Backblaze

Wish I could give a negative stars. I've been told my external hard drive data has been deleted because I had a 30 day version history (even though a year version history is free but I had to enable it) I bet everyone LOVES to hear that once they find out their data is gone. "oh yeah you could still have it but you didn't click that button tehe" Icing on the cake? I was able to access my media 50 days after backing it up. (odd right because apparently they delete it after 30) Doesn't that go against your data privacy policy? Amazing. EDIT: Making an edit to address the owners comments below. No, the data is no longer on my external hard-drive because it failed. I put my money into y'all for a year and a half thinking you would keep my media safe. Now I've lost years worth of precious material because you LOVE deleting peoples data so much. Absolute pointless $140 spent on your company.

Updated 13 December 2022 After my little disappointment about the speed of a Backblaze restoration, I have continued to use it for years now. The program is reliable, and problem free. It is also low-profile, meaning it works away in the background and does not annoy the user with unwanted new gimmicks or sales pitches. Earlier Review I purchased Backblaze knowing the backup occurred slowly to conserve computer use and bandwidth. That makes sense for keeping costs down. It was inexpensive and easy to use. I wish I had done more reading first, because I thought once I actually needed to restore, that I could get all my data and be back in business. It turns out the backup download occurs at the same pace as the backup itself. Also, Backblaze recommends downloads be done in manageable bites. Even these small bites are taking as much as 10 hours to complete. My not-very-big file set will likely take weeks to download. I actually had in mind that a backup would let me get back to work. In the future, I will either buy a two external drives and alternate them, or I will find another online backup system. If you absolutely feel you must try this, at least pay monthly. I paid in advance. That was money I could have used toward the new hard drive.

Every time the Backblaze software kicks in on my Intel Mac it brings the entire system to a grinding hault... to the point where I have to click pause backup if I want my computer to be usable at all. This is after contacting support and having the performance settings on automatic. Please test your software on older Macs too...

I paid for the 12-month worth of service upfront, Backblaze attempted to charge my card again after only 7 months of service. Backblaze then suspended my service and deleted my backup. Their support team wasn’t at all helpful. They provided me with a reason that my card was declined. It was too early for a renewal. There was no need to charge my card anyway. My original payment went through fine. Looking at the other reviews, it seemed that I wasn't the only one who experienced this.

I ran into a situation twice now where my external HDD’s backup was deleted. The first time, the data was deleted in less than 30 days from the last seen date. I also had extended history setup as well to cover the data for up one year. I talked to support about it and the only recourse was to re-backup the drive. I did that. Unfortunately, it happened again where the data was deleted in less than 30 days. I contacted support again, but after going around and around with support, the answer was there nothing they could do, and the ticket was closed. I marked the issue as not solved, but no one ever followed up. I went ahead and closed my account.

It's a crying shame that Backblaze has developed a world class file backup system when their customer service is above helping you. I did Backblaze's 2-week trial. It impressed me as exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to purchase. Strangely, my credit card was declined -- on three different browsers on two different days, with and without a VPN. So I went to my credit card company and asked if there was a problem. They told me there was no problem and that my card should not be declined. I took a screenshot of this chat and created a ticket for Backblaze's support staff. The response was slow, prolonged, and maddening. It was the type of customer support that you'd expect for a free app from a multi-national corporation, not a quality, paid product. The staff gave zero flying flips that Backblaze rejected my credit card multiple times. So unfortunately, I surfed on over to another cloud storage service that starts with a D and ends with an X. They accepted my credit card on the first try.

Almost nonexistent customer service (phone calls are impossible, and chat/email is inconsistent) They do not understand how to ship products, which are needed because their restoration process is decades out of date. (small hard drives mailed to you with your data since downloading data is out of the question for files of any modern size.) Abysmal out of date practices and lackluster service. Money charged for shipping and borrowing drives, and commercial invoices not filled out for loaned equipment, charging customers duty on devices that aren't sold to them. Horrible. Stay away and explore competitors, of which there are several competent ones. I have been submitting feedback on how to improve the restoration process for years to backblaze. they dont care about their customers, or their process at all. They do not wish to improve at all. demonstrably. I have also learned that the hard drives backblaze sells their customers are used, and the used condition is not disclosed anywhere to the customer. Backblaze is collecting a markup cost, shipping and duty selling used hard drives to customers without informing them they are buying used products.

