Backblaze was formed in 2007 and we went to work creating the online backup service. We kicked off the private beta in June 2008 and in September we released Backblaze 1.0, five short years ago. Through it all, Backblaze has been laser-focused on providing unlimited backup at $5/month. It wasn’t always easy, but we’ve managed to maintain and expand on what we set off to do.
One of the nice things is that we still have many of our original customers, including Ron, who recently took a few minutes from his CTO job to tell us about his Backblaze experience.
“As someone working in the security space the protection of my data is critical. That’s why when I saw what Gleb and the guys had put together with Backblaze, I was in. Its ability for me to control the encryption keys and to know that what’s backed up is secure and encrypted before it ever leaves my laptop was critical. Having both a Mac and Windows client gave me the flexibility to backup either platform. Also the ability to choose what I wanted to back up made it even better.”
“Over the last five years I have had instances where I needed to quickly restore a file and every time it worked like clockwork. The ease of use was, for me, why I started recommending it to family and friends. It was so easy I gave my mom the web address and in minutes she had it installed and the backup running.”
We’ve had a few challenges along the way: how to design a cost efficient Storage Pod, almost getting acquired, and the flooding in Thailand. Through all those trials, not only have we never raised prices from our original price point of $5/month, but we have also made our online backup service even more unlimited than when we first launched. Here’s some of the more significant things we added since we launched our online backup service five years ago.
- SSD drive detection and optimization
- Increased file list scalability by eight times
- Optimized for increased RAM
- 64 bit Windows version
- Backblaze sold in stores in Japan
- Backblaze Mobile for iPhone
- Safety Freeze feature added
- Improved Russian translations
- USB hard drive restores increased to up to 3TB
- Improved Japanese translations
- Improved German translations
- Localized downloader for all 11 supported languages
- Localized installer for all 11 supported languages
- Improved Transfer Backup State functionality
- Windows 8 support
- Mountain Lion (Mac 10.8) support
- Open Street Maps for Locate My Computer
- Time based backup feature added
- Added USB thumb drive restore option
- Added unlimited file size option
- Added unlimited file type capability
- Added Automatic network bandwidth feature
- Lion (Mac 10.7) support
- Locate My Computer feature added
- Restore files within a date range
- Delivered restore downloader apps
- Two year license support
- Search added to file restores
- Push deployment for Backblaze installer
- Added Transfer Backup State feature
- Support for Backblaze for Business
- Windows 7 support
- Bandwidth utilization improvements
- Launched Backblaze on Mac in 11 languages
- Launched Backblaze on Windows in 11 languages
We absolutely love providing a service that gives our users peace of mind. We’ve been innovating in the field for the past five years, and looking at the next five, we are beyond excited about what we have in store. Stay tuned, and here’s to the next five!
