Agree with all that has been posted above. I’m a longtime Arq user with B2 now as my backend (I used Glacier previously until B2 came out at a cheaper price point).
The pros to Arq over BackBlaze:
— Storage is, if you want it to be, forever - you can set up pruning if you like, as previously posted, but you do not have to.
— FIles are not deleted from the backup after 30 days. For me this was a lifesaver, as some years ago I lost about 50GB of old archived data. I have no idea how; I must have accidentally deleted the folders during a cleanup without realizing what I had done. Six month later I was looking for something and discovered the missing files. WIth BackBlaze, those files would be gone from my backup as well, as BackBlaze only holds on to deleted files for 30 days. With Arq, my data was in a 6-month old backup (then on Glacier) — which is how I know when I lost the files, btw. A few hours later the restore was done.
— Disconnected hard drives remain in your backup. BackBlaze removes them after 30 days (but does send you email warnings to reconnect before the deletion happens).
— You can backup network shares as well (if you need that functionality).
— You control the backend storage, and so you can pool it among all of your computers. For example, I have 3 computers backing up with Arq. WIth BackBlace I would have three different computers registered, so I would pay 3 x their current yearly rate, perhaps about $200/year. WIth Arq I pay for the storage I use, and with a pooled 2TB between all three computers it runs me about $140/year.
Cons:
— Slightly harder to set up, but really not all that difficult (I would be more than happy to walk you through the process if you have trouble)
For BackBlaze, pros:
— Dead easy basic setup, really plug and play, and very easy to modify settings if you want/need to
— Unlimited storage at a single price if you have only one computer to back up (if you have more than one, you could back up for example all of your laptops to a single desktop and then have BackBlaze back that up for you, which is not a bad solution, really), but of course more setup for you to do.
— You can get data shipped to you via a hard drive if you need fast to avoid the download overhead.
Cons:
— As noted above, need for separate subscriptions (at additional cost) for each additional computer, unless you backup all of them to one central computer that then sends the data to BackBlaze - making the plug and play part disappear.
— 30-day retention policy. This is actually the dealbreaker for me, because as noted above I have already had to restore data that was 6 months gone. If that were not the case (and I understand why BackBlaze needs this in their business model) I would be using BackBlaze for the convenience factor, as I would be comfortable setting up my own process to backup data from my laptops to my desktop.
As far as ArqCloud goes, this is sort of BackBlaze like in the plug and play aspect, and I suspect it is a great product, but I don’t use it because it too requires a per-computer subscription, and with one desktop with 2TB of data and 2 laptops each with only a small amount of (local) data, the total cost would be higher than pooling all of my storage into my B2 account, and since I have already been using Arq for years anyone, there is no reason for me to change.