Backblaze Review

Backblaze has more name recognition than any other service in the cloud backup business, and if you’ve listened to a podcast in the last few years, chances are you’ve heard the name many times over. Although Backblaze features a streamlined service with unlimited storage, the question remains, does it live up to the hype? Keep reading this Backblaze review to find out.

Backblaze clearly prioritizes simplifying the backup process over packing its service full of features and settings for you to manually control. 

Although this does result in a service that’s easy to set up and get going, it also leaves quite a bit to be desired in terms of features and control. On top of this, more advanced features, like image-based backups and mobile backup, are entirely absent.

In this review, we’ll give you a detailed rundown of what Backblaze does well and where it falls short. If a simple setup, unlimited storage and reasonable prices are important criteria for you, then keep reading. 

However, if you’re the kind of person who likes to fiddle with settings and have a large degree of control over your software, then this probably isn’t the backup solution for you. In that case, head over to our list of the best online backup services for a look at some alternatives.

Backblaze Video Review

Backblaze Review 2020: Is It the Best Backup Service?

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for Backblaze

Features

As mentioned in our introduction, Backblaze does not place a heavy emphasis on features. Opting instead for an automated and streamlined experience, Backblaze focuses on backing up your computer with minimal effort required on your part. This might be attractive to some users, but it does leave the client feeling remarkably sparse.

Thus, things like image-based, server and hybrid backups are all missing, and you can’t backup mobile devices, either. If these things are important to you, check out our IDrive review, as all these features are included with that service.

When it comes to versioning — that is, the retention of deleted data or previous versions of files — Backblaze is similarly basic, only keeping an archive of files for a maximum of 30 days. This is in stark contrast to SpiderOak ONE, for example (read our SpiderOak review), which lets you recover deleted and altered files with no expiration date.

All that said, there are some Backblaze features worth mentioning. First up is the sharing functionality, which allows you to easily create a link that you can then share in any way you choose. This puts it ahead of IDrive in this regard, as its only option is for you to email the link.

Another nifty inclusion is the ability to inherit backup states from previous computers. If you’ve switched devices, this means you can backup your new computer without Backblaze wasting time and resources reuploading files you’ve already backed up.

Finally, and somewhat strangely, Backblaze’s web client gives you the option of locating your computer in the event of loss or theft. This is an unusual feature for an online backup service, but it’s welcome nonetheless. 

In order to use the feature, you need to have the web client’s “mapping” setting turned on and hope that whoever has your device connects to the internet without first doing a complete wipe of your drives.

If you’re handling large files you don’t have to worry about any file size limitations because there aren’t any. This is great for video producers that handle a lot of 4K video files and frequently deal with large backups. 

Backblaze Business Features

Backblaze for business is pretty much the exact same product as the one intended for personal use, with a couple of additional features packed in. The first is the ability to create multiple users under the same main account. These users can be organized into groups and have their access rights and settings controlled by an admin.

However, you still have to purchase an additional license for each user. The business version also opens up for server and NAS backups, but the storage itself is provided by Backblaze B2, which means you don’t get to put these backups on your unlimited storage.

Backblaze Features Overview

Pricing

Backblaze’s pricing structure is as simple as it gets, and the prices are reasonable when compared to other online backup services. 

There’s only one plan to choose from — the personal unlimited plan — which provides unlimited storage for $6 per month. You can save some money by signing up for a full year or two years, in which case the service will run you $60 per year or $110 for two.

Although the plan offers unlimited backup, the same isn’t true for devices. Each plan can only backup one computer, so if you have a lot of devices you’d like to secure, you might be better served with a different backup provider rather than purchasing multiple Backblaze licenses.

That said, if all you need is a single device, then the cost of Backblaze is reasonable, with only Carbonite being able to match it while still providing unlimited storage. If you’d like to see how they stack up against each other, check out our Backblaze vs. Carbonite comparison.

Unlimited Personal Unlimited GB Storage	1-month plan $ 6.00/ month 1-year plan $ 5.00/ month $60.00 billed every year Save 17 % 2-year plan $ 4.58/ month $110.00 billed every 2 years Save 24 %

Because you can pay per month, you can easily test out Backblaze without committing too much money. Furthermore, the company also offers a 15-day free trial, if you’re on the fence.

