Backblaze Reviews

I'm writing this on behalf of a client of mine.

I had recommended this app based on internet recommendations but I hadn't tried it myself.

Ugh. The backup mysteriously failed on her Mac for 32 days. It was non-obvious that it had. When I was checking it out, I wasn't sure that it had but I wasn't absolutely sure about that.

Then I contacted customer support for help. My first attempt at trying to get it to work again failed. It was a bit unclear because it had a disk scanning progress bar that was stuck at 100% for several hours but I also got an alert that the backup had failed. This was confusing…

I then contacted customer support and did an uninstall and reinstall which also failed with unclear error messages.

After that, I gave up and asked for the subscription to be canceled.

In my mind, a great backup should be more like Apple’s Time Machine: you should be easily able to check when it was backed up and see what files were backed up. You should have clear error messages.

The program does not work. It gets stuck in the initial backup and won’t finish the job. Will be canceling service. Customer support is horrible.

can't see my files

Can’t see any of files and Backblaze doesn’t even pull up my drives most of the time.

I’ve had this app for years, backing up my Mac plus and external drive with all my family photos and videos. Never needed to restore anything until a couple of days ago.
My external drive failed and I choose to restore the entire drive.
First, restore from the Mac app is really slow.
I left my computer on with the restore in progress and after 2 days I want to check. At about 75% restore, Backblaze stated to skip files and download speed went down to 0%. Log files shows authentication problem.
I restart my Mac and retry, Backblaze asks my password again and I continue the download.
The skipped files remain skipped.
According to this app, this is a known issues with large restore.
They suggest to retry by skipping existing files. I retry and again, so slow anyway, and after 2 days authentication problem again, password to reenter.
I’m now restoring manually a folder a time.
What’s the point to pay for a service that it’s not reliable the moment it’s needed?

Why doesn’t this work?! Just stuck spinning on browse. Can’t view the files. Fails when needed!!

I’ve tried to download files a few times in the last few months and Backblaze always gets stuck loading, on multiple devices. this app support could not help, and the issue isn’t fixed even though it’s been months.

I was a long time customer until I discovered that an external hard drive that was backed up was deleted before the 30 day time limit.

I contacted support about the issue, they weren’t too sure, so they had re-upload the drive’s content. I started to do that, but I didn’t upload the entire drive just in case it happened again.

About three weeks later, the drive’s contents were deleted again. Even though I paid for the one year extension.

I contacted support again and basically was told that there was nothing they could do and the ticket was closed. I complained about the service, but never got a response from anyone at the company.

Shortly after that, I cancelled the service.

I’ve used this app for 15 years to back up my iMac. After my iMac crashed in November I used this app to restore. Several months later I realized 4/5 of my pictures were missing. When I called this app to get support for finding those pictures, I become aware that they have horrible customer service. They do not do any telephone support. I spent the last week exchanging emails,, waiting half a day in between emails. Customer support is obviously not reading all of the email exchange because I have to use phrases such as “as I explained in my previous email, I tried that …”.
A week later, I still do not have all of my missing photos and I’m unsure if I will ever recover my children’s baby pictures. Very upsetting experience with a company I’ve given 15 years worth of payments to.

Why in the heck does opening Backblaze interrupt the audio session?

I really like the this app service, but Backblaze is terribly limited in at least two ways that impact it's usability for me:

1. Backblaze is incredibly reluctant to grab updated summary information from the this app servers. I have a Mac Mini with a large external drive that's still trying to finish the initial upload after a couple months. Consequently, while away from home on business I like to pull up Backblaze to check my upload process (not to mention occasionally retrieve files). Unfortunately, I find the upload total rarely updates. After a week or so of refreshing Backblaze or killing Backblaze using the multitasking/app-switcher/app-killer function then re-starting Backblaze . I'll finally see a new total and it'll be a couple dozen more gigabytes. Clearly the uploads continue but Backblaze just isn't gathering/reporting it well at all.

2. The second is short and sweet. I don't believe there should be a bandwith cap on downloadable files. Is there a necessary or unavoidable technological limitation causing this? If it's just a proprietary business decision, drop it. More often than not I've needed a file on mobile while on the road yet been unable to access it for download because it's size is reportedly too large.

*Original Review*
Once I authenticate the screen flashes and takes me back to the login screen. I have verified I am using the same credentials I am on the website.

