Backup

Backblaze, IDrive, Arq — the offsite backup decision for normal humans.

Backup is one of the categories where the gap between marketing and reality is widest. We test these services with real backups, real restores, real failover scenarios — then publish what we'd actually recommend to a friend.

What you'll find here:

• Head-to-head comparisons — like Backblaze vs IDrive — where we test products side by side on the same workloads, with the same datasets, under the same constraints.
• Tutorials — when a tool has a high learning curve, we publish step-by-step setup guides written by people who've configured it for real production use, not toy projects.
• Listicles — ranked by use case, not affiliate payout. We disclose every affiliate relationship in our disclosure.

Editorial standards for Backup

Every piece in this category has been reviewed by an editor with hands-on experience in the relevant tool or workflow. We don't publish AI-only content. We don't accept gifted hardware. We don't publish reviews of products we haven't used.

If we recommend a paid tool, the affiliate link is clearly marked with data-aff, and the recommendation is independent of payout. We've actively rejected several lucrative partnerships because the products didn't survive our internal testing.

How we test Backup tools

Our test methodology is published per-review at the bottom of each comparison piece. In general:

1. Real workloads — we don't run synthetic benchmarks. Each tool is tested on the workload an actual operator would run.
2. Multi-month evaluation — we never publish a review based on less than 30 days of real use. Many of our reviews represent 6-12 months of production usage.
3. Editor-reviewed — every comparison goes through a senior editor in the category before publication.
4. Reader-corrected — when readers point out errors or out-of-date information, we update with a visible changelog.

Browse the 6 pieces in this category below. If you have a topic request or a correction, our about page has contact details.

##All Backup pieces