What is the cheapest way to back up multiple computers?
The short answer
IDrive is built for exactly this. One plan covers unlimited PCs, Macs and phones that share one storage pool. Backblaze charges per computer. That stays competitive for one or two machines and adds up for a household. Acronis prices per machine in tiers, with images and security included.
In detail
The pricing models differ a lot once a household has three laptops, two phones and a desktop. Backblaze keeps it simple with unlimited data on one computer for one fee. With more computers, that fee multiplies. Four computers means four subscriptions. For one heavy machine Backblaze is still very hard to beat. For a whole family the total adds up.
IDrive works the other way round. You buy a pool of storage and connect as many devices as you like. Computers, phones and tablets all go into one account with one dashboard. Even a NAS can join. For mixed households that dashboard matters as much as the price. In one place you can check that the teenager’s laptop really backed up this month. The Express seeding service and strong versioning apply to every connected device.
The third model is per-device tiers with extras. Acronis bundles disk imaging and anti-malware per machine. That suits a household that wants full-system restores on every device. Do the math for your own devices. Count them, estimate your total data and price all three models against it. For most families with three or more devices, the pooled-storage model wins. That is why IDrive is our default answer to this question.