Kopia — The Complete Guide: Encrypted Backup With a GUI and Scheduling, No Subscription
Kopia is open-source backup software that creates encrypted, compressed and deduplicated snapshots of folders and stores them on a local disk, a server or cloud storage of your choice. It comes with a graphical interface (KopiaUI) as well as a command line, and suits a small office or a freelance engineer who wants orderly backups without a subscription.
Kopia
Kopia project
Encrypted incremental backup with a GUI and scheduling — to local disks or the cloud storage of your choice.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Encryption and compression — for every snapshot.
- Deduplication — repeated backups of similar files take almost no extra space.
- Backup policies — what to back up, what to exclude and how many versions to keep.
- Automatic scheduling — backups that run in the background without you remembering.
- Single-file restore — find an earlier version of a file and bring back just that one.
First-time setup
The step that needs some technical understanding is creating the backup repository: choose a destination (external drive, NAS or cloud storage) and a password. Then add the project folders, set policies and a schedule. Test-restore one file on day one, and keep the password in KeePassXC.
Related tools
A command-line-only alternative — restic. For continuous sync between computers — Syncthing. For a simple mirror copy to an external drive — FreeFileSync.
restic
restic project
Fast, encrypted, deduplicated backups — project folders to disk, NAS or cloud storage.
Get it from the vendorFreeFileSync
FreeFileSync
Folder sync and backup — compares folders and copies only what changed, for backing up projects to an external drive.
Get it from the vendor
Syncthing
Syncthing Foundation
Sync files directly between computers, with no cloud — identical project folders at the office, at home and on site.
Get it from the vendor
rclone
rclone project
Sync and copy files to 70+ cloud storage services from the command line, and mount cloud drives as local disks.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Kopia gives you backup on the level of a commercial product — encrypted, versioned and scheduled.