You have to agree that it took a lot of hard work to make a website or blog successful. And you definitely don’t want your hard work to go in vain for any silly reason. Thankfully there are WordPress Backup Plugins that can ensure peace of mind even when you’re sleeping. Yes, you already know it, in this article, we’ll be comparing 9 Best WordPress Backup Plugins to find out best of the best.
There are currently more than a dozen WordPress backup plugins to choose from. With such a large number to choose from, you will need to do some research and reading in order to make the right choice.
Certainly, reading this article is the part of your reading/research on a quest for finding the best backup plugin for WordPress site.
Fortunately, we have compiled a list of the best WordPress backup plugins for you because we do not want you wasting any more time searching.
WP Backup plugins are useful in several situations, like
- To recover hacked/malware-infected websites.
- Recovering Update-Fail broken sites.
- Any other tech failure (hosting/software etc.) and site recovery.
- New Design/Development deployment.
- Staging/cloning of websites and blogs.
Before we go through WordPress Backup Plugins one by one, let’s see what makes a WordPress plugin suitable for use.
☲ Table of Contents
- How to Choose the Right WordPress Backup Plugin
- 9 Best WordPress Backup Plugins [Free & Paid]
- #1 UpdraftPlus: Best WordPress Backup Plugin 2020
- #2 Duplicator: WordPress Migrations & Backups Made Easy
- #3 BackUpWordPress: Free & Open Source Backup Plugin
- #4 BackWPup: WordPress Backup Plugin
- #5 WP-DB-Backup: WordPress Database Backup Plugin
- #6 WP Database Backup: Another WordPress Database Backup Plugin
- #7 VaultPress: One of the Best WordPress Backup Plugins
- #8 Total Upkeep by BoldGrid Backup
- #9 BlogVault Backups: Backup & Staging Plugin
- Conclusion
How to Choose the Right WordPress Backup Plugin
To select the right backup plugin for your WordPress site, you should evaluate a plugin on the following parameters and then decide which WordPress backup plugin is worth it to keep your years of hard work safe.
Cloud Backup Support
Cloud backup support is a very useful feature. A WordPress plugin with cloud backup support is capable of creating and storing the backups on cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon cloud, etc.
Automatic Backups
An automatic backup is a big time saver and real bliss for a WordPress user. A WordPress backup plugin with an automatic backup feature, let you schedule your backups at certain time intervals. And the plugin will automatically create backups at the defined intervals and store them on allocated locations like cloud storage.
Reliability
The backup plugin must be reliable in terms of creating backups & restoring them, and capability of handling the websites regardless of size, etc. Reliability is important, otherwise what’s the point of using a WordPress Backup plugin, right.
There are different types of backup plugins. The best WordPress backup plugins provide database backups, file backups (i.e. complete backups) and also offer automatic scheduled backups.
You need a plugin that enables you to do all this in one package so that you have peace of mind.
9 Best WordPress Backup Plugins [Free & Paid]
The following is an unordered list of best WordPress Plugins available to back up your WordPress blog/website.
#1 UpdraftPlus: Best WordPress Backup Plugin 2020
UpdraftPlus is one of the best backup plugins for WordPress. To give you some context, let me tell you that it has more than 2 million active installs.
The plugin has both free and premium versions in order to give you the best options for your WordPress backups.
Even the free version offers the feature to back up your website to the cloud storage. You can directly backup your WordPress site to email, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, FTP, Rackspace Cloud, and DreamObjects among others.
If you want to back up on Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Backblaze B2, WebDAV and others like this, you need to go for the premium version.
Key Features of UpdraftPlus Backup Plugin
- Automatic backup schedules
- Several cloud storage options
- Easy and fast backup and restore
- Easy site migration
- Multisite support
- Incremental backups option
- Non-WordPress files and database backup support
- Premium Customer support
- Database encryption & Advance reporting option
- WP-CLI support
Active installations: 2+ million
#2 Duplicator: WordPress Migrations & Backups Made Easy
Duplicator makes it easy and fast for you to back up your site because it allows you to convert to zip file format for download.
