I just had to comment on a video that I saw on CNN.com (The transcript can be found on the Data Doctors website). The answer given by "the Data Doctor" is a little strange – the guy loves online backup but he doesn't like unlimited backup plans like Carbonite. He seems to think that they are hobbled in some way. This doesn't make an ounce of sense and it would have been good for the "doctors" to check their facts before making such pronouncements. The assertion that vendors with unlimited backup somehow throttle or limit backup speed or capacity in some way is just plain wrong. I know it's not the case with Carbonite, and I suspect that our competitors, like Mozy, similarly do not encumber their unlimited offers. It's amazing how these rumors and "common wisdoms" spread on the Internet and how infrequently experts actually bother to check the facts.

I love these guys for promoting online backup, but I wish they would have reported unlimited backup for the incredible deal that it actually is. I wish they would have said, "With disk storage costs dropping like a stone, vendors like Carbonite are able to offer truly unlimited capacity for a fixed price. Yeah, they probably lose money on a small percentage of their users, but by making it unlimited they keep the user from having to make a lot of compromises and choices."

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite

When Carbonite entered the online backup market in May 2006, everyone in the online backup business was pricing their services by the gigabyte. We introduced the first backup service with unlimited storage for a fixed price. Why? Because our market research showed that people didn't like having to learn new software applications and they didn't like having to figure out what they needed to back up. If your backup is limited to, say, 5GB, you are forced to pick and choose files and folders. We envisioned a service that didn't require the user to do anything other than put in an email address and password.

Many people think that we came out with unlimited backup in order to win the "gigabyte war" vendor A gives you 5GB for $5/mo, vendor B gives you 10GB for $5/mo, and so on. But that's really not why we decided on unlimited backup – the REAL reason was simplicity of the user experience. If you make the capacity unlimited, then the user doesn't have to make any choice – we just back up everything by default.

What happened, of course, is that our direct competitors were forced to switch to an unlimited pricing plan, but THEY DIDN'T CHANGE THEIR PRODUCTS! They missed the point. You still had to learn new software. Every bit of complexity makes it harder for the user and lowers adoption rate.

We are committed to one simple task: protect all the valuable data on your computer with the absolute minimum of effort and at the lowest possible cost to you.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite