5 Best WordPress Backup Plugins To Safeguard Your Hard Work
A backup plugin is essential for every WordPress site in the world.
A professional blogger’s worst nightmare could be losing years of hard work in a matter of seconds due to one single mistake:
Ignoring backups.
Backups are one of the most important parts of running a blog.
Its an insurance for your passion and the work you do day and night. So, you should be concerned about integrating a backup plugin that creates a copy of your WordPress database and files.
Before You Create Backups…
While using WordPress, you must always create a backup of two things:
- Your Database
- Your Public.html folder (or wp-content folder)
Your database saves all your website customization and essential data that will be used by the themes, plugins, and WordPress core settings placed in your wp-content folder to give your website’s output intact, just the way you want.
You have to make sure your backup data is kept away from the server of your website. If anything goes wrong with your server, you’ll still have the backup files to restore it on another.
And, don’t rely on the backups your web hosting provider creates. Always keep a separate backup with you on any cloud storage as well as in your hard drive.
Below are the best premium and free backup plugins for WordPress
1. UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular free backup plugins for WordPress users. It makes creating databases and files backup very easy.
Some of its best features are:
- Automated & Manual Backups
- prunes the number of old backups routinely
- Automatically backs up when plugins or themes update and before WordPress updates
- UpdraftPlus cloud is a central place to store and manage backups (1GB free storage)
- Works on multisite WordPress installs
- Supports 15+ cloud storage (including Dropbox and Google Drive)
And more. It was the first plugin I used to restore my site, as it performed great. Without any issues, my blog was restored.
2. BackUpBuddy
BackUpBuddy is one of the most popular backup premium plugins for WordPress, and it comes from Ithemes. It is actually the one backup plugin we use currently.
BackUpBuddy is a more advanced plugin that allows you to schedule backups based on their type, including plugin, themes, database, changes, etc.
Some of its best features are:
- Scheduled backups
- Includes restore and migration function
- Individual files backup option
- 10+ remote storage area (including iStash)
- Inbuilt malware scanner
- Real-time backups
You can quickly restore or migrate your website to another host with BackUpBuddy. A 1GB of free iStash cloud storage is free with your plans as well as premium support from iThemes.
3. VaultPress
VaultPress is a part of jetpack professional plans, and it is a remote backup storage service. It is an Automattic (WordPress parent company) plugin.
With VaultPress, you get automatic backups, premium support, and a real-time cloud backup solution starting at $3.50 a month for a single site.
Some of its best features:
- Daily backups
- Real-time backups
- One-click restores on any location.
- Inbuilt security scanner
- Central dashboard
- Multisite backup support
You can enter FTP or SSH information, and VaultPress will automatically restore any backup to your site quickly. It also scans your site daily and sends an email if there are any potential threats found on your site. You will have to purchase a jetpack professional plan to use VaultPress. (It is expensive for multiple websites)
4. BlogVault
BlogVault is a feature-rich backup solution for WordPress that that offers remote dashboard features and cloud storage. It one of the most user-friendly backup plugins.
You will get full website management tools with Blogvault and some of its best features are:
- One-click staging area
- Multiple Offsite storage locations (including Dropbox and Google Drive)
- Remote backup automation
- Email notification for changes, errors, and backups
- Organized backup archive of up to 1 year
- Live support
You can use BlogVault to restore as well as migrate your site with one click. To test new plugins, themes, and other developments on your WordPress site, you can simply create a new staging area using BlogVault and push those changes to go live in a single click.
The plan starts at $7 for single sites.
5. BackWPUp
BackWPUp has over 5 million downloads and more than 600,000+ active installs with an impressive user rating of 4.6 stars in the WordPress plugin repo. It is a simple to use backup plugin best suited for beginners. It has a free as well as a pro version.
Some of its best features include:
- Encrypted WordPress backups
- Database optimization
- Check and repair the database.
- Send backups to a remote destination.
- Backup archive management
You can easily schedule automatic backups as well as on click live backups can be made using BackWPUp plugin.
If you want to get a backup plugin for WordPress multisite installs or multiple websites (if you are a freelancer or developer who has clients), you should choose Blogvault or BackUpBuddy. It will save a lot of money because these two plugins have specific developer plans and multisite support.
If you want a premium backup solution for your personal or any single website, VaultPress would be best.
And if you want to start with something free, Updraftplus and BackWPUp would be great for you.
I hope you’ve found an ideal backup plugin for your WordPress site by now. You should also read about the best security plugins for WordPress and how to secure your wp-admin area.