Cloud backup pricing is one of the most opaque corners of the IT industry. Headline 'starting from $0.005 per GB' numbers hide minimum charges, egress fees, retrieval costs, API request fees and storage class transitions. After running cloud backup for hundreds of Dubai businesses since 2007, Azizi Technologies has a clear picture of what each service actually costs in AED per TB per month - and which traps to watch out for. This guide is the honest 2026 cost breakdown, no vendor incentives, all numbers in AED.
The headline comparison - 1 TB stored, 1 TB restored once a year
We modelled a realistic Dubai SMB backup scenario: 1 TB of data stored continuously, with one full 1 TB restore in a 12-month period (typical for an actual recovery event), plus a 100 GB partial restore (typical for fat-finger recovery).
| Service | Storage / GB / month | Egress / GB | 12-month AED total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze B2 | AED 0.022 | AED 0.037 (free under 3x stored) | AED 290 |
| Wasabi Hot Cloud | AED 0.025 | Free (with 90-day min retention) | AED 310 |
| AWS S3 Standard | AED 0.085 | AED 0.33 | AED 1,460 |
| AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive | AED 0.0036 | AED 0.07 (plus retrieval AED 0.07) | AED 220 (restore takes 12-48h) |
| Azure Blob Hot | AED 0.077 | AED 0.31 | AED 1,310 |
| Azure Blob Archive | AED 0.0036 | AED 0.07 + AED 0.018 retrieval | AED 230 (rehydrate takes 15h) |
| iDrive Business | AED 1,400/year fixed for 5 TB | Free | AED 1,400 |
| Carbonite Safe Server | AED 2,200/year for 1 server | Free | AED 2,200 |
| Synology C2 Plus | AED 0.043 | Free | AED 530 |
1 TB cloud backup - 12-month total AED cost including 1.1 TB egress
The egress trap
Headline storage prices like AWS S3 Standard at AED 0.085/GB look reasonable. The egress fee at AED 0.33/GB is the gotcha - restoring 1 TB from AWS S3 Standard costs AED 360 in egress alone. For most Dubai SMBs doing real disaster recovery, Backblaze B2 or Wasabi with their free or low egress is dramatically cheaper than the hyperscalers.
Backblaze B2 - our default Dubai recommendation
B2 wins for most Dubai SMBs because it strips cloud storage to its essentials at the best price-to-performance ratio. Real costs we charge through:
- Storage: AED 0.022 per GB per month (US$0.006 - we round up slightly for AED conversion stability).
- Egress: AED 0.037 per GB but you get 3x free egress on stored amount per month. For most backup use cases, restore stays inside the free tier.
- API requests: AED 0.014 per 1,000 Class B operations, trivial for backup workloads.
- Object Lock: free, supports compliance and ransomware-resistant retention.
- Region: US East and EU Central; data does cross borders, factor into PDPL planning.
- Integration: native support in Synology Hyper Backup, QNAP HBS, Veeam, Arq, Cloudberry, rclone.
Wasabi - when egress costs matter most
Wasabi is Backblaze B2's closest competitor. The differences:
- Storage: AED 0.025 per GB per month.
- Egress: free, but with a fair-use clause - egress cannot exceed total stored data per month.
- Minimum retention: 90 days. Delete a file before 90 days and you still pay for 90 days. Important for high-churn backup retention policies.
- Regions: US, EU, AP. No Middle East region as of 2026.
- Object Lock: supported.
- Best for: media businesses, video studios, anywhere you might need to pull lots of data out for projects.
AWS S3 - power and complexity, mainly for archive
AWS S3 has the deepest feature set, the most reliable storage durability claim (11 9s) and the most complex pricing model. For Dubai SMBs we generally only use S3 in two scenarios:
- S3 Glacier Deep Archive for long-term archive (7+ year retention, regulator-driven) - AED 0.0036 per GB per month is unbeatable, but retrieval takes 12-48 hours and adds retrieval fees.
- S3 with UAE region (me-central-1, Bahrain region available too) when the client has strict PDPL or DIFC residency requirements that Backblaze and Wasabi cannot meet.
- Otherwise, S3 Standard at AED 0.085 per GB plus AED 0.33 per GB egress is significantly more expensive than B2 or Wasabi for the same workload.
