8 ms·

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users.

by rsync 5y ago

I find this part interesting - of the ~500,000 customers, 70,000 are B2 customers and 430,000 are "backup" customers ... which are flat-rate "unlimited" users. These flat-rate users are very fickle and price-sensitive. If you peruse subreddits related to cloud storage or online backup, etc., they are filled with very picky users who expect the product to be free - or close to free. It's a fools errand to pursue this market and I assume the pivot to B2 was to build something more sustainable with a much higher price and usage ceiling. Regardless, roughly 85% of the user-base are paying $7/mo for "unlimited backup". I wish them good luck.

matthewmcg 5y ago
"Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.
- saghm 5y ago
  Is it possible that the $7 rate was only for new customers from the point the price change was instated, rather than for existing customers?
  - arsome 5y ago
    No, they did increase it for existing users. - One of those fickle users who bought all the extra credits he could at the original price.
    - apple4ever 5y ago
      And I'm one of those fickle users who was never notified about the price increase until it was due, and could not convince them to be a good company and let me extend at the old price for another year since I'm a good long term customer.
- rsync 5y ago
  ""Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc." I wish that were the case and I wish that all customers were like you. However, I have been tracking - and discussing - these rates with this target market for longer than Backblaze has existed and this market segment is pretty ruthless. They expect google-quality infrastructure at $0-$5 per month and are constantly shopping providers. We don't market to them at all anymore ... although, I personally can't resist posting in /r/datahoarder from time to time because I like the group ...
  - munificent 5y ago
    I think you may be overfitting to the backup enthusiast community which is likely a small fraction of their userbase. Most users: 1. Realize they should back up their stuff. 2. Hunt around for a backup solution provider. At this moment, they are probably very highly price sensitive. 3. Pick one and set it up. 4. Forget about forever, or until the house burns down. You will never ever see or hear these people on forums and stuff like they because they don't give a crap about backups any more than the average tooth-owner spends time discussing dental hygiene on the Internet. It's just a problem to be solved and forgotten as soon as possible.
    - cwp 5y ago
      This is me. I've been a Backblaze user for a long time, but I'm not sure how long, because I never think about it. I've never had to do a full recovery, but every few years I download a file.
    - MrManatee 5y ago
      This. I’ve been a Backblaze customer for years. I’m not a backup enthusiast. To me it’s a problem I want to solve and forget about. If I needed to save money on utilities, I’d probably have more to gain by switching my electricity provider, my insurance provider, or my internet provider. The possibility that there might exist a slightly cheaper backup provider isn’t particularly exciting to me, and hasn’t been on my radar. What has been on my radar is that my laptop has a small SSD, and in addition I have an external hard drive containing files that I want to back up but I rarely use. Backblaze used to require that I regularly plug in that hard drive and then keep it plugged in for a few hours. This was a total chore, and meant that I couldn’t just forget about my backups. I seriously considered switching backup providers because of that. Luckily Backblaze eventually introduced a slightly more expensive plan where I don’t have to do that. So at the moment I’m a satisfied customer, and I’m not actively looking for alternatives.
deanCommie 5y ago
I think the hope is that 420,000 of those users are Grandmas who installed backblaze because their son told them it's a good idea to make sure she doesn't lose all her important documents, and she's backing up a couple PDFs. And then the other 10,000 are data hoarders like me with Terabytes of data. I used to be a Crashplan customer - tried them and Backblaze, and liked Crashplan more. They eventually pivoted to Business only. I was at AWS Re:invent and came up to their booth and bemoaned the loss of a great service. They said "How much data were you backing up?" I told them. They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Fair enough!
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Such an interesting statement. It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Like ISPs with their "unlimited" plans, they market that stuff and then they get mad if you actually saturate their link 24/7. I actually emailed backblaze about this years ago. I asked them if they were really okay with me just dumping 10-20 terabytes of encrypted data that can't be deduplicated on their servers for such a low monthly price. I actually got a reply saying there was no problem. > Thanks for writing in! Our system is truly unlimited. > You can backup move than 15TB of data if you have that amount without hitting a cap or any extra fees. > The business product just adds options for multiple backups and users. Really surprising... I almost subscribed to their service on the spot. I gave up because transfering 20 TB over the internet is insane: it would take days to restore a backup. Also, they had no Linux software.
  - good8675309 5y ago
