Backblaze vs Ottomatik

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.

Ottomatik is a small backup service that copies databases and files from your servers to cloud storage you control, on a schedule, and alerts you when something fails. It is aimed at PHP and Laravel developers, freelancers and small agencies who host applications on their own VPS servers and do not want to write and babysit backup scripts.

You connect a server, choose databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL and the directories to include, then set a schedule and a retention policy. Backups are stored in your own destination, such as an Amazon S3 bucket, so the data does not stay with the vendor. Notifications report failed or missed jobs, and restores can be started with one click. Pricing is a simple monthly subscription: Lite covers a few daily backup jobs, while Professional and Agency add many more jobs, more frequent backups and API access. There is no permanent free tier.

Ottomatik fits teams who want reliable off-site database backups without building the tooling themselves. The scope is narrow: there is no full server imaging, the vendor is small, integrations are limited and the interface is basic. The open-source spatie/laravel-backup package is free if you are comfortable maintaining it, SimpleBackups covers a broader range of databases and storage providers, and managed database services from your cloud provider include automated backups by default. Because you choose the storage region, it is also easier to keep backups where your data protection rules require.