Backblaze vs. Carbonite

Backblaze and Carbonite are two of the easiest online backup services you can use at the moment and are two of our more popular services that we have reviewed. In many ways the services are similar but they are very different in how they perform their backups.

Backblaze takes the approach to backup everything on your computer with the exception of your operating system, applications, and temporary files. Unless otherwise excluded Backblaze will back it up. A default Backblaze install will protect the majority or peoples files on their computer.

Carbonite offers a more traditional folder and selection process but it will not backup your computer system files such as .EXE and .DLL files, temporary files ,operating system files, files in hidden system folders, files over 4gb in size and video files. You can however manually select files over 4gb and video files. This can take a little longer to setup and configure but with a little tweaking will protect the majority of peoples files.

	Backblaze	Carbonite
Founded	2007	2005
Price Month Year 2 Year 3 Year	$5.00 / Month $50.00 / Year $95.00 / Two Years NA	NA $59.99 / Year $109.99 / Two Years $149.99 / Three Years
Supported Platforms	Windows & Mac	Windows & Mac
Free Trial	Yes	Yes
Storage Size	Unlimited	Unlimited
File Sharing	No	No
Lock File Support	No	Yes
Local Backup	No	Yes HomePlus and HomePremier plans support local backup.
External Hard Drive	Yes	Yes HomePlus and HomePremier plans support external hard drives.
Network Drives	No	No
Web Access / Restore	Yes	Yes
Locate Computer Feature	Yes	No
Encryption	Yes	Yes
Internet Transmission with SSL	Yes	Yes
Private Encryption keys	Yes	Yes (Windows Only)
Support	Email	Email, Chat, Phone
Restore	Client, Web, USB Flash Drive, USB HD	Client, Web, USB HD (HomePremier account only)
Mobile Access	No	Yes (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry)
File Size Limit	Unlimited	4GB (By default, larger files can be manually selected)
Bandwidth Throttling	No	Yes
Backup Scheduling	Yes	Yes
Backup Continuously	Yes	Yes
File Versioning	30 Days of Revisions	12 Versions
File Archiving	30 Days	30 Days

If there is anything else you would like added to the Backblaze versus Carbonite comparison table please leave a comment.

Whether your choose Backblaze or Carbonite to backup your files both services do a good job of keeping your files safe in the event your computer hard drive dies, your computer is stolen or some other disaster happens.

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Backblaze, Carbonite

Cloud Storage Buzz Team

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compare, Comparison

Comments

8 responses to “Backblaze vs. Carbonite”

Richard Dallow

I just redid my harddrive and figured I had backblaze installed so it would be easy to restore my files. Not so. After spending the better part of the weekend downloading files both in under 20gb chunks and in one 60+gb chunk, I discovered to my horror that upon restoration, the files are empty! -0- bytes yet the filesnames are intact. I wrote to tech support but have not heard back from them yet. My big issue is that they REALLY need to have a telephone number to contact them when a situation like this occurs. I’m out of business until they figure out what is going on.
Reply
1. Cloud Storage Buzz Team
  
  Richard,
  I am sorry to hear about your problems restoring from Backblaze. This is certainly a good reminder that you should always do a couple of things before you wipe your hard drive. One is have a local backup, it is always much easier to copy all your files back from a local source, the second is to test your restores before you need them. That way you might have been able to spot the problem with your files on Backblaze before you needed them. Certainly it is not good that Backblaze has had problems restoring your files and it would be nice if they had phone support to help in cases like this.
  Reply
ezas

The above information is out of date. Backblaze does support bandwidth throttling. Version 2.x supports both automatic and manual throttling settings.
Reply
1. John Tucker
  
  Yes you are correct, except the type of bandwidth throttling that the table refers to is where the service throttles the amount of bandwidth the client can use. In this case Carbonite throttles a client depending on how much data they have backed up, while Backblaze does not have a bandwidth throttle and you can use as much of the bandwidth as you can.
  Reply
Tyler

Great, much appreciated!!
Reply
Tyler

Can you add Crashplan to this comparison table? Or do a Crashplan vs Backblaze table comparison?
Thanks!
Reply
1. John Tucker
  
  I have one in the works actually just have not finished it yet. Compare some of them on the main comparison page: https://cloudstoragebuzz.com/online-backup-comparison/
  Not as complete but has some more information.
  Reply
2. John Tucker
  
  I added a Backblaze vs. CrashPlan comparison table.
  It really is difficult to compare the two since they offer different ideas on how and what to backup. If you want really easy Backblaze. Want total control, CrashPlan. Depends on what kind of computer user you are I guess.
  Hope it helps.
  Reply

Backblaze vs. Carbonite

Comments

8 responses to “Backblaze vs. Carbonite”

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