    I think they avoid Linux support to prevent people like me from putting it on my Linux server. They also don't allow Windows Server to run it either. But hey, you can always use something like Goodsync and B2.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    > It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. I didn't sense that they were bitter about it. But in both cases I do have some sympathy for the business. There is "unlimited" in the sense of what a regular average p50 user would consider reasonable ("every photo i've ever taken with my cellphone of my grandchild") Then there is "unlimited" for a professional p99 user("Every RAW file of every photo i've ever taken as a professional photographer") And then there is "unlimited" for a data hoarder p99.99 user ("Every movie i've ever torrented in 4k, plus multiple seasons of every TV show ever made") As a business you design your model to attract to the p50 customer so that Grandma doesn't have to worry about deleting photos, taking things too far, and losing something important. Unlimited is powerful here. The hope is that the p99 use case gets offset by the person who's paying for the service but barely using it. The p99.99 user? They're just a pain in the butt. You can't chase them away without also chasing away grandma (You can't say "Data cap of 1TB" - people have no idea how much data anything uses). So of course you tolerate them. But ultimately? They're the reason you go out of business. They're the reason Crashplan switched to B2B, and why Backblaze isn't making any money. Can't feel good.
delusional 5y ago
I don't think there's really any "unlimited backup" solutions left outside of backblaze. Back when storage was cheap I could see users switching if you upped the price, the datahoarders that actually use the storage don't really have anywhere to go anymore.
- distances 5y ago
  CrashPlan is still alive with flat pricing, they just don't advertise the service for private customers.
firecall 5y ago
CrashPlan essentially bailed on the consumer market a few years back! I'd agree that customers can be fickle - especially technically inclined customers. It's actually very easy to switch backup systems.
- LilBytes 5y ago
  I'm still salty CrashPlan pulled out. I would have been very happy to keep paying. - one of the salty people on Reddit who ended up building another NAS off site to make up for it.
  - distances 5y ago
    I'm still with CrashPlan. They pulled out of the consumer market but there was no problem rolling over as a business customer. Their admin web consoles are definitely not suited for a basic end user but they work, so I'm happy to keep using the no-hassle Linux client.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
For a backup service they have too many ifs and gotchas. I’d personally stay as far away from them. I’d rather want something that charges more and doesn’t offer that gimmicky unlimited storage and gives me unlimited versioning and external media and doesn’t delete anything as long as I’m paying and am within my storage limit. That simple. That’s why I preferred CrashPlan which had a desktop app much less polished than Backblaze but they were a true backup service. So Backblaze Personal Backup service is a bullshit wrapped in a sophisticated app. My aversion to them is on the same lines of of those VPN and cloud storage companies (pCloud, Koofr etc) offering lifetime plans. And that’s an unsustainable rate!! I mean what else is there to be argued. Data hoarder crowd often use them. Lifetime, unlimited are one word gimmicks which ought to be treated as red flags on giant billboards.
- 55873445216111 5y ago
  I use Duplicati (duplicati.com) with Backblaze B2 as a backend for my backups. I get billed by GB-month and I get to define exactly what files to backup and how many versions to keep.
  - crossroadsguy 5y ago
    I use restic -> b2. And also Vorta (which uses borg) -> rsync, borgbase; Tarsnap -> Tarsnap's S3 (I guess). Vorta so far has been really good and has lots of potential. (Badly need a restic GUI here. May drop restic anytime - I am not comfortable having a personal backup setup without a GUI)
    - davidandgoliath 5y ago
      rclone is fairly swell, and, comes with a spawnable browser ui.
      - crossroadsguy 5y ago
        Is it a backup tool? Or a clone things to some remote tool? I mean does it have standard differential backup features ie dedup, diff, compress, e2e, snapshot etc?
Matthias1 5y ago
Are you affiliated with rsync.net, competing with BackBlaze? Is the major difference with rsync.net that they charge per GB?
- rsync 5y ago
  I am the founder of rsync.net. I don't think we are competitors. I have publicly criticized flat-rate storage pricing for many years[1]. That being said, I wish them good luck and will watch with great interest. [1] https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-storage-services-vs-rsyncnet.html https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stor...
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    That's an interesting view on flat rate storage. Although if you happen to be within the target audience for their business model (like I am) then it works pretty well, especially as a secondary off-site backup option. But yeah, if there's a threshold of, say, 2TB and > 5GB/day bandwidth that makes someone an unprofitable customer, then they should just set caps accordingly rather than claim unlimited.
    - tallanvor 5y ago
      As far as I know Backblaze doesn't throttle. I have two computers being backed up (1.5TB and 33TB) and about 2TB being backed up from a NAS to B2. Honestly it's been working without a hassle. Granted, if I ever have to restore that 33TB, it could take a long time, but most of it wouldn't be critical to getting the system up and running again and if it takes a couple of weeks to restore, fine.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Well, they compete in some ways with B2 but B2 isn't the thing being criticized here.
mikewarot 5y ago
I have 4 machines backed up at Backblaze, and only the machine I'm currently typing on still exists. It's far less trouble to pay them a few bucks rather than try to consolidate all the stuff. (Which will not fit on this new SSD based laptop, I used to have a Terabyte) It's data hoarding of a different nature, like the millions of rented physical storage sheds full of stuff that should have been tossed a decade or more ago, but aren't because it's "cheap enough, for now" a decade ago, then inertia.
brandon272 5y ago