I've been with Backblaze for about 5 years now and I LOVE it! Fifty dollars a year is nothing compared to the peace of mind it gives me. I compared lots of different companies before choosing Backblaze and I haven't ever regretted it. One negative review I saw was about speed of the initial backup. I, also, feel like that's kind of slow, but my experience wasn't anything like the guy who said it took over 3 weeks for 259GB. I think the biggest one I ever did all at once was about 800GB and it took almost a month. Way faster than that guy's, but still kind of slow. I felt vulnerable while I waited for it all to complete, but it worked out fine and after that I never notice any slowing as it's doing the continuous updates on a daily basis. Also, I seem to switch computers a lot, like every 2 years or so, plus I've had one die on me, so after the 1st switch and waiting while backblaze redid all the info, I got smarter. I found this cool feature they have that if you pull out your hard drive with all your files and add it inside the new computer (which is what I do), you can just transfer your backup state from your previous computer so it doesn't all have to be redone. It's so slick! One other thing I love about Backblaze is how you can access any of your files while you're away from home, like on vacation or whatever, super easily! Lots of times I'll even just be in town but away from my house and I love that if I realize I need my address book or recipes (that are kept in my computer) I can simply log in, "restore" those files, and within a minute or two I can download a zip with those files in it and get whatever I need. I highly recommend backblaze to my friends and family (and perfect strangers) all the time!!

Received an email from Backblaze advertising a promotional 20% off for Black Friday/Cyber Monday set to expire at 11:59PM ET on 11/27. Tried using an existing account that I created but never signed up for an actual plan with (which is the account that the email was sent to) and even tried creating a new account from scratch and both would show the same "Invalid Offer Code" error message. I ended up contacting support since that was the only option offered thru their webpage. Mid-day the next day (today, 11/28), I get a response from support that states the code could not be applied because the offer expired yesterday 11/27 at 11:59PM. Sometimes things happen to really be that red flag that you need to know to avoid companies because they're burning bridges before there's any sort of relationship and more importantly they're demonstrating a lack of accountability that would make me extremely uncomfortable trusting them with my critical data and information. No surprise a quick Google search reveals all sorts of issues with the service, so again this was a blessing in disguise that prompted me to do further research and avoid what could've been an expensive and critical mistake. Interestingly enough, I guess sales are down enough where they've started offering a referral program where anyone that signs up with your referral link gets a free month as well as you. They should think about the experience they are providing as based on the limited interactions I've had with them, I'd never recommend them to anyone and working as an IT consultant that's unfortunate for them because I work with thousands of clients I could've potentially referred.

Awful. Will not let me cancel my account because I can't provide a card number from a credit card that expired and was replaced. DO NOT enroll unless you routinely hold on to expired credit cards.

Just remarkable. They send me a drive that isn't showing on any of my computers (probably formatted improperly) and there is no way of speaking to customer service. Now I'm stuck waiting for some canned email while working is impossible. Just pathetic and a shame.

Using Backblaze could be a line from a Seinfeld Episode, that is "the whole point of a backup is restoring the backup." DO NOT trust this with your valuable content. I have almost a terabyte of uploaded content and have not been successful in downloading any of it. I have tried both Windows 10 and an Older Mac (OS 10.13). I have tried two different ftp clients. I have tried their command line tools. I am on a 1G network. I have NEVER been successful in downloading a large zip file intact and their software indicates the checksums on my precious backups are 0 I have paid into their subscription service, I have paid for B2 storage, I have paid for the downloads. DO NOT trust this with your valuable content.

I have been a Backblaze customer for at least 5 years. I recommend it to my friends, family, and clients. The folks that work here publish all sorts of interesting stuff like drive failure stats, their custom storage server designs, and more. I love to support companies like that. Plus, they're sorta local. They offer a service where they'll send your data on USB hard drives which beats downloading it all again which could take weeks if you have a lot of data, and that would have come in handy for my home NAS (network attached storage) which is about 40TB of data, consisting mostly of a bunch of virtual machine images I use for work and a bunch of, uh, "Linux ISOs" attached to my Plex server. But nope, their app won't work on Windows Server, and it doesn't allow backup of network mapped drives. I'm removing a star because their software doesn't work on Windows Server. Guess they don't want me to upload 40TB of data for $6/month. So much for "unlimited". How about you allow Windows Server for an extra $4/month, to compete with Crashplan which offers unlimited backup that works on Windows Server for $10/month? Only reason I didn't end up using Crashplan is because they don't have a "ship me my stuff on USB drives" features so I may as well redownload all my "Linux ISOs" from scratch instead of restoring them from the backup solution... Anyway, I'll keep Backblaze for my main PC (if you really care about your data, back it up in two different places) - in this case I back up my data using Backblaze and to my home NAS.

