If you own or maintain a website, one thing that you should never forget is backups. It may be the key difference between keeping your business online or failing it forever when something goes wrong suddenly.
You might think that the backup you have with your hosting provider is enough, however, that’s far from the truth. You need an additional blanket of security around your website to ensure it’s truly secure and nothing can cause you to lose all your hard work and effort.
WordPress, being the sturdy platform that it is, has made it remarkably simple to backup your site. We are talking about plugins, of course.
With the thousands of WordPress backup plugins out there, it might be challenging to find the most suitable one. In this article, we have analyzed multiple plugins and have shortlisted the best backup plugins out there and what they provide. But first, let’s understand why you need a backup in the first place.
Why You Should Do A Website Backup
Consider a website backup as a coverage plan. In case if in case something goes wrong with your website, you will be covered. Many people know the significance of backing up computer data, but it’s additionally clever to do a similar thing for your website.
There are all sorts of things that could bring down your website and ruin all the hard work you have put in, despite whether it’s deliberate or not.
Here are a few of the several well-known reasons you’ll want to conduct regular website backups:
Accidents Occur
Have you ever unintentionally spilt coffee on your keyboard, or has your phone fallen out of your pocket and smash onto the floor? Probably yes. Accidents are inevitable, and the same applies to your website as well.
This is particularly valid if you have additional users who have backend access to your site. Usually, all it takes is modifying a single line of code to make your site offline.
Click the incorrect button or unexpectedly delete a file, and a few moments later you can no longer log in to your site.
The final safeguard against these errors is having a backup of your website good to go.
Hacking Is More Frequent Than You Can Imagine
Website hacking happens regularly on the internet. Only because you haven’t encountered it yet, doesn’t signify you are safe. Currently, there are measures you can take to help enhance the security of your site.
However, no security solution is 100% safe.
This is particularly precise for WordPress site owners. WordPress is the most regularly used CMS, but as a consequence, it’s the most targeted by hackers.
Abstaining a core, theme, or plugin update can leave the doors open and your WordPress site exposed.
Therefore yes, you should unquestionably strengthen the security of your site by installing a security plugin and use security best practices.
Nevertheless, another major step is backing up your website to many locations. So, rather than having to retrieve your site from a hack, you can wipe the slate clean and replace it from a fresh backup.
This is a cost-effective method for recovering from a hack, instead of having to struggle with a team of specialists to work and recover your files and data.
Website Updates Can Crush Your Site
Updates don’t always go the way they’re intended to. Most websites have a lot of provoking pieces, and when you update one thing, it won’t constantly play perfectly with other features of your site.
In some cases, it can make your complete site offline. Then, you need to go through the time-consuming method of troubleshooting your site, to seek and solve what the problem was.
Website wrecks appear to occur at the worst time. Therefore, instead of wasting hours troubleshooting the problem while your site is offline and spending your money, you can revive to a functioning version immediately.
This is not a fix to the issue; however, it can save you a substantial headache when earnings are on the line.
How Frequently Should You Backup Your Site?
The regularity of your backups will depend on how often you update your site. A few website owners need to back up their sites every day, where different website owners could get away with a backup every couple of months.
For example, if you run an ongoing blog that publishes many posts a day, then you’ll want to backup every day.
The most important rule of thumb is backing up whenever you execute a significant change to your website.
If either of the following circumstances occurs, then it’s a great idea to backup your website:
- You just published a new blog post
- You updated your site, and it’s working perfectly
- You redesigned your site (and don’t desire to lose your customization choices)
- You installed a new plugin
If you change something to your website that you don’t need to have to change again, it’s an excellent idea to run a backup.
Imagine it this way: the newer your backup, the simpler it will be to make up lost time if you require to restore your site.
What To Look For In A WordPress Backup Plugin Or Tool
Despite the size of your business, investing in the suitable WordPress backup plugin is entirely worth it, because retrieving a website without a backup will be much more costly!
Considering that there are several WordPress backup plugins possible, it can be complicated to pick the right one that suits your needs.
When choosing a WordPress backup plugin, you should ideally check the methods it includes.
Backup methods:
- Database backup: Some plugins enable you to just backup your WordPress database.
- Complete backup: A few plugins allow you to backup your complete website, including your database plus all WordPress files.
- Scheduled backup: With this choice, you can schedule a backup to work automatically, providing you with peace of mind.
Best WordPress Backup Plugins
While several WordPress hosting providers give limited backup services, we constantly advise our users to not rely only on them. It is your responsibility to keep daily backups of your website.
Mentioned below are some of the most useful and cost-effective WordPress backup plugins that you can choose from.
1. BlogVault
BlogVault is a prominent WordPress backup service for WordPress. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution more than just a WordPress plugin.
It produces offsite backups individually on BlogVault servers, so there will be no load on your server.
BlogVault generates an automatic backup of your website regularly and further enables you to create unlimited on-demand backups manually.
It features quick incremental backups that sync only gradual modifications for minimum server load. This guarantees optimal performance for your site.
Pricing: $89 every year for Personal Plan (1 Site Permit)
Features:
- Offsite Storage
- Organized Backup Archive. Access 365 days of backups by the date and time, or updates in an orderly manner
Automated Process
2. VaultPress (part of Jetpack)
VaultPress was established by Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) and his crew at Automattic.
Even though it began as an independent plugin, VaultPress is currently a part of Automattic’s different product named JetPack. You will require a JetPack subscription plan to utilize VaultPress.
There are several pricing plans with a different set of features.
