The best thing you can do for the security of your website is to create regular WordPress backups. Backups provide peace of mind and can save you in disaster situations such as when your website is hacked or you accidentally lock yourself out.
There are several free and paid WordPress backup plugins available, and the majority of them are fairly simple to use. In this article, we’ll go over the top 7 backup plugins for WordPress.
Important: While many WordPress hosting providers provide limited backup services, we always advise our customers not to rely solely on them. Finally, it is your responsibility to keep regular backups of your website.
If you are not already backing up your WordPress website, then you should pick one of these 7 best WordPress backup plugins and start using it right away.
1. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the most widely used free WordPress backup plugin on the internet. More than 2 million websites use it.
UpdraftPlus allows you to create a full backup of your WordPress site, which you can then store in the cloud or download to your computer.
The plugin supports both scheduled and on-demand backups. You can also specify which files you want to back up.
It can upload your backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email, and a variety of other cloud storage services automatically (see our step by step guide on how to backup & restore your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus).
UpdraftPlus not only backs up each WordPress website, but it also allows you to easily restore backups directly from your WordPress admin panel.
UpdraftPlus also has a premium version that includes add-ons for website migration and cloning, database search and replace, multisite support, and several other features. Priority support is also included with the premium version.
Price: Free (UpdraftPremium Personal is $70).
UpdraftPlus is the most well-liked WordPress backup plugin on the market. It also has about two million active installs as well as an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. While the free version has many features, we recommend upgrading to UpdraftPlus premium to gain access to all powerful backup features.
2. VaultPress (Jetpack Backup)
Jetpack Backups is a well-known WordPress backup plugin developed by Automattic, the company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.
This plugin was originally released under the name VaultPress, which we use on Your Blog Master has since been redesigned and rebranded as Jetpack Backups. We’ve begun to migrate several of our websites to the new Jetpack backup platform, which is more up to date.
Without slowing down your site, the Jetpack backup plugin provides automated daily and real-time cloud backup solutions. Jetpack backups are simple to set up, and you can restore from them with a few clicks.
Jetpack’s premium plans also include security scans and a slew of other useful features.
For beginners, there are a few drawbacks to using Jetpack backups.
First, because you pay on a per-site basis, it is a recurring expense that can quickly add up if you have multiple WordPress sites.
Second, the purchase process is quite complicated, and they require you to install the Jetpack plugin in order to purchase a subscription. The good news is that you can disable all of Jetpack’s unnecessary features, except backups, so they don’t slow down your site.
Finally, backups are only kept for 30 days on the lower plans. If you want an unlimited backup archive, you must pay $49.95 per month per website, which is significantly more expensive for beginners than the other solutions listed here.
Your Blog Master’s website continues to use VaultPress (an older version of Jetpack) because we were grandfathered in at their previous pricing, which was much more favorable.
Even at the higher price, Jetpack backup is well worth it due to Automattic’s stellar reputation. Because All in One SEO is an eCommerce store, we pay for a higher-priced real-time backup plan.
Pricing starts at $9.95 per month for daily backups and goes up to $49.95 per month for real-time backups.
Review: Jetpack Backup is a premium backup service that comes at a premium price. If you already use JetPack for other features such as JetPack CDN for photos, social media promotion, Elastic search, and so on, it’s a good idea to buy their Complete plan bundle for the best value. If you only need real-time cloud backups for WordPress, you can look at BlogVault in our list because their pricing is more affordable for beginners.
3. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is one of the most popular premium WordPress backup plugins, with over 500,000 WordPress sites using it. It allows you to easily schedule backups on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
BackupBuddy allows you to store backups automatically in cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, Stash (their cloud service), and even email them to yourself.
If you use their Stash service, you can also perform real-time backups.
The most significant benefit of using BackupBuddy is that it is not a subscription-based service, so there is no monthly fee. The plugin can be used on the number of websites specified in your plan.
You also get premium support forums, regular updates, and 1GB of BackupBuddy Stash storage to store your backups. Furthermore, with their iThemes Sync feature, you can manage up to ten WordPress sites from a single dashboard.
BackupBuddy can also be used to duplicate, migrate, and restore websites.
Blogger Plan costs $80 per month (1 Site License)
BackupBuddy is a low-cost premium WordPress backup solution for you. It includes all of the features required to backup, restore, and move a WordPress site. In a nutshell, it’s a powerful UpdraftPlus and VaultPress replacement that you can use.