I think this is an incorrect assessment of that 430K customer base and the target market for that specific BackBlaze product. The product is really aimed at people are either vaguely aware or fully aware that they need a backup product but don't know where to turn and want something simple. It's aimed at people like me who need to recommend a backup product to friends, family members, etc. that I can simply direct them to install (or install for them) and requires next to no configuration to get up and running. It's minimally configured and just runs reliably in the background, rarely to be thought of again. All for a small, consistent monthly fee. It is not targeted at backup enthusiasts, and DEFINITELY not the DataHoarder crowd, though I know some in that community do find ways to somehow use the service. To that end, BackBlaze has made strategic choices to increase the chances that they are unlikely to be an attractive option to the DataHoarder or backup enthusiast or 20TB homelab folks: 1) As I said, the client offers little configuration compared to more powerful and flexible backup options. When you backup using their backup client, it is all done under their storage and retrieval preferences and paradigm. (In my experience, these communities tend to want more ability to configure, not less) 2) They don't offer a Linux client 3) They don't allow you to backup network shares. Nor do they allow you to back up a drive and then disconnect it. (After BackBlaze can no longer see the file, it will only retain it for 30 days) I would imagine that these strategic choices have worked, because from what I see, the BackBlaze Unlimited service does not seem to be all that popular within the DataHoarder or "I need to store 100TB for $5/mo. and retrieve it all every few weeks" communities.
eins1234 5y ago
I actually think they could continue to do well in this market because they've persevered long enough to become the last surviving company offering an unlimited backup product in the consumer space (afaik, if there are others I'd love to hear about them). They're basically a monopoly at this point, and can dictate the price. They could double their prices tomorrow, and their customers (myself included) would likely complain loudly, but ultimately very few of them would actually cancel because there is no real alternative to switch to since every one of their former competitors have given up on this model and either introduced caps/usage-based pricing or pivoted to businesses. I certainly would keep paying my subscription at double the price because I'm backing up more than enough data to justify the cost. In fact I currently also subscribe to Crashplan's "Business" backup product at $10/month in addition to Backblaze in order to get an extra level of redundancy in my backups. (Crashplan markets to businesses but there's not much stopping any individual from signing up and using it the last time I checked).
cbhl 5y ago
Their "backup credits" system has helped mitigate churn from price increases (and they've gotten very good at using it), but agreed that there are a lot of turned down / discontinued offerings in the unlimited backup space.
apple4ever 5y ago
I don't expect it to be free. But they keep raising the prices, and don't let longtime customers take advantage and extend. And on top of that, their support is terrible. I ended up dropping them for Arq - $140 vs $60. No brainer.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  You are literally the exact type of bad customer the parent comment is referring to.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Well that's really rude and unjustified. If Arq works for them, then they have less than a terabyte. If they switched to paying per byte, their bill would decrease. They don't fit that "bad unlimited customer" profile at all. They just want a stable price and reasonable support. That's not being fickle.
thathndude 5y ago
To your point, the customers sign up for unlimited backup, and then they spend every waking moment trying to find a way to “trick” back blaze into backing up their entire Synology, or the like, on the service.
ksec 5y ago
It is similar how insurance works. And the maths work just fine over a large enough sample size on Windows and Mac. And the reason why they dont support Linux. I think B2 is a leverage of their scale to offer something that is profitable per unit cost. At the end of the day they need to chase economy of scale. So it is a great addition. My biggest concern is the cost of HDD not failing as fast as they have predicted, and that is part of the reason why they raised the price from $5 to $7. The recent announcement from WD only aims at 2.5x platter density increase by 2030 without using EAMR, suggest to me EAMR is expensive, and while HDD capacity will go up, unit cost wont go down as much. This is similar to NAND. We may be arrive at the end of the S curve in terms of storage cost reduction.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
For whatever reason, Apple is the only company who has internalized the fact that price-sensitive customers simply aren’t worthwhile.
prirun 5y ago
Brian posted a histogram a while back on HN showing the backup size distribution of the unlimited customers. There was one customer backing up over 400TB. But, more than 50% of customers were backing up less than 300GB. IOW, they are paying $7/mo for flat-rate unlimited that would only cost $1.50/mo on B2. Sounds like a good business plan. To add a Linux plan, which could be lots of larger servers, I would add something like $7/TB/mo rounded up to the nearest TB. This is priced similarly to the flat-rate plan but also accommodates larger servers. 1) It has the same advantage of the unlimited plan that most customers will not be backing up a TB, increasing their margins 2) even if they do backup a TB, B2 is currently priced at $5/TB, so the Linux backup is higher margin 3) there will be an average unused space of 500GB per backup, even for customers backing up more than a TB, further increasing their margins

