best cloud backup services in 2023

Cloud backup is crucial since it is not always possible to depend on local backup disks to safeguard data. You may have the most reliable external hard drive in the world connected to your computer or functioning as a standalone backup device on your home network, and yet, even if that device were to be stolen or destroyed in a natural disaster, you would still be left with no data.

For this reason, “off-site” backups are used by many small enterprises to reduce the impact of natural catastrophes. Consumers may rest easy knowing their data is safe with cloud backup services. Each of the cloud backup providers we examined offers its own server-side encryption using industry-standard methods; alternatively, you may use your own private key.

Top 3 best cloud backup solutions

The best cloud backup service you can get today

IDrive provides the best value, with unlimited machine backup space up to either 5TB or 10TB (more than enough for most users). It is the greatest cloud backup service according to our editors.

With IDrive, you can avoid spending days uploading data thanks to its rapid upload rates, mobile applications that really back up the devices they run on (and detect faces in photographs for quick tagging), substantial file-syncing option, and the ability to send in a whole drive.

IDrive is great since it stores many versions of your files and never deletes any of them, but you should be aware of its storage limits. It also includes two-factor authentication, a feature that should be standard across all web-based service providers.

Backblaze despite a recent price increase, remains one of the most cost-effective options for cloud backup, when measured against competitors’ offerings on a gigabyte-by-gigabyte basis. You can basically simply set Backblaze and forget it; it’s that simple to use.

We also like how quickly data can be uploaded and how often it can be restored through email. Even if your computer is lost or stolen, you may track it down with the help of Backblaze by using the Wi-Fi network it was last connected to.

But when rivals provide new functionality like cloud synchronization, file sharing, and backups of networked devices, Backblaze is falling behind. In addition, unless you have almost infinite space, it’s not the best option for someone who has to back up many computers. In such a situation, it could be worthwhile to pay the relatively low annual price of backing up each system with numerous Backblaze accounts.

Acronis True Image, recently rebranded as Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, may be the most powerful and versatile online-backup solution available, with a terrific desktop application and an insane number of backup and security options.

It offers mobile-device, external-drive, and social-media backups, as well as syncing and sharing options. It will save an image of your primary hard drive — applications, OS, and all — to the cloud. It also includes antivirus software, ransomware protection, a vulnerability scanner, and a bootable file-restoration tool.

Acronis is one of the greatest cloud backup services, but it also has some of the most annoying features, such as a steep price increase when more devices and storage are added, and a lackluster online and mobile interface. However, if you are a power user or are in the market for antivirus software, this may be your best option.

CrashPlan had the best cloud backup service for consumers until it quit the market in 2017. Its plan for small businesses retains that service’s very fast upload and download speeds, and adds business-friendly features such as support for Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux and unlimited (if you want) retention of old versions of files.

The backup schedule, the length of time deleted items are kept, the level of account security, and the location from which recovered information may be downloaded are all adjustable. CrashPlan can back up disks formatted for Linux and macOS across a network in the same way it can back up discs locally. If you’re prepared to pay $10 per month per computer, you can store as much data as you want on as many devices as you want.

What you won’t receive are the consumer-friendly features like disk shipment and mobile-device backups that made CrashPlan for Home so popular. The mobile applications are very secure, but otherwise lack features. While doing backups, CrashPlan for Small Business uses a significant amount of system resources; however, this may be minimized by adjusting the application’s settings.

SpiderOak was the first online storage (or online-syncing) service to make sure the customer held a private, exclusive encryption key.

Most other cloud storage services now offer the same thing, but SpiderOak also has strong file-sharing and -syncing features, as well as support for unlimited machines and, if you insist, backups of system files and applications.

Yet SpiderOak’s storage-space pricing is so high that it’s more competitive with Dropbox than it is with IDrive. While its file-restoration speed was amazingly fast, its initial upload speed was glacial.

Carbonite offers unlimited storage, which is always nice to have in one of the best cloud backup services. It also has an intuitive user interface that shows you which files have been fully, partly or not backed up.

However, it is important to read the tiny print, since the Basic plan of Carbonite does not automatically back up huge files, external devices, or video files of any type. These capabilities are only available on the more expensive Plus or Premium subscriptions, which are otherwise equivalent to the free tiers of competing services like IDrive and Backblaze.(For a limited time, Carbonite has reduced prices by 30%, making them closer to those of its competitors.)

It’s possible to have many computers associated with a single account, but there is no discount for purchasing in bulk; each extra computer costs the same as the first. The upload speed is really poor. As for the enticing Carbonite mobile applications, they have been discontinued with no foreseeable reintroduction date provided by the firm.

How we test the best cloud backup services

We took several factors into consideration when testing the best cloud backup services: storage costs, ease of file restoration, computer-resource usage, unique features, ease of use, and installation. Upload speed also matters even though you only do your initial backup once, it can take days or even weeks if it’s several hundred gigabytes.

We also gave bonus points to the online backup services that let you mail in a hard drive full of data to start the process as well as those that send you a hard drive to restore your data.

Our testing and evaluation was done on a 2017 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro running Windows 10. Meanwhile, mobile apps were run on a Google Pixel XL 2 running Android 8.1 Oreo. We monitored data-transfer rates on the MacBook using GlassWire and CPU usage using Windows’ built-in Resource Monitor.

We put each cloud backup service through its paces before uninstalling them from both devices in between tests. Our evaluation data totaled 16.8GB and included text files, image files, video files, and audio files. We saved the information on the cloud servers of each service and retrieved a 1.12GB subset of it to the laptop.

The testing environment itself was a home in Wisconsin, provisioned by TDS Telecom Extreme 300 Fiber internet service. Internet speeds during testing were typically 280 megabits per second (Mbps) down and 120 Mbps up, according to Speedtest.net.

Online backup vs. online syncing vs. online archiving

Cloud-backup services aren’t the same as online-syncing services like Dropbox (opens in new tab), Google Drive, iCloud (opens in new tab), or OneDrive (opens in new tab).

When you sign up for an online syncing service, the program will duplicate the files and folders on your device in the cloud and then distribute those exact duplicates to all of your other devices. You may see the synchronizing service as the hub of a wheel and each of your connected devices as the spokes.

Cloud-backup services are simpler. All of your data is being uploaded to their cloud servers in real-time or at regular intervals. A file-syncing service would seem like a spoked wheel, whereas an online backup service would only be a line from your device(s) to the cloud server.

If you’re lucky, you’ll never need to access the information stored on those offsite backup servers. Gigabyte for gigabyte, cloud backup services are significantly more cost-effective than online synchronization services, and most of them provide quite large quantities of storage for a low monthly rate.

Cost-effective alternatives include cloud storage services like Box and Google Cloud. As a result, you may free up valuable storage space on your device by transferring seldom-accessed information to remote servers.

Even while cloud-archiving services may be very inexpensive (as low as a few cents per month per GB), there is typically a charge to retrieve data again. (The assumption is that you will never need to download all the archived files.) Backblaze has its own very affordable cloud-storage service called B2.