Backup Costs: What You're Actually Paying For | Backups And Recovery Field Guide

A Panama City restaurant owner paid $8,000 to migrate their data out of a backup service when the company was acquired. They hadn't read the fine print about "data portability fees." Three years of customer reservations, vendor contacts, and recipes — held hostage over a $0.08/GB exit charge.

Here's what you're actually paying for when you back up your business data.

The Four Cost Categories

1. Storage Costs

This is the headline number vendors lead with.

Cloud storage (per TB per month):

| Provider | Price | Notes | |----------|-------|-------| | Backblaze B2 | $6 | Simple, no frills | | AWS S3 Standard | $23 | Overkill for most SMBs | | Wasabi | $7 | No egress fees on first 90 days | | Google Cloud | $20 | Regional pricing varies | | Microsoft Azure | $20 | Similar to AWS |

Local storage (one-time):

| Device | Capacity | Price | |--------|----------|-------| | External USB drive | 4-8TB | $80-150 | | NAS (Synology DS223) | 2-bay, expandable | $300-400 | | NAS (Synology DS923+) | 4-bay, faster | $550-800 | | NAS (QNAP TS-464) | 4-bay, Intel CPU | $500-700 |

2. Software and Licensing

Consumer-grade backup tools (built into your OS):

Windows File History: Free with Windows
Time Machine: Free with macOS
These are fine for single laptops, not adequate for business

Business-grade backup software:

Veeam Backup & Replication Community: Free for small deployments
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: $50-100/year
Carbonite: $6-12/user/month
CrashPlan: $10/user/month

Enterprise backup platforms (for businesses with IT staff):

Veeam Backup & Replication: $600/capacity unit (minimum ~$2,000/year)
Rubrik: $15,000+ annually — enterprise tier
Cohesity: Enterprise tier only

3. Egress Fees

This is where vendors hide costs. "Egress" means data leaving their network — your restores.

| Provider | Egress Fee | |----------|------------| | Backblaze B2 | Free (no egress charges) | | AWS S3 | $0.09/GB | | Wasabi | Free (except first 90 days) | | Google Cloud | $0.12/GB | | Azure | $0.087/GB |

Real example: Restoring 500GB from AWS costs $45. Restoring 500GB from Backblaze costs $0. For a small business doing periodic restores, this rarely matters. For a business doing large-scale disaster recovery, egress can double your annual bill.

4. Support and SLAs

Community support only: Free
Email support: Usually included in basic plans
Phone/24/7 support: $50-300/month additional
Guaranteed response SLAs: $100-500/month for business-critical coverage
Managed backup services: $100-500/month total — includes software, storage, monitoring, and human support

What Gulf Coast SMBs Actually Pay

Scenario 1: Solo consultant, 100GB data

Backblaze Personal: $7/month
External drive for offline copy: $80 one-time
Total year 1: ~$165 | Year 2+: $84

Scenario 2: Small office, 2 employees, 1TB data

Backblaze B2: $6/month
NAS for local backup: $350 one-time
Backup software: Veeam Community (free)
Total year 1: ~$422 | Year 2+: $72 + NAS depreciation

Scenario 3: Professional services, 10 employees, 3TB data

Backblaze B2: $18/month
NAS (4-bay): $550 one-time
Backup software (Acronis): $1,000/year
Total year 1: ~$1,786 | Year 2+: ~$1,216

Scenario 4: Medical office, 15 employees, 5TB, HIPAA required

Managed backup service (Veeam + compliance layer): $400/month
Includes monitoring, restore testing, compliance documentation
Total year 1: $4,800 | Year 2+: $4,800

What Can Go Wrong

You sign a 3-year contract at $0.023/GB, then realize you have 10TB, not 2TB. Always calculate your actual data size with growth projections before signing annual contracts.

Your "unlimited" cloud backup has a hidden 4TB limit. Read the terms. Some "unlimited" consumer plans cap file sizes or total storage for business use cases.

You're paying for enterprise software but only using 10% of the features. Veeam, Rubrik, and Cohesity are powerful tools designed for IT departments. A 5-person accounting firm using Veeam to back up two file servers is paying for features nobody uses.

Egress fees surprise you during a disaster. A hard drive fails on a Friday. You need to restore 2TB over the weekend. AWS egress: $180. That's not fatal, but it's a bill you didn't budget for.

The free tier you rely on changes pricing. CrashPlan had a free "CrashPlan for Small Business" tier. They discontinued it in 2017. Carbonite has raised prices multiple times. Don't build a business process around free services without a backup plan.

Vendor Questions (Copy/Paste)

"What will I actually pay in month 13, not just month 1? Do prices increase after the first year?"
"What are your egress fees? What's the total cost to restore my full dataset once?"
"How much does it cost to export all my data and leave? Are there time limits on data portability?"
"What's included in 'managed' backup? What happens if backups fail — do I get a phone call or an email I might miss?"
"Do you have clients in [your industry]? Can you share what they pay?"

Minimum Viable Implementation

Calculate your actual data size today. Don't estimate — open File Explorer, right-click your main data folders, check Properties. You're probably smaller than you think.
Pick a cloud provider with no egress fees (Backblaze B2 or Wasabi) unless you have specific compliance needs requiring AWS/Azure/Google.
Buy a Synology NAS if your data is over 500GB and you have more than one computer. It handles multiple computers automatically and gives you a local restore option.
Set a recurring calendar event — annually — to review your bill and compare to your actual data size. Storage prices keep dropping; you might be overpaying for an old plan.

When to Hire Help

You have compliance requirements (HIPAA, FINRA, SEC, state bar for attorneys)
Your data exceeds 5TB
You have multiple locations or remote workers with local files
You've had unexpected bills from your current backup provider
You need restore SLAs faster than 24 hours
You don't have anyone on staff who can explain your current backup costs

Most Gulf Coast businesses with fewer than 10 employees and under 2TB of data can handle this themselves with the tools above. The key is choosing a vendor with transparent pricing and no lock-in.