Carbonite vs Duplicati

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.

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup client for Windows, macOS and Linux, started by developer Kenneth Skovhede and maintained with a community and, more recently, a company that sells central management. It creates encrypted, compressed and deduplicated backups and uploads them to almost any storage target, so you can keep an offsite copy without trusting the storage provider with readable data.

Backups are encrypted with AES-256 before upload, split into blocks and stored incrementally, so only changed data is sent after the first run. Supported destinations include S3-compatible storage, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SFTP, WebDAV, local disks and network shares. Scheduling, versioned retention rules and a browser-based interface come in the free client, and the paid Duplicati Console adds centralized monitoring and management across many machines.

It suits home users, homelab owners and small offices that want encrypted cloud backups for the cost of storage only. It requires technical comfort: restoring large backup sets can be slow, the local database occasionally needs repair, and support is community-based unless you pay. Restic and Kopia are faster command-line alternatives, Arq is a polished paid option for Mac and Windows, and Backblaze Personal Backup is simpler for people who just want unlimited backup of one computer. Whatever you choose, test restores regularly.