Backblaze Review: With Unlimited Cloud Space

Cloud computing is getting much attention in the past couple of years, as it’s one of the best ways to store and utilize your data. Sure, it comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, but I, and probably you, still use cloud services to store your files. In today’s review, we are going to talk about Backblaze. While its name is badass enough to catch my attention, I asked myself about the performance here and got some answers that I’m going to share with you, but first, let me introduce you to Backblaze.

What is Backblaze?

As you’ve probably realized, Backblaze is a cloud storage service, offering some of the free and premium features for the newcomers. It’s a limited cloud storage, offering support for just PC and Mac, and it’s REALLY cheap, costing around $5 per month. It all sounds great on paper, but in reality… well, that’s a different story. In the next section, I’ll break it down for you; all about the performance and features, you can expect from Backblaze.

Performance and Features

Being a $5 per-month cloud service, I’m surprised that Backblaze offers an unlimited storage space. Yes, you’ve read it well, it’s unlimited, folks! Bring it on! But wait, upload and download speeds are also very important, at least for me, so what about that? Well, if you don’t want to be disappointed, then quit reading, and if you want a bitter taste of truth, then you know what to do. As there’s unlimited space, I’ve decided to use 1TB of data as a testing field. And I was surprised to see how slow the backup process is; according to my recorded data, I would need more than three weeks to back up 1TB of data… (I am not mad to test 1TB, but I wanted to make sure of the stability of the service over a long time and with huge files) that’s ridiculous!

I don’t know if it’s up to my Windows 10 operating system, but I’ve heard that it’s way faster for Mac users. I was further disappointed with restore speeds, as they are painfully slow. Plus, the developers of Backblaze decided to make my life harder by complicating the whole process of recovery. You can’t recover files without previously signing in to your account, and then select the files you want to restore, then wait for the ZIP file to be prepared, and then go to your mail where you received the download link, just to be returned to the portal again, for downloading. I’m very, very mad at Backblaze for having this much of complication, instead of making it very simple. More about this in Ease of Use section.

Feature-wise, Backblaze doesn’t offer anything impressive. I can count the features on my hand’s fingers because aside from recovery and back up of the files, there is nothing more here.

Ease of Use

While the restore process will get the lowest mark from me, because of it’s overly complicated stuff that you need to do, the backup process is another story. I’m always for simple stuff, but backup process is so simple, that it won’t even allow choosing the files you want to backup. The developers really did a good job of ruining my life with Backblaze, as they constantly go against my will. From the second I clicked on Backup Now, it started backing up all of my files, even those I didn’t want to be backed up.

There is a way to exclude certain folders from backup process, but again, this is a complicated process so take it or leave it. In my opinion, Backblaze should let the users have more control of their files, and this is a very immature thing that they’ve done. Ease of Use is definitely not the best here.

Pricing

In the previous section, I mentioned how Backblaze is overly simplified with some features, and here, it also applies, but in a good way. Remember the $5 price tag I mentioned before? Well, that’s the only thing you need to pay here, as the service offers unlimited storage. This means no variations in either storage space or backup/restore speeds… pity! Nonetheless, $5 isn’t that much, and if you are considering another PC or another two or three PCs, be prepared to pay $5 for every PC you connect. Still, that’s a very cheap offer, and if you have, let’s say five PCs, that’s $25, which is a great offer. At least, they got it great on pricing, congrats to that!

Security

Although there is only a 128-bit AES encryption on files, Backblaze still manages to offer a great encryption for your data. This is done by encrypting the files before the upload and letting you maintain that encryption key. Maintaining your own private encryption key is of the high essence, and I’m glad they introduced it here. And by knowing that you are in control of the encryption key, you can be sure as hell that your files are safe. However, before signing up with Backblaze, you should know that private encryption keys aren’t stored to the server, meaning that only YOU know about it, and if you forget it… well, you can say ‘goodbye’ to your data, as Backblaze can’t restore your encryption key.

Verdict

So, at the end of the day, we all want a final thought on Backblaze. This one gave me some rough time to get used to, but in the end, I’ve learned to appreciate Backblaze. Sure, there are some downsides to slow backup and restore speeds, and yes, it can be a little complicated and a little simplified, but overall, there’s nothing to despise here. Backblaze works well, and it’s very reliable cloud service, plus it offers unlimited cloud space which I admire. I really do. The price tag of $5 for unlimited space sounds really good, and if you aren’t worried that much about backup and restore speeds, I strongly recommend this cloud service to you. However, if you don’t care much about space, and want some crazy fast speeds, then Backblaze probably isn’t for you. Either way, Backblaze will remain as a solid cloud service in my mind.

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