Azure Blob - the M365 alignment play
Azure Blob makes sense when your business is already deeply on M365 and Azure, you want a single billing relationship, and you can pick UAE North or UAE Central region for PDPL alignment. Azure Blob Hot is AED 0.077 per GB; Archive is AED 0.0036 per GB. Egress mirrors AWS pricing. We use Azure Blob primarily for Microsoft 365 backup via Veeam or Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365.
iDrive Business and Carbonite - the small-business turnkey
iDrive Business and Carbonite Safe Server are the turnkey options - they include the backup client, the scheduling, the encryption and the storage as one product. Best for very small Dubai businesses (1-5 staff) without IT support who want a one-product-one-bill solution. The price per TB is higher than DIY B2 plus a backup client, but the simplicity is genuine. We deploy these for small clinics, accountants and law firms where IT capability is limited.
M365 and Google Workspace backup - the often-missed layer
M365 is not backed up by default
Microsoft's standard policy is 30 days for deleted item recovery and SharePoint retention. After 30 days, deleted data is permanently gone. Google Workspace is similar. A real M365 or Workspace backup requires a third-party tool - we use Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365 (free with a Synology unit) or Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (around AED 18/user/year).
Real Dubai monthly costs by data size
| Data backed up | B2 storage / month | Estimated egress / month | Total AED / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 GB (solo / freelancer) | AED 2.2 | AED 0 | AED 5-10 with min charge |
| 500 GB (small office) | AED 11 | AED 0 | AED 11-15 |
| 1 TB (mid SMB) | AED 22 | AED 0 | AED 22-30 |
| 3 TB (design studio) | AED 66 | AED 0 | AED 70-90 |
| 5 TB (video studio) | AED 110 | AED 0 | AED 120-150 |
| 10 TB (large SMB / production house) | AED 220 | AED 0-50 | AED 230-300 |
| 25 TB (enterprise SMB) | AED 550 | AED 50-100 | AED 600-700 |
Monthly cloud backup cost in AED for Dubai SMBs (Backblaze B2)
Hidden cost - bandwidth on your end
Cloud backup bandwidth use is invisible until your Dubai office internet becomes mysteriously slow. A first-time full upload of 1 TB over a 100 Mbps business fibre takes roughly 24 hours of saturated bandwidth - which means slow internet for everyone in the office. We always plan the first upload over a weekend or by shipping a seed drive to the cloud provider (Backblaze and AWS both support seed-drive ingest, AWS via Snowball).
Azizi NAS + Cloud + Recovery combo
We design hybrid setups where the NAS holds working data and Backblaze B2 holds the off-site immutable copy. The monthly cloud cost depends mostly on how many terabytes you keep and how long you hold versions, and if the NAS or a cloud restore fails, our cleanroom data-recovery lab in Bur Dubai picks it up. See /data-recovery-dubai.
Common cost mistakes Dubai businesses make
- Picking storage based on headline GB price alone, ignoring egress fees that hit at restore time.
- Buying enterprise-grade storage class (AWS S3 Standard) for backup workloads when archive-grade or B2-style would do.
- Backing up duplicate data (full backup every night instead of incremental) and paying for the duplication every month.
- Not setting lifecycle policies - cold data sits in hot storage class forever, doubling or tripling the bill.
- Forgetting to back up M365 or Google Workspace and assuming the vendor handles it - they do not.
- Choosing a backup provider with no UAE region when PDPL or DIFC requirements actually mandate one.
How we pick the right service for each Dubai client
Every Azizi cloud backup engagement starts with a 30-minute assessment that measures four things: total data volume today and growth rate, restore frequency expectations, compliance regime (PDPL, DIFC, DHCC, RERA, financial) and bandwidth available. Those four numbers usually determine the right service before we even open a calculator. A 500 GB document-only office under PDPL with a 100 Mbps line and no compliance specifics gets Backblaze B2. A DHCC clinic with 25-year retention gets a hybrid - Backblaze B2 for hot and AWS S3 Glacier Deep Archive for cold. A DIFC entity gets AWS me-central-1 or Azure UAE North for residency reasons. We never push a client into the most expensive option when a cheaper one meets all the requirements.
Get an honest cloud backup quote
30-minute assessment. We measure your data, audit your current cloud spend, model 12-month cost across Backblaze B2, Wasabi, AWS and Azure, and pick the right one for your AED budget. You get a written quote for the deployment and, if you want it, an AMC to keep it monitored.
