Carbonite - Reviews and experiences

I first heard about it from a coworker who tipped me — so I gave it a shot when I needed to restore 200+ GB of photos. I was halfway through a coffee when the download barely moved (about 1 GB in 24 hours). Ran a speed test, everything fine on my end. I asked support for a one-week grace since my sub was expiring and the speed was their problem; no reply. The little moment of satisfaction came when I finally decided not to renew — relieved, really, more relieved than angry. Kinda sad it cost so much for one machine though.

Bought a one-year subscription because my laptop basically died after a macOS update and I needed help fast. The app just stopped working and I reached out via chat and then phoned — both times they pushed for remote access. I wasn’t comfortable with that and asked to cancel and get a refund, but they hung on to the 30‑day rule and refused. That part was frustrating and felt pretty unfair. On the plus side, the interface was neat and a built-in restore feature actually kicked in later, which was a nice surprise. So, decent product when it runs, but the support and refund side left me disappointed. I’ll think twice before renewing.

I stared at a progress bar moving like molasses, thinking "this can't be right." After nearly a decade with them, I started a 1.5 TB restore on a 2026 Mac Mini over a 70 Mbps BT line. Downloads crawled at about 100–150 KB/s. Four different support calls later they insisted the problem was on my end—my hardware, my ISP, Apple, you name it. Only when I showed logs and repeated tests did someone finally admit they intentionally slow restores to that speed. That means a full restore will take months. They also wouldn’t send a recovery drive to a U.S. address to speed things up. I was annoyed, obviously, but I’ll give credit — their admission felt oddly satisfying. I’ve used other services that were faster. Still, I’m done for now unless things change.

I searched their web recovery for the filename and it came up as "0 results", which is... alarming. Customer support/contact info on the site was a maze; I actually used an AI to dig up a real phone number. After calling, the rep was patient and eventually helped me pull the file from an older snapshot — a bit of a miracle, to be honest. So delivery of help was slow and the website confused me, but the person on the line did save the day in the end.

not an hour. After a week I was at roughly half, despite disabling sleep, quitting everything, and babysitting the progress bar. I rang support a couple of times — nice folks, polite — but the message was basically “that’s normal, your data is special,” which felt like a shrug more than help. They didn’t fix the speed, just defended it. I’m a bit amused and annoyed at the same time; I’d hoped for a smooth rescue and instead got a slow drip. Canceling soon and looking for something faster, unless it magically finishes in a day or two.

the core idea is solid, but the recent service and upsell approach made me lose trust.

I’m not renewing — too risky to trust with my backups. I was a subscriber for years because I needed reliable offsite backups for work documents and a pile of family photos. When renewal came around I tried to log in and was immediately locked out for no clear reason. I went through the 'forgot password' flow, several times, from different browsers and my phone. No reset code ever arrived. All the "contact us" links routed me to generic help articles, nothing that leads to a person. I kept trying, kept trying, and ended up in a loop where Carbonite apparently sends nothing and I can't access the account I pay for. It’s maddening and honestly insulting — especially when you rely on this service for things you can’t replace. The product worked fine before, and I liked it, which makes this worse. But support failures are a dealbreaker for me. I’m now switching providers and spending time migrating files. If you value access and actual support, be cautious; don't assume the renewal will be smooth. So yeah, that’s where I’m at.