zero. Teams commonly run both while policies move across, then keep N2W as the primary backup and disaster recovery product once coverage matches.
How is N2W deployed?
N2W deploys as an EC2 instance from AWS Marketplace, inside the AWS account you already run. Most teams complete a first backup about 20 minutes after launch. The instance arrives with a preconfigured DR policy protecting N2W itself, and no backup data ever leaves the account you control.
Does N2W cover the same AWS services?
N2W protects EC2, EBS, RDS, Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, EFS, FSx, VPC, S3, EKS and AWS Outposts, matching AWS Backup on the core services and adding cost control and orchestrated recovery on top. EKS backup runs on Velero, which installs on each source and destination cluster.
Hasn’t AWS always had a backup tool?
AWS shipped AWS Backup in January 2019. N2W has built cloud backup and recovery since 2012, seven years earlier, and it is the only thing the company does. AWS Backup centralized the existing snapshot tools, without adding the cost controls or orchestrated recovery a dedicated product brings.
Does N2W show which resources are not backed up?
Yes. The N2W dashboard carries a live protection widget covering AWS and Azure together: protected versus unprotected resources by type, count and total size, with compliance state down to snapshot immutability and lock status. Tag a new resource at creation and it joins its backup policy automatically, so coverage keeps pace with the environment.
Does adding N2W mean running a second backup platform?
Every backup and DR product is a platform, including the native services: policies, vaults and restore paths still need managing. N2W's runs as a single EC2 instance in your own AWS account, launched from AWS Marketplace and patched like any other AMI. The MSP iFeu runs 100+ AWS accounts from one console.
Can N2W restore a single file or a single database?
Yes. File-level recovery reaches across multiple backup generations, so you can pull one file from any retained generation without restoring a whole instance. On the RDS recovery screen every database has its own checkbox, so you restore only what you select. Gett restores files in seconds that used to take hours.
Does testing disaster recovery with N2W cost extra?
No. A DR drill tests the ability to spin resources up without spinning them up, so it adds no cloud charges. A full failover test costs only what AWS or Azure charges for those resources during the test. Randstad Spain runs a full DR test in under an hour, down from most of a day.
What is a good replacement for AWS's native backup?
That depends on why you are replacing it. Most teams move for cost at scale or for recovery, since AWS Backup restores one resource at a time and stays inside a single AWS Org and a single cloud. N2W runs as an EC2 instance in your own AWS account, orchestrates multi-resource failover, and covers Azure from the same console. If your estate is mostly on-premises, Veeam or Commvault fit better than a cloud-native tool.
What tools are similar to AWS Backup?
Third-party tools covering the same AWS workloads include N2W, Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, Druva and Eon. They split into cloud-native products that run inside your own account and enterprise platforms that also cover on-premises estates. N2W is in the first group, deploying as an EC2 instance from AWS Marketplace and keeping backup data in the account you control.
Can AWS Backup archive to Glacier Deep Archive?
No. AWS Backup exposes one opaque cold tier through a day count, MoveToColdStorageAfterDays, rather than a storage class, so Glacier Instant Retrieval, Flexible and Deep Archive are not selectable. Cold storage covers EBS, EFS, DynamoDB, and does not cover RDS, Aurora or FSx. For EBS it maps to EBS Snapshots Archive, which accepts only snapshots taken monthly or less often and retained beyond 90 days, so daily and weekly snapshots cannot be archived at all. At $0.0125 per GB-month with 24 to 72 hour retrieval, that is roughly 12 times the price of Glacier Deep Archive at Deep Archive latency.