Backblaze’s unlimited backup service increases upload and restore speeds, adds file sharing and more

Backblaze is one of the few unlimited backup services standing — in part because of its prowess in securing its own hard drives and building its own cloud services. Today, the company launched version 5.0 of its service and desktop clients. This new version introduces faster backups and restores, as well as improved browsing speed, image previews on the restore page and a new file sharing feature backed by the company’s B2 Cloud Storage service.

The highlights here are clearly the increased speed and the new file sharing feature. Backblaze for Mac and PC now makes smarter decisions about how many simultaneous upload connections it can handle. On a slow connection, you don’t want to have to use too many parallel threads, but on a fast connection, you may want as many as possible. The company says that its service can now achieve backups of up to 100 Mbps, though in the infrastructure backwater that is most the U.S. in 2017, not everybody has access to these kinds of fast connections.

It’s worth noting that Backblaze founder and CEO Gleb Budman tells me that he remains fully committed to offering unlimited backups without any speed restrictions.

As for the new file sharing feature, Backblaze now allows its users to publicly share any of their backed up files through its B2 service. While this cloud storage service is mostly meant for developers, all B2 accounts come with 10GB/month of free storage and 1GB/day of free downloads, which should make it powerful enough for sharing photos and other files with friends and family. You do need a B2 account for this to work, but the sharing tools will walk you through setting one up if you don’t have one yet.

Backblaze charges $5/month for its personal backup service (or $50/year if you pre-pay) and $50/year per computer for its business plan.