I have stopped recommending the battery backups, as I have seen too many bad batteries or just too long of a period where water kept flowing in to basements.
Since we have mostly all public water around here, I tell them to call the plumber and have a water powered pump installed. If I don't trust a product, I'm not going to install it. The water pumps are the most trustworthy/surefire sump pump out there (so long as the city water pressure is correct).
My backup sump pump which I wouldn't mind just being the normal one, is a Liberty SJ10. It out pumps my 120v sump, works when there is no power (no need to worry about the generator), and if I lose public water I've got bigger problems to worry about than my basement flooding.