8 Best WordPress Backup Plugins To Never Lose Data Again
Everybody knows how important website backup is. Still, people get unpleasantly surprised when they wake up one morning finding nothing but a blank page and “Not found” in the same place their site used to be. No matter how healthy your Internet habits are, or how well you protect your website with security plugins, the worst can still happen. Even if you have a reliable hosting company that does everything for you, it is a good idea to take things into your own hands, backing up your website. That’s where WordPress backup plugins turn out to be useful.
When you think about how many hours and how much money you have invested in creating your site, setting up a simple backup solution in a matter of minutes will be the best decision you have made. Even if you have to pay for the plugin, the investment will return, 100 times more. It is better to be safe than sorry, always was, so here are the best backup plugins for WordPress websites and pros and cons.
Content:
- UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin
- BackupBuddy
- Duplicator
- BackUp WordPress
- WP-DB backup
- VaultPress
- BackUp Guard
- BackWPup
- Conclusion
Let’s Start With 8 Popular WordPress Backup Plugins
1. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin
UpdraftPlus has over a million downloads and is the most popular backup plugin on the WordPress market. You will not go wrong deciding to go with this plugin.
Trusting your website to a backup plugin should not be taken likely, and a plugin like this with millions of downloads will give you peace of mind.
UpdraftPlus is very simple to use, and the whole process of backup and restoration is effortless when you use this plugin. You can do both back-ups to the cloud and do restores in a single click.
As for the cloud services, you can sync your WordPress backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP and plenty of other popular cloud services.
There is an option to use a cloud owned by UpdraftPlus, which is interesting. The paid version adds, even more, supported cloud storage services.
UpdraftPlus is fast and uses fewer resources than most other backup plugins. Also, it provides restoration, which makes it a comprehensive solution for handling your website.
You can also create automatic backup schedules. That will give you more convenience, but also fortify your website, making sure that everything you do stays ultra safe.
Of course, you can do manual backups if you like. You can choose to back up the whole site, or only certain parts of it, like the WordPress database.
The free version of UpdraftPlus is terrific, a must-install plugin. However, if you want to push your site protection even further, consider the Premium Add-on.
You get access to more cloud services as well as site migration and being able to restore your website from backups created by other services. Install UpdraftPlus. You won’t regret the decision.
2. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is a premium WordPress backup plugin, so no free options here. However, it is full of features, and very liked by many users and is one of the most popular premium plugins out there.
More than 500k WordPress sites use it as their backup solution, which is something. You can find this plugin on the iThemes market.
BackupBuddy offers a tone of features, including full site backup to many popular cloud services. Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3 are all supported.
BackupBuddy Stash is also available, which is a cloud service created by the BB company themselves. The most significant advantage of Stash is that it lets you run real-time backups to make your website bulletproof.
You get 1GB of storage on Stash. WordPress theme backup process is straightforward, and you can easily download a backup of your site to your computer.
An interesting thing about this plugin is that it also has staging capabilities, which is a bit unusual for backups and restore solutions.
Staging is handy, as it gives you a testing field for your website, where you can try out different changes before they go live.
Backup Buddy is also a complete restoration solution. You can use it for duplicating and migrating websites. It is a premium plugin, but there are no subscriptions, so no continuous monthly fees.
You only need to buy it once, and you are good, all the features are unlocked. Because it’s premium, you will also get one year of ticketed support and plugin updates.
Prices are competitive, and the plans are flexible. You will undoubtedly find something for your needs.
3. Duplicator
Duplicator is a flexible solution, primarily intended for migration and cloning of whole WordPress websites. It has over 10 million downloads and is a tested solution that works on different platforms.
However, it is also a very good backup plugin and will do an excellent job for you. Yet, if you are not that familiar with WordPress, and are still new to building websites, Duplicator is probably not the best option for you.
It requires a certain level of technical knowledge, and the developer team even states this on the plugin website. This certainly means Duplicator is not that beginner-friendly.
Still, it offers a lot. Duplicator allows you to clone, migrate, and move WP sites, between different hosts and domains, and all that with zero downtime. You can also create manual backups, for the whole site, or only parts of it.
You can duplicate your site to a staging area, and the other way around, all that while the website is still live.
Performing the full site migration without any import and export scripts is one of the best features of the Duplicator plugin. It also supports WordPress multi-site network backup.
Duplicator Pro gives you some premium features like email notifications as well as running instant and scheduled backups. It also gives you the option to back up your site to cloud services (Backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3).
You also get customer support. The price of the Pro version is affordable, so consider the upgrade after trying out Duplicator free.
4. BackUpWordPress
BackUpWordPress is another popular backup plugin you can find in the WordPress market as a free to use, a plugin that has a premium, paid version too.
It gives you tools to backup your whole website, with all WordPress files and databases. You can do this by creating an automated backup schedule that does not interfere with your site use.