by rsync 5y ago

matthewmcg 5y ago

"Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc.

saghm 5y ago
Is it possible that the $7 rate was only for new customers from the point the price change was instated, rather than for existing customers?
- arsome 5y ago
  No, they did increase it for existing users. - One of those fickle users who bought all the extra credits he could at the original price.
  - apple4ever 5y ago
    And I'm one of those fickle users who was never notified about the price increase until it was due, and could not convince them to be a good company and let me extend at the old price for another year since I'm a good long term customer.
rsync 5y ago
""Fickle"? I've been a subscriber to the unlimited tier since seemingly forever, and I didn't realize it was now $7/mo instead of $5/mo. I think in the aggregate, subscriptions are pretty sticky due to inertia, etc." I wish that were the case and I wish that all customers were like you. However, I have been tracking - and discussing - these rates with this target market for longer than Backblaze has existed and this market segment is pretty ruthless. They expect google-quality infrastructure at $0-$5 per month and are constantly shopping providers. We don't market to them at all anymore ... although, I personally can't resist posting in /r/datahoarder from time to time because I like the group ...
- munificent 5y ago
  I think you may be overfitting to the backup enthusiast community which is likely a small fraction of their userbase. Most users: 1. Realize they should back up their stuff. 2. Hunt around for a backup solution provider. At this moment, they are probably very highly price sensitive. 3. Pick one and set it up. 4. Forget about forever, or until the house burns down. You will never ever see or hear these people on forums and stuff like they because they don't give a crap about backups any more than the average tooth-owner spends time discussing dental hygiene on the Internet. It's just a problem to be solved and forgotten as soon as possible.
  - cwp 5y ago
    This is me. I've been a Backblaze user for a long time, but I'm not sure how long, because I never think about it. I've never had to do a full recovery, but every few years I download a file.
  - MrManatee 5y ago
    This. I’ve been a Backblaze customer for years. I’m not a backup enthusiast. To me it’s a problem I want to solve and forget about. If I needed to save money on utilities, I’d probably have more to gain by switching my electricity provider, my insurance provider, or my internet provider. The possibility that there might exist a slightly cheaper backup provider isn’t particularly exciting to me, and hasn’t been on my radar. What has been on my radar is that my laptop has a small SSD, and in addition I have an external hard drive containing files that I want to back up but I rarely use. Backblaze used to require that I regularly plug in that hard drive and then keep it plugged in for a few hours. This was a total chore, and meant that I couldn’t just forget about my backups. I seriously considered switching backup providers because of that. Luckily Backblaze eventually introduced a slightly more expensive plan where I don’t have to do that. So at the moment I’m a satisfied customer, and I’m not actively looking for alternatives.