Ease of Use

The upshot to Backblaze’s lack of features is that it’s incredibly easy to set up and get going, as long as you’re happy to let the client pick what gets backed up. If all you need is a basic backup of your device, then using Backblaze is a breeze.

Although the UI certainly won’t be winning any awards for aesthetics, it’s functional and simple, resulting in a clean user experience without much room for confusion. 

Most of the action happens in the main panel of the client. This is where you can see the progress of your backup as well as the button for initiating one. Everything else is located in the settings menu, which is split into eight tabs: settings, performance, schedule, exclusions, security, files scheduled for backup, reports and issues.

In the “settings” tab, you can set up warnings when you haven’t backed up for a certain amount of time, set a temporary data drive — which is where Backblaze stores the files it’s preparing to transfer — as well as set up backup inheritance and decide what hard drives you want to backup.

The “performance” tab gives you an estimate of how quickly you can upload files, as well as the options for throttling and multithreading. We didn’t find these estimates to be very useful, as they seemed to fluctuate constantly and rarely reflected our actual connection speed or upload rate.

In “schedule” you have a single dropdown that lets you choose between continuous, scheduled (once per day) and manual backup.

The “exclusions” tab is probably the one you’ll end up using the most, as it’s here that you can exercise some control over what files backup to cloud. 

Besides choosing folders to exempt — which is a bit of a hassle because you can only pick one at a time — you can also type in the file extension names of file types you wish to ignore. System files and certain large file types are entered here by default.

The “security” tab is fairly barebones, with its only purpose being to provide you with some information about Backblaze’s security and a button for creating your private key.

The next tab over is called “files scheduled for backup” and includes exactly what it says. This is simply a text list of new or altered files that will be backed up on the next run. Unfortunately, you can’t click the files in the list to be taken to their location, which seems like an obvious feature to include.

The final two tabs, “reports” and “issues,” aren’t too interesting. Although “reports” sounds like it might contain a log of sorts, all it does is tell you how your backed up files break down in terms of categories, such as videos or documents. Meanwhile, the “issues” tab is where errors are reported.

The biggest issue is the lack of information Backblaze gives you about your backup. Although you can see what file is currently being uploaded, you’re not told the speed of your upload, how far along the current file is or an estimated time of completion. 

If you’re the kind of person who likes to know exactly what’s happening at any given time, then using Backblaze can be somewhat frustrating.

By default, Backblaze scans your hard drives when the computer boots up. To force a new scan without rebooting, you have to hold down the “alt” key and click the “restore options…” button. 

This isn’t exactly intuitive, and although we appreciate that Backblaze is designed to be lightweight — which precludes continuously scanning your drives — a dedicated button for a manual scan wouldn’t be out of place.

Backblaze Web Client and Mobile App

The Backblaze online web client is quite basic. After logging in to your account, you’re given an overview of your devices and files, as well as a menu for restoring your backup. You can also access a list of your previous restore actions and the files that you’ve shared with others.

This is also where you can adjust your account settings, such as your contact information and two-factor authentication. Finally, the web client also gives you access to the “find my computer” feature, which we covered earlier on in this article.

The Backblaze mobile app is similarly basic. It’s available for both Android and iPhone, and it essentially only exists to provide mobile access to your backed up data. You can look through your backed up devices and download files, but that’s pretty much it.

File Backup & Restoration

Although it’s light on more advanced features, if you’re just looking for a straightforward backup, Backblaze gets the job done. Keeping in line with the general philosophy of the company, you’re not given too much control over the process, other than setting up exclusions and changing the options for throttling and multithreading.

As mentioned in the “ease of use” section above, Backblaze automatically chooses what files on your computer need to be backed up. By default, this is basically everything barring system files and certain file types that are usually very large, such as ISOs.

If you do want to exercise some control over the backup process, doing so is fairly tedious. Excluding file types is simple enough — simply type the file extension in the text box located in the “exclusions” tab of the settings — but excluding folders is more of a pain. You can do so in the same tab, but the client only allows you to choose one folder at a time.

For your backup plan, you can choose between continuous, scheduled or manual backup. The scheduled backup can only be set to perform once a day, which is a bit limited. To perform a manual backup, you simply need to click the “backup now” button on the main page of the client.

