Backblaze vs IDrive

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.

IDrive is a cloud backup service from IDrive Inc., a privately held company in Calabasas, California, whose roots go back to Pro Softnet Corporation, founded by Raghu Kulkarni in the 1990s. Its core job is backing up many computers, phones and servers into one encrypted account instead of paying per machine. The company says it serves more than 4 million customers.

Backups are incremental and continuous, keep up to 30 previous versions per file, and add snapshots for point-in-time recovery against ransomware. An optional private key keeps 256-bit AES encrypted data unreadable to IDrive. One account covers Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, with entire-machine backup, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup. IDrive Basic is free with 10 GB; Personal plans serve one user with unlimited devices from 5 TB, Team plans bundle users and storage, Business adds servers, NAS, Exchange and SQL, and IDrive e2 is separate S3-compatible object storage.

IDrive fits households, freelancers and small businesses with several devices who want one inexpensive account. The desktop app is cluttered, restores of very large sets can be slow, and first-year promo prices rise on renewal. Backblaze is simpler with unlimited backup for one computer, Duplicati is a free open-source client that writes to storage you choose, and Sync.com or pCloud are better for file sync and sharing than for backup.

Pricing tip: new sign-ups see discounted first-year prices, such as $6.99 a month for Personal 5 TB billed yearly against a regular $9.99, and standard rates apply from year two.