5 Online Backup Services Reviewed

CrashPlan+ is my favorite online backup service because of the excellent software, cost effective plans, and feature set.

CrashPlan's interface is excellent and the features abound including a web-based restore option, continuous backup, an unprecedented 448-bit encryption level (better than your bank), and the foundation of a proven and excellent backup software program.

CrashPlan+ 10GB costs $24.99 /yr and allows up to 10 GB of storage.

CrashPlan+ Unlimited is $49.99 /yr and, as the plan suggests, allows an unlimited amount of online storage.

CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited costs $119.99 /yr and offers an unlimited amount of online storage across anywhere from two to ten computers.

All CrashPlan+ plans offer discounts for longer terms.

I love Backblaze mainly because it's so straightforward with its pricing and software.

The software interface is as simple as I've seen but there's plenty of fine tuning available if you want it.

Backblaze is $5 /month /computer and allows an unlimited amount of storage.

Backblaze also offers a just-as-simple business plan - unlimited storage for $50 /computer /year.

If you're concerned about backing up online being complicated or confusing, you're going to love Backblaze.

Any exceptional backup service should be easy to use, automatic, reliable, and easy to restore from. Mozy is all of these.

To get started with Mozy, visit their website and sign up for an account. Download and install their software, tell it what files or types of files to backup, and then set it to automatically backup whenever you like.

MozyHome Free is, you guessed it, completely free and gives you up to 2 GB of storage on Mozy's servers.

MozyHome's pricing is tiered: $5.99/month for 50 GB from one computer and $9.99 /month for 125 GB of storage from up to three computers. Additional computers and each additional 20 GB of space can be had for an extra $2 per month, each.

Mozy used to offer an extremely popular unlimited backup plan but ended it in favor of its current tiered plan in early 2011.

Carbonite's online backup service works in a similar way to other services - you download and configure a piece of software and the backup is handled automatically in the background.

I found Carbonite's software to be slow and I thought it was integrated too heavily into my computer. If you don't mind this type of software, Carbonite may be your first choice for backing up online - many people rave about this service.

Carbonite's online backup service costs $54.95/year and allows for an unlimited amount of data backup.

IDrive is similar in most ways to other online backup services. Some features that make IDrive stand out among the competition include mapped drive support, more frequent continuous backup, and support for server operating systems.

I found the IDrive software to be a little less user friendly than those from some other online backup services, but if their unique features are high on your priority list, IDrive may be just what you're looking for in an online backup service.

IDrive Basic is completely free and gives you up to 5 GB of storage.

IDrive Pro costs $4.95/month for up to 150 GB of storage or $14.95/month for up to 500 GB of storage across up to five computers.

IDrive Pro also has business-class pricing and storage options, up to 1 TB for $79.95 /month.