Carbonite vs Ottomatik

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.

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.