Backblaze Business Backup vs. Carbonite Endpoint

Backblaze's "set it and forget it' interface is ideal for home users. In addition, the $50/year pricing is very competitive. Most business should find Backblaze as a very good backup solution, but in cases where a backup archive needs to be kept indefinitely, alternative solutions should be looked at (specifically CrashPlan - though it is significantly more expensive at $10/month).

Incentivized

It's really great if you have a small or medium-sized business like ours. You can choose the number of computers you want to back up and pay per computer. And since it's pretty easy to set up and deploy, you don't need a dedicated IT guy to do it for you. On the other hand, if most of your data is already in the cloud (like Google Docs or Google Sheets) and you don't have any other critical data then you can get by without it.

Incentivized

• Backblaze offers unlimited backups for a low-low cost per computer. Essentially, it's $5 for an all you can eat back-up buffet.
• The interface is simple - both on the computer side when you're configuring it. But more importantly, the online interface to search through your stored data is simple and efficient. Once you find what you're missing you can restore via downloading a zipped archive, requesting a USB drive, or you can have large data loaded onto a hard drive.
• It has never let me down - which in the world of remote back-up is amazing.

• Protected file restoration: Users love having confidence that their files are being backed up remotely with no action required on their part.
• Device tracking: While we've only enabled this feature for a small set of key personnel, this feature is useful in helping to determine if a given asset is lost, and works across mobile device platforms - unlike in-built solutions for individual users.
• Management console: The management console is clearly organized and easy to work with. Setting up groups and policies is logical and hierarchical, and makes managment tasks easy.

Incentivized

• Backblaze, once installed, resides in the app tray on the lower right of windows. It's just a small menu that takes you to your website to perform recovery operations. You also have to install their little download and unzipping app after you select files to restore. I would like to see a single backup and restore interface that runs locally and handles all those details in the background.
• If you have to reinstall your computer, they additionally setup and charge you for a new license, even though you have an account, you can't simply log in and reconnect to it. I didn't find this out until I saw the charge on my credit card. Now that I have the data I need downloaded, I have to call them and have the original license canceled for a pro-rated (partial) credit. I was told this is how system administrators preferred to minimize downtime. As a small business owner, I found it irritating.

Incentivized

• Carbonite indicates which files are being backed up by its dot system so that you can easily backup a single file that you don't see the dot on by selecting that option from the file's context menu. But there is no place for me to go to select entire folders or data sets so that it will back up everything in that folder, regardless of file type. Carbonite automatically backs up a majority of files types by default but does not take into consideration specialized file types like font files. These files are very important for a designer like myself and I can't afford to lose my fonts. But I also don't want to have to select the option to back them up one by one. I have over 1,000 of them! So there is definite room for improvement here.
• The cost is significantly more than what I paid for Mozy, almost double. For the first year, they are giving old Mozy users a deal comparable to Mozy's pricing, but after that my pricing will be almost double what I used to pay.

Incentivized

I found their alerting to be very poor. I missed several days of backups without knowledge of this, until I signed into the portal. I would get daily emails reporting backups were in progress or done, but nothing indicating that a backup had been stuck or paused for 3 days. For this reason alone, I did not renew.

Incentivized

The only bad thing about Backblaze B2 is that to use it to its full ability, you need a third party to truly get any use out of it and its cheap price because they don't have their own software. Now, on the desktop endpoint back-up for non-B2 storage, they have a fantastic client with unlimited back-ups that is only $6 per month.

Incentivized

I've never had to reach out to customer support, but their periodic emails letting me know if a device is missing are very nice for informing me when something is wrong. Based on how helpful their system is, I would imagine their customer support is top-notch.

Incentivized

Does what it needs to do quietly and efficiently in the background without interrupting the workflow. It offers instant automated back-ups without troubling the end user. As it is such an automated system, once it is up and running, there is little or no support needed from the service provider. From what I understand the support from Carbonite during the setup and implementation was absolutely fine.

Incentivized

I previously used CrashPlan before they pivoted their business model. CrashPlan was fine, and has feature parity with Backblaze. I was motivated to move from CrashPlan to Backblaze for 2 reasons - 1, as they pivoted, they increased their cost, which was frustrating, and 2, because they had always had a java-based client that wasn't as performant as a native client. Backblaze is so unobtrusive because of its highly performant client, and I couldn't be happier.

Incentivized

Carbonite Endpoint 360 definitely has a solid footing in the market. Barracuda Essentials is a more comprehensive solution offering many additional features and complementing services including archiving and email Antispam and encryption. Proofpoint is very similar to both products and has many features as well. Overall, the market is very competitive on the backup and retention of Office 365.

Incentivized

• The Backblaze service has provided a huge return on investment. We had a system fail, and it was very easy to have a drive with the backup data shipped to us for recovery.
• The service has been very cost effective, allowing us to keep costs down while maintaining a good system integrity.

Incentivized

• We have only started this process at this time and have not fully completed our transfer of data up to the cloud.
• As far as business objectives, we now have at least implemented a backup solution on a very vital server at an off-site facility that had not ever been backed up in two years and holds data for a major constitutional office in the county.

Incentivized