By default, Backblaze will automatically handle throttling and threading. If you don’t like this, you have the option of manually setting how many threads the application should use for the upload, and also whether or not the speed should be throttled on slow connections to save bandwidth for other software and devices. 

Backups are performed using a block-level algorithm, which means you won’t waste time or resources reuploading entire files, but rather just the parts that have changed.

Although you can backup external drives, you need to do so at least once every 30 days to avoid Backblaze deleting the files. 

To avoid this happening accidentally, Backblaze sends you a warning after 14, 21 and 28 days to remind you to reconnect the drive and run a backup. In a similar vein, you can also get Backblaze to notify you when seven days have passed without a backup.

Other forms of backup — including NAS drives, mobile devices and servers — are not included in Backblaze, and there’s no way to perform a hybrid backup, which is a mix between backing up your data locally and on the cloud. 

Backblaze Drive Cloning

You also can’t create a clone of your drive, which would allow you to replicate your system on a new device. If these features are important to you, we recommend checking out IDrive, as it includes everything we just listed and more (read our IDrive vs Backblaze comparison).

Instead of restoring through the desktop client, Backblaze requires you to log in to its online platform in order to retrieve your data. This presents some serious security and privacy implications, which we will cover later on in this article, and it also feels a bit clunky.

If downloading your data directly through the browser doesn’t appeal to you, you can also install the “Backblaze downloader,” which is a standalone application that lets you download the restored files you prepared in the web client.

The default restore option is to download a zipped folder containing your data. If your backup is large, you can also opt to have it physically shipped to you. This can take the form of either a USB flash drive — if your backup doesn’t exceed 256GB — or an external hard drive with a capacity of up to 8TB.

However, both of these options carry additional charges, with the flash drive costing $99 per restore and the external hard drive coming in at $189.

Speed

Speed is an incredibly important criterion when selecting a cloud backup service, especially when uploading a large amount of data, which is common, at least for the initial backup.

To test its speed, we uploaded a 3.61GB folder over a 20Mbps download and 10Mbps upload connection. 

In theory, if the connection was perfectly stable and there was little to no other traffic to Backblaze’s servers, then that would mean our download would take about half an hour, and the upload roughly an hour. Realistically, we’d like to see them done within one and a half and three hours, respectively. As always, we ran both the upload and download twice, and averaged the results.

As you can see, the download time pretty much matched our expectations, but sadly the upload to cloud storage took longer than we hoped. For the initial backup, we let Backblaze handle the throttling and multithreading, while for the second attempt we manually set it to maximum performance and four threads, which seemed to help.

Note that this test was performed in Asia, about as far away as you can get from the U.S. data center we were using. When performing a cloud backup from North America or Europe, you should get better results. If you’re curious what your connection speed would be, you can use Backblaze’s test tool to figure it out.

Security

Backblaze features pretty good security, both in terms of its network and physical data centers. However, encryption is not as good as it could be, especially considering its implementation of private keys is seriously flawed.

When backing up your data with Backblaze, your files are secured using AES 128-bit encryption both at-rest and in-transit. When your files are being transferred to the cloud, SSL is used to ensure it remains private. 

Although 256-bit encryption would be ideal, AES 128-bit should still be sufficient for the vast majority of users. If you want to learn more about the difference, check out our description of encryption.

Private encryption is not enabled by default, requiring users to set this up manually. Regardless, there is a fundamental flaw — at least from a security standpoint — in how Backblaze implements it. The only way you can restore your files is via the web client. This means you have to provide Backblaze with your private encryption key in order to recover your data.

Although Backblaze claims that the key is flushed from its systems the moment it has been used, this still leaves the door wide open for things like man-in-the-middle attacks if your network or Backblaze’s servers have been compromised.

Besides this significant caveat, Backblaze’s security is top-notch. You can enable two-factor authentication to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to access your account. Additionally, the physical data centers themselves are secured against unauthorized access using biometric security and against natural disasters, such as fire or earthquakes.

Privacy

Much like with security, Backblaze offers decent privacy hampered by its flawed implementation of private encryption, as well as the location of its data centers.

