Cloud backup pricing pages are simple in a way the eventual invoice is not. The base rate is real; it is just not the whole bill.
This is about how the pricing works, not about which vendor is cheapest this month - vendor prices move faster than any article about them, so check current numbers yourself and use the framework below to compare them properly.
The three pricing models
Per device. A flat rate per machine backed up, often with servers priced above workstations. Predictable, and usually best when you have a small number of machines holding a lot of data.
Per user. A rate per person, covering all their devices, often with a large or unlimited allowance each. Best for laptop fleets - eight people with 200 GB each usually costs less this way than any per-terabyte plan.
Per terabyte. You pay for stored volume. Best when one large data set dominates, and the model that punishes you for keeping many versions.
Do the arithmetic both ways. The same eight-person business with one 4 TB file server frequently gets very different answers from each model, and the “expensive” vendor on one model is often the cheap one on another.
The four things that move the bill
1. Retention
How far back you can restore. Thirty days is common as a default; ninety days to a year is common where the risk is corruption or ransomware that dwelt quietly before firing.
Retention multiplies storage, so it multiplies cost on per-TB plans and is often a tier boundary on the others. Pick it from a question: how long could something be wrong before anyone here noticed?
2. Version count
Separate from retention. Keeping hourly versions for thirty days is a very different volume from keeping daily versions for thirty days. Some plans meter this; some include it.
3. Egress and restore
The one that hurts. Ask three specific questions before signing:
- Is a full restore included, or charged per gigabyte?
- How long would a full restore of everything take?
- Is there a seeded restore option - a physical drive shipped to you - and what does it cost?
Over a typical office connection, pulling several terabytes back over the internet is measured in days. If that is unacceptable, you are buying disaster recovery, not backup, and that is a different product at a different price.
4. Backup versus disaster recovery
These get sold as if they are the same thing.
- Backup answers: can I get the data back?
- Disaster recovery answers: how fast can we be working again? - usually by booting a virtual copy of the failed server in the vendor’s cloud.
DR costs meaningfully more. Whether you need it comes from one honest number: what does an hour of downtime cost this business? If the answer is “we would go home and try again tomorrow,” buy backup. If it is “we would lose the day’s revenue and some customers,” price DR.
Estimating your own bill
- Measure what you actually have. Not disk capacity - used data. The two are usually very different.
- Split it: workstation data, server data, and cloud-app data (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailboxes and files, which most backup vendors charge for separately and which their built-in retention does not fully cover).
- Add your growth rate. A year of growth belongs in the estimate, because you are signing for a year.
- Choose retention deliberately, then get quotes at that retention rather than the default.
- Get the restore number in writing - cost and time for a full restore.
- Compare all three models with your real numbers.
Where people get it wrong
- Backing up the machines and forgetting the SaaS. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace protect against their failures, not against your employee deleting a mailbox and the retention window expiring. Their own documentation says to use third-party backup; almost nobody reads it.
- Buying on the monthly rate alone. The cheapest storage frequently has the most expensive retrieval.
- Never testing a restore. An untested backup is a receipt, not a recovery plan. Restore one real file quarterly and one full system yearly.
- No offline or immutable copy. Modern ransomware looks for the backup first. Ask whether the vendor offers immutable or object-lock storage that cannot be deleted by your own compromised credentials within a set window. This is one of the highest-value features in the category and is frequently a tier upgrade rather than an add-on.
The one-line version
Price the restore, not the backup; count all three pricing models with your real data volume; pick retention on purpose; and never let the only copy be one your own admin account could delete.
Questions people also ask
Is cloud backup the same as OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox?
No. Those are sync services: a deletion or a ransomware encryption propagates to the cloud copy within seconds. They keep version history that can rescue you inside a retention window, which is genuinely useful, but they are not designed as backup and they do not do bare-metal or server restores. Treat sync as one copy in a 3-2-1 plan, not the plan.
Why is per-user pricing sometimes cheaper than per-terabyte?
Because most people's laptops hold far less than a terabyte. Per-user pricing bundles a generous or unlimited allowance per person, so a team of eight with 200 GB each is usually cheaper per-user than per-TB. Flip that around for one file server holding 4 TB and per-TB wins. Count both ways before choosing.
What are egress and restore fees?
Egress is what you pay to get data OUT. Some providers include restores; some charge per gigabyte retrieved; some offer cheap archival storage with a retrieval fee and a delay measured in hours. A plan that is cheap to fill and expensive to empty looks great until the outage. Always ask what a full restore of everything would cost and how long it would take.
How long should I keep backups?
Long enough to outlive a problem you have not noticed yet. Thirty days catches accidental deletion; ninety days to a year catches slow corruption and the ransomware that sat quiet before triggering. Longer retention costs more because it multiplies stored versions, so this is the dial to tune deliberately rather than accept by default.
Do US small businesses have compliance requirements for backups?
It depends entirely on the data. Handling protected health information brings HIPAA obligations including a business associate agreement with the vendor; card data brings PCI DSS; and most US states have their own breach-notification laws. None of that mandates a specific product, but it does mean a vendor unable to sign the paperwork is off your list regardless of price. Confirm with your own counsel, not with a blog.
Is it cheaper to back up to an external drive instead?
Cheaper per gigabyte, yes, and worth having as one of your copies. But a drive in the same building is destroyed by the same fire, taken in the same burglary, and encrypted by the same ransomware if it is plugged in. The cloud copy is bought for being somewhere else, not for being cheap.