Are Zoolz Reviews Honest?

The cloud backup industry can be cut throat and gaining new users at any cost can be tempting. Affiliate marketing can be a great channel for cloud backup companies to gain new users, but what happens when affiliates are paid to write good reviews for a bonus? Are the reviews still honest and truthful? I recently wrote a review for Zoolz and because I was curious about their affiliate program I signed up and because of that I got the following email.

Now the review I did would not qualify since it is for a different product, not to mention I was not particularly impressed with the service. I never could get my Windows test machine to backup to the service, even though the application said it was backed up. Not a good sign for a backup service if it never actually backs up but says it did. However I imagine there is going to be a flood on new reviews for Zoolz Cloud Archive soon that all praise how good it is and I suspect the majority of those reviews are nothing more than an attempt to cash in on the bonus.

For the record, the links to Zoolz on the site are not affiliate links directly, but could be because Viglink is installed on the site. While I signed up to be a Zoolz affiliate I imagine after this post goes up I will be removed from their program. I never did get around to changing links to affiliate links because the product seemed so poor it was not worth promoting. Now that I see why they get such attention from other review websites and blogs I would not want to promote them anyway.

Just a good reminder to always question reviews and do your own testing of services. Most services offer trials or free versions. Try before you buy and make sure they work and do what you need. Zoolz is not the only service out there that encourages good reviews for bonus or higher affiliate payout and the end result is you, the customer, often gets screwed. Oh, and if you are still thinking about trying Zoolz I would recommend you look at another service, like perhaps Backblaze or IDrive (and yes those are affiliate links). I have used both services and have been happy with them.