Best Unlimited Cloud Backup Services 2016 - Cloudwards

This article was written on November 1, 016 by Ben Schmitt, Cloudwards:

Best Cloud Backup Services 2016

Cloudwards has been publishing reviews about cloud backup services since early 2012, and I’ve been involved in this market since 2010.

Not only have I seen and tested many services and apps, but I’ve also had a close eye on the industry itself, where many services come and go on a regular basis.

This article summarizes my years of experience in the cloud backup market.

Top 3 Best Cloud Backup Services by Category

Best Unlimited Cloud Backup

Winner	Price	Why?
Crashpan	$59.99/year	Crashplan wins this category because it lets you customize it to be truly unlimited: unlimited file size, bandwidth, storage, file retention and versioning make it truly unique. It also backups NAS and external HDDs.
Backblaze	$50/year	Backblaze is a great unlimited cloud backup service because it is both easy to use and offers unlimited file size, bandwidth. It doesn’t offer fancy features like sharing or syncing, though. With $5 per month it’s also extremely affordable.
Carbonite	$59.99/year	Carbonite is one of the leading unlimited cloud backup services. Their Windows version is better than the Mac version, and the service unfolds its real power with the Prime or Plus plan which are a bit more expensive that Backblaze or Crashplan.

* Pricing is for the annual plan per computer. Carbonite doesn’t have monthly plans. You can generally save more with bi-annual plans.

The Fastest Cloud Backup*

Winner	Price	Why?
Acronis	1,000GB for $39.99/year	Acronis did an incredible job, making full use of our gigabit upload connection. 10GB were uploaded in less than 10 minutes with occasional speed peaks at 320Mbit/s. Most users won’t have such fast upload connection, but it shows what Acronis is capable of. They clearly do not throttle.
Crashplan	Unlimited gigabyte for $59.99/year	I have mixed feelings about Crashplan because the speed results vary a lot depending on the location I was testing. On a computer in the US, speeds were terrific uploading 10GB in only 17mn, but on my office computer in Berlin, it drags along for hours.
Backblaze	Unlimited gigabyte for $50/year	I tested this on a very fast machine with gigabit upload and download speeds. Why? Because I needed to see what was possible with some cloud backup services. Clearly, results differ vastly.

The Easiest Cloud Backup

Winner	Price	Why?
Backblaze	$50/year	Backblaze is true set-it-and-forget-it backup. After installation it just backups everything that’s on users computer. Nothing needs adjustment, really. Great if you help your mom and pop to finally get a backup of their files, or if you’re looking for a hands-off secondary backup for your machines.
Carbonite	$59.99/year	While Carbonite is certainly not the fastest cloud backup service, it is very easy to use. One caveat though: if you sign up for the Basic plan, you need to remember to backup video files and files over 4GB manually.
Zoolz	100GB for $14.99/year	While I find Zoolz’s pricing extremely confusing their backup software is actually very easy to use thanks to a wizard that guides the users through the initial backup setup. You can either use Zoolz’s Smart Selection which scans Windows user folders or select folders manually.

The Best Cloud Backup with Syncing

Winner	Price	Why?
IDrive*	1,000GB for $44.62/year	IDrive is also my overall winner in this cloud backup showdown. I like the fact that you get an additional terabyte of syncing space with your plan.
Acronis	1,000GB for $39.99/year	Acronis is unique in that it offers unlimited storage and file syncing for a very moderate fee. In my test, file syncing had a few hiccups between a Mac and a Windows computer, but it did transfer the majority of files fast.
SugarSync	250GB for $99.99/year	Technically, SugarSync is not a backup service, but as the name suggest, a syncing service. And it does that pretty well, but because of missing backup features, like scheduling, it could only take the number 3 spot in this list. If you care about security and personal encryption, use SpiderOak instead.

* as a reader informed us, IDrive limits the file upload to 600 files on the mobile client. This is something you should be aware of if you plan to backup multiple mobile devices.

Best Business Cloud Backup

Winner	Price	Why?
IDrive	5GB for $0/year	IDrive offers some good business plans that allow SMBs to backup server and MySQL data bases, do backup snapshots and true archiving of files.
Carbonite	Unlimited gigabyte for $59.99/year	Carbonite has invested heavily in their business suite which includes full system images, fast DR and more.
Livedrive	Unlimited gigabyte for $84/year	Livedrive’s Pro Suite is certainly interesting for business because it allows unlimited cloud backup for 5 computer plus a 5TB syncing or online storage space.

* This article does not focus on business backup solution. The majority of services tested here do have a business plan with certain relevant upgrades: faster support, archiving features, server backups, image backups and snapshots etc.

Best Unlimited Cloud Backup Services 2016 – Cloudwards

Crashpan, Backblaze and Carbonite