Imagine spending hours, days, months, or even years creating your dream WordPress website; you’ve finally got everything exactly how you want it, and poof! It’s gone in a flash. All that time and money, with nothing to show for it?
Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to happen to you— it’s vital that you know all about WP backup and making sure that you safeguard your information and website security. When you do regular WordPress backups, you’ll have peace of mind that your hard work is accessible even if something unthinkable were to happen, such as getting locked out of your site or being hacked.
WordPress backup plugins make it very easy to create regular WordPress backups; with a variety of free and paid options, we’ll outline here the top 7 WordPress backup plugins that will keep your site protected and saved.
Pro Tip: If you’re wondering how to back up your website through your WordPress host, most providers do offer limited backup services; that said, it’s a good idea not to rely 100% on your WordPress host. Why?
They, too, are still a third party that could encounter problems, and in the end, the responsibility falls on you to do regular WordPress backups if for nothing more than a sense of security alone.
If you’re relying only on your WordPress host for backups, it’s time to check out these 7 WordPress backup plugins and begin using it immediately.
1. UpdraftPlus
Known as one of the most popular free WordPress backup plugins, UpdraftPlus is used by over 2 million websites and counting.
You can create a complete WP backup and store it via computer download or in the cloud based on your preference.
UpdraftPlus supports on-demand backups in addition to scheduled backups and you’ll also have the chance to select which files you want to be backed up.
You’ll be able to back up all of your WordPress websites, and UpdraftPlus offers users the option to restore a previous backup directly from the WordPress admin panel.
UpdraftPlus can save your backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace, FTP, S3, SFTP, email, and a handful of other cloud storage services for easy access.
As with most WordPress Backup Plugins, UpdraftPlus offers a premium service with features including cloning or migrating websites, multisite support, database search and replace, among others. You’ll also score priority support with the premium version.
Pricing: Free with premium plans: Updraft Premium Personal— $42, Business— $57, Agency— $145, Enterprise— $195.
Review: UpdraftPlus ranks #1 on our list of WordPress backup plugins because it’s the most used and beloved by almost all who have selected it. With a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars and over 2 million active installs, it’s clear that UpdraftPlus stands out from the crowd. Depending on your website and your needs, the free version gets the job done well; that said, if you want access to powerful premium features for your website backups, we highly recommend the upgrade to UpdraftPlus premium.
2. BackupBuddy
A well-known player among WordPress backup plugins, BackupBuddy is trusted by over 500k WordPress sites for daily, weekly, and monthly scheduled backups.
BackupBuddy offers users the ability to auto-store your backups in cloud storage platforms such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, FTP, Stash, Rackspace Cloud, or email it to yourself.
You will only have the ability to do real-time backups if you use their cloud service, Stash. Stash offers you 1GB of BackUpBuddy storage on the basic plans; the Gold plan offers 5GB.
One great feature of BackupBuddy is the capability to duplicate, migrate, and restore websites. Aside from that, you’ll also have access to regular updates, premium support forums, as well as their iThemes Sync feature, from which you can manage a maximum of 10 WordPress sites from one dashboard.
The best news? BackupBuddy is one of the WordPress backup plugins that offers a set yearly fee, leaving you off the hook for monthly, recurring payments.
Pricing: Blogger plan (1 site)– $80/year, Freelancer plan (10 sites)– $127/year, Gold plan (unlimited sites)– $199/year.
3. BoldGrid Backup
BoldGrid Backup is one of the automated WordPress backup plugins available, and it’s created by BoldGrid, a website builder that is powered by WordPress. It’s referred to as Total Upkeep on the BoldGrid website.
With BoldGrid Backup, you can create website backups easily, restore your site if it crashes, and also use it to move to a new WordPress hosting provider. It offers users the option of both automated backups or manually-created backups in one click.
Backups can be stored in up to 10 backup archives on your dashboard; you can store more in cloud storage services like Google Drive, FTP, S3, or SFTP.
One notable feature of BoldGrid Backup is its automated fault protection feature. Before your site updates, BoldGrid Backup will create a backup of your site in case of an update failure. If the update fails, your site will automatically be restored to your last WP backup. This feature is excellent in combating update errors.
Pricing: Total Upkeep Premium plan— $30/year.
Review: BoldGrid Backup is one of the simpler WordPress backup plugins on the market, but we do like the automated fault protection feature and the no-frills nature of their backup service offerings.
4. VaultPress (Jetpack Backup)
Jetpack Backup is another effective choice of WordPress backup plugins available; WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg created the company that released Jetpack Backups, known as Automattic.
This WP backup plugin was first launched under the name VaultPress; now, it’s been completely rebranded and redesigned as Jetpack Backups, offering a more up-to-date backup platform than VaultPress.
As one of the WordPress backup plugins with no free option, JetPack offers some great entry-level features, including automated daily and real-time cloud backup with no impact on your site speed and performance. Jetpack backups can be easily set up and restored in just a few simple clicks.
That said, it’s true that for beginners, Jetpack Backups may come with a few cons.
Since you’ll pay for Jetpack per site, if you have multiple WordPress sites, it may not be the most budget-friendly option for those with a limited budget.
In addition, the backups on Jetpack are only stored for 30 days on the most affordable plans, so if you want an unlimited backup archive, you’d be looking at a cost of minimum $29.95 a month, which is quite steep compared with other WordPress Backup Plugins available.
Finally, in order to purchase your Jetpack Backup subscription, you’ll have to first install the Jetplack plugin, which doesn’t make for the easiest purchase flow. You will be able to manually disable all features aside from backups in order to ensure there’s no negative impact on site speed.
Even though there appear to be quite a few cons and a higher price tag, the reputation that backs Automattic is exceptional, making Jetpack backup totally worth it. They provide maximum protection.
Pricing: $5.97/mo for Backup Daily plan and $29.95/mo for Backup Real-Time plan; discounts offered for yearly payments instead of monthly.
Review: In terms of WordPress backup plugins, Jetpack Backup is undoubtedly a premium backup service, and the price tag confirms it. Jetpack also offers other features including CDN, elastic search, social media promotion, and more, so combining all of your services and using one go-to hub is a good option. If you’re looking for simple WordPress backup plugins that offer just the basics, consider checking out UpdraftPlus or BackupBudd (see next section).
5. BlogVault
Another of the most popular WordPress backup plugins is BlogVault, and what makes this option unique is that it is a Software as a Service (Saas) solution and not simply a WordPress plugin. This means that BlogVault uses its own servers to create offsite backups, effectively removing any load from your server.
BlogVault performs daily automatic backups of your website with the option for you to manually create on-demand backups as often as you like. Your site will enjoy optimal speed and performance due to their smart incremental backups— they minimize server load by syncing only incremental changes.
Aside from backups, you will also be able to recover your website easily through BackupVault with a 90-day backup archive on lower plans and a 365-day backup archive on higher plans. If anything happens, you’ll be good to go.
BlogVault offers its users a variety of different separate features as well, including a built-in staging area for site testing as well as migration services to other WordPress hosting providers.
Price: Basic plan— $89/year, Plus plan— $149/year, Advanced plan— $249/year.
Review: While BlogVault offers attractive features for small businesses, their plans are more costly than other WordPress backup plugins available and all three only offer support for one site.
You won’t have access to real-time backups unless you’re on the advanced plan, but all plans do have migration options, one-click website recovery, as well as one-click site staging.
A benefit, though, is that as a SaaS they can offer less load impact to your server as they work with their own. Ultimately, it will come down to the features you prefer, how many sites you need to back up, and your budget.
6. BackWPup
Some WordPress backup plugins offer very simple and straightforward services, and BackWPup is one of them, allowing you WP backup for free. Your backups will be stored on the cloud of your choice— Dropbox, S3, Rackspace, Google Drive, OneDrive, and others; you can also store them via FTP, computer download, or email.
Based on your site’s update frequency, BackWPup lets you easily schedule automatic backups. It’s just as easy to restore your WordPress site from backup, making it an excellent choice for beginners.
BackWPup has a Pro version that offers you migration to a new domain, encryption of backup archives, among other useful features.
Pricing: Free with Pro plan available starting at $69.00/year and a reduced annual renewal fee.
Review: Also one of the most popular WordPress backup plugins, BackWPup is used by over 600k websites and its premium version offers interesting and beneficial features that are useful for site restoration, encryption, migration, and more.
7. Duplicator
Duplicator, unlike the other WordPress backup plugins on this list, is described by its developer as a site migrator. It also offers both a free and paid solution for how to back up your WordPress site.
Although it’s main claim to fame is site migration with zero downline, it also offers backups for WordPress sites; you can choose to backup the full site or part of the site.
In terms of frequent and scheduled WP backup options, the free version of Duplicator is a bit lackluster— you aren’t able to create automated scheduled backups, which is quite disappointing if you’re looking for a solid WordPress backup solution.
On the pro Duplicator, however, you can schedule backups and recover your sites easily; cloud backups can be done to Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP, OneDrive, or S3.
Pricing: Free, Personal Duplicator Pro plan— $69/year.
Reviews: Duplicator is a very basic tool if you’re using the free version, but it can be a good supplement if your WordPress hosting provider already does regular backups. It’s great for site migration and the Duplicator Pro plans will offer you even more features that may benefit you, especially if you run multiple sites.
Final Thoughts
That concludes our list of WordPress backup plugins, and while each of them has their advantages and disadvantages, they all offer you options in terms of complete WP backup and database backup features.
Jetpack Backups is a very easy-to-use plugin and it also offers real-time incremental backups, which is very useful. It can shave a lot of impact off of your server load.
Incremental backups only create a backup of what was updated and it makes this backup within minutes of the update. That means that all of your files aren’t going to be backed up every day or every hour, saving server resources and impacting site performance very little.
Another top option is UpdraftPlus. With its almost 5-star rating and 2m+ downloads, it’s hard to argue there. You’ll get powerful features such as backup encryption and encrypted backup transport, a huge range of cloud storage options, and much more.
No matter which of the WordPress backup plugins you choose, make sure you don’t store your backups on the same server as your website— this ultimately defeats the purpose completely.
If your server happens to fail or get hacked, you won’t have a backup of your website readily available for restoration. It’s much more effective to use a cloud storage service.
We hope you enjoyed learning about the top WordPress backup plugins! If you’re looking for other excellent WordPress plugins, check out our OptinMonster form plugin review and our comparison of GravityForms vs NinjaForms!
