🆕 Software Suggestion | Blobbackup – Private, Secure Computer Backups

[bimbashrestha]

Basic Information

Name: Blobbackup
Category: Computer Backup, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery
URL (Main): https://blobbackup.com
URL (Github): https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup

Description

I had been looking for a privacy-first computer backup service for some time. Everything I found was either closed source, not end to end encrypted or command line only. I built Blobbackup to help people easily back up their computers to the cloud without compromising their privacy.

The service is pretty simple. When you create an account with us, you create a master password. This master password is never stored on or transmitted to our servers (like a password manager). Then you download our desktop client and start backing up your computer data. All your backups will be encrypted with your master password locally before getting uploaded. When you need to restore your data, our desktop client will download the encrypted backups from our cloud and decrypt them on your local computer.

Backups are incremental with a year long file history. All the code is open source on Github. Blobbackup currently supports Mac and Windows (Linux support coming soon).

Why I am making the suggestion

Offsite computer backups are an important part of good digital hygiene. Blobbackup is the only privacy focused and easy-to-use tool that lets you do this (as far as I know).

My connection with the software

I am the founder and primary developer of Blobbackup.

[SkewedZeppelin]

What was the reasoning on creating a new backup tool and service instead of just the service around an existing one?

Like rsync.net and borgbase?

edit: it appears to be restic under the hood? and the answer to the service question is probably that you're going for a way more user friendly target audience given the polish?

[jonaharagon]

and the answer to the service question is

Probably also to make money, it's a business :P I can't read lol

This looks pretty nifty though, and seems to have reasonable pricing.

[bimbashrestha]

Hey @SkewedZeppelin, thanks for checking it out!

What was the reasoning on creating a new backup tool and service instead of just the service around an existing one?

I had trouble finding a private, open source backup option that was also as easy to use as the closed source options (ie: Backblaze, CrashPlan, Carbonite, etc). Privacy and ease of use are the main differentiators but there are a few others too (eg: price, customer support, group management, simple monitoring...the site has details :-))

Like rsync.net and borgbase?

Somewhat. I know they've got a nice desktop client called Vorta (which could perhaps also be a recommendation on privacyguides under a new section called "Backup tools" or something?).

But I don't really think we compete with each other directly. Vorta gives you a lot more control and we're a lot simpler to set up and use (there are many other differences too btw). I'd say we're more a direct competitor to the closed source options I mentioned above.

edit: it appears to be restic under the hood?

Yep! Restic under the hood.

and the answer to the service question is probably that you're going for a way more user friendly target audience given the polish?

Exactly :-)

[ph00lt0]

As a Votra user I could def. recommend that. GUI isn't super obvious but it works really well.

[jonaharagon]

Looks cool, a couple questions:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/BlobBackup/comments/nrm9yd/bitwardenlike_business_model_ideas/:

   The differentiating factor will that all the code will be [...] self-hostable on users computers much like BitWarden is for free [...]

   Do you still intend to do this, out of curiosity? Not that I have an issue recommending service providers, but (exactly like Bitwarden and SimpleLogin) we like to recommend providers that give people this option if technically possible. I'm guessing this is possible since the code for the frontend and backend both appear to be on GitHub, but I ask because I don't see (at a glance) a way for users to specify a custom backend in the prebuilt clients, like under an Advanced tab or something. So presumably people would need to build the client with their custom backend URL/IP/whatever themselves.

2. https://github.com/Blobbackup/Blobbackup/tree/dev/original:

   It's still maintained but I'll be prioritizing the new offering.

   Can you elaborate on what this means in regards to your original client, what level of maintenance or support you're providing if any. Additionally, can your original client connect to your $6/month hosted service as a backend? I ask because your current client does not yet support Linux as far as I'm seeing, which leads me to...

3. Do you have a timeline as far as Linux support? We do strongly recommend Linux to our readers, so Linux support is definitely a big plus. I see Get desktop client working on Linux Blobbackup/Blobbackup#92

[jonaharagon]

As an aside, if you are still investigating Linux packaging options I would really encourage you to offer a Flatpak (and maybe Snapcraft) package rather than standard distro packages or AppImage. In addition to automatic updates (which are a very high priority for us) and built-in containerization, it's also the recommended installation method for immutable Linux distros like Fedora Silverblue (which are IMHO the future of desktop Linux).

[bimbashrestha]

Hey @jonaharagon, Good questions!

Do you still intend to do this [self-host], out of curiosity?

Yep! It's actually possible to do this already (and a few users have set it up at home for themselves). The process isn't the most user friendly right now. I'd like to dockerize things at some point so that it is :-)

Anyway, you can follow the progress of it on this thread from a while ago: Blobbackup/Blobbackup#95

Can you elaborate on what this means in regards to your original client, what level of maintenance or support you're providing if any. Additionally, can your original client connect to your $6/month hosted service as a backend? I ask because your current client does not yet support Linux as far as I'm seeing, which leads me to...

Yes, so I've had this question a few times. I should make things clearer on the github README somewhere :-).

So the "original" Blobbackup app was basically a GUI that let you configure, schedule backups to any storage you wanted. There was no subscription pricing or anything like that. Just a straight up FOSS desktop GUI app that let you create backups to S3 buckets, SFTP, NAS, etc. The "original" application supported Linux.

As far a support goes, it'll mostly be security and bug fixes. I might occasionally add a big feature but it won't be very frequent.

Recently, I released a completely new application (which is also called Blobbackup because I have poor foresight) that is subscription based. You pay monthly and the service takes care of the storage set up, monitoring, code signing, etc for you. There is no option to send backups to your own storage (unless you self-host).

The new application is not yet Linux compatible but me and few other community members are working on it. You can track the issue here: Blobbackup/Blobbackup#92. It's technically not that difficult to get things working on Linux given that the application is written using PyQt6. I'm mainly trying to figure out the packaging (which is always my least favorite part of linux dev haha).

As an aside, if you are still investigating Linux packaging options I would really encourage you to offer a Flatpak

I think Flatpaks will be the primary way we do Linux packaging and distribution. I know the Vorta project has managed to do this pretty well (we both have similar tech stacks) so I'll likely take some inspiration from them.

So long story short, I'd like to support Linux. But I'd like to do it properly (ie: not just ask people to compile the source). I need to find some time to do it though :-)

[dngray]

This is something I think we could evaluate as a part of privacyguides/privacyguides.org#1740