As mentioned in the previous section, the way Backblaze handles its restore process means that you are required to give up your private key if you want to recover your data. 

We won’t waste your time by repeating why this can have disastrous results, but suffice it to say that it’s just as damaging to privacy as it is to security. It also means Backblaze is not a zero-knowledge service.

Furthermore, most of Backblaze’s data centers are located in the U.S., a country infamous for its poor online privacy laws and willingness to circumvent what protections there are in the form of programs like PRISM or laws like the Patriot Act. 

Furthermore, the existence of the Five Eyes spy network means that if U.S. authorities intercept your data, it could be shared with other countries, as well.

That said, you do have the option of tying your account to Backblaze’s data center in Amsterdam. However, this isn’t exactly ideal, either, given that the Netherlands is the most wiretapped country in Europe (which you can read more about in our guide to the best VPN for the Netherlands). 

The choice to change your region is incredibly easy to miss, as it’s an optional field at the very bottom corner of the signup form when you first create your account. If you don’t pick a region, it will default to the U.S. west coast, and there’s no way of changing this later without creating a new account.

Backblaze Privacy Policy

All that said, Backblaze does seem to genuinely care about the privacy of its users. The privacy policy is clear and concise, and it states that Backblaze will never share or sell the metadata it collects to anyone unless it’s a trusted partner involved in providing the service or to comply with a law or regulation. 

These caveats are standard across the cloud storage and online backup industries, so Backblaze is no outlier in this regard. When it comes to that metadata, it consists of your email address and password, as well as your billing information. 

Certain details about your device, such as your operating system and usage statistics, are also collected, but these are stripped of personal identifiers. This data is used internally for development and analysis, which again is pretty standard across the cloud backup industry.

As for your actual files stored on Backblaze’s servers, these are entirely confidential, and the terms and conditions state quite definitively that they will only be accessed with your consent and to provide the core functionality of the service. 

That said, Backblaze does reserve the right to remove your files for any reason, though it would probably only do so to remove illegal materials.

Backblaze is GDPR compliant and adheres to the EU/Swiss Privacy Shield for international data transfers, but it is not HIPAA compliant. Thus, if you need to backup any confidential medical records, you’ll need to use a different service, such as IDrive or SpiderOak ONE.

Support

Backblaze provides several options to help you solve any problems you have with the service. With a helpful and responsive customer support department, as well as extensive self-help resources, there’s not much we can complain about in this category.

Although there is no phone support, you can contact Backblaze for assistance by either submitting an email request or using the live chat function. The chat is open from Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. PST. 

To test the responsiveness of its support, we sent an email request and received a response within a day, which is really as much as you could ask for, as there’s a chat option if you require more immediate support.

The Backblaze FAQ page is also excellent, providing you with solutions to a whole host of the most common issues with the service, all neatly organized into categories that are searchable.

The Verdict

That concludes our review of Backblaze. Without a doubt, it’s a strong cloud backup contender, although Backblaze sacrifices features for a more streamlined experience. This makes it an excellent choice for those who simply want to use Backblaze to run regular backups on their system without having to worry too much about the details.

However, its focus on providing a simple experience hurts Backblaze in the way of features, as many common backup options are not included. 

Similarly, Backblaze can be frustrating at times due to the low level of control over the backup process and how little information you’re given about its progress. If these things bother you, make sure to find an alternative.

What did you think of our Backblaze review? Do you agree that it’s a good online backup service for those who are looking for a simple and streamlined yet unlimited backup plan? Or do you prefer a service that offers more control, backup for more than one computer and better private encryption? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

Backblaze FAQ

• Is Backblaze Any Good?

  If you’re looking for a streamlined backup experience and unlimited cloud storage, then yes. If you’d rather have more manual control over your backup, Backblaze is not ideal.

• Is Backblaze Really Unlimited?

  Yes, Backblaze offers unlimited storage space. However, you can only backup one device per license.

• How Long Does Backblaze Keep My Files

  Files that have been deleted or previous versions of files that have been changed are archived by Backblaze for 30 days.

• How Secure Is Backblaze?

  Backblaze features decent security, but with a major caveat. Because file recovery requires you to share your encryption key with the company, it cannot truly be said to have private encryption.