Best Backup Software for Small Business in 2026

Small-business backup fails in one of two ways: nobody finished the setup, or the plan that was bought does not cover the thing that died. The second failure is the expensive one, and it is the reason this ranking sorts tools by what they protect before it sorts them by price. A computer-only product is the right answer for an agency on Google Workspace and the wrong answer for a clinic with a Windows server in the closet.

Every price here was read on the vendor's own pricing page on October 17, 2026. Where a vendor shows a promotion, the list price comes first and the promotion is named. Acronis sells on quotes and is included because its own pages explain the editions; managed-service backup platforms that publish nothing are left out because a buyer cannot compare them from a web page. If ransomware is the scenario you are planning for, read this next to our ransomware response playbook and the n0n report on backup destruction, which is the attack this software has to survive.

Backup software for a small business copies the data on employee computers, servers, NAS devices and cloud tenants to a second location on a schedule, keeps dated versions so an encrypted or deleted file can be rolled back, and restores it to a new machine when the old one is lost. The three decisions that matter are what gets covered, how long versions are kept, and how a full machine comes back.

The products split into three shapes. Per-computer agents (Backblaze, CrashPlan, Carbonite) charge per machine or per user and send everything to the vendor's cloud. Pooled-storage plans (IDrive) charge for a quota shared across any mix of devices. Infrastructure and tenant tools (Veeam, Microsoft 365 Backup, Acronis, Duplicati) protect servers, virtual machines and SaaS data, and usually expect you to pick the storage target. For encrypted storage that is not a backup product, see our best encrypted cloud storage ranking.

The bill is small next to the failure it prevents, but the spread between products is wide enough to matter. Cyberpresso data: for a 10-laptop office with roughly 500 GB of data in total, we priced the four cloud-agent plans on vendor pages on October 17, 2026: IDrive Business 500 GB costs $239.88 a year ($167.88 in year one for new signups), Carbonite Core lists at $287.99, CrashPlan Endpoints comes to $880, and Backblaze Business Backup comes to $990. The cheapest two cap storage; the dearest two do not, and the moment that office adds a 2 TB video archive the order flips.

The second cost is the one no pricing page prints: a server or a Microsoft 365 tenant that the plan does not cover. Backblaze's agent covers computers only, so the same office with one Windows server adds CrashPlan Servers at $189 a year or moves to IDrive, Carbonite Power or Veeam. A 500 GB Microsoft 365 tenant adds $75 a month on Microsoft's own per-gigabyte backup. Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, evaluated 35 tools for its October 2026 cloud storage ranking; IDrive and Carbonite sit in its top 10 and Backblaze in ranks 11 to 30, which is roughly how they sort for storage and the reverse of how they sort for laptop backup.

Prices were checked on October 17, 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page: Backblaze Computer Backup, IDrive, CrashPlan, Carbonite, Acronis Cyber Protect, Veeam Community Edition, Microsoft 365 Backup and Duplicati. Promotions are named as promotions; the list price is the budget number.

The per-computer plans are the easiest to budget. Backblaze is one yearly fee per machine with no cap, which the vendor also shows as $8.25 a month on the yearly plan and $7.88 a month on a two-year term. CrashPlan Endpoints is $88 a year per user, and the person with a laptop and a desktop is one license. Carbonite Core bundles up to 25 computers but caps storage at 250 GB, so a real office with 25 machines should price Power, which doubles the cap and adds a server.

The pooled and tenant plans are cheap at the entry tier and scale with data. IDrive's 500 GB Business plan is $239.88 a year on yearly billing and the 5 TB tier is $149.99 a month, with 30% off year one. Microsoft 365 Backup is billed per protected gigabyte a month, so cost tracks the tenant's size, recycle bins included. Veeam's Community Edition and the Duplicati client are free; what you pay for is storage and, for Duplicati's console, $2 a machine a month. Acronis is the only pick with no public number: its own page says pricing varies by region, workload and deployment and directs buyers to a quote or a partner.