Cloud Backup Services, picked by what actually saved a customer
Five cloud backup services for personal, family, power-user, small-business, and privacy-first use cases — chosen from the recoveries I've watched succeed (and the ones that didn't) over the past decade in this business.
FTC DISCLOSURE. Computer Medic Repair & Service LLC participates in affiliate programs including the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and several cloud-backup providers. We may earn a commission from signups or purchases made through links on this page at no extra cost to you. Our recommendations are based on independent research and real-world reliability data — not on commission rates.
Cloud backup is the answer to a specific question: what happens to your files when the drive that holds them is on a desk in a flooded house? A surge protector, a UPS, and an external SSD don't help when the building is gone. Offsite — meaning, somewhere not in your house — is the only word in the 3-2-1 backup rule that matters during a disaster. Cloud backup is the easiest way to satisfy "offsite" without driving a hard drive to your sister's place every Sunday.
This guide picks five services across five use cases. Use the decision tree to skip to the section that's actually for you. Notice what's missing: Carbonite doesn't appear here. Once a top recommendation, Carbonite has gotten outpriced and outperformed by Backblaze and iDrive over the past four years, and the customer-facing software has stagnated. The brand recognition is real; the product no longer earns it.
Rating scale calibrated tight, same as previous issues — top of the scale is 4.7, nothing earns a 5.0. A 4.2 here means "this is the right pick for its slot, with real trade-offs noted in the field-note callout." Read the caveats — that's where the honest part lives.
Section A · Personal
Three picks for one PC, a family, or a power user with terabytes.
The home / personal segment of this guide. Pick 1 is the answer for one machine that you want set up in twenty minutes; Pick 2 covers a household of devices on a single license; Pick 3 is the technical reader's pick for scaling beyond what either of the first two offer. If your situation isn't covered by these three, Section B has the small-business and privacy-first picks.
Pick 01 · Single PC backup (Personal)
Backblaze Personal ($99/year per computer, unlimited)
4.7 / 5·DX·07A
Pricing$99/yr per computer
StorageUnlimited
Devices1 per license
Versioning30 days included
RestoreDownload or shipped USB drive
EncryptionEnd-to-end optional
If you have one personal computer and you want backup that you set up in twenty minutes and never think about again, this is the answer. Backblaze Personal is unlimited storage, $99/year per computer, with a desktop client that just runs in the background and uploads everything that changes. Most reviewers' top pick for the last decade for one specific reason: it's the simplest thing that works.
The unlimited storage is the headline feature, and it's real — I have a customer with 4.2 TB backed up on a single Backblaze license, no surprise fees, no warnings. Where Backblaze stays honest with the unlimited promise is by being a backup service, not a sync service: it backs up the drive on the computer, not 'all your data forever across all your devices.' If you want to back up two machines, that's two licenses ($198/yr). It's a deliberate constraint that keeps the unlimited offering economically sane.
⚠ Field note
External drives are backed up only if they're plugged in at least every 30 days. Mapped network drives are not backed up by Backblaze Personal — that's a B2 (Pick 3) or iDrive (Pick 2) job. Also: free version history is 30 days; if you need 1-year history, the "Forever Version History" add-on is $2/month per computer extra. Most home users don't need it.
iDrive ($80-100/year for 5-10 TB, unlimited devices)
4.5 / 5·DX·07B
Pricing$80/yr (5TB) → $100/yr (10TB)
DevicesUnlimited
Photo featuresFaces, places, dedup
Versioning30 versions
RestoreDownload or shipped drive
EncryptionServer-side default; opt-in private key
For households with multiple devices and a desire to back up the family photos, iDrive is the right pick. $80/year for 5 TB, $100/year for 10 TB, and the headline difference from Backblaze is that one license covers unlimited devices. Phones, tablets, laptops, the kid's MacBook, the spouse's iPhone — all on one plan, all in one console.
iDrive's photo features are also genuinely useful. It groups photos by date, location, and face; deduplicates aggressively (your 'iCloud download' folder won't double-count); and has a decent restore-by-album workflow when you need to pull just the wedding photos back out. For a family of four with shared photos and the usual mix of old hard drives full of nostalgia, this is the cleanest path I've found.
⚠ Field note
iDrive's pricing is "first-year promotional" — the $80 first-year jumps to ~$100 in year two. Plan accordingly. Also: by default, iDrive uses server-side encryption, which means iDrive can technically read your files. To switch to private-key (zero-knowledge) encryption, you opt in during setup; it's a one-way switch, and if you lose the key, your files are unrecoverable. For most family use cases the default is fine; for sensitive data, see Pick 5 (Sync.com) instead.
Strong points
One license covers unlimited family devices
5-10 TB plans (Backblaze Personal is per-computer only)
Photo organization features (faces, places, dedup)
Ship-a-drive restore option (IDrive Express)
HIPAA-eligible on the consumer plan with BAA
Real-world drawbacks
First-year promo pricing — jumps in year two
Default encryption is server-side (opt-in for private key)
For the technical reader with multiple terabytes across multiple machines and a willingness to set things up properly: Backblaze B2 (the storage layer) plus a backup client like restic, Arq, or rclone. You pay $6/TB/month for storage plus a few cents per GB for restores, and you get an S3-compatible API that any backup tool worth using can speak to.
The reason to do this rather than Backblaze Personal: scaling. Backblaze Personal caps at one computer per license; B2 caps only at your wallet. The reason to do this rather than iDrive: control. With restic or Arq plus B2, you own the encryption keys (client-side), you control what's backed up, you pick the version-history retention. The trade is setup time. Plan a Saturday afternoon.
