Backblaze raises pricing backup plus#

Historically, Backblaze benefitted from hard drives growing in capacity and decreasing in price. We now carry a HD video camera in our pockets, music/video downloads are ubiquitous, and no event goes by without memorializing it with a photo or a social media post. In many ways our daily lives generate more data. The volume of personal data has been skyrocketing for the last decade. While we are changing our prices, we remain fully committed to providing simple, reliable computer backup. Our customers tell us they love simplicity and predictability. Other services have moved away from unlimited plans in favor of tiered pricing options (and different feature sets for different customers). Locate My Computer, Preview/Access/Share, two-factor verification, iOS/Android apps, network management, Save to B2, and many of the other features/functions not only incurred development costs but have ongoing server/bandwidth expenses. It’s a program our customers love but most other players in the industry have abandoned due to the costs of shipping, packaging, drive replacement, etc. We also introduced the Restore Return Refund program. Expanded the maximum size of Restore by Mail from 0.5 TB to 8 TB on a hard drive, and from a 4 GB DVD to a 256 GB flash drive. This means your data gets backed up as fast as your setup allows. Combined small files into bundles, added threading to allow 30 backup processes at once, and added automatic thread management.

Backblaze raises pricing backup plus#

Originally 4GB was the maximum size any individual file could be and VM images, ISOs, plus other file types that aren’t typically user data were excluded. Removed all limits on what can be backed up.Here are a few examples of that commitment: When we say unlimited, we mean unlimited. As consumer data has expanded, we have made sure that we continually back up all data as quickly as possible. In addition, over the years, we’ve introduced many enhancements to improve the product in ways that have increased our costs.

When we launched our service, we were (and still are) committed to providing unlimited backup. I’d like to go into further detail on the two primary sources of our increased costs: 1) enhancements to the service, and 2) the market cost of storage. By making this decision now, we are ensuring we can continue to offer unlimited backup and keep improving our Computer Backup service. We’ve worked hard to avoid raising our prices, which resulted in some great storage innovations and has allowed us to keep our original prices for more than a decade. We have continually removed impediments to getting data backed up - no file size restrictions, speeding up uploads, all while data sets have grown larger and larger. The short answer is that we have enhanced the service in many ways and storage costs have gone up. The 1TB hard drive was a breakthrough in capacity. Maxtor, at the time the third-largest hard drive vendor, had just been acquired by Seagate, and HGST was still a stand-alone hard drive company. Even for techies, the arrival of clouds mostly meant the need to bring an umbrella. Apple’s Time Machine, iPhone, iPad, Watch, and iCloud didn’t exist when we first started Google Drive, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure were years away from being announced. The answers were primarily “nothing” or “not enough.” Five of us decided to quit our jobs and commit to working on this problem for a year with no salary in the hopes that we could help save a few people from this type of loss.Ī lot has changed since then. As a result, we asked friends, family, and co-workers what they did for backup. Since she had no backup, she lost everything. More than ten years ago, a friend’s computer crashed, taking with it all her writing and other files.

Today, after more than a decade of providing unlimited backup at that same price while also continuing to add features and functionality, we are announcing a price increase.Įffective for new purchases and renewals after Maat 5PM Pacific, our prices will change to: Since 2008, we have offered unlimited Computer Backup for $5 per month.