Backblaze Computer Backup Review: US$9 a Month for One Computer, Billed in US Dollars

What US$9 a month actually buys

The product is a subscription, not a storage allotment. The page promises "Unlimited backup — every file, every size, no exceptions," and the licence attaches to a computer, not to a quota: one subscription, one Mac or PC, and the external drives connected to it. A photo library or a video folder never pushes you into a dearer tier, because the pricing has no capacity axis.

The client is a native Mac or PC application, with no Java and no middleware by Backblaze's own description, and every file is encrypted before it leaves the computer.

Where the data sits is a choice made at sign-up. Backblaze's documentation says a new Computer Backup account picks US East, US West, EU Central (Amsterdam) or CA East (Toronto), the choice fixes where all of that account's data is stored, and it cannot be changed afterwards; moving means opening a new account in the other region and re-uploading. Storage costs are the same in every region. The page says people in or near Europe should see lower latency from EU Central. The pages read do not say whether the list is the same for a UK sign-up, so check the selector before creating the account.

The flip side of per-computer licensing is arithmetic to do before signing up. Two computers cost US$18 a month, three cost US$27. Backblaze sells no family pool, so households with several machines pay per machine; the IDrive section below prices the pooled alternative.

Monthly, yearly or two years, all in US dollars

The page lists $9 a month, $8.25 a month paid annually (US$99 a year on the pricing page) and $7.88 a month paid bi-annually, which is the US$189 two-year licence. Twelve monthly payments come to US$108, so the year saves US$9; two years of monthly billing is US$216, so the two-year term saves US$27. Those savings are small, which argues against overcommitting.

The 15-day free trial requires no credit card, so the sensible sequence is to install it, let the first full backup finish, and only then pick a term. Backblaze names no billing currency in the visible page text, and the page's data labels the offer USD. Budget for US$99 plus whatever your card issuer charges to convert it into pounds; the checkout is where a sterling option or a VAT line would show, and it was not opened.

The current rates took effect on 3 October 2023, in an announcement that called the change a price increase, and Backblaze sells this direct, so its own site is the only price on record.

Thirty days of versions, and what more costs

Version history decides how far back a restore can reach. By default Backblaze keeps changed and deleted versions for 30 days, so a file deleted in September and missed in November is gone from the backup.

The one-year option stretches that to 365 days, and the documentation says it carries no additional cost for storage. It needs client version 7.0 or newer and works only from the moment it is switched on, so it belongs in the first session after install. External drives left disconnected for more than 30 days stay on Backblaze's servers but drop out of the current backup view.

Forever keeps versions indefinitely, and the documentation says versions older than a year then accrue storage charges. Backblaze's current pages give no per-gigabyte rate for it, so price it before enabling.

Getting files back: the web cap and a drive from the US

Restores run three ways. The built-in restore app needs Computer Backup 9.0 or later on macOS 11 or Windows 7 and newer, and the plan table lists full restores through it as unlimited. A web ZIP download is free but capped at 500 GB per request, with at most 20 active at once. For a large recovery, Backblaze mails a USB hard drive of up to 8 TB, and a restore bigger than that is split across several drives.

For a UK address the mailed drive has more moving parts. Drives are built and shipped from the US even if your data sits elsewhere, and outside the US they go by FedEx international priority: three to four days for many places and up to 10 for remote ones, after one to two business days of preparation per terabyte. The drive is refunded if you return it within 30 days of receiving it, but return postage is yours and the 30 days end at the postmark.

Backblaze pays no taxes, duties or customs fees for addresses outside the US and refuses parcels that arrive with charges due; its return-drive page links GOV.UK guidance on reclaiming import duty and VAT if overpaid. The documents give no drive price, so the UK cost shows at ordering.

How IDrive and Carbonite compare

IDrive Personal is the pooled alternative: its 5 TB plan covers one user across multiple computers. The en-gb pricing page states all prices are in US dollars and lists the plan at US$9.99 a month, cut to US$6.99 for the first year for new sign-ups, with standard pricing from year two. The 10 TB tier is US$14.99 (US$10.49 in year one), and the free Basic tier holds 10 GB. Going over a plan's limit incurs an overuse charge of US$0.25 per GB per month, which Backblaze's unlimited plan has no equivalent of.

Carbonite Safe is unlimited per device. Basic, for one computer, lists at $95.99 a year; Plus, which adds one external hard drive, Webroot antivirus and automatic video backup, lists at $131.99; Prime, at $161.99, adds courier delivery of recovered files, an extra-fee item on the two lower tiers. Carbonite's page names no currency.

Set against Backblaze's US$99 a year, Carbonite Basic lists a few dollars lower, if its figure is in US dollars, but covers no external drive, and the tier that does, Plus, costs about a third more. For two computers, Backblaze runs US$198 a year, while IDrive's 5 TB plan covers both at US$119.88 a year at its standard annual rate, as long as they fit in 5 TB.

Skip it if your files live on more than one machine

The clearest case against it is device count. A desktop and a laptop cost US$18 a month on Backblaze, where IDrive's single-user 5 TB plan covers both at US$9.99 a month on annual billing. Backblaze's table frames coverage as computers and connected drives, so files that live only on a network drive or NAS box fall outside it.

The second reason is currency. If a card charge in US dollars bothers you, nothing on the pages read offers a pound-priced plan. The third is history: the default keeps 30 days of versions and the one-year setting extends it to 365 days.