

There is conflicting reports, so I’d trust them technically to be like Box, but with better legal protections, and an interest in privacy generally. What is unclear is how zero knowledge they are. They also offer some Box like picture management and file share and sync tools. Now, googling will show the “unlimited” is more like 5-10TB, but compare 5TB Backblaze object storage at $26 a month, and it seems like a much better deal. They offer unlimited backup for a personal user for 690 NOK per year, which is around $81. They’re based in Norway, so they have GDPR and other privacy regulations that are stronger than in the US. But if I was going to need to deal with third party tools and object storage management, I figured I’d give one more look at cheaper alternatives.Īnd, I found Jottacloud. So, the obvious competitor is Backblaze B2. They are pretty expensive for “hot storage”, and Glacier is just more complication that using a competing vendor. So, I’m sure many techies are asking why not “object storage” from AWS, Azure or Google Cloud? Well, mostly price. One option that is likely to be the easiest, but more expensive, is SpiderOak One. If you know me, you know I tend to prefer to get what I pay for and only what I pay for – so less advertising, or AI training, or really anyone but people I explicitly select having access to my files, let alone backups is preferable. Many, like Google, use photos to train face detect AIs for instance. What this means in practice is that while your backup data is private while being backed up, the cloud vendor can look at your files if they want to for any reason.

The other thing to keep in mind is how sensitive your backups are – many cloud vendors do encrypt data, but very few do so in a “zero knowledge” end to end method and at rest. it’s a building block, but not the whole shebang.

This is often pay per GB per month, with charges for download, and often is strictly storage space via an API or CLI offering. However, most cloud providers only offer “enterprise” storage if you happen to use Linux. There are a huge number of options in this space if you use Windows or MacOS, all running about $6/month per computer, or pay for storage used. Cloud backup is a common solution for home users to actually have backups of their data.
