Backblaze vs Carbonite

Backblaze is a publicly traded storage company from San Mateo, California, founded in 2007, that runs its own data centers and sells two products. Computer Backup continuously backs up an entire Mac or Windows PC, including attached external drives, for a flat monthly price with no data cap. B2 Cloud Storage is S3-compatible object storage priced per terabyte, positioned as a much cheaper alternative to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage.

Computer Backup offers version history, restores through the web and the app, and the option to have data shipped on a USB drive. B2 includes free egress up to three times the data stored each month, free transfer through partners such as Cloudflare, object lock for immutable, ransomware-resistant backups, and integrations with tools like Veeam, Synology, QNAP, rclone and media asset managers. The first 10 GB of B2 storage is free, and billing beyond that is simple and predictable.

Backblaze suits individuals and creatives who want set-and-forget workstation backup, and developers or IT teams storing backups, media archives and app uploads cheaply. It is not a sync or collaboration tool like Dropbox, it offers far fewer regions and services than AWS, and very large Computer Backup restores can be slow. Against Wasabi it competes on egress terms and ecosystem, and against IDrive on simplicity. The company is also known for publishing quarterly hard drive reliability statistics from its own fleet.

Carbonite is a cloud backup service for individual computers, small business PCs and servers. It was founded in Boston in 2005, bought the security company Webroot in 2019 and was itself acquired by the Canadian software group OpenText in late 2019 for about $1.42 billion. Its core job: install an agent, let it continuously copy your files to encrypted cloud storage, and restore them after a crash, theft or ransomware attack.

Personal plans (Basic, Plus, Prime) cover one computer with unlimited cloud storage; Plus and Prime add one external hard drive and automatic video backup, and Prime adds courier recovery options. Business plans are priced per account rather than per device: Core covers up to 25 computers, external drives and NAS with 250 GB, while Power and Ultimate add server backup, 500 GB, bare metal image restore and application-aware backup. All plans are billed annually; extra business storage costs $99 per 100 GB.

Carbonite fits households and small offices that want backup to run without thinking about it. It is weaker for power users: storage caps on business plans are low for the price, there is no monthly billing, and restores of large data sets are slow over the internet. Backblaze offers simpler unlimited personal backup, IDrive covers many devices on one plan for less, and Acronis bundles backup with stronger endpoint security.

Buying tip: the prices on the plans page are first-year discounts (up to 35% off list), and renewals revert to the higher list price, so compare the renewal cost, not the promo, against Backblaze and IDrive.