Yester vs Backblaze: back up your files, or your whole Mac?

Backblaze and Yester both keep a copy of your Mac’s data away from your desk, which is the part of a backup plan that survives a burglary, a fire or a flood. What they give you back is different. Backblaze Personal Backup backs up your files. Yester backs up the whole Mac every hour, apps and settings included, and it’s built around getting that Mac back: one file picked by sight, or everything restored onto a new machine.

We make Yester. Every fact about Backblaze below links to Backblaze’s own pricing or help pages, which call the product Computer Backup, so you can check each one yourself.

What does each one back up?

Yester backs up the whole Mac: every user’s home folder, the Applications folder, mail, messages, photos, app data, and your app and system settings. Hidden folders are included too, like the ones where Claude Code and Codex keep your conversations. It leaves out macOS itself, because Apple supplies it and a new Mac already has it, along with caches, logs and temporary files. Files that live only in iCloud, with no copy on the Mac, are listed in Settings, so nothing is left out without you knowing.

Backblaze backs up “all of your data across all of the user profiles” on the computer, including user Library folders, email and photos. Its documentation is just as clear about what it leaves out: it “does not back up your operating system, application files”.

That’s the difference that matters on the worst day. After a stolen laptop or a Mac that won’t start, Backblaze gives you back your documents and photos. Yester gives you back your Mac.

How often do they back up?

Yester backs up every hour. Each backup starts from an APFS snapshot, a frozen picture of every file at one instant, and uploads only what changed since the last one, so a document you’re editing mid-backup is still captured whole. Backups pause on battery power and ease off during video calls, and the first backup sends your documents before bulkier things such as apps, so a Mac that fails on day one still has its work saved.

Backblaze’s default schedule is Continuous: it looks for new and changed files and uploads them, which Backblaze says “typically occurs once per hour”. You can also set it to once a day, or to back up only when you click Backup Now.

How far back can you go?

Yester keeps 90 days of history on the standard plan, a year on Yester Pro and five years on Yester Max. History is thinned as it ages: every hourly version for the last day, one a day for a month, then one a week until the end of your plan’s window. Deleted files stay restorable for the same window, and the current state of everything you pay for is kept for as long as you pay. Five years on Yester Max comes at a fixed monthly price, within a fair-use limit set out in the terms. That matters for things other apps throw away: Claude Code keeps its conversations for 30 days by default and then deletes them, and Yester keeps each one for your plan’s whole window.

Backblaze keeps old versions and deleted files for 30 days by default. You can switch on one-year history at no extra cost, or choose Forever, which is charged at $0.006 per GB a month for versions older than a year. When a version passes the window, Backblaze removes it from the backup, leaving only the current version.

What is each one like to use?

Yester is built for macOS 26 and lives in your menu bar. One click shows when your Mac last backed up, the files it saved most recently and whether the weekly restore check passed, with Restore a File and Back Up Now right there.

Everything else happens in one window. Search finds a file by name across every version, and shortcuts such as Deleted recently and Changed today take you straight to the files you’re most likely to want back.

Backblaze spreads the same jobs across three places: a file tree with date fields in its web console, the restore app built into version 9.0 of its Mac app, where you choose files, a date and time and a destination, and its phone app, which downloads single files of up to 5 GB.

How do you undo a change to a file?

In Yester you open Browse & Restore and see your Mac as it was at the moment you pick. Select a file and the timeline marks each moment it changed; Earlier and Later jump straight between those changes, so you never scroll through hours where nothing happened. A preview shows each version as it was, with the parts that differ from today highlighted, so you choose the right one by sight rather than by date.

Then you decide what to do with it:

• Restore This Version puts the older version back where the file lives. Yester takes a snapshot first, so today’s file is kept too, and you can undo the restore itself.
• Save a Copy saves that version wherever you like and leaves today’s file alone.
• Full Preview opens the version full size without restoring anything.

Versions from the last 24 hours are still on your Mac, so they come back instantly. A whole folder can be put back the same way.

Backblaze offers several routes. In its web console you can download a single file smaller than 6 GB straight to your browser, and bigger selections are prepared as ZIP files of up to 500 GB. For an earlier version, you set “Files uploaded to” to a date when the file existed, select it and continue with a restore. Backblaze’s restore app can also put files back in their original folders as of a date and time you choose, with options to skip or overwrite identical files; its documentation doesn’t mention keeping the copy it replaces.

Backblaze finds an older version by date. Yester finds it by what it looked like, and lets you take the restore back if you picked the wrong one.

How fast are backups and restores?

