I intended to make this submission about an alternative and not so much criticism about Backblaze. But you're right, I vaguely made some criticism and I definitely think it warrants a better explanation.
I also 100% agree with what you say about product updates, I want my backup provider to be relatively static and slow in changing their product as long as it is robust and it does the job.
On the more specific reasons I think Backblaze is a little far behind in UI/UX:
- It's very hard (or impossible) to know if you're 100% backed up after you add new files to your HD.
- When you go to the website to check if your new files are backedup, the web page is extremely slow and outdated (I'm talking windows xp style interface iframed into a modern page).
- When you get a new HD, because you're constantly filling this things up, the transition process is very sketchy, to say the least. Technically you go through the same process as when you loose an HD, which might make sense, but the process is very slow and the user doesn't get much feedback as to the progress and state of it. Which is particularly nerve-racking when you're dealing with a huge and priceless treasure trove of information.
That said I do have to make a caveat in favor of Backblaze. Not only it is reasonably priced (100$/year, new pricing), Backblaze seems to be design to run continuously on computers with lots of storage and with their HDs connected at all time. That's why they don't bother giving the information about the completeness of your backup, or even making a good web UI for it, because I guess their target user just turns on Backblaze and never really looks back at it. And forget about sharing files through Backblaze, it is 100% a backup tool, not a modern cloud file tool.
It should be said that I fall a bit off their target user, I want to backup my external drives that are connected only when I add new files, and not my whole computer, all the time. This is also the motivation to once in a while look for an alternative in hopes of finding a better solution.
Thanks for the tip on SpiderOak, I'll have a look into it.