The Best Cloud Backup Services

Anybody who’s ever suffered a data loss knows the importance of keeping your stuff backed up. In a previous post, we gave you a basic guide to keeping your computer backed up using a combination of on-site backups and cloud-based backups. Today we’re going to go a little more in-depth on the cloud backup piece of the equation. There are a lot of cloud backup services out there, so today we’re going to take a look at some of the best options.

What To Look For

The two main factors to consider when you’re looking for an online backup service are storage capacity and price. The first thing to do is figure out how much data you want to backup and decide how much (if any) more space you might need in the future. Once you’ve done that, you can start looking at prices for the amount of storage you need.

Of course, there are other factors to consider. You want to make sure that the service offers a software client for your operating system, and look into how they plan to get your data back to you if you need to retrieve it (some offer an option that involves fast-shipping you a hard drive with your data on it, but you might have to pay extra).

Backblaze

Of all the cloud backup services out there, Backblaze is one of only a few that still offer unlimited data storage, and they do it for a remarkably reasonable price. For $5 per computer per month or $50 per computer per year, you can backup absolutely everything on your computer, without regard to storage caps. If you have a lot of data to backup, then Backblaze is definitely worth your attention, especially since that $50 price point puts it pretty close to a lot of its competitors with tiered data storage plans.

iDrive

If you start doing research on the best backup services, you’re going to read the name iDrive early and often. Widely regarded as one of the best services on the market, iDrive takes the opposite approach to Backblaze: whereas Backblaze offers unlimited storage on a per-computer basis, iDrive lets you backup as many computers as you want, but has a tiered storage structure. For $69.50 you can backup every computer you own, as long as the data totals up to less than 2.5TB. For $99.50, you get 5TB.

Carbonite

Carbonite is another backup service that offers unlimited data on a per-computer basis, but there’s a little bit of a catch. At its lowest service tier - which costs $60 per computer per year - Carbonite omits videos and other large files from its backups. So if you’ve got a large media library, you might need to bump up to the next tier, which does videos and large files, but will run you $75 per computer per year.

Acronis

Acronis is a bit unusual compared to the other services on this list, because cloud backup is actually the secondary purpose of the software. Acronis True Image’s primary function is drive mirroring. It’s designed to create an exact copy of your hard drive on a local external drive - so you plug in your backup drive, and Acronis creates a duplicate of your computer’s hard drive that you can use to restore your drive in the event of a crash. Acronis’s cloud backup service is a later addition to its mirroring software. What that means for you is that Acronis is a complete backup solution, since you can use it to create both on-site and off-site backups of your data. Unfortunately, their service options a bit small compared to the other cloud storage services on this list. For $49.99 you get 250GB of backup space for one computer, and for $99.99 you get 1TB. If you want to add computers, the price goes up a bit.

At Phone Medics Plus , we want to help you get the most out of your digital life. One of the best ways you can do that is by giving yourself the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you have a good backup system in place, so that even if something goes wrong you won’t lose all your valuable data.