Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Score8.6 out of 10

25 Reviews and Ratings

What is Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage?

Backblaze, headquartered in San Mateo, provides cloud storage and online backup, boasting trust with over an exabyte of data from customers in 175 countries. A backup service specialist, Backblaze describes their B2 cloud object storage service as S3 compatible and purpose built to provide simplicity, reliability, and affordability. B2 Cloud Storage is available at $0.005/GB/Month, with single-tier pricing.

Categories & Use Cases

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Device sync
Device syncing that updates files connected to the cloud, keeping all files up to date regardless of where they are edited or viewed.
Category average: 8.5
Device management
Administrators can manage devices connected to the cloud storage platform, including restricting access for certain devices or wiping files from devices remotely.
Category average: 8.6
Storage Reports
Includes reporting capabilities to monitor user activity and storage levels.
Category average: 8.3

Document collaboration
Users can edit files and attach comments to files.
Category average: 8
File organization
The ability to choose where files will be stored, and manage individual users' storage; includes control over file organization structure.
Category average: 8.4
File search
A search function that allows users to easily find files, and in some cases even search within multiple files.
Category average: 7.8

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage for backups, archiving legacy data, and application storage. Using this for such uses saves a lot of infrastructure cost, as we don't have to build storage infrastructure. It's also a scalable and reliable solution, as we can add additional storage at any time as per the requirement.

Pros

Archiving and legacy storage
Application and Database backups
Storage for large object files like video, images, invoices etc

Cons

Deleting the data is not simpler and requires manual intervention
Integration with third party tools needs much improvement as there are very less tools that can be integrated.
Fewer data centres presently that restrict options to meet specific geographic redundancy or data sovereignty requirements.

Return on Investment

Affordable storage solution reduced infrastructure cost
Developers can use existing APIs to access cloud storage, making the code reusable.
It's scalable and reliable, so no additional storage planning is required.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Wasabi Object Storage

Other Software Used

DigitalOcean Spaces, Wasabi Object Storage, Azure Blob Storage

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Backblaze B2 as the cloud backup target on our file storage NAS units. Its tight integration with the OEM backup application through AWS S3 service makes it a zero deployment cost and seamless solution to fulfill one peg of the 3-2-1 backup strategy. Backend infrastructure built on S3 gives us assurances in uptime reliability and geographical redundancy.

Pros

Tight integration with OEM backup application
Among the lowest price per TB cloud backup provider
AWS S3 service integration
Optional services for initial seeding of large backup data sets
Optional services for physical backup retrieval to speed up recovery

Cons

Web UI to access the backup files is clunky and slow
It would be great to have the ability to switch regions after account creation. They could charge a fee for the service and I would still pay to utilize the feature when necessary
Lifecycle retention features could be improved

Return on Investment

Improved company's disaster recovery posture
Initial seed data backup took 10-25x less time than it would have taken with other backup services with only option to transfer over the internet
Reduced OPEX compare to other options, being the lowest $/TB cloud backup service on market

Usability

Other Software Used

Dropbox Business, Google Workspace, WeTransfer

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Backblaze B2 to store backups for our Synology NAS devices.

Ever since Backblaze B2 started to support the de-facto standard S3 protocol, it opened the service to more and more of our devices that need backups. We have moved our Backblaze B2 backup jobs to the S3-compatible platform and are going to be using B2 for years into the future.

Pros

Affordable online backups using redundant, inexpensive storage hardware
S3-compatible interface
Fast internet connectivity to data centers

Cons

My chief complaint about the former lack of S3 compatibility was resolved so I have no complaints now.
Please keep egress free!

Return on Investment

The per-byte pricing has saved us 30% over the competing Wasabi service which charges on a three-month minimum which causes us to pay for deleted objects.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Wasabi Object Storage, Synology DiskStation, IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2 and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

Other Software Used

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2, Wasabi Object Storage

Paulette Ensign View profile

Owner in Professional Services at Tips Products International (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage backs up our external drive, where we archive everything we do internally to run the business, including client work so we have that level of automatic redundancy in place. That is in addition to the backup our vendors and subcontractors have on their own respective computers and stored in the cloud. Because this backup is done automatically and we receive regular reports from Backblaze, we're able to sleep a lot better at night and pay less than we were with the previous cloud backup service we used. Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage also seems to have their system working seamlessly so there's never an outage or or gap of any kind, which somehow happened all too often with the previous vendor company. When I looked for referrals for a reliable and inexpensive cloud service, I had no idea Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage was so popular among other small business owners. I've seen why in my own experience this past year since we switched over to them.

Pros

Seamless service - I hardly know they're there, yet reports assure me they are!
Charges a reasonable price for excellent coverage.
Communicate clearly and promptly on the rare times I've had a question.

Cons

For what my company needs, I cannot think of anything more or better they could do, though a birthday card would be fun!

Most Important Features

Abundant storage space to grow into
Consistent service and communication
Reasonable fee for service
Ease of reconstructing content (though we have fortunately not needed that -- yet!)

Return on Investment

Difficult to quantify the peace of mind Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage services provides.
Based on the reported experiences of other Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage clients, recovery has been smooth. We have not yet had the need to use that function.
Because Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage's service has been seamless, I feel much more confident in their ability to deliver what they promise when we have the need to expand or enhance what we are purchasing from them.

Alternatives Considered

Carbonite Cloud-to-Cloud Backup

Other Software Used

Shared Contacts for Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack

Matt Hoffman View profile

Chief Executive Officer in Corporate at Hoffman Management Group (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Backblaze offers some of the cheapest storage available. I have over 2 terabytes of backups (excessive, I know!) which only cost me $10 as of last month. Extremely cost effective and allows us to store very old backups for a very cheap price. Their personal backup services are even cheaper, and has (at time of review) unlimited backup capacity.

Pros

File management
Pricing
Customer Service

Cons

File organization sometimes is a little confusing
Lots of emails, but I assume that's due to the alerts I have set up

Most Important Features

Price
Capacity
Bucket abilities

Return on Investment

We haven't had any data loss situations yet, however I'm sure our ROI will be fairly high if we have to recover any data. Backblaze is in the insurance industry, not storage.

Alternatives Considered

AWS Backup, Linode, Google Drive, Box and Dropbox

Other Software Used

Linode, AWS Backup, Box

Google Cloud Storage

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

IDrive Online Backup and Object Storage e2

Azure Blob Storage

Wasabi Object Storage

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

What is Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Device sync

Device management

Storage Reports

Areas for Improvement

Document collaboration

File organization

File search

Reviews

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Other Software Used

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Other Software Used

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Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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Most Important Features

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Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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