HP Upline to close in March; Research alternatives on NextAdvisor.com

Posted by Joe on February 26th, 2009

Hewlett Packard announced in an email to subscribers today that the company's online backup service, HP Upline, will be discontinued effective March 31, 2009. The service will stopped backing-up subscriber data this morning at 8am PST.

In a very pro-consumer move, HP will be providing full refunds to all subscribers in an amount equal to the fees they paid while they were an active paid member of the service.

We would strongly suggest that former Upline subscribers invest their refunds in a new online backup service such as Carbonite or Mozy. You can compare online backup services at NextAdvisor.com.

We never included HP Upline in our comparison of online backup services because of the various issues that plagued the service during it's short lifespan such as an extended downtime last April that left subscribers without file backups for days.

Below is the full text of the email sent to subscribers today:

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