Backblaze B2 can host static websites from B2 buckets at a fraction of AWS S3 costs — but as an object storage service it has no WCAG accessibility audit, no Core Web Vitals scoring, and no post-deployment front-end quality monitoring. PageGuard audits any B2-hosted website externally — free, no Backblaze account access needed, results in 30 seconds.
ADA Title II Deadline: April 24, 2026
State and local government websites must meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 24, 2026. Government agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions hosting public-facing static websites in Backblaze B2 buckets face this compliance deadline. Automated deployments through rclone, GitHub Actions, or the B2 CLI can upload new HTML files to B2 buckets with accessibility regressions without any WCAG quality gate at the storage layer. PageGuard monitors the live production URL continuously without requiring Backblaze account access, B2 application keys, or bucket modifications.
| Feature | PageGuard | Backblaze B2 |
|---|---|---|
| What is it? | External website health monitor — scans any deployed URL for performance, accessibility, SEO, and best practices | Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage is an S3-compatible object storage service known for being approximately one-quarter the price of AWS S3, with storage from $6/TB/month and free egress to Cloudflare (when served through Cloudflare) or $0.01/GB to the public internet; B2 is widely used by developers, photographers, video creators, and small businesses for affordable backup, media storage, and static website asset hosting; B2 supports public buckets that serve files directly via a CDN-friendly URL or a custom domain when used with Cloudflare, enabling static website hosting for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and image files; Backblaze has a partnership with Cloudflare that makes data transfer between B2 and Cloudflare's CDN free, significantly reducing costs for websites that serve large media files; B2 is S3-compatible via its B2 Native API (b2_upload_file) and S3-compatible API (PUT Object), and works with rclone, Cyberduck, Mountain Duck, Transmit, and most S3-compatible clients; B2 does not analyze the HTML content of files it stores — it is an object store that serves bytes without understanding HTML structure, accessibility requirements, or Core Web Vitals quality |
| Free tier | ✓ Yes — unlimited one-off scans, no signup required | Partial — B2 Free Tier includes 10 GB of storage and 1 GB of free egress per day; after the free tier, Standard storage from $6/TB/month ($0.006/GB); download bandwidth from $0.01/GB (free to Cloudflare, Fastly, and other Bandwidth Alliance partners); no built-in WCAG accessibility auditing or Core Web Vitals measurement for websites hosted in B2 buckets at any storage tier or pricing level |
| Accessibility audit (WCAG / ADA) | ✓ Yes — WCAG 2.1 AA scored 0–100 with specific issue list | No — Backblaze B2 is an object storage service with no built-in WCAG or ADA accessibility auditing capability for websites hosted in its buckets; B2 stores and serves the HTML files uploaded to it but has no mechanism to parse, analyze, or score the accessibility quality of that HTML; B2 does not understand color contrast ratios, ARIA attribute usage, alt text presence, heading hierarchy, keyboard navigation, or any other WCAG 2.1 AA success criterion; the accessibility quality of a B2-hosted website is entirely determined by the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files stored in the bucket — not by B2 itself |
| Technical SEO audit | ✓ Yes — meta tags, headings, canonical, structured data | No — Backblaze B2 provides no SEO audit scores, meta tag validation, heading hierarchy analysis, canonical URL checking, or structured data verification for HTML files stored in its buckets; B2 serves files as-is without analyzing or validating their SEO quality; developers hosting websites in B2 must use separate SEO audit tools to verify the rendered HTML served to users and search engine crawlers; B2 also does not generate or validate robots.txt or sitemap.xml files |
| Performance audit (Core Web Vitals) | ✓ Yes — LCP, CLS, FCP scored 0–100 per scan | No — Backblaze B2 provides no Core Web Vitals measurement (LCP, CLS, FCP, INP, TTFB) for websites hosted in its buckets; B2 bucket metrics focus on transaction counts, storage bytes used, and data download volumes — not browser-side user experience quality scores; B2 static site TTFB is affected by data center proximity (US West, EU Central, US East regions) and CDN configuration — but B2 itself does not measure or report user-facing Core Web Vitals; measuring production Core Web Vitals for B2-hosted sites requires external tooling |
| Affordable S3-compatible storage | No — PageGuard is an external monitoring tool, not an object storage or hosting service | ✓ Yes — B2 core differentiator: storage from $6/TB/month (approximately 1/4 the cost of AWS S3 at $23/TB/month) with free egress to Cloudflare, Fastly, and other Bandwidth Alliance partners; S3-compatible API works with existing tooling (AWS SDK, rclone, s3cmd, Cyberduck, Transmit, Mountain Duck); public bucket URLs (f000.backblazeb2.com or custom domains via Cloudflare) for serving static websites directly; B2 Native API for direct integration; 3 data center regions: US West (Phoenix), EU Central (Amsterdam), US East (Virginia); Bucket lifecycle rules for automatic file version cleanup; File Lock WORM compliance for regulated industries; per-file or bucket-level encryption; Server-Side Encryption with customer-managed keys (SSE-C) |
