IDrive e2vs
Backblaze
Backblaze: Better documented, more widely integrated, and a closer match if your tooling assumes B2
IDrive e2
Low cost S3-compatible object storage with egress included up to a multiple of what you store
As of 31 August 2026, IDrive e2 has a free plan and paid plans start at $4/month. IDrive sells object storage at roughly four dollars per terabyte per month with egress included up to a cap tied to your stored volume. Softwr lists it under File Storage. IDrive e2 is made by IDrive Inc, available on Web, API.
Overview
What IDrive e2 does
IDrive e2 is an S3-compatible object storage service from IDrive Inc, the company behind the IDrive consumer and business backup products. It exposes standard S3 endpoints across a set of regions in the United States, Europe and Asia, supports versioning and object lock, and is priced per gigabyte stored per month at a rate well below the hyperscalers. The fact that decides deals is the egress policy: e2 includes outbound transfer up to a multiple of the data you store rather than charging per gigabyte, so a bucket that is read a few times over each month carries no transfer line at all. Combined with no per operation charge on standard usage, this makes the invoice predictable in a way S3 is not, which matters more to small teams than the last cent on the storage rate. Buyers are backup vendors and small teams looking for the cheapest credible S3 target, often as the offsite copy in a Veeam, restic or Duplicati chain. The trade-off is that you are buying from a value provider: fewer regions, thinner published architecture, less depth in support engineering, and a service whose reputation rests on a consumer backup business rather than a platform business.
What people use it for
- The offsite copy in a three two one backup chain driven by Veeam, restic or a NAS backup client
- Replacing an S3 bucket whose cost is dominated by storage rather than by requests
- Small teams who want predictable monthly object storage billing with no request line items
- Archiving media or logs that must stay accessible without a retrieval delay
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about IDrive e2.
- The included egress is capped as a multiple of stored data, so a small bucket that serves a lot of traffic exhausts the allowance quickly and the economics stop looking cheap exactly where a CDN backed store would still be free.
- The region list is short compared with the hyperscalers, so data residency requirements outside the main markets are hard to satisfy and multi region designs have fewer options.
- S3 compatibility covers the common calls but not the long tail, so software that relies on less common features can fail in ways that are hard to diagnose against a provider with thin public documentation.
- Support is organised around a consumer and small business backup product rather than a platform engineering organisation, so escalating a storage layer problem takes longer than it would with a specialist provider.
- IDrive publishes far less about the underlying architecture, durability engineering and incident history than its competitors, so due diligence on the storage layer is largely taking the vendor at its word.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of IDrive e2
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- IDrive e2vsWasabi
Wasabi: Flat per terabyte pricing with no egress charge at all, at the cost of a ninety day minimum retention
- IDrive e2vsIDrive
IDrive: If what you actually want is a managed backup product rather than a raw S3 endpoint to point tools at
Pricing
What IDrive e2 costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- 10 GB stored
- S3 API access
- Egress within the included allowance
Pay as you go
$4 /mo
- Roughly 4 USD per terabyte stored per month
- Egress included up to a multiple of stored data
- No per operation charge on standard usage
- Object lock and versioning
Capabilities
Features
S3-compatible endpoints
Standard S3 API access from existing SDKs, backup tools and rclone
Included egress allowance
Outbound transfer included up to a multiple of stored volume rather than billed per gigabyte
Object lock
Write once read many retention for ransomware resistant backup targets
Versioning
Retains prior object versions for recovery from overwrite and deletion
Regional endpoints
Buckets can be placed in named regions across the Americas, Europe and Asia
Cross region replication
Copies buckets between e2 regions for a second geographic copy
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is the egress genuinely free?
It is included up to an allowance tied to how much you store, not unlimited. Read heavy workloads on a small bucket will exceed it.
Does it work with Veeam and restic?
Yes, both treat it as a standard S3 endpoint, and object lock is supported for immutable backup chains.
Is there a minimum retention period?
No fixed minimum retention charge on standard storage, which is a real difference from providers that bill ninety days on early deletion.
How does it compare with Backblaze B2?
The rates are close. B2 is the better documented and more widely integrated service; e2 is cheaper at list and has a different egress allowance model.
Keep looking
Where to go from IDrive e2
- IDrive e2 alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- IDrive e2 pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- IDrive e2 badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All File Storage softwareThe full category
- Best File Storage softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best File Storage software for
Compare IDrive e2 with
- Backblaze
- Storj
- Cloudflare R2
- Cloudian
- MinIO
- Scality RING
- Panzura
- Tigris
- Ceph
- Tresorit
- Veeam Backup & Replication
- Carbonite
- Google Drive
- Microsoft OneDrive
- Nextcloud
- Zerto
- LucidLink
- Panzura
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for IDrive e2, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on IDrive e2
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Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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IDrive e2 badge
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Best File Storage software alternatives
Cloud filesystem that streams large media files on demand instead of syncing them
Per member per month plus storageGoogle's consumer cloud storage app, sharing the same 15GB quota as Gmail and Google Photos
Free tier plus paid storage add-onS3-compatible object storage server you run yourself, now under AGPL with a stripped community edition
Open source, no licence feeOpen source distributed storage providing object, block and file from one cluster
Open source, no licence fee