Checkpoint vs. The Alternatives

You've got options. Most of them weren't built for the way developers actually work. Here's the honest breakdown.

Feature Comparison

Checkpoint vs. Time Machine

Time Machine does one thing well: it backs up your whole computer. The problem is, "your whole computer" includes 400 GB of stuff you don't care about and none of the developer-specific intelligence you actually need. It doesn't know what a database is. It doesn't know what .env means. It can't tell your project files from your system cache. And when you need to pull back a single project from two Tuesdays ago, you're spelunking through a full-system timeline looking for a needle in a haystack.

Checkpoint thinks in projects, not partitions. It dumps your databases properly, skips node_modules and build artifacts automatically, and lets you restore a complete project — code, data, config — in one command. No external drive required. No NAS. Just works.

Checkpoint vs. rsync / cron

The DIY approach. Respectable. Also, a maintenance nightmare that nobody admits to. You'll spend an afternoon writing rsync flags, setting up cron schedules, rigging log rotation, building exclude lists — and then you'll never touch it again until it silently breaks three months later and you find out the hard way.

Checkpoint is the version of that script you'd write if you had unlimited time and actually followed through. Versioned snapshots, smart exclusions, database dumps, encrypted cloud sync, health monitoring, failure alerts — all from one backup-now command. No crontab required. No shell script to babysit. A menu bar dashboard tells you if anything's gone sideways, so you don't discover problems on the worst possible day.

Checkpoint vs. Restic

Restic is genuinely good software. Deduplication, encryption, multi-backend support — it's well-engineered for server backups and general-purpose snapshots. What it isn't is developer-aware. Restic sees files and directories. Checkpoint sees projects.

That distinction matters. Checkpoint auto-detects your databases — SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, Mongo — and runs proper dumps before each snapshot. No corrupt half-written WAL files. It knows to skip node_modules, .git, and build output without being told. And it picks up .env files and credentials that live in your .gitignore — the exact files Restic would only back up if you remembered to tell it where they are.

Restic also needs you to handle scheduling, exclude patterns, and repo initialization yourself. Checkpoint does all of that on install. Plus there's a native macOS dashboard that gives you the kind of at-a-glance status Restic's CLI never will.

Checkpoint vs. Git (as Backup)

Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: Git is not a backup system. It was never designed to be one. It deliberately ignores your .env files, your databases, your uploaded assets, your credentials — basically everything in .gitignore. That's by design. Git tracks source code. If your SSD dies tomorrow and all you have is your GitHub repo, you'll get your code back. You will not get a working project back.

Checkpoint protects the rest — all the stuff that makes a project actually run. Think of Git as your collaboration tool and Checkpoint as the thing that catches you when the collaboration tool can't. They're not competitors. They're partners.

Also: Git only saves what you commit. That half-finished refactor you haven't pushed yet? The local branch you've been working on for a week? If you didn't push, it doesn't exist anywhere else. Checkpoint runs automatically. Your work is protected whether you remembered to commit or not.

Checkpoint vs. Cloud Sync (Dropbox / iCloud)

Put a developer project in Dropbox and watch the chaos unfold. Every node_modules install triggers thousands of file syncs. SQLite databases lock up because two processes are fighting over them. Build output gets uploaded, deleted, re-uploaded — burning through your quota and your patience simultaneously. These tools were built for documents and photos. Developer projects break them.

Security is the other problem nobody talks about. Dropbox and iCloud store your files in plaintext on their servers. Your .env files, your API keys, your database dumps — all sitting on infrastructure you don't control. Checkpoint encrypts everything with age before it ever leaves your machine. Your cloud provider gets ciphertext. You keep the key.

And "restore to a point in time"? Cloud sync doesn't do that. You might get version history on individual files, but reassembling an entire project state from a specific moment is basically impossible. Checkpoint gives you complete, timestamped project snapshots. One command. Done.

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