Additionally, the plugin gives you a unique capability to migrate, move or clone your site from one domain or host to another instead of reworking from scratch.
In addition to bundling up your site for migration, the plugin allows you to back up your site to the cloud storage.
Like many other popular WordPress backup plugins, Duplicator also comes in two versions of free and pro.
The pro version gives you additional options like scheduled backups and cloud backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3, and FTP/SFTP.
Key features of Duplicator Backup Plugin
- Easy site migration and cloning between domains and web hosting
- Manual backup option
- Live site to localhost migration
- Cloud storage to Dropbox Google Drive Microsoft OneDrive FTP etc.
- Multisite WordPress migration
- Email notifications
- Professional customer support
Active installations: 1+ million
#3 BackUpWordPress: Free & Open Source Backup Plugin
BackUpWordPress is a popular backup plugin because it is free, open-source and easy to use.
Additionally, it does not require you to perform any configurations once you have installed it on your website.
Once you activate the plugin on your site, you can have peace of mind because the plugin takes over backing up your website files immediately.
Out of the box, the plugin creates a path /wp-content/backups on your website root to place the backups.
We highly recommend changing this path in order to remove any website security risks.
After changing ownership from HumanMade, the plugin no longer supports its paid cloud backups. Fortunately, you can do this with the free version of UpdraftPlus.
Key features of BackupWordPress Plugin
- Multiple schedules managing
- Option to exclude files and folders from your backup
- Work well with low memory shared hosting environments
Active installations: 200,000+
#4 BackWPup: WordPress Backup Plugin
BackWPup backup plugin is popular among WordPress users because it provides just about all the backup features that are needed.
It comes in two versions i.e. free and pro. You can use this plugin to save your complete website in a zip format.
Additionally, you can save your backups to your preferred cloud storage that includes S3, Dropbox and FTP among many others.
In order to restore your original website after any issues, you only need that single zip file that you created using BackWPup. You can also create .tar and tar.gz files for backups.
Key features of BackWPup WordPress backup plugin
- Zip, tar.gz, tar format support for Backups
- Dropbox, FTP, Microsoft Azure RackSpace Cloud, Google Drive, etc cloud storage support
- Send Backups & backup logs via email
- Check, repair, optimize database
- Multisite support
- Backup encryption
- Complete automatic restore
- Store backups on S3 services
- Standalone App suitable for an emergency restore
- Priority premium support
- Automatic updates
- Import job settings
Active installations: 600,000+
#5 WP-DB-Backup: WordPress Database Backup Plugin
WP-DB-Backup remains true to its name because it allows only database backups. You will need to back up your other files separately in order to have a complete website backup.
One of the reasons for the popularity of the plugin among WordPress users is that it also allows you to send your DB backup to an email address of your choice.
WP-DB-Backup plugin is good for sites that do not require consistent backups. Additionally, the plugin is best suited for websites that do not require backups for image files.
However, you can do a manual backup for other files other than the database. Unfortunately, you will need some level of WordPress knowledge to use this plugin and it is therefore not suitable for the beginners.
Key features of WP-DB-Backup
- Schedule automatic database backups
- Send generated backups to your email automatically
Active installations: 200,000+
#6 WP Database Backup: Another WordPress Database Backup Plugin
WP Database Backup is another popular free WordPress database backup plugin.
It is an easy to use plugin. The users like this plugin because it allows the creation and restoration of WordPress backups with just a single click.
Also, you can send your DB backups to remote and multiple locations of your preference.
These locations include Dropbox, FTP, Email, Google Drive, and Amazon S3.
If you get stuck during the backup and restoration process, you do not need to worry because the plugin offers good support documentation.
Key features of WP Database Backup WordPress plugin
