Carbonite vs Spanning Backup

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.

Spanning Backup is a cloud-to-cloud backup service for Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. The company started in Austin, Texas, and is now part of Kaseya, which sells it alongside its other backup products for IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs).

Spanning takes automated daily backups, with on-demand backups available, of Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts and Shared Drives; of Exchange Online mail, OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365; and of Salesforce records, metadata and attachments. Point-in-time restore brings back individual files, emails or records, or whole accounts, to their original location, and end users can restore their own items without opening a support ticket. Audit logs, status reports and encryption help with compliance and ransomware recovery. Pricing is per user, typically bought through resellers and MSPs, with separate products for each platform.

Spanning fits IT teams and MSPs that want proven, low-maintenance protection for the main productivity suites. It is limited to these three platforms, the interface feels dated and restore speed varies with data volume. Native retention and version history in Google and Microsoft cover simple cases for small teams but are not true backups, since they do not protect against every deletion or sync error. Alternatives include Backupify (also owned by Kaseya through Datto), Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, AvePoint and Afi, while Own, now part of Salesforce, specializes in Salesforce data.