Carbonite vs Ceph

Compare Carbonite and Ceph on pricing, features, platforms, and ratings — both Cloud Storage tools, Subscription vs Open Source pricing to decide which fits…

At a Glance

 CarboniteCeph
Primary categoryCloud StorageCloud Storage
RatingNot documentedNot documented
Pricing modelSubscriptionOpen Source
Starting price$4.91/month (billed annually)Free
Free planNot documentedNot documented
Free trialYesNot documented
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Mac, WindowsNot documented
Team collaborationNot documentedNot documented
AI featuresNot documentedNot documented
Public APINot documentedYes

Pricing Compared

Starting price reflects the lowest paid tier, not the full cost for every team size or usage level.

Carbonite

Safe Basic — $4.91/month billed annually
Safe Plus — $6.99/month billed annually
Safe Prime — $8.74/month billed annually
Safe Pro Core — ~$24/month billed annually
Safe Pro Power — ~$50/month billed annually
Safe Pro Ultimate — ~$83.33/month billed annually

Ceph

No individual plan breakdown documented yet.

Pros & Cons

Carbonite

Pros

  • Unlimited storage on personal plans regardless of data volume
  • Long operating history and enterprise backing from OpenText
  • Physical courier recovery option for restoring large data sets without a slow download
  • 256-bit encryption and two-factor authentication for account security

Cons

  • Personal plans cover only a single computer by default
  • English-only language support
  • File version history is capped at the 12 most recent versions rather than unlimited
  • Business/server plans are priced and licensed separately, which can add up at scale

Ceph

Pros

  • Free and open source with no software license cost
  • Proven at large scale, backed by Red Hat's ongoing development investment
  • Unifies object, block, and file storage in a single cluster instead of separate systems
  • Runs on standard commodity hardware rather than proprietary storage appliances

Cons

  • Requires significant in-house expertise to deploy, tune, and operate reliably at scale
  • Enterprise support via Red Hat Ceph Storage has pricing that is not publicly listed
  • Not designed for small-scale or single-node use cases where simpler storage would suffice
  • Cluster rebalancing and recovery operations can be resource-intensive on large deployments

Use Cases

Carbonite

  • Personal computer backup — Unlimited, automatic backup of a single home computer with optional external drive coverage.
  • Small business workstation and server backup — Backup coverage for a defined number of business computers and servers, with expandable storage.
  • Large-scale data recovery — Physical courier recovery service for restoring large volumes of backed-up data without a slow download.

Ceph

  • Private & Hybrid Cloud Storage — Enterprises and cloud providers use Ceph as the storage backend for OpenStack clouds and Kubernetes persistent volumes.
  • Large-Scale Research & Archival Storage — Research institutions use Ceph to store and preserve large datasets at petabyte-to-exabyte scale on commodity hardware.

Read the full Carbonite review · Read the full Ceph review