*Updated Review*
After additional research on this app’s website, they posted an update as to why there are many issues with their mobile app. To the this app team, lthough I believe there should be enough redundancy built into your infrastructure to handle changes, while continuing allowing your users to access your product, I do appreciate you updating your customers with an estimated timeline. I am a big fan of your product and will give Backblaze 3 stars for that sake. I am looking forward to seeing the finished (mobile) product, hopefully it will be worth the wait.

I achieved my goal ... I retrieved a particular file I needed from my backup to my iPhone. That being said I understand the other negative reviews of Backblaze. The search function is not obvious to find (ironic) and the first time I tried to search Backblaze crashed. The second time I tried it didn't find the file. So I went more primitive and clicked through the file tree and manually scrolled looking for the file. I did find it, so five stars for satisfying my need but one star for having a tremendously clunky app.

Backblaze is great but as a photographer/videographer I would like to have thumbnails for pictures and video files. That way I don’t have to download it before knowing what it is.

This is an edit of my previous review, which said there was no way to sign out, which would be a security problem on a mobile device you take everywhere & might get stolen. It's true that the feature to turn off automatic login is NOT within the main app interface. But an astute other reviewer pointed out that you can turn off auto-login from within the Settings app (if you have this app installed). That raises my review by a full star, to almost as much as I like the this app service overall!

Also noticed that if a file has a name ending in something other than a file extension (like "….jpg COPY" for example), then Backblaze couldn't figure out what to do with it. Though I'm not sure if the developer should be responsible for fixing that; it COULD be an iOS limitation. It may be worth this app looking into, though.

I was able to download my passport photos directly from my backup without having to manually upload them to cloud storage or save them to my phone.

this app is an amazing cloud storage system.

Here is how I use it and why I think it’s incredible.

I use a Mac Studio at home with multiple external drives plugged in. this app’s desktop application allows me to back up all of those drives and access the files on them in the exact way I’ve organized them. Additionally it serves as a backup for my backups with time-machine.

With this mobile application I can access all of those files on my phone whenever I need to.

I can also move files over to my work computer at any time.

Exactly what I was looking for and I actively recommend this to people.

It saved my userid and password for use with TouchID. Allowed me to download a spreadsheet, an .mp3, and a 5MB .pdf file. No issues. Allows sending to other iOS apps. this app is not a Cloud Sync’ing service like Dropbox. It’s a backup protection service. This extra feature that they provide access too all my files while on-the-go is really appreciated. They don’t stream large files like movies, but, that seems like a lot to ask of a backup provider. Use your own Plex server if that’s what you want. I was forced out of CrashPlan like a lot of fellow users, and honestly, I did like CrashPlan a little better. But, I also know they didn’t feel like what I paid them was worth it for the service they thought they provided so they exited the business. Not much I can do about that. this app is adequate and at a reasonable price. And Backblaze, while not feature rich, works fine for accessing my files on the go and in an emergency.

I have trouble getting my WD Passport for Mac to be identified...I’ve followed every blog instruction and called the companies but only to be left waiting on the phone.

I searched the internet for a backup/cloud company and found this app....

I basically need my files and professional work backed up and it’s that simple so for being day one, (Even when my external hard drives backed up my information; I would still need two or three other places to store it to back those up)

it seems to be very simple to use; even Backblaze . I’m not so advanced I understand what others are talking about on reviews but intend to update the review as time goes by but if I don’t then it’s going good. The service is very affordable and with my circumstances it fits just perfect....

I like the idea of someone else backing up my information since I have two or three backups of everything....personal hard drives seem to crash and I have over 10TB of information, photos, videos etc....not much in the grand scheme of things as this has built up over the years...

Really glad this company exist and fits a need that I have and they made it simple for me to understand

I may or may not be your typical and end-user. Utilizing a PC laptop, iMac desktop, & iPhone at any given time. I'm constantly either swapping files up into a cloud or deciding where each file needs to live long term.

With this app I'm so happy everything is getting backed up as it should knowing that evil is out there patiently waiting to crash my stuff.

The this app app is fantastic, I love it that I could be on the go and pull some random file down for immediate use or reference. It's like having everything on your computer(s)....available no matter where you are. That convenience alone is worth $50 a year!!