Tink vs Duplicity
Duplicity runs full/incr chains, GPG volumes, and backends. That is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux host, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Duplicity runs the chain. Tink answers “why is this VPS sick?”
Accidental sysadmins land on Duplicity because an encrypted backup chain looks cheaper than a NAS. Then the host volume fills, nginx dies, and collection-status still looks healthy — no volume match for host fill. A filling /var is a Tink warning; it is not a Duplicity job unless you scraped cron mail and watched it.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep using Duplicity if you already run backup chains. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Duplicity |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours — duplicity full, PASSPHRASE, GPG keys, backends, then a host that still has no mechanic after the last incr prints Backup Statistics |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | Encrypted backup chains, volN.difftar.gpg volumes, and backends. Disk fill, nginx, Postgres, and certs stay your problem until you SSH past duplicity collection-status |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | GPL and free. You still pay the person who owns the VPS after the last chain stays complete |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | A quiet cron at 2am, a GPG chain that is not host fill, and a second tool to tell you the box is sick while collection-status still looks healthy |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | Chains, volumes, and backends. Duplicity does not watch a quiet cert or host auth.log after the last incr finished |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | PASSPHRASE, --full-if-older-than, --volsize, file:// vs s3://, Duply conf, and which cron stderr actually pages you |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | You read Backup Statistics, then SSH into the host to change the Linux box Duplicity already sits on |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | duplicity cleanup and duplicity restore — Duplicity cannot free host disk, rotate a cert, or stop SSH brute-force unless you wrote that job |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | Not a Duplicity job — cron mail plus a separate monitoring tool have to fire |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Not a Duplicity job — a complete chain does not forecast a quiet host filling up |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Never — Duplicity does not read host auth.log, journald, or firewall state after the last backup finished |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Silence if the cron dies after the last incr — unless you built a separate uptime check |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | None — Duplicity has no customer-facing status page for the Linux host |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | None — a collection-status recap is not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Not included — wire failed duplicity cron into PagerDuty or another incident tool |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | CLI and SSH. No mechanic you text when /var filled and the last chain still printed Backup Statistics |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Steep — full vs incr, GPG keys, volume chains, Duply, backends, and which failure is Duplicity vs the running host |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Teams that already run Duplicity for encrypted backup chains, not a sick-VPS mechanic |
When Duplicity is the right choice
Keep using Duplicity when you already want that exact job:
- Encrypted chains with GPG volumes — you need duplicity incr, PASSPHRASE, and volN.difftar.gpg backends, not a mechanic.
- An existing backup stack — collection-status, Duply, and --full-if-older-than matter more than guest nginx, certs, and SSH on a quiet VPS.
- An existing lab or nested setup — the cron already starts, the backend already ships, and someone owns the Duplicity box.
- Hosts that only page on chain or backend death — you already run cron mail, not a sick-box SSH loop.
The real cost of “just watch Backup Statistics”
Duplicity runs chains and backends. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
- A healthy chain still means you SSH into the host and change the box by hand when it gets sick later
- Host fill, nginx, certs, and SSH brute-force never appear unless a separate tool scraped those signals and a rule fired
- A filling /var is a Tink disk warning on every scan — Duplicity will stay quiet until the next incr fails
- A single VPS with a dead agent still needs a mechanic, not another Backup Statistics line
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than the engineer who keeps failed-cron notifications alive after a free Duplicity install, and every scan includes a diagnosis a quiet collection-status will not type.
No duplicity homework. No silent host. One command install.
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