Backblaze is currently our favorite online backup service and also tops our list of unlimited online backup plans. While there are plenty of individual things to love about Backblaze, it’s what those things have in common that makes Backblaze so great: they’re all simple!
Backblaze Plans & Costs
Valid January 2023 Backblaze offers just one online backup plan. Most online backup services offer at least two plans, some offer dozens, but Backblaze’s strategy keeps the decision process really easy. Backblaze lets you backup an unlimited amount of data from a single computer with no restriction on individual file type or size. Here’s how their pricing works out: Month to Month: $7.00 /month; 1 Year: $70.00 ($5.83 /month); 2 Years: $130.00 ($5.42 /month). You’ll get a 15-day free trial when you sign up. As you can see, you can get substantial discounts on Backblaze’s service when you prepay for one or two years at signup. Save more with Backblaze’s Refer-A-Friend program, where you can get a month free per friend you get to sign up. Backblaze also offers a similar business-class online backup plan, which you can read about on their site. You can try Backblaze’s unlimited online backup free for 15 days before having to commit to a monthly or yearly plan. However, they do not offer a 100% free online backup plan like some other backup services do. See our List of Free Online Backup Plans if that’s something you might be interested in.
Backblaze Features
Backblaze, like all online backup services, backs up existing data automatically when it’s changed, as well as new data when added to a location you’ve chosen to back up. This means that every piece of important data you have is kept backed up to Backblaze’s servers without any action on your part, after the initial setup, of course. Past these very basic online backup features, you’ll get the following with your Backblaze unlimited backup plan: Backblaze keeps a comparison chart on their site if you’re interested in comparing it with other similar services.
Our Experience With Backblaze
I’m a huge fan of Backblaze. If you’re having a tough time deciding between Backblaze and another service, just stop where you’re at and pick Backblaze. You won’t be sorry. Why do I love Backblaze so much? It’s simple. Everything about Backblaze is easy, including pricing, software setup, configuration, file restoration, you name it. Read on for more about what I like about Backblaze, and a few things that I don’t:
What We Like
Backblaze isn’t messing around with their pricing. I find it quite amazing that, for just $110, you can get a 2-year insurance plan for every bit of the most valuable stuff you own—your information. Some online backup plans from other services run two or three times that much. I almost didn’t mention price first, considering that it’s Backblaze’s incredible simplicity that has won me over more than anything. There’s only one plan to choose, and it offers unlimited online backup space. One [really good] choice takes all the guesswork out of which size of a plan to choose. The software is quick to download and install and requires that you know next-to-nothing about where your data is at or what’s important. That’s not to say that there aren’t options if you need them, but they’re out of the way and not required. I love that. Another strong benefit of Backblaze that I can’t not mention is the option to upgrade your version history from 30 days to a year or even forever. Unlimited versioning means that Backblaze has the ability to keep old versions of files forever. This is a feature that some of our other top online backup picks have and is a great way to ensure that whether you upgrade, change, or delete a file, those past versions are still always available. Not only is Backblaze easy, I’ve also found it to be very fast. Backing up online can be slow, especially that initial chunk of data, but I was able to upload almost 300 GB in just three days, a feat that I haven’t been able to duplicate with any other online backup service. Plus, Backblaze won’t give up on you if you have a slow network. If uploading a file is taking days, or even weeks, it will keep working on it until the whole thing has finished. Something else worth mentioning about Backblaze’s backup capabilities is that you can feel safe using the service even if you have a monthly data cap, like what might be the case if you use a hotspot at home for some of your internet activity. In the preferences of the program is an option to stop backing up data if you’re connected to a specific Wi-Fi network, so if you switch over to your data-restricted network, no more files will back up until you switch back to a network that can support the bandwidth. I also like the restoring process Backblaze allows. You can restore any single file directly from your account so long as it’s less than 30 MB, else the restore process takes a little longer since it’s first put into a ZIP file and then you’re emailed the download link. When restoring pictures, you can preview the image in your browser before choosing to download it, which is a great feature so that you’re not restoring dozens or more pictures to find the one you need. True, the quality of our experience no doubt has a lot to do with whatever bandwidth was available to me in those days, but that’s been the case with our tests with other services as well and Backblaze “blazed” (pardon the pun) past them in this regard.
What We Don’t Like
Something I should mention is that some users have had bad experiences with Backblaze because of a not-so-apparent feature that maybe should be a lot more obvious: Backblaze doesn’t function as a permanent archive of all of your data, but instead as a mirror. In other words, if you delete files on your computer, or the drive fails and you’re connected to Backblaze’s website, Backblaze will see that those files are gone and will remove them from your online account, too. Granted, signing up for the forever version history option would eliminate any issues with this, but it still poses a problem for anyone using one of the limited version history options.
Final Thoughts on Backblaze
For what it’s worth, I use Backblaze for online backup at home. No, they didn’t pay me to say that or give me the service for free. I highly recommend that you choose Backblaze for your needs at home, too. It’s fast, easy to use, and is easy to forget about. And that’s a good thing! Not convinced that Backblaze is the best thing since sliced bread? Check out our review of Carbonite, the other cloud backup provider near the top of our lists.