| Automated website monitoring | ✓ Yes — weekly or daily scans with email alerts on score drop | No — Backblaze B2 does not perform automated quality monitoring of WCAG compliance, Core Web Vitals, or SEO quality for websites hosted in its buckets; B2 provides download and upload activity logs, storage usage graphs, and API call statistics — not front-end accessibility regressions, Core Web Vitals degradation, or SEO issues in the HTML files stored in the bucket; automated front-end quality monitoring of B2-hosted websites requires a separate external monitoring tool |
| AI-generated plain-English report | ✓ Yes — explains issues in non-technical language | No — Backblaze B2 provides no AI-generated health report or plain-English explanation of front-end accessibility, SEO, or Core Web Vitals issues; the B2 dashboard shows bucket storage usage, file list, download activity, and API call counts — not front-end quality analysis of the website content stored in the bucket |
| ADA Title II compliance monitoring | ✓ Yes — WCAG audit + alert on accessibility regression | No — Backblaze B2 does not audit or alert on WCAG compliance for HTML files stored in its buckets; government agencies, nonprofits, and educational institutions hosting public-facing static websites in B2 buckets face ADA Title II compliance requirements with an April 24, 2026 deadline; automated deployments through rclone, GitHub Actions, or the B2 CLI can upload new HTML files to B2 buckets with accessibility regressions without any WCAG quality gate at the storage layer; continuous WCAG monitoring of the production URL requires a separate external tool like PageGuard |
| Works on any deployed platform | ✓ Yes — scans any URL on any hosting or platform | Backblaze B2 serves content within its own storage infrastructure across its three data center regions; it does not scan or monitor the front-end quality of websites hosted on AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Cloudflare R2, Vercel, Netlify, or other storage and hosting platforms; B2 focuses exclusively on its own object storage operations without cross-platform front-end quality monitoring capability |
| Independent external audit | ✓ Yes — third-party scan, shareable URL for clients/stakeholders | No — Backblaze B2 provides no built-in tool to generate a shareable external front-end health report for websites it hosts; the B2 dashboard and B2 Activity Log show bucket storage metrics, file transaction history, and download statistics — not WCAG accessibility scores or Core Web Vitals quality scores shareable with clients, procurement teams, or ADA compliance auditors |
| Instant on-demand scan | ✓ Yes — results in 30 seconds, no code changes needed | No — no on-demand front-end health scan of websites hosted in B2 buckets; auditing a B2-hosted website for WCAG accessibility, Core Web Vitals, or SEO quality requires running third-party tools against the public bucket URL or custom domain; B2 has no concept of scanning the HTML accessibility or performance quality of the static files stored in its buckets |
| Multi-site dashboard | ✓ Yes — 1–50 sites depending on plan | The Backblaze B2 dashboard shows all buckets within a B2 account with storage usage, file count, and download activity — there is no cross-website front-end health dashboard showing WCAG compliance, SEO quality, or Core Web Vitals for multiple static websites hosted across B2 buckets |
| Pricing for health monitoring | ✓ Free + from $9/mo for automated monitoring | Front-end health monitoring not available — B2 storage from $6/TB/month ($0.006/GB); download bandwidth from $0.01/GB (free egress to Cloudflare and other Bandwidth Alliance partners); API calls from $0.004/10,000 Class B transactions; no front-end quality monitoring at any spend level |
Get WCAG accessibility scores and Core Web Vitals for any static website hosted on Backblaze B2. Results in 30 seconds. No Backblaze account access, B2 application keys, or bucket modifications required.
Results in ~30 seconds. 4 scores: Performance, Accessibility, SEO, Best Practices.
Yes — PageGuard scans any public URL regardless of whether the website is hosted on Backblaze B2, AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, or any other platform. Paste your B2 website URL into PageGuard for a full health report covering WCAG accessibility, Core Web Vitals, SEO, and best practices in ~30 seconds. No Backblaze account, B2 application keys, or bucket modifications required.
No — Backblaze B2 is an object storage service that stores and serves files without analyzing their content quality. It has no built-in WCAG compliance checking, accessibility scoring, or front-end quality analysis for HTML files stored in its buckets. B2 provides download activity logs, storage usage statistics, and API call metrics — not browser-side user experience quality metrics. PageGuard audits the live rendered URL and provides a WCAG 2.1 AA score with specific issues to fix.
Yes — automated deployments through rclone, GitHub Actions, or the B2 CLI that upload new HTML files to a B2 bucket can introduce WCAG accessibility regressions without any quality gate at the storage layer. Static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby, Eleventy, Next.js) regenerating templates can break heading hierarchy, remove alt text from images, or introduce missing ARIA labels in the generated HTML. PageGuard's automated monitoring detects these front-end regressions in the live production URL after each deployment to B2.
No — they serve completely different purposes. Backblaze B2 is an affordable S3-compatible object storage service that stores and serves static files at approximately one-quarter the cost of AWS S3, with free egress to Cloudflare and other Bandwidth Alliance partners. PageGuard is an external quality monitoring tool that audits the front-end HTML delivered to users for WCAG compliance, Core Web Vitals, and SEO quality. Organizations hosting websites in B2 buckets should add PageGuard to continuously verify front-end health at the production URL after each deployment.