Carbonite
Carbonite, now part of OpenText, is continuous cloud backup for computers and servers, with unlimited storage on its personal plans and server support plus compliance features on its business ones.
Who Carbonite is best for
- Sole traders and home offices wanting set-and-forget backup of one machine
- Small businesses that need Windows server backup alongside desktops
- Regulated practices that need backup mapped to HIPAA, FERPA, or GLBA obligations
Ideal team: Businesses of roughly 1 to 25 that want continuous, automatic backup without administering it, and in particular those with a Windows server to protect rather than only laptops.
Carbonite pricing
Personal Basic
$6.33/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $75.99 a year, 1 computer
- Unlimited cloud backup storage
- No external drive backup
Personal Plus
$6.58/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $78.99 a year, only $3 above Basic at current discounts
- 1 computer plus 1 external hard drive
- Unlimited cloud backup storage
Personal Prime
$8.08/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $96.99 a year, 1 computer plus 1 external drive
- Courier delivery of recovered files included
- Unlimited cloud backup storage
Professional Core
$24/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $287.99 a year, up to 25 computers, drives and NAS
- 250 GB of cloud storage across the account
- No server backup at this tier
Professional Power
$50/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $599.99 a year, list price $799.99
- 1 server plus up to 25 computers
- 500 GB of cloud storage across the account
Professional Ultimate
$83.33/flat / mo (billed annually)
- $999.99 a year, list price $1,299.99
- Unlimited servers plus 25 computers
- 500 GB of cloud storage across the account
Costs to watch before you commit
- The business plans cap cloud storage at 250 GB on Core and 500 GB on Power and Ultimate, while the personal plans are unlimited. A 25-person business gets less storage than one home user.
- Advertised business prices are promotional: Power lists at $799.99 and Ultimate at $1,299.99 before the current discount, so budget for the list price at renewal.
- Everything is billed annually up front. The monthly figures are the yearly price divided by twelve, not a monthly plan.
- Basic covers one computer and no external drive, yet Plus is about $3 a year more at current discounts, so Basic is rarely the sensible buy.
- Courier delivery of recovered files is an extra charge on Basic and Plus.
- The best rates need multi-year prepay, with a further 5% off for two years and 10% for three.
Carbonite pros and cons
Pros
- Unlimited cloud storage on the personal plans, which is genuinely rare and the strongest thing about the product
- Continuous backup that runs without being administered, which is the point for a business with no IT person
- Real Windows server backup on Power and Ultimate, to cloud and onsite targets, which most consumer-grade backup does not do
- Positioned explicitly for HIPAA, FERPA and GLBA obligations, so regulated practices have something to point at
- 1-click file restore, with browser and mobile access to your backed-up files
- A 30-day money-back guarantee rather than a trial you have to remember to cancel
- 172 reviews is a large enough sample to draw conclusions from
Cons
- The business plans cap storage at 250 GB or 500 GB while the personal ones are unlimited, which is the wrong way round
- iDrive rates 4.58 across 1,201 reviews against Carbonite's 4.3 across 172, and costs less
- Value for money is its weakest score at 4.01, against 4.25 overall
- Business prices are promotional; Power lists at $799.99 and Ultimate at $1,299.99
- Everything is an annual prepay, and the best rates want two or three years up front
- Professional Core has no server backup at all despite costing $287.99 a year
- Basic is poor value at current discounts, costing about $3 a year less than a materially better plan
Carbonite review: a closer look
The storage caps are backwards
This is the finding that should decide most business purchases and it is easy to miss, because the caps sit in the comparison table rather than next to the price. Carbonite's personal plans, from $75.99 a year, include unlimited cloud backup for one computer. Its business plans do not. Professional Core at $287.99 a year covers up to 25 computers, external drives and NAS devices, and allows 250 GB of cloud storage across the whole account. Power and Ultimate raise that to 500 GB. So a single home user pays $75.99 for unlimited space, and a 25-person business pays $287.99 for 250 GB shared between everyone. For a business backing up documents that may be sufficient. For a business with design files, video, or a server holding anything substantial, 500 GB is a ceiling you will hit and the plan above it does not raise the storage, only the server count. Work out your actual data volume before this becomes an argument with their sales team.
iDrive rates higher, on seven times the sample, for less money
We carry both, so this is worth saying plainly. On Capterra, Carbonite holds 4.25 overall across 172 reviews. iDrive holds 4.58 across 1,201. That is a higher score on roughly seven times the sample, which is not a rounding difference. The subscores sharpen it: Carbonite's value for money is 4.01, its lowest of four, while iDrive's is 4.67, its highest. Carbonite's customer service sits at 4.02 against iDrive's 4.53. iDrive is also cheaper for multi-device business backup and does not impose the same storage inversion. None of that makes Carbonite a bad product, and the section below covers what it does better, but anyone choosing between them on general-purpose backup should understand they are picking the lower-rated and more expensive option, and should have a reason.