Yester backs up as fast as your connection allows, and after the first backup it only sends the pieces of files that changed. In our tests, an hourly backup after 2,300 files had changed took about a minute.

Restores run at the full speed of your connection too. In the same tests, a whole gigabyte came back in about a minute and a half, and every file matched the original exactly. The last 24 hours don’t even need the connection: those versions are still on your Mac.

Can you restore a whole Mac onto a new one?

With Yester, yes. Install it on the new Mac, sign in, choose Restore this Mac from a backup, and pick the moment: the latest backup, or one from before something went wrong. Then take either route:

• With an external drive. Yester writes your backup to the drive in the layout Migration Assistant understands, and Migration Assistant brings your apps, settings and files across just as it would from a Time Machine^® drive.
• Straight from the cloud. Yester restores your settings, documents and mail first, and the Mac is ready to use after about ten minutes while photos, media and apps keep arriving in the background. How long the rest takes depends on your internet connection.

Either way your history comes with you, and the new Mac takes over the old one’s subscription and backup history, so nothing is paid twice.

Because Backblaze doesn’t back up macOS or applications, moving to a new Mac means reinstalling your apps and then restoring your files. Its Inherit Backup State option lets the new computer take over the old backup without uploading everything again but, in Backblaze’s words, it “does not transfer any data to your computer itself”. For a large restore, Backblaze can post you a USB drive of up to 8 TB for $279, refunded if you send it back within 30 days, and says preparing one typically takes one to two business days per terabyte, plus delivery.

What about external drives?

Backblaze includes external drives in its price, on a condition. With the default 30-day version history, you have to reconnect each drive at least once every 30 days or Backblaze may remove its backed-up data; reminders arrive at 14, 21 and 28 days. With one-year history the limit becomes a year. Network drives and NAS devices aren’t supported.

Yester treats a drive as something you keep. It costs £6.99 per TB of the drive’s capacity a month, backs the drive up once a day while it’s plugged in, and keeps the backup for as long as you pay, whether the drive is on your desk, in a drawer or on holiday with you. Recent files restore instantly; files you haven’t changed for 90 days sit in archival storage and arrive within 12 hours.

The photo archive you plug in twice a year stays backed up on Yester. On Backblaze’s default setting, it would need plugging in every month.

Who holds the encryption key?

Yester encrypts everything on your Mac before it’s uploaded, including file names and the previews you browse, and only your recovery key can unlock it. Yester never has a copy of that key, so nobody at Yester can read your files: not support, not an engineer, not anyone who got hold of the stored data. Yester offers to keep a copy of the key in your iCloud Keychain, so signing in to iCloud on a new Mac is enough to open your backup.

Backblaze also encrypts files before they leave your computer. By default, though, the private key that unlocks them is stored in Backblaze’s data centre, protected by your password. You can set an optional private encryption key instead, an option Backblaze says it doesn’t recommend, because it then can’t help you if you forget it.

Yester adds a second safeguard by design. Your Mac can add to its backup and read from it, but it can never delete from it: versions go only when they pass your plan’s window, with a 30-day safety net behind that. Ransomware on the Mac can’t reach the versions from before it struck, and neither can a mistake at two in the morning.

What does each one cost?

Yester is priced per Mac by its built-in storage, whatever you keep on it: £11.99 a month for 512 GB, £16.99 for 1 TB and £24.99 for 2 TB, with 90 days of history. Yester Pro costs £16.99, £21.99 or £29.99 and Yester Max £23.99, £28.99 or £36.99 for the same sizes. Paying yearly gives two months free, so a 512 GB Mac is £119.90 a year, and you can ask for a full refund within 60 days of your first payment.

Backblaze charges $9 a month, $99 a year or $189 for two years in US dollars, with unlimited data and external drives included, and its prices are per computer.

The two prices pay for different things. Backblaze’s pays for an off-site copy of your files. Yester’s pays for your whole Mac: hourly history you can browse by sight, a key that never leaves your hands, a backup your Mac can’t delete, and a way to put all of it onto a new Mac.

Which is right for your Mac?

If what you want back after a disaster is your Mac, not just your files, choose Yester. You get:

• The whole Mac, every hour, apps and settings included.
• Versions you pick by sight, for 90 days, a year or five years.
• Changes you can undo: put an older version back, and take that back too if you change your mind.
• A new Mac restored through Migration Assistant, or straight from the cloud.
• A key only you hold, and a backup that nothing on your Mac can delete.
• Drives kept while you pay, however long they’re unplugged.

Yester runs on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. Install it, let the first backup run overnight, and save your recovery key somewhere you’ll still have if the Mac is gone. Then restore one file to see how it works, so you know where to click on the day you need it.