One of the most disappointing issues (for me personally) which arose when Acronis retired their True Image line of backup software, rolling all functionality into the newer and more security focused Cyber Protect Home Office suite, was that they also discontinued selling perpetual licences at the same time.
In all fairness to Acronis, I can appreciate that the new Cyber Protect Home Office suite brings with it much more functionality than was available before within True Image. Notable additions include a fully featured antivirus suite which is built directly into the application, upgraded backup and recovery tools and, in certain editions of the product, use of the built-in Acronis cloud storage solution as well.
Whilst this might seem like a positive upgrade for many home-based backup users, anyone simply seeking the (very good) core backup functionality from the software and nothing more will still need to pay an ongoing subscription for access to the “Essentials” edition of the suite which omits these additional cloud storage and security related features.
NB – Even though the “Essentials” edition of Cyber Protect Home Office does omit use of the fully featured antivirus suite, it still provides some (non-subscription based) security tools including the anti-crypto mining component amongst others.
With all of this being said, Acronis did reach out to existing True Image perpetual licence holders recently (early 2024) offering them the chance to upgrade to a special perpetual edition of Cyber Protect Home Office, this being Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 2024. In the remainder of this guide, I will be documenting my own experience upgrading to this new edition of the tool whilst also looking in-depth at what new features and upgrades are on offer for anyone else thinking about the upgrade.
NB – Sadly, as of time of writing this post, it would appear that Acronis are only offering this new perpetual edition of Cyber Protect Home Office to existing Acronis True Image perpetual licence holders (it is not available to any new customers nor existing Cyber Protect Home Office subscription-based users).
Upgrading to Cyber Protect Home Office 2024
With this upgrade currently only being available to existing perpetual True Image licence holders, I was first alerted to its existence via a message within the True Image software itself (this message could also be seen via the Acronis notification system tray icon as well). Interestingly, I couldn’t find this upgrade offer mentioned anywhere else nor was it visible when I logged into my Acronis account meaning I was at first a little dubious as to what was actually being offered within this upgrade.
After some thought about the benefits of upgrading (plus been aware that my current edition of True Image is almost four years old – which isn’t ideal), I decided to upgrade to the new perpetual edition of Cyber Protect Home Office 2024. As of time of upgrading myself, this latest edition was priced at $69.99 for a single licence, $89.99 for 3x PCs and $119.99 for 5x PCs.
The upgrade process itself takes place within the Acronis True Image application (it doesn’t appear possible to do this via the Acronis website) and, after entering a few details, I had managed to purchase a new and upgraded licence with email confirmations following shortly afterwards. So far, so good!
After my purchase was complete, logging into my Acronis account revealed the new licence was indeed visible with the new licence key and software download packages available for me to download straight away.
Installing the new software
With the upgrade purchase process now complete and the new software installer downloaded, I could begin installing the latest (perpetual) edition of Cyber Protect Home Office 2024. This installation process appeared virtually identical to that of installing one of the regular Acronis subscription editions for the most part baring the need to enter the newly purchased licence key (plus the key form the previously purchased perpetual edition) towards the end of the set-up when the application is finally activated.
Once activated, opening the new Cyber Protect Home Office 2024 application shows a piece of software which, for all intents and purposes, appears to be identical to the subscription version of the tool (albeit, of course, without the need to pay for this edition via an ongoing subscription).
As can be seen above, when upgrading from True Image to Cyber Protect Home Office 2024, we see a very familiar product, albeit one with some new backup features and operational improvements, support for the latest Windows operating system and devices plus a full year of professional support from Acronis themselves backing everything up.
What’s actually new in this latest edition?
In all fairness, there isn’t too much new functionality found in this latest perpetual edition of Cyber Protect Home Office versus one of the later editions of True Image. In fact, having been an avid user of True Image myself since about 2007, the only real new additions which I have noticed since upgrading from one of the latter True Image editions is the inclusion of a tool for converting disk image backups into VHD formats (from the native Acronis .’tib’ file format) via a context menu option as can be seen below.
Security wise and things are a little better with Acronis now offering and integrating multi-factor authentication into the application. Additional device protection is also provided via the use of a cut-down suite of security tools (including an anti-crypto mining component) which can be used in this perpetual edition without an ongoing subscription in place.
In addition to these key upgrades mentioned above, Acronis have also improved things behind the scenes within the software with up to 20% faster backups now mentioned, new driver and extended hardware support within the built-in recovery tools, support for the latest operating systems currently in-use plus 1 year of professional help and support from Acronis themselves (via email and live chat) for anyone choosing to upgrade.
So, is it worth upgrading?
So far, I have made the upgrade to Cyber Protect Home Office 2024 myself and have had the software backing up my main PC for several days now. As I have already mentioned, whilst everything seems very similar on the surface, the new software does appear to be working faster and more smoothly than it did before in my own particular experience.
In fact, one issue I did have with my older edition of True image (which is most likely related to my own hardware rather than the software itself) was that making use of the maximum compression level on disk image backups seemed to slow things down excessively (versus simply using ‘high’ compression, the next level down form ‘maximum’). This issue seems to have now been resolved for me within Cyber Protect Home Office 2024 with the ‘maximum’ compression option (as well as everything else) seemingly running that little bit faster and more smoothly than it did before (suggesting Acronis really have been busy behind the scenes improving this latest edition).
Whilst everything does definitely seem a little bit smoother in my own experience, I think the real value in upgrading to this perpetual edition (if you have the opportunity to) is gaining access to the latest support for the latest hardware and editions of Windows. There is (unfortunately) no commitment form Acronis that this upgrade offer will be available long term nor any firm suggestion that Acronis will go back to offering perpetual licences for general sale ever again either. With all of this in mind, if you can afford to upgrade to the latest edition it might be a good investment giving the typical perpetual software user several more years piece of mind that they won’t be made to utilise subscription-based software in the meantime.
NB – Just a quick addendum – if you currently have a single perpetual True Image licence then you can upgrade to the 3x PC edition of this new edition for only $20 more than the cost of the single licence upgrade (meaning you will get 2x new perpetual licences for effectively just $10 each in such circumstances). Well worth the consideration!
Are you looking for help and advice on choosing the best backup software for your PC or Mac? If so then be sure to check out our guide to choosing backup software which also contains a list of our favorite choices as tested here on BestBackupReviews.com!
