The classic solo-operator backup: copy files to a USB, email key documents to yourself, hope nothing fails between now and next Friday. It mostly works — until the USB corrupts, the attachment hits 25 MB, or the laptop dies on a Wednesday. Keeply automates version history and backup so the ritual stops being your problem.
Free forever for personal use · Team $25/mo flat (coming soon).
The email-plus-USB ritual works because you perform it. The week you skip it — stressful deadline, travel, forgot — is the week the laptop drops and the USB is unplugged in a drawer. Attachment size limits (25 MB on Gmail, 20 MB on Outlook) cut out exactly the design files and video drafts you most want backed up. USB drives physically fail or get left in coffee shops. And emailed copies have no version structure — five copies of "final_proposal.docx" in your Sent folder tell you nothing about which one is actually final. Keeply automates continuous per-save versioning and backup to targets you own, so you stop being the single point of failure.
Source: Gmail / Outlook attachment limits; common solo-operator backup patterns
Based on public product information as of April 2026. Keeply rows reflect shipping v1.0.10.
| Feature | Email & USB backup (the Friday-afternoon ritual) |
Keeply (recommended) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free (in dollars; costly in time and reliability) | Free forever · Team $25/mo flat (coming soon) · $599 Perpetual Founding Member (limited 500) |
| Frequency | Weekly if you remember | Every save, automatically |
| File size cap | 25 MB (Gmail) / 20 MB (Outlook) | No cap — 38 binary formats + >10 MB detected silently |
| Version structure | None — just duplicates in Sent | Real timeline with save notes and visual diff |
| Mid-week failure | Lose up to 5 days of work | Continuously versioned; lose at most the current save |
| USB reliability | Physical failure, lost, stolen, corrupted | Optional USB + NAS + GitHub/Gitea (up to 3 destinations) |
| "What changed this week?" | Compare dated copies manually | Side-by-side diff (Word, Excel, PPT, PDF, images) |
| Offline | USB yes, email no (needs send) | Versioning fully offline; backup syncs when online |
| Sharing with team | Forward emails, pass the USB | Shared NAS or GitHub/Gitea backup target |
| Discipline required | Yours, every week, forever | None — it runs on save |
Don't rip out your safety net before the new one is trusted. Let Keeply version in parallel while you keep emailing yourself and plugging in the USB. After two weeks of Keeply running, the ritual starts to feel redundant.
The one whose loss would be most painful — active client work, your business documents, your portfolio. Download Keeply, open the folder, click Start protecting. Every save from now on is on the timeline with a note.
In Keeply, add a NAS if you have one, a USB drive as a secondary, and a private GitHub or Gitea repo as the cloud piece (up to three total). Now every save goes to multiple places automatically. No single point of failure, no weekly ritual.
Once you trust Keeply, stop sending yourself files and unplug the USB ritual. Keep the USB as an occasional extra belt-and-braces copy if you like, but it's no longer the system — it's just extra.
Free download for Windows and macOS. Thirty-second setup. No account required — just install and open your project folder.