What the money actually buys on the business tiers
The three professional plans are best read as a server ladder rather than a capacity ladder. Core at $287.99 a year covers up to 25 computers and no server at all, which is a lot of money for desktop backup with a 250 GB cap. Power at $599.99 adds exactly one server. Ultimate at $999.99 makes servers unlimited. If you have no server, Core is the only tier that applies and it is expensive for what it is. If you have one server, you are at $599.99. Note also that the advertised figures are discounted: Power lists at $799.99 and Ultimate at $1,299.99, so the price you renew at may be several hundred dollars higher than the price you signed at. Compare on the list price, as with any product whose homepage advertises a percentage off.
On the personal plans, skip Basic
A quirk of the current promotion makes the entry plan the wrong buy. Basic is discounted 20%, to $75.99 a year. Plus is discounted 40%, to $78.99. That is about three dollars a year between them, and for it Plus adds backup of an external hard drive, which Basic does not do at any price. Prime at $96.99 adds courier delivery of recovered files, which the cheaper plans charge extra for and which matters only if you expect to recover a volume of data too large to download comfortably. So the sensible personal ladder is Plus for almost everyone, Prime if a full restore over the internet would be painful, and Basic essentially never while the discounts sit where they are. Promotions change, so check the two prices against each other rather than assuming the cheapest line is the cheapest plan.
How it compares
Against iDrive, covered above: higher rated, larger sample, cheaper, no storage inversion, and the default recommendation for general backup. Against Backblaze, which we also carry, Computer Backup is about $9 a month for unlimited storage on one machine and is simpler and cheaper than Carbonite's personal tiers, though it does not do servers. Against a NAS with offsite sync, that is cheaper over several years and requires someone to own it. Where Carbonite earns its price is narrower than its marketing suggests: continuous, genuinely hands-off backup that includes Windows server support and is documented against HIPAA, FERPA and GLBA. A small regulated practice with a server and no IT staff is exactly who that describes, and for them the compliance framing and the server backup are worth paying for. A business that just wants laptops backed up is paying more than it needs to.
Who should use Carbonite?
A good fit
Carbonite fits small regulated businesses, medical, legal, financial and educational practices, that have a Windows server as well as desktops, no dedicated IT staff, and a compliance obligation they need to be able to evidence. It also fits sole traders and home offices who want one machine backed up continuously with unlimited storage and no thought required, where Personal Plus at about $79 a year is a straightforward purchase.
Look elsewhere if…
Anyone choosing general-purpose business backup should price iDrive first, which rates 4.58 across 1,201 reviews to Carbonite's 4.3 across 172, costs less, and does not cap business storage below its personal storage. Businesses with large data volumes should check the 250 GB and 500 GB ceilings before anything else, because the top tier does not lift them. Anyone wanting simple unlimited backup of a single machine should compare Backblaze. And nobody should buy Personal Basic while Plus sits three dollars a year above it.
The verdict
Carbonite is a mature, genuinely hands-off backup product, and for a small regulated practice with a Windows server and no IT staff it is a reasonable purchase that few competitors match on that specific shape. Outside that description the case is harder. Its business plans cap cloud storage at 250 GB on Core and 500 GB above, while its personal plans are unlimited, so a 25-person company gets less space than a single home user, and the most expensive tier buys more servers rather than more storage. Its own users rate value for money lowest at 4.01. And iDrive, which we also carry, rates 4.58 across 1,201 reviews against Carbonite's 4.3 across 172, for less money. Buy Carbonite for the server support and the compliance framing. If you are buying general backup, price iDrive first and make Carbonite prove why it should win.
Top Carbonite alternatives
Popular Cloud Storage & File Sharing tools teams evaluate alongside Carbonite.
SimpleBackupsAutomated backups for servers, databases, storage buckets, and SaaS apps.
Google DriveGoogle's cloud storage tied to Docs, Gmail, and Photos.
TresoritSwiss end-to-end encrypted storage for security-first businesses.
IDriveMulti-device cloud backup that doubles as bulk cloud storage.
NextcloudOpen-source, self-hostable storage and collaboration platform.