deanCommie 5y ago

I think the hope is that 420,000 of those users are Grandmas who installed backblaze because their son told them it's a good idea to make sure she doesn't lose all her important documents, and she's backing up a couple PDFs. And then the other 10,000 are data hoarders like me with Terabytes of data. I used to be a Crashplan customer - tried them and Backblaze, and liked Crashplan more. They eventually pivoted to Business only. I was at AWS Re:invent and came up to their booth and bemoaned the loss of a great service. They said "How much data were you backing up?" I told them. They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Fair enough!

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> They said "yeah, we lose a ton of money on every user like you." Such an interesting statement. It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. Like ISPs with their "unlimited" plans, they market that stuff and then they get mad if you actually saturate their link 24/7. I actually emailed backblaze about this years ago. I asked them if they were really okay with me just dumping 10-20 terabytes of encrypted data that can't be deduplicated on their servers for such a low monthly price. I actually got a reply saying there was no problem. > Thanks for writing in! Our system is truly unlimited. > You can backup move than 15TB of data if you have that amount without hitting a cap or any extra fees. > The business product just adds options for multiple backups and users. Really surprising... I almost subscribed to their service on the spot. I gave up because transfering 20 TB over the internet is insane: it would take days to restore a backup. Also, they had no Linux software.
- good8675309 5y ago
  I think they avoid Linux support to prevent people like me from putting it on my Linux server. They also don't allow Windows Server to run it either. But hey, you can always use something like Goodsync and B2.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  > It's like they really think they can get away with offering "unlimited" storage without people taking full advantage of it. I didn't sense that they were bitter about it. But in both cases I do have some sympathy for the business. There is "unlimited" in the sense of what a regular average p50 user would consider reasonable ("every photo i've ever taken with my cellphone of my grandchild") Then there is "unlimited" for a professional p99 user("Every RAW file of every photo i've ever taken as a professional photographer") And then there is "unlimited" for a data hoarder p99.99 user ("Every movie i've ever torrented in 4k, plus multiple seasons of every TV show ever made") As a business you design your model to attract to the p50 customer so that Grandma doesn't have to worry about deleting photos, taking things too far, and losing something important. Unlimited is powerful here. The hope is that the p99 use case gets offset by the person who's paying for the service but barely using it. The p99.99 user? They're just a pain in the butt. You can't chase them away without also chasing away grandma (You can't say "Data cap of 1TB" - people have no idea how much data anything uses). So of course you tolerate them. But ultimately? They're the reason you go out of business. They're the reason Crashplan switched to B2B, and why Backblaze isn't making any money. Can't feel good.

delusional 5y ago

I don't think there's really any "unlimited backup" solutions left outside of backblaze. Back when storage was cheap I could see users switching if you upped the price, the datahoarders that actually use the storage don't really have anywhere to go anymore.

distances 5y ago
CrashPlan is still alive with flat pricing, they just don't advertise the service for private customers.

firecall 5y ago

CrashPlan essentially bailed on the consumer market a few years back! I'd agree that customers can be fickle - especially technically inclined customers. It's actually very easy to switch backup systems.

