Mozy Mac Out of Beta; 50 Free Accounts Available

Online backup site Mozy is giving away 50 free year-long accounts to commemorate the official release of their Mac backup client.

To get yours, send a message to techcrunch@mozy.com that answers the question, “Why do you deserve free backup service for your Mac?” Data-loss horror stories are encouraged. The Mozy team will select the fifty best responses and will email the winners instructions to claim their free accounts.

Mozy is a cloud-based alternative to Apple’s Time Machine, which works very well but doesn’t have the added security of off-site data backup. And at $4.99 a month for unlimited storage, the price is couldn’t be much lower.

We covered Mozy’s Mac version last April when it was introduced as beta. The final version of the software has introduced support for Apple Mail and Leopard, along with a host of technical features like bandwidth throttling and compatibility for programs with resource forks.

In addition to local backup solutions like Time Machine, Mozy faces competition from online storage sites such as Apple’s .Mac, Sugarsync, and recently-released Syncplicity. Carbonite, one of the leaders in this space, works on Windows machines but has yet to release a Mac version.