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Backblaze Business Backup

Score8.5 out of 10

62 Reviews and Ratings

What is Backblaze Business Backup?

Backblaze headquartered in San Mateo, California offers continuous, automatic cloud backup for personal and business use. Backblaze Business Backup consists of cloud solutions to safeguard systems and files (e.g Veeam, Servers, NAS, Workstations).

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Universal recovery

    Universal recovery is the ability to restore backups to any machine regardless of the platform

    Category average: 8.7

  • Backup to the cloud

    Ability to store and back up data to the cloud

    Category average: 9.2

  • Platform support

    Product supports multiple operating systems and applications

    Category average: 9.2

Areas for Improvement

  • Instant recovery

    Instant recovery is the ability to restore operations very rapidly

    Category average: 8.6

  • Operational reporting and analytics

    The product provides insights and analytics to help keep data secure

    Category average: 8.9

  • Management dashboard

    Web-based dashboard allowing configuration and monitoring of all backups

    Category average: 8.9

Solid company solid product set it forget it and hope you never need it

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We primarily use Backblaze Business Backup, both to host static web resources, and off-site copies of our internal backup software.

We also have a couple of users that are running Backblaze's "Desktop" backup software, for those users that do not store all of their data on the server (for reasons).

Pros

  • Bulk data storage
  • Ease of setup / daily management

Cons

  • Managing desktop licenses can be a bit odd
  • Group management via the web interface has a learning curve
  • Snapshots can be slow to create

Return on Investment

  • Largely neutral ROI -- Gotta have it, don't want to pay a ton for it, and hope to never use it.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Carbonite Endpoint

Other Software Used

MDaemon Email Server, MailStore by OpenText, restic

Backblaze Business Backup review

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Backblaze Business Backup all staff computers as well as to backup our servers.

Pros

  • Ease of setup
  • Speed of recovering data

Return on Investment

  • recovery of multiple systems

Usability

Alternatives Considered

CrashPlan

Other Software Used

Addigy, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Entra ID Protection, Proxmox VE

Backblaze is an affordable and powerful cloud backup provider

Pros

  • Backblaze utilizes a native app across platforms vs. a javascript app you find with other backup services (CrashPlan being one of them). Native apps function better and have a better user interface than comparable javascript apps.
  • Backblaze has an intuitive interface that automatically backs everything up from your computer but allows you to easily exclude items you don't want or need to backup (applications, system files, etc.).
  • Backblaze has a built-in bandwidth cap and monitor allowing you to limit how much data is backed up on a daily basis to prevent going over ISP data caps or utilizing all of your upload bandwidth.

Cons

  • The main downside of Backblaze is that it only keeps deleted items for 30 days. In other words, if you delete an item off of your computer, it will stay in your Backblaze archive for 30 days before it is removed from the archive. In general practice, this isn't an issue, but there are times being able to go back further in time can be very useful - a feature that CrashPlan has (keeps ALL backed up files indefinitely).
  • While the user interface is easy to use, it is limited in comparison to other solutions. In particular, CrashPlan provides more control over how many resources the computer should use to back up - both while a user is present and while a user is away. Backblaze only allows for bandwidth throttling.
  • Backblaze does not offer a seeded backup - wherein if you have a large number of files to backup, you can send Backblaze a hard drive with those files to initially seed the backup so not all files will have to be uploaded prior to being backed up.
  • Backblaze cannot back up network shares - though this is by design. Network devices such as Synology NAS servers must utilize Backblaze's B2 service which can end up being very expensive.

Return on Investment

  • Online backups provide greater peace of mind more than anything else. While local backups are adequate, an offsite backup is an absolute necessity for mission-critical files. It is difficult to put a price on this, but Backblaze's $50/year/computer is certainly a good one.
  • From a purely monetary standpoint, having a rotating offsite back up using external hard drives would be cheaper in the long run - but far more cumbersome and potentially less effective if backups are not rotated on a regular basis.
  • Because Backblaze does not allow for the backup of network shares, competitors that may be more expensive per computer may actually be less expensive in the long run. For example, CrashPlan, at $10/month/computer is $70 more expensive/year than Backblaze - but a central NAS server can be set to backup multiple computers, and the NAS server can have a network share attached to a dedicated desktop that can be backed up. In other words, CrashPlan can be utilized to backup multiple computers via a single computer - and thus can be significantly less expensive is certain scenarios.

Alternatives Considered

Code42 (formerly CrashPlan)

Other Software Used

Code42 (formerly CrashPlan), Altaro Hyper-V Backup, Parallels Desktop

Want easy backup? Use BackBlaze now!

Pros

  • Price is unbeatable
  • Runs constantly in the background.
  • 30 day retention, but can go longer.
  • Can send a hard drive if data needs to be recovered.

Cons

  • There should be better notification of issues.
  • Mass deployment, via MDM needs to be built better.

Most Important Features

  • Price
  • Ease of functionality
  • Easy restorability

Return on Investment

  • No reseller program

Alternatives Considered

Code42 (formerly CrashPlan) and Wasabi Object Storage

Other Software Used

Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM), Zendesk Support Suite, Addigy, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Apple Remote Desktop

Backblaze as Our Trusted Backup Services

Pros

  • Reasonable Price
  • Reliable Service
  • Well-enough Feature

Cons

  • Documentation
  • Technical Support
  • More Package Option

Most Important Features

  • S3 Compatible
  • Datas Backup
  • High Reliability

Return on Investment

  • Cost Efficient
  • High Reliability
  • Safe Backup

Alternatives Considered

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS)

Other Software Used

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS), Linode