Backblaze launches B2 object storage service at 1/4 of the cost of Amazon S3

Backblaze, a company that has long offered to back up data sitting on personal computers for $5 per month, is announcing today a major expansion: It’s launching a new service to store files for developers’ web applications.

The new Backblaze B2 service will cost one-fourth the price of the widely used S3 storage service from public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services. The price — half a cent per GB per month — will also undercut object storage services from CenturyLink, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, and Verizon.

Backblaze has opened up a private beta waiting list for the new service, which will become fully available by the end of the year.

Of course, there is the matter of entering a highly competitive market. And Backblaze provides the service out of its one and only data center in the Sacramento, California, area. And there is no enterprise-friendly service-level agreement (SLA) for the new service at this point. And there is no developer ecosystem around Backblaze.

But the numbers speak for themselves.

“Whether it’s for hosting websites or building applications, all these different things, the key thing is our pricing is dramatically, dramatically lower,” Backblaze cofounder and chief executive Gleb Budman told VentureBeat in an interview.

Above: Backblaze B2 users can access the service through a graphical user interface, a command line interface, or an application programming interface.

Image Credit: Backblaze

The service could well work as an alternative to S3, even if other parts of applications are running on Amazon Web Services, Budman said. But it could also work as a viable data backup service. (AWS outages, anyone?)

Backblaze started in 2007 and is based in San Mateo, California. The company took on a $5 million funding round in 2012.