4. BlogVault
BlogVault is yet another popular WordPress backup service. It is more of a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution than a WordPress plugin. It creates offsite backups on BlogVault servers independently, so there will be no load on your server.
BlogVault creates regular backup system of your website and also permits you to manually generate an endless amount of on-demand backups. It includes intelligent incremental backups that sync only incremental changes to reduce server load. This ensures that your site performs optimally.
Aside from backups, it allows you to easily recover your website. You can store a 90-day backup archive on lower plans and a 365-day backup archive on higher plans, allowing you to recover your site in the event of a disaster.
It also includes a built-in staging site feature that allows you to easily test your website. Furthermore, they make it simple to move your website to a different host.
BlogVault’s features are very appealing to small businesses, and their real-time backup plan is significantly less expensive than Jetpack backups (half the price). However, when compared to self-hosted plugins like Updraft or BackupBuddy, the cost per site is higher.
Personal Plan 1 Site License for daily backups costs $89 per year. Real-time backups cost $249 per year.
Review: BlogVault is a user-friendly WordPress backup solution. It creates offsite backups so that your website server is not overburdened with backups. The pricing appears to be very reasonable for small businesses that require real-time backups but do not wish to pay the premium pricing of Jetpack backups.
5. BoldGrid Backup
BoldGrid Backup is an automated WordPress backup solution provided by BoldGrid, a WordPress-powered website builder.
It enables you to easily create website backups, restore your site after it crashes, and even move your site when changing hosts. With a single click, you can set up automated backups or manually create backups.
BoldGrid Backup includes an automated fault protection feature that creates a backup of your site before updating it. If an update fails, your WordPress site is automatically rolled back to the most recent backup. It’s a fantastic feature that guards against update errors.
BoldGrid Backup allows you to keep up to ten backup archives on your dashboard and more in remote storage locations such as Amazon S3, FTP, or SFTP.
Annual cost is $60. (Includes all of BoldGrid Premium tools & Services)
BoldGrid Backup
6. BackWPup
is an easy WordPress backup plugin that you can use to create backups of your website. The benefit of using this plugin is the collection of other powerful tools that come with the purchase of this plugin.
BackWPup is a free plugin that allows you to create full WordPress backups and store them in the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, and so on), FTP, email, or on your computer.
It is extremely simple to use and allows you to schedule automatic backups based on the frequency with which your site is updated.
It is also very simple to restore a WordPress site from a backup. BackWPup Pro includes priority support, the ability to store backups on Google Drive, and a few other cool features.
Price: None (Premium plan is also available)
BackWPup, which is used by over 600,000 websites, is a great alternative to the other backup plugins on this list. The plugin’s premium version adds more powerful features, such as easy and quick website restoration from the backend via a standalone app.
7. Duplicator
Duplicator, as the name suggests, is a popular WordPress plugin for migrating WordPress sites. It does, however, include backup features.
It does not support automated scheduled backups, making it a poor choice for a primary WordPress backup solution for a regularly maintained site.
Price: None.
Review: Duplicator makes it simple to create manual backups of your WordPress site. If your web host performs regular backups, you can use this plugin to generate backups for use in the staging environment. It’s an excellent site migration plugin.
Last Thoughts
Each WordPress backup plugin on our list has advantages and disadvantages, but they all provide complete WordPress file backup as well as full database backup features.
Jetpack Backups are used for two main reasons. It is very simple to use and provides real-time incremental backups.
This means that instead of backing up all of your files every day or every hour, it only backs up what has been updated within minutes of the update. This is ideal for a large website like ours because it allows us to make better use of our server resources.
If you run a small and medium sized website and despise paying monthly fees, we suggest the prominent UpdraftPlus plugin. It includes all of the powerful features, such as backup encryption, encrypted backup transport, and a plethora of cloud storage options.
Please do not store your backups on the same server as your website, regardless of which WordPress backup plugin you use.
You are putting all of your eggs in one basket by doing so. If your server’s hardware fails or, worst case scenario, you are hacked, you will not have a backup, which defeats the purpose of setting up regular backups.
This is why we strongly advise you to store your backups on a third-party storage service such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, and so on.
That’s all there is to it. We hope this list has assisted you in selecting the best WordPress backup plugin for your site. You might also be interested in our WordPress security guide for beginners and our comparison of the best email marketing services for small businesses.
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