Whenever we talk about North America, the great United States of America is the first thing that come to our mind. But you know, USA is not the only country in North America region. Among the superpowers in that region, Canada is also quite a prominent country.
We may not hear much about Canada in the tech world. Its uber close proximity to USA and most prominent tech firms being in US make it somewhat invisible in tech world. But Canada is no sloth either. Many great tech firms like Microsoft and Google have branches in Canada, and there are a lot of homegrown tech firms there too.
With almost 100% wireless penetration rate in the whole Canada, and around 80% broadband penetration rate, it is suffice to say that more than 80% of Canadians are using computers. With such massive usage, the need for backups also rises. The scenario is always the same everywhere: natural disasters, manmade disasters, hardware failures, theft, human error. Regardless of the cause, data without backup is just dangerous.
So for our Canadian readers, here are 5 best online backup companies with networks and servers in or within close proximity of Canada. Check them out after the break.
Summary
| Rank | Provider | Starting Price | Review | |
| 1 |  | $2/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 2 |  | $59/year | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 3 |  | $3.96/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 4 |  | $5/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 5 |  | $4.95/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
Winner – JungleDisk – From $2/month
With “pay what you use” pricing model, JungleDisk has set itself apart from the rest of the competitors in cloud backup industry. It won’t charge you a flat fee with fixed storage space, or unlimited option. Instead, it will charge you a small fee to use its desktop client software and for storage, it will be charged per GB. Personal plans will cost you just $2 or $3 a month which also comes with 5GB of free storage. JungleDisk also lets you choose your preferred storage provider at either Amazon S3 or Rackspace. Both companies have data centers in Canada and will let you choose the location when you sign up for it. So basically, JungleDisk works as a medium and amazing backup client that lets you backup your data to Rackspace or S3, while providing necessary things like encryption and whatnot. Once you have signed up, you can backup any numbers of computers running Mac, Linux and Windows. If you go with S3, it will cost $0.125 per GB a month but there will be other fees like data transfer and bandwidth. Rackspace charges $0.15 per GB a month and there won’t be any other extra fees so you are getting a good deal. The basic plan is only for backup, while Desktop Edition plan comes with syncing and network drive which lets you access your files from a mounted network drive. Read our review for more comprehensive details.
2. Carbonite – From $59/year
Although Carbonite is the most well-known and advertised American cloud backup company in the industry, they also run data centers in Canada. Just $59 year will get you top notch quality service and blazing fast speed, although they throttle the bandwidth at around 1GB a day. Bummer! Anyway, for $59 a year (which is just $4.91 a month) and unlimited storage backup, we can’t complain much. At least, not with the service level we are receiving from Carbonite. We really like the in-software restoration options as well as the courier restoration service where they will send you a hard drive with your data. Of course, for that you have to subscribe to HomePremier plan which costs $149 a year. However, if you are a Mac user, you might want to look elsewhere since Carbonite Mac client app is rather basic and lacking all bells & whistles that Windows users enjoy. Things like fine-tuning controls on scheduling and bandwidth controls can’t be found on Mac client. There are some other things we don’t like about Carbonite too. You can read more in our review about Carbonite.
3. Backblaze – From $3.96/month
Backblaze makes only one promise and they excel at that – unlimited storage backup for one computer at really affordable price. Although Backblaze isn’t running data centers in Canada, with their locations in US, Canadian users will not have any latency issues when using Backblaze’s services. For just $5 a month, you are getting unlimited storage backup with really simple to use yet powerful client software. If you want even cheaper, just pay for 2 years in advance ($95) and that will only cost you $3.96 a month! Totally among the most affordable we have seen and reviewed here. But that price doesn’t give Backblaze any excuse to skimp on their service level. In fact, Backblaze is among the best we have reviewed. There is no arbitrary limit on individual file sizes either, which is a plus for people with huge files like Lightroom catalogues or HD movies. You can also backup external drives, and restoration is not a problem either. You will receive a ZIP archive with the files you want to restore in same original directory structure as you have backed up. Oh and there is no bandwidth throttling on data upload either! If you are not convinced yet, read our comprehensive review here.
4. CrashPlan – $5/month
Flexibility, customization options, boatloads of features, and really cool stuffs that can make your jaws drop are just a summary of CrashPlan. With freely downloadable client software which runs beautifully on all three operating systems (Mac, Linux and Windows), you can create multiple backup sets to multiple destinations such as external hard drives, NAS, remote computer running CrashPlan software and CrashPlan online storage facility. All local backup options are free since the CrashPlan desktop client software itself is free to download, and you are only going to pay for cloud storage service which is just $5 a month for unlimited storage backup. CrashPlan also lets you do a lot of fine-tuning and full control over every aspects. Oh and it comes with unlimited file versioning and no limit on individual file sizes too. In fact, it is our love at first sight service. If you don’t believe us, head on to our full review here.
5. MyPCBackup – From $4.95/month
MyPCBackup uses Amazon S3 and Glacier to store data and mainly uses North America region ones. Because of that, Canadian users can be assured that they won’t run into any speed or connection issues when they are using MyPCBackup. Infamous for its utter simplicity and straightforward desktop client software, MyPCBackup is really easy to use as well. All you have to do after you have downloaded the software is just install it, and choose folders you want to backup. Then that’s about it. It is entirely set it and forget it affair. If you want to tweak and fiddle with settings, then you are out of luck. All you can do as change frequency of scheduled backup and some bandwidth throttling, and that’s about it. The backup will then run silently behind the background so that it won’t disturb you. Although the name implies PC-only usage, the software will run flawlessly on Mac as well so Mac users don’t have to worry a thing. There is a 14-day free trial, and it will only cost you $4.95 a month. That will only give you 75GB of storage space though. If it is not enough for you, then opt for unlimited storage plan which costs just $6.95 a month. Here is a comprehensive review about them. We will revisit the service and refresh the review soon.
Summary
| Rank | Provider | Starting Price | Review | |
| 1 | | $2/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 2 | | $59/year | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 3 | | $3.96/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 4 | | $5/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
| 5 | | $4.95/mo | Read Review | Visit Site |
I just checked with a Carbonite rep who confirmed that all of their \”storage servers for backups are entirely U.S. based.” Your information is apparently incorrect.
My research so far has found six companies which store your data in Canada. Not one of them is mentioned here.
thanks for these reviews but I agree with Adam – since the article refers to best backups for Canada can we assume that all of them have data centres in Canada? If not please include that information.
The article does not cover the elephant in the room …. The US Patriot Act, which is prompting many companies to examine where their data sits.
If the article is supposed to be a review of options for Canadian businesses, it would be nice if the location of data centres was covered in detail.
Cheers,
Adam