LilBytes 5y ago
I'm still salty CrashPlan pulled out. I would have been very happy to keep paying. - one of the salty people on Reddit who ended up building another NAS off site to make up for it.
- distances 5y ago
  I'm still with CrashPlan. They pulled out of the consumer market but there was no problem rolling over as a business customer. Their admin web consoles are definitely not suited for a basic end user but they work, so I'm happy to keep using the no-hassle Linux client.

crossroadsguy 5y ago

For a backup service they have too many ifs and gotchas. I’d personally stay as far away from them. I’d rather want something that charges more and doesn’t offer that gimmicky unlimited storage and gives me unlimited versioning and external media and doesn’t delete anything as long as I’m paying and am within my storage limit. That simple. That’s why I preferred CrashPlan which had a desktop app much less polished than Backblaze but they were a true backup service. So Backblaze Personal Backup service is a bullshit wrapped in a sophisticated app. My aversion to them is on the same lines of of those VPN and cloud storage companies (pCloud, Koofr etc) offering lifetime plans. And that’s an unsustainable rate!! I mean what else is there to be argued. Data hoarder crowd often use them. Lifetime, unlimited are one word gimmicks which ought to be treated as red flags on giant billboards.

55873445216111 5y ago
I use Duplicati (duplicati.com) with Backblaze B2 as a backend for my backups. I get billed by GB-month and I get to define exactly what files to backup and how many versions to keep.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  I use restic -> b2. And also Vorta (which uses borg) -> rsync, borgbase; Tarsnap -> Tarsnap's S3 (I guess). Vorta so far has been really good and has lots of potential. (Badly need a restic GUI here. May drop restic anytime - I am not comfortable having a personal backup setup without a GUI)
  - davidandgoliath 5y ago
    rclone is fairly swell, and, comes with a spawnable browser ui.
    - crossroadsguy 5y ago
      Is it a backup tool? Or a clone things to some remote tool? I mean does it have standard differential backup features ie dedup, diff, compress, e2e, snapshot etc?

Matthias1 5y ago

Are you affiliated with rsync.net, competing with BackBlaze? Is the major difference with rsync.net that they charge per GB?

rsync 5y ago
I am the founder of rsync.net. I don't think we are competitors. I have publicly criticized flat-rate storage pricing for many years[1]. That being said, I wish them good luck and will watch with great interest. [1] https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-storage-services-vs-rsyncnet.html https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stor...
- ineedasername 5y ago
  That's an interesting view on flat rate storage. Although if you happen to be within the target audience for their business model (like I am) then it works pretty well, especially as a secondary off-site backup option. But yeah, if there's a threshold of, say, 2TB and > 5GB/day bandwidth that makes someone an unprofitable customer, then they should just set caps accordingly rather than claim unlimited.
  - tallanvor 5y ago
    As far as I know Backblaze doesn't throttle. I have two computers being backed up (1.5TB and 33TB) and about 2TB being backed up from a NAS to B2. Honestly it's been working without a hassle. Granted, if I ever have to restore that 33TB, it could take a long time, but most of it wouldn't be critical to getting the system up and running again and if it takes a couple of weeks to restore, fine.
Dylan16807 5y ago
Well, they compete in some ways with B2 but B2 isn't the thing being criticized here.

mikewarot 5y ago

I have 4 machines backed up at Backblaze, and only the machine I'm currently typing on still exists. It's far less trouble to pay them a few bucks rather than try to consolidate all the stuff. (Which will not fit on this new SSD based laptop, I used to have a Terabyte) It's data hoarding of a different nature, like the millions of rented physical storage sheds full of stuff that should have been tossed a decade or more ago, but aren't because it's "cheap enough, for now" a decade ago, then inertia.