Do not trust Backblaze with your data. Maybe you'll be like me and pay for their services for 6 years, finally need it when my laptop was stolen, and then have my data deleted after 30 days because said laptop was no longer in my possession. And the Data Restore experience is terrible - incredibly slow download times and multiple crashes. This business model is like paying insurance premiums every month and then not actually having coverage when you need it. But hey, at least they gave me a protracted refund on my year subscription after I gave them money for 6 years for absolutely nothing. Thanks guys!

Awful. Would not transfer my acct to my new laptop, so paying for service I didn't get. AND won't cancel my account after multiple written requests.

I have contacted Backblaze and the only way to do that is through email. It's very frustrating. Christopher, is a very very unskilled and rude customer service representative and is not helpful at all. I do not recommend this company to back up your computer!

Backblaze should change its name to Backstab. Somehow they got us signed up with our visa card some time ago (? when) and we got a bill from them which we disputed. That's bad enough, but when we tried to cancel the account which they said we had and which we never knew about, they refused. They told us in writing that WE had to do that from our end, by going on their web site. We had never (to our knowledge) been on that site or used their services, but we tried to get on and were not able. We could not get to first base (did not know basics like user name, password, etc.). We went around in circles before reporting their fraudulent activities to apropriate authorities.

I have not been backed up for several weeks and can get no help from Backblaze. They will not respond to my emails. I strongly recommend that you chose a different service.

Was notified that my hard drive was backed up - hard drive crashed, so I jumped on Backblaze acct. Couldn't find hard drive- customer support tells me it hasn't been backed up yet. This drive is connected almost daily. Complete blatant lie; do not trust this company with your valuable memories!!!

If I could give a minus -0 I would. I had Backblaze for years, never needed them, presumed things were going as they should. Then one day they emailed me that my account was frozen. I still don't know why. I tried communicating with them and as another disgruntled customer exclaimed, they only communicate via email. Yeah, hiring an actual person to speak on the phone would bankrupt them. So, back and force with the instructions. I try to explain to the individual I am not the most tech savvy person. This falls on deaf ears. I follow the instructions to the best of my ability and end up creating a second account. I become increasingly frustrated trying to get the #$@!!! at the other end of the email to understand this dilemma, and would they cancel one of the accounts as I only have one computer. Finally I end up just accepting the fact that I will now pay double for back up. Fine. I pay DOUBLE for three years when they again freeze my account. Again, feeling like I'm in Groundhog Day I begin the conversation via email. Again, same response. Close your account, open it again. Now I may not be a rocket scientist but I know that THAT is what previously resulted in the double account and I'll not be hornswoggled into paying for 3 accounts for one computer. So for the following 145 days I have no back up. My computer dies. It had led a valiant fight for 11 years. I got a new computer. I literally had forgotten about Backblaze until I received their notice of not only an increase but my automatic payment was around the corner. Oh no you don't. It took quite a while, because they don't make it easy, but I deleted both accounts, AND called my bank card to alert them to stop any future payments should they try to sneak one through. In this day and age to have a giant company and not allow for actual human customer service is ludicrous....and I ain't referring to the singer. I would never use this company again, and for the record, in case you folks are reading this, you are missing out on a huge demographic of people who are not necessarily tech savvy. You want loyal customers, treat them with respect. (visualize me dropping mic!)

Four days ago I got locked out of my login page when asked for a 6-digit verification code that does not get sent to me anymore. Over four days of tedious dealing via email with tech support, all they could say is that the can not fix anything, nor allow me access to my cloud backup. Even asking them to delete the backup so I could start over was denied; (figured they were trying to block a fraudulent login). The final offer was that they would cancel my account and stop recurring billing. Well, I had just renewed five weeks ago and asked for a refund as they are not providing the service to me that I paid for. "Well, oh no! We can't do that as it's been over 30 days." That's all I got for four days of back and forth emails. We can't and won't help you, and no we won't refund your money. Just go away. Recommend you all stay away as well.