A neat thing about this plugin is that you can set up different schedules for various types of backups. For example, you can set up your WP database to be backed up each day, while the whole site can be done once per week.
BackUpWordPress is very easy to use, and it requires no installation, it is immediately ready to work. It is so lightweight that it is perfectly suitable for running backups on shared hosting too.
The site’s performance will be unaffected by this plugin. Currently, BackUpWordPress is available in twelve languages, which is phenomenal, and the developers are continually working on adding more.
BackUpWordPress free version has one huge drawback – backup to cloud servers is unavailable. To unlock this valuable feature, you will have to go Premium.
The paid version is not expensive, but still, plenty of other backup plugins offer this feature in their free plan, at least to some extent. This is going to be the deal-breaker for many potential users.
However, you should still try BackUpWordPress free version, especially if you run on low resources, and see how it works for you.
5. WP-DB-Backup
As the name suggests, WP-DB-Backup is intended for backing up databases of your WordPress website.
If that is your primary concern, you don’t need to download some other complicated WordPress backup plugins that offer full site backups. WP-DB-Backup will do just fine. It will do the same job while using fewer resources.
This is a top-rated solution, with over 300k of active installations, and excellent user ratings. WP-DB-Backup is frequently updated, and the code is available on GitHub.
Furthermore, it is available in 14 languages, which makes it very adaptable. The plugin is simple to use, as expected, and you will have no issues handling your database backups.
However, the interface is a little bit overwhelming, and not exactly beginner-friendly since it displays all the database tables at once (so you can exclude some from the backup).
You can schedule your backups, download, or email them to yourself. WP-DB-Backup also has restoration capabilities.
WP-DB-Backup is a useful tool if backing up your website’s database is all you need. However, this is enough only for a small number of websites that almost never have any file changes.
If yours is like that, great, use WP-DB-Backup. If not, you should get a different plugin that can back up your whole site.
6. VaultPress
VaultPress comes as a part of the Jetpack plugin. We have reviewed Jetpack in our article that talks about best security plugins.
Automattic, the same company that makes WordPress, makes both Jetpack and VaultPress, so you know your website is in good hands.
VaultPress is a complete solution, and it will backup your whole website. The idea is to automate the whole process and never worry about the backup again.
Real-time backups are also possible, so every time you change your website, the change gets saved so that no accidents can ruin it. Setting up backups and doing restorations is simplified, and can be done in a couple of clicks.
VaultPress does backups to their servers, and there are no options to use some third-party cloud, like Google Drive or Dropbox.
In order to use VaultPress, you will have to subscribe to Jetpack. Unfortunately, this makes it too expensive for beginners and smaller businesses, especially if you want your backups to be kept for longer.
Still, Jetpack is a total solution for making your website secure. Since this is a premium plugin, you are right to expect terrific customer support, and VaultPress has it. If you can afford it, VaultPress + Jetpack will not disappoint.
7. Backup Guard – WordPress Backup and Migrate Plugin
Not that popular yet, but still a fantastic tool, Backup Guard is a plugin that will let you schedule backups of your whole website, and store your backup on the most popular cloud services.
The free version of Backup Guard lets you do a full site, or only database or file backups. You can also choose specific folders or database tables for backup.
WP migration and restoration can also go through this plugin. You can do an unlimited number of backups as many times as you want. WordPress Multisite Network is also supported.
The Pro version of Backup Guard will offer more features. With it, you will be able to migrate your site and run scheduled backups. It also lets you upload or import backups from popular cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive, and SFTP/FTP.
You will get email notifications on finished backups or restorations. Emergency support (<24h) is also available for Pro subscribers. Pricing is reasonable, so consider the upgrade after trying out the free version.
8. BackWPup
Last but not least, we have BackWPup, one of the most popular backup tools on the WordPress market, with 600k active installations.
This plugin gives you what you need to save your whole website, or only specific parts of it, like the database. Speaking about it, BackWPup can also check and repair and optimize the database which is excellent.
That is a feature not many other backup WordPress plugins have. You can do your backups locally, downloading them as a zipped archive, or on cloud servers such as Dropbox, Amazon S3 or other.
There are also options for you to send yourself backup logs.
The Pro version of BackWPup gives you more power. You will be able to use more cloud services, like Google Drive, but also do restores in just a few clicks. Also, as a premium user, you will get priority support.
BackWPup is a fantastic plugin, and even the free version offers a lot. No surprise it is one of the most used backup plugins, and we warmly recommend you to try it.
Conclusion
Those were our picks for the best WordPress backup plugins compared. You can find a bit of everything, free and premium alternatives. Do some exploring yourself, and try out different ones, see how they feel for you.
Perform regular WordPress backups. This is an insurance against disasters, and you would be wise to install a backup plugin for your site.
As always, if you have trouble, and need any assistance, contact FixRunner WP Help. We will be glad to aid you with any WordPress related problems you encounter.