⚠ Field note
B2 is storage, not a backup product. You need a separate client that handles scheduling, encryption, and de-duplication: restic (free, CLI-only, what I use), Arq (Mac/Windows, $50 one-time, what I install for customers who want this tier without the CLI), Duplicati (free, GUI, but rougher UX), or rclone (CLI, free, sync-style). Egress fees apply on restore — Backblaze waives the first 3× your monthly storage in egress, which is generous, but a "restore everything" on a 5 TB account will cost roughly $50 in egress unless you ship-a-drive.
Strong points
Pay only for what you store ($6/TB/month)
Scales infinitely — wallet is the only cap
Client-side encryption with restic/Arq
S3-compatible API — works with countless tools
Full version-history possible (you set retention)
Real-world drawbacks
Requires technical setup (cron, restic config, or Arq license)
No all-in-one GUI by default
Egress fees apply on restore (mostly waived)
Misconfigured backups can be invisible until you need them
Section B is the small-business pick (multi-employee, server backup, compliance) and the privacy-first pick (zero-knowledge encryption — the provider cannot read your files). Both are picks where the personal services in Section A miss the requirements: Backblaze Personal can't back up servers, iDrive's default encryption isn't zero-knowledge, and B2 isn't a turn-key product. These two fill those gaps.
Pick 04 · Small business (Business + privacy)
iDrive Business ($100-1,500/year by storage tier)
4.3 / 5·DX·07D
Pricing$100/yr (250GB) → $1,500/yr (12.5TB)
UsersUnlimited
Server backupSQL, Exchange, file shares
ComplianceHIPAA, SOC 2
RestoreDownload or shipped drive
AdminCentralized console
Small businesses need things home users don't: server backup (SQL Server, Exchange, file shares), centralized admin (one place to add and remove employee laptops), compliance certs (HIPAA for medical, SOC 2 for clients-who-ask), and the ability to ship a drive when a server's gone and you need a 4 TB restore by Tuesday. iDrive Business is the right fit when you've outgrown personal backup and don't want to manage your own backup infrastructure.
Pricing scales with storage rather than seats. The 250 GB starter is $100/year; the 12.5 TB tier is $1,500/year. Most one-to-five-employee shops land at the 1 TB ($300/yr) or 2.5 TB ($500/yr) tiers. HIPAA-eligible plans require a signed Business Associate Agreement — request it during signup, not after.
⚠ Field note
iDrive Business pricing has "arbitrary jumps" — going from 5 TB to 10 TB is the same step ($1,000/yr), and from 10 TB to 12.5 TB is just +$500. Look at next year's likely capacity before locking in a tier; the upgrade path is straightforward but the per-TB cost is uneven. Also: the admin console is functional but dated. If polished UX for non-technical employees is critical, Backblaze Business may fit better despite higher per-seat pricing.
Strong points
Server backup included (SQL, Exchange, file shares)
HIPAA-eligible (BAA required)
Centralized admin console
Ship-a-drive restore (IDrive Express)
Long-running provider with stable pricing
Real-world drawbacks
Pricing tier jumps feel arbitrary
Admin UI is dated vs. competitors
No per-user pricing — you buy storage capacity, not seats
The pick when you specifically want zero-knowledge encryption — meaning the backup provider literally cannot read your files. Sync.com encrypts everything client-side with keys that never leave your device. Even if Sync.com is compromised, your data is mathematical noise to the attacker.
This matters for: lawyers handling client documents, medical practices with PHI, journalists with sensitive sources, and anyone who's read enough breach reports to be uncomfortable trusting a US-based service with corporate-owned encryption keys. Sync.com is Canadian (PIPEDA jurisdiction, no US warrant access without due process), audited annually, and has been operating since 2011 without a known compromise.
⚠ Field note
Sync.com's Solo plan ($96/yr, 2TB) is technically a sync service, not pure backup — your files live in a special Sync folder on your machine, and changes propagate. If you delete a file locally, it gets deleted in the cloud (within Sync's 30-day version history, recoverable). For pure backup behavior, use the Teams plan or pair Sync.com with a separate local backup (an external SSD from Issue 02 works). Also: zero-knowledge means there's no "reset password by email" option — lose your password and your data is unrecoverable. Use a password manager.
Strong points
Client-side encryption — provider cannot read your data
HIPAA-eligible on Teams plan with BAA
Canadian jurisdiction (PIPEDA, not US CLOUD Act)
Audited annually by independent third party
Password-protected file sharing with expiration
Real-world drawbacks
Solo plan is sync, not pure backup (deletions propagate)
No password reset — lose password = lose data
Slower upload speeds than US-based providers for US users
This guide weights actual restore performance over feature lists. It's easy for a backup service to LOOK good in a feature comparison; it's harder to be the service that gets your photos back at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday after a flood. The calibrated top of the scale here is 4.7 (Backblaze Personal — for the specific job of "set up once and forget"). 4.2 (Sync.com) means "the right pick for its slot, with caveats."
Sources cross-referenced: my own customer experiences with restore events over the past decade, independent reviews from Tom's Guide, Wirecutter, PCMag, and CNET, long-term ownership reports on Reddit's r/DataHoarder and r/Backup, and the TrustRadius / G2 enterprise reviews where applicable. Marketing comparison tables published by the providers themselves were the lowest-weight signal — every vendor's table happens to show their product winning.
Affiliate disclosure: as of publication, Computer Medic does not yet have signed affiliate accounts with any of the providers above; the /go/ redirects point to bare service URLs. That will change as we sign up for each provider's affiliate program. The picks were chosen before any of those conversations, and won't change because of them.
DX·07 — Issue 07 — Cloud Backup Services — Computer Medic Repair & Service LLC, Clearwater FL — Published May 2026