brandon272 5y ago

I think this is an incorrect assessment of that 430K customer base and the target market for that specific BackBlaze product. The product is really aimed at people are either vaguely aware or fully aware that they need a backup product but don't know where to turn and want something simple. It's aimed at people like me who need to recommend a backup product to friends, family members, etc. that I can simply direct them to install (or install for them) and requires next to no configuration to get up and running. It's minimally configured and just runs reliably in the background, rarely to be thought of again. All for a small, consistent monthly fee. It is not targeted at backup enthusiasts, and DEFINITELY not the DataHoarder crowd, though I know some in that community do find ways to somehow use the service. To that end, BackBlaze has made strategic choices to increase the chances that they are unlikely to be an attractive option to the DataHoarder or backup enthusiast or 20TB homelab folks: 1) As I said, the client offers little configuration compared to more powerful and flexible backup options. When you backup using their backup client, it is all done under their storage and retrieval preferences and paradigm. (In my experience, these communities tend to want more ability to configure, not less) 2) They don't offer a Linux client 3) They don't allow you to backup network shares. Nor do they allow you to back up a drive and then disconnect it. (After BackBlaze can no longer see the file, it will only retain it for 30 days) I would imagine that these strategic choices have worked, because from what I see, the BackBlaze Unlimited service does not seem to be all that popular within the DataHoarder or "I need to store 100TB for $5/mo. and retrieve it all every few weeks" communities.

eins1234 5y ago

I actually think they could continue to do well in this market because they've persevered long enough to become the last surviving company offering an unlimited backup product in the consumer space (afaik, if there are others I'd love to hear about them). They're basically a monopoly at this point, and can dictate the price. They could double their prices tomorrow, and their customers (myself included) would likely complain loudly, but ultimately very few of them would actually cancel because there is no real alternative to switch to since every one of their former competitors have given up on this model and either introduced caps/usage-based pricing or pivoted to businesses. I certainly would keep paying my subscription at double the price because I'm backing up more than enough data to justify the cost. In fact I currently also subscribe to Crashplan's "Business" backup product at $10/month in addition to Backblaze in order to get an extra level of redundancy in my backups. (Crashplan markets to businesses but there's not much stopping any individual from signing up and using it the last time I checked).

cbhl 5y ago

Their "backup credits" system has helped mitigate churn from price increases (and they've gotten very good at using it), but agreed that there are a lot of turned down / discontinued offerings in the unlimited backup space.

apple4ever 5y ago

I don't expect it to be free. But they keep raising the prices, and don't let longtime customers take advantage and extend. And on top of that, their support is terrible. I ended up dropping them for Arq - $140 vs $60. No brainer.

mdorazio 5y ago
You are literally the exact type of bad customer the parent comment is referring to.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  Well that's really rude and unjustified. If Arq works for them, then they have less than a terabyte. If they switched to paying per byte, their bill would decrease. They don't fit that "bad unlimited customer" profile at all. They just want a stable price and reasonable support. That's not being fickle.

thathndude 5y ago

To your point, the customers sign up for unlimited backup, and then they spend every waking moment trying to find a way to “trick” back blaze into backing up their entire Synology, or the like, on the service.

ksec 5y ago

It is similar how insurance works. And the maths work just fine over a large enough sample size on Windows and Mac. And the reason why they dont support Linux. I think B2 is a leverage of their scale to offer something that is profitable per unit cost. At the end of the day they need to chase economy of scale. So it is a great addition. My biggest concern is the cost of HDD not failing as fast as they have predicted, and that is part of the reason why they raised the price from $5 to $7. The recent announcement from WD only aims at 2.5x platter density increase by 2030 without using EAMR, suggest to me EAMR is expensive, and while HDD capacity will go up, unit cost wont go down as much. This is similar to NAND. We may be arrive at the end of the S curve in terms of storage cost reduction.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

For whatever reason, Apple is the only company who has internalized the fact that price-sensitive customers simply aren’t worthwhile.

prirun 5y ago

Brian posted a histogram a while back on HN showing the backup size distribution of the unlimited customers. There was one customer backing up over 400TB. But, more than 50% of customers were backing up less than 300GB. IOW, they are paying $7/mo for flat-rate unlimited that would only cost $1.50/mo on B2. Sounds like a good business plan. To add a Linux plan, which could be lots of larger servers, I would add something like $7/TB/mo rounded up to the nearest TB. This is priced similarly to the flat-rate plan but also accommodates larger servers. 1) It has the same advantage of the unlimited plan that most customers will not be backing up a TB, increasing their margins 2) even if they do backup a TB, B2 is currently priced at $5/TB, so the Linux backup is higher margin 3) there will be an average unused space of 500GB per backup, even for customers backing up more than a TB, further increasing their margins