VaultPress plugin provides a digital real-time cloud backup solution commencing at $3.50 per month. You can efficiently setup VaultPress backups and recover from backups in a few clicks.
The more expensive plans of Jetpack also give security scans and many other great features.
Even at the more expensive price, VaultPress is worth it due to the heavenly reliability of Automattic.
Pricing: From $39 every year for JetPack Personal plan
Features:
- Data backups. automated real-time backups with unlimited storage space. unlimited backup archive
- Security scanning. daily and on-demand scans for infiltrations and malware. automated resolution
- Additional features. unlimited high-speed, ad-free video hosting. ad revenue generation
3. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is the best free WordPress backup plugin obtainable on the internet. More than 2 million websites adopt it.
UpdraftPlus enables you to create a full backup of your WordPress site and save it on the cloud or download to your computer.
The plugin backs scheduled backups and on-demand backups too. You additionally have the choice to pick which files you need to backup.
It will automatically upload your backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email, and various other cloud storage services.
Besides backing up every WordPress website, UpdraftPlus further allows you to restore backups straight from your WordPress admin panel effortlessly.
Pricing: Free (UpdraftPremium Personal for $70)
Features:
- Multi-site (i.e. WPMU/WordPress Network) compatible
- Proven to backup sites of 100GB; file size only limited by a Web host
- Backs up limitless non-WordPress files and external databases
- WP-CLI support
- Incremental backups that can be set to the hourly schedule of your choice
4. Sucuri Website Backups
Sucuri is best identified as a security and performance program for websites. They offer a firewall, CDN, malware monitoring, malware elimination and a collection of other essential features.
Their backup offering is easy, and there is no plugin to install. Connect your website, and your site will be backed up automatically every day.
If you need to install a new plugin, you can run a new backup directly there without having to wait until the following day.
You additionally get email notifications and clarity over what files have modified since your last backup.
Pricing: $5/site/month however you will require to sign up for their Website Security program first (It’s $299/year for the SSL ready plan).
Features:
- File system backed up over FTP/SFTP
- MySQL Database auto-detection
- Customer support available
- Download backups from the Sucuri dashboard
5. Duplicator
As the name implies, Duplicator is a famous WordPress plugin utilized to migrate WordPress sites. Though, it additionally has backup features.
It does not permit you to generate automated scheduled backups which makes it more limited than typical primary WordPress backup solution for a frequently maintained site.
Duplicator allows you to create manual backups of your WordPress site efficiently. If your web host produces regular backups, you can utilize this plugin to generate backups to use on a staging environment. It is a fabulous site migration plugin.
Pricing: Free
Features:
- Scheduled backups
- Cloud Storage to Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3 and FTP/SFTP
- Multi-threaded to support larger web sites & databases
- Migrate an entire multisite WordPress network in one shot
6. BackWPup
BackWPup is a free plugin that enables you to generate complete WordPress backups for free and save it on the cloud (Amazon, Dropbox S3, Rackspace, etc.), FTP, email, even on your computer.
It is straightforward to use and lets you schedule automatic backups depending on your site’s update cycle.
Reviving a WordPress site from backup is additionally very simple. The BackWPup Pro version originates with priority assistance, facility to save backups on Google Drive, and a few other great features.
UtilizedUtilized by over 600,000 websites, BackWPup is an excellent choice to other backup plugins in the list.
The premium version of the plugin includes more great features, including quick and straightforward website recovery from the backend with a standalone app.
Pricing: Free (Premium plan is additionally available)
Features:
- Complete Automatic Restore
- Encrypt Backup Archives
- Complete Database Backup
7. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is one of the most successful premium WordPress backup plugins utilized by over half a million WordPress sites. It enables you to schedule daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
With BackupBuddy, you can automatically save your backups in cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, Stash (their cloud service), and also email it to yourself.
If you utilize their Stash service, then you further have the capability to do real-time backups.
The most significant benefit of using BackupBuddy is that it is not a subscription-based service, so there is no cyclic fee. You can utilize the plugin on the number of websites specified in your plan.
You additionally get access to premium backed forums, frequent updates, and 1GB of BackupBuddy Stash storage to save your backups.
Besides, their iThemes Sync feature allows you to manage up to 10 WordPress site from a single dashboard.
You can also use BackupBuddy to replicate, move and revive websites.
Pricing: $80 for Blogger Plan (1 Site Permit)
Features:
- Complete WordPress website backup
- Scheduled, automatic backups
- Store WordPress backups off-site
- Restore your WordPress site
Which is the Best WordPress Backup Plugin for you?
Without any doubt, UpdraftPlus is the most reliable WordPress backup plugin for your website. UpdraftPlus is THE perfect backup solution that arises with all the necessary features, directly out of the box.
Best of all, also the free version gives an excess of features, even when linked to other premium plugins.
Nevertheless, if you choose to pick a premium backup plugin that provides live backup whenever your files get modified, then you can utilize BackupBuddy.
It further allows you to scan and fix general issues, which is a tremendous plus. With its Stash feature, the plugin preserves a lot of your server resources as well.
Takeaways
Whichever WordPress backup plugin you choose, do NOT save your backups on the corresponding server as your website.
By executing that, you are placing all of your eggs in one basket. If your server’s hardware crashes or worst you get hacked, then you do not have a backup which overcomes the goal of setting up regular backups.
This is why we profoundly suggest storing your backups on a third-party storage service such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc.
We hope that this list encouraged you to choose the best WordPress backup plugin for your website.
