Definitely understand that mind-set. We review most of our decisions every year, but it's a tricky problem. Since Backblaze Online Backup is a flat-fee service, by definition most folks who have that much data would not be break-even customers for us, and adding in services that encourage those large customers wouldn't be a great long-term plan. That said, one thing you might be able to do is see how much more expensive an "unlimited" plan with your ISP would be for 1 month (hopefully less than the $60 extra). CrashPlan Small Business is a good service as well, so if you're happy with them and don't mind paying the extra few dollars a month, staying with them, from a bandwidth perspective isn't the worst.
And yea, I'm personally hoping that the ISP situation gets a bit more friendly towards consumers!
Re:Backblaze cuts B2 download price in half
by timdorr on Friday March 09, 2018 @02:17PM
(#16554123)
Not sure of your ISP, but some offer an unlimited option for an additional fee. For instance, Comcast offers this for an extra $50 per month: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/exp-unlimited-data While it sucks to have to pay extra, there is at least a cap (ironically!) on the price.
Re:Backblaze cuts B2 download price in half
by martin-adams on Friday March 09, 2018 @03:27PM
(#16554697)
I'm quite curious. What is more important to you, is it not paying for 6 months while the initial backup is made, or having the initial backup made within 1 month?
Solving the first is definitely within Backblaze's capability if they are prepared to make an exception.
> $10 / 50GB overage, which would work out to 3000 / 50 = $60
You forgot to multiply by $10, so you're actually looking at $600 for 3 TB of overage
Re:Backblaze cuts B2 download price in half
by AdmiralAsshat on Friday March 09, 2018 @03:58PM
(#16554976)
Thought it seemed on the low end, thanks for that!
Thanks for your reply. I can certainly investigate that route, but the kinds of ISPs that implement these caps aren't exactly known for their magnanimity to begin with, so I'm not optimistic. Assuming they don't, I would get charged about $10 / 50GB overage, which would work out to 3000 / 50 = $60, which is the yearly cost of your service. So my dilemma is that I'm either paying for about half a year before I get a complete backup set with BB, or I'm effectively paying double the service price just to make sure the data all gets to you guys in a timely manner. For that price, I could just as well just shell out the extra dough to stay with an upgraded Crashplan Small Business account.
I hope you guys will reconsider or re-examine your position on seeded backups. I don't think I am being unreasonable in wanting that to be an option, nor do I think I'm alone in having somewhere north of a terabyte of media--any amateur photographer or video editor probably has a similarly-sized dataset. If unlimited bandwidth were available, this wouldn't be a concern, but, I don't have the luxury of being able to choose a different ISP. And with Chairman Verizon heading the FCC, I don't see that changing any time soon.