Creating regular WordPress backups is the best thing you can do for your website security. Backups give you peace of mind and can save you in catastrophic situations such as when your site gets hacked or you accidentally lock yourself out.
There are several free and paid WordPress backup plugins and most of them are fairly easy to use. In this article, we will share the 7 best backup plugins for WordPress.
Important: While many WordPress hosting providers offer limited backup services, we always recommend our users to not rely solely on them. At the end of the day, 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 popular free WordPress backup plugin available on the internet. It is used by more than 2 million websites.
UpdraftPlus allows you to create a complete backup of your WordPress site and store it on the cloud or download to your computer.
The plugin supports scheduled backups as well as on-demand backups. You also have the option to choose which files you want to backup.
It can automatically upload your backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email, and several other cloud storage services (see our step by step guide on how to backup & restore your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus).
Besides backing up each WordPress website, UpdraftPlus also allows you to easily restore backups directly from your WordPress admin panel.
UpdraftPlus also has a premium version with add-ons to migrate or clone websites, database search and replace, multisite support, and several other features. The premium version also gets you access to priority support.
Pricing: Free (UpdraftPremium Personal for $70)
Review: UpdratPlus is the most loved WordPress backup plugin in the market. It has over 2 million active installs and 4.9 out of 5 star rating average. While the free version has a lot of features, we recommend upgrading to UpdraftPlus premium to unlock all powerful backup features.
2. VaultPress (Jetpack Backups)
At WPBeginner, we use VaultPress to back up our website. VaultPress was founded by Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) and his team at Automattic.
Although it started as an independent plugin, VaultPress is now a part of Automattic’s another product called JetPack. You will need a JetPack subscription plan to use VaultPress. There are multiple pricing plans with different set of features.
VaultPress plugin offers automated real-time cloud backup solution starting at $3.50 per month. You can easily setup VaultPress backups and restore from backups within few clicks.
The higher plans of Jetpack also offer security scans and several other powerful features.
There are a few downsides of using VaultPress.
First, it is a recurring expense that can add up if you have multiple WordPress sites because you pay per site.
Second, you will have to subscribe to JetPack, get a WordPress.com account, and install the Jetpack plugin on your site.
Lastly, backups are stored for only 30-days on the lower plans. If you want an unlimited backup archive, then you would have to pay the $29 per month per website which is significantly more expensive for beginners when compared to other solutions listed here.
We are still using VaultPress because we got grandfathered in at their older pricing which was a lot more favorable.
Even at the higher price, VaultPress is completely worth it due to the stellar reputation of Automattic.
Pricing: From $39 per year for JetPack Personal plan
Review: VaultPress as part of the popular JetPack plugin gives good value for money. If you’re already using JetPack for other features like JetPack CDN for photos, social media promotion, etc, then it’s an easy pick for you.
3. BackupBuddy
BackupBuddy is one of the most popular premium WordPress backup plugins used by over half a million WordPress sites. It allows you to easily schedule daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
With BackupBuddy, you can automatically store your backups in cloud storage services like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, Stash (their cloud service), and even email it to yourself.
If you use their Stash service, then you also have the ability to do real-time backups.
The biggest advantage of using BackupBuddy is that it is not a subscription-based service, so there is no monthly fee. You can use the plugin on the number of websites mentioned in your plan.
You also get access to premium support forums, regular updates, and 1GB of BackupBuddy Stash storage to store your backups. In addition, their iThemes Sync feature lets you manage up to 10 WordPress site from a single dashboard.
You can even use BackupBuddy to duplicate, migrate and restore websites.
Pricing: $52 for Blogger Plan (1 Site License)
Review: BackupBuddy is a cost-effective premium WordPress backup solution for you. It has full set of features you’ll need to backup, restore and move a WordPress site. In the nutshell, it’s a powerful UpdraftPlus and VaultPress alternative that you can use.
4. BoldGrid Backup
BoldGrid Backup is an automated WordPress backup solution by BoldGrid, which is a website builder powered by WordPress.
It allows you to easily create your website backups, restore your site after it crashes, and you can even use it to move your site when switching hosts. You can set up automated backups or manually create backups with one-click.
BoldGrid Backup comes with an automated fault protection feature which automatically creates a backup of your site before it updates. If an update fails, it automatically rolls back your WordPress site to the last backup. It’s a great feature which protects you against update errors.
With BoldGrid Backup, you can store up to 10 backup archives on your dashboard and more in a remote storage locations like Amazon S3, FTP or SFTP.
Pricing: $60 per year (Includes all of BoldGrid Premium tools & Services)
Review: BoldGrid Backup is a simple WordPress backup plugin that you can use to create your website backups. The advantage of using this plugin is the bundle of other powerful tools you’ll get with the purchase of this plugin.
5. BlogVault
BlogVault is another popular WordPress backup service for WordPress. It’s a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution rather than just a WordPress plugin. It creates offsite backups independently on BlogVault servers, so there will be a zero load on your server.
BlogVault creates automatic backup of your website on a daily basis and also allows you to manually create unlimited on-demand backups. It features smart incremental backups that sync only incremental changes for minimal server load. This ensures optimal performance for your site.
Besides backups, it helps you to recover your website easily. You can store 90 days backup archive, so you can recover your site from any mishap.
It also has a built-in staging site feature to let you test your website easily. Plus, it provides an easy option to migrate your website to another host.
BlogVault features seem promising however pricing seems a bit expensive when compared to other plugins above. You’ll need to pay $89 for the basic plan which offers a 1 site license.
Pricing: $89 per year for Personal Plan (1 Site License)
Review: BlogVault is an easy to use WordPress backup solution. It creates offsite backups, so your website server will not be loaded with your backups. The pricing seems a bit high for small businesses.
6. BackWPup
BackWPup is a free plugin that allows you to create complete WordPress backups for free and store it on the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, etc), FTP, email, or on your computer.
It is extremely easy to use and allows you to schedule automatic backups according to your site’s update frequency.
Restoring a WordPress site from backup is also very simple. The BackWPup Pro version comes with priority support, ability to store backups on Google Drive, and some other cool features.
Pricing: Free (Premium plan is also available)
Review: Used by over 600,000 websites, BackWPup is a great alternative to other backup plugins in the list. The premium version of the plugin adds more powerful features including easy and quick website restoration from the backend with a standalone app.
7. Duplicator
As the name suggests, Duplicator is a popular WordPress plugin used to migrate WordPress sites. However it also has backup features.
It does not allow you to create automated scheduled backups which makes it less than ideal primary WordPress backup solution for a regularly maintained site.
Pricing: Free
Review: Duplicator lets you create manual backups of your WordPress site easily. If your web host creates regular backups, you can use this plugin to create backups to use on staging environment. It’s a great site migration plugin.
Final Thoughts
Each WordPress backup plugin in our list has their pros and cons, but all of them offer complete WordPress file backup as well as full database backup features.
We use VaultPress for two main reasons. It is extremely easy to use, and it offers real-time incremental backups.
What this means is that instead of backing up all of your files every day or every hour, it only creates a backup of what has been updated literally within minutes of the update. This is ideal for a large website like ours because it allows us to use our server resources efficiently.
However, if you run a small to medium size website and hate paying monthly fees, then we recommend the popular UpdraftPlus plugin. It comes with all the powerful features like backup encryption, encrypted backup transport, and tons of cloud storage options.
Whichever WordPress backup plugin you end up choosing, please do NOT store your backups on the same server as your website.
By doing that, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. If your server’s hardware fails or worst you get hacked, then you don’t have a backup which defeats the purpose of setting up regular backups.
This is why we highly recommend storing your backups on a third-party storage service like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc.
