WordPress Backup Plugins

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.

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.

VaultPress (Jetpack Backups)

At SEOnuf, 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.

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.