The cloud backup industry has seen its share of tumultuousness. BitCasa, Dell DataSafe, Xdrive, and a dozen others have closed up shop. Mozy, Amazon, and Microsoft offered, but later canceled, their unlimited offerings. Recently, CrashPlan for Home customers were notified that their service was being end-of-lifed. Then today we’ve heard from Carbonite customers who are frustrated by this morning’s announcement of a price increase from Carbonite.
We believe that the fundamental goal of a cloud backup is having peace-of-mind: knowing your data — all of it — is safe. For over 10 years Backblaze has been providing that peace-of-mind by offering completely unlimited cloud backup to our customers. And we continue to be committed to that. Knowing that your cloud backup vendor is not going to disappear or fundamentally change their service is an essential element in achieving that peace-of-mind.
Committed to Unlimited Backup
When Mozy discontinued their unlimited backup on Jan 31, 2011, a lot of people asked, “Does this mean Backblaze will discontinue theirs as well?” At that time I wrote the blog post Backblaze is committed to unlimited backup. That was seven years ago. Since then we’ve continued to make Backblaze cloud backup better: dramatically speeding up backups and restores, offering the unique and very popular Restore Return Refund program, enabling direct access and sharing of any file in your backup, and more. We also introduced Backblaze Groups to enable businesses and families to manage backups — all at no additional cost.
How That’s Possible
I’d like to answer the question of “How have you been able to do this when others haven’t?
First, commitment. It’s not impossible to offer unlimited cloud backup, but it’s not easy. The Backblaze team has been committed to unlimited as a core tenet.
Second, we have pursued the technical, business, and cultural steps required to make it happen. We’ve designed our own servers, written our cloud storage software, run our own operations, and been continually focused on every place we could optimize a penny out of the cost of storage. We’ve built a culture at Backblaze that cares deeply about that.
Ensuring Peace-of-Mind
Price increases and plan changes happen in our industry, but Backblaze has consistently been the low price leader, and continues to stand by the foundational element of our service — truly unlimited backup storage. Carbonite just announced a price increase from $60 to $72/year, and while that’s not an astronomical increase, it’s important to keep in mind the service that they are providing at that rate. The basic Carbonite plan provides a service that doesn’t back up videos or external hard drives by default. We think that’s dangerous. No one wants to discover that their videos weren’t backed up after their computer dies, or have to worry about the safety and durability of their data. That is why we have continued to build on our foundation of unlimited, as well as making our service faster and more accessible. All of these serve the goal of ensuring peace-of-mind for our customers.
3 Months Free For You & A Friend
As part of our commitment to unlimited, refer your friends to receive three months of Backblaze service through March 15, 2018. When you Refer-a-Friend with your personal referral link, and they subscribe, both of you will receive three months of service added to your account. See promotion details on our Refer-a-Friend page.
Want A Reminder When Your Carbonite Subscription Runs Out?
If you’re considering switching from Carbonite, we’d love to be your new backup provider. Enter your email and the date you’d like to be reminded in the form below and you’ll get a friendly reminder email from us to start a new backup plan with Backblaze. Or, you could start a free trial today.
We think you’ll be glad you switched, and you’ll have a chance to experience some of that Backblaze peace-of-mind for your data.
Please Send Me a Reminder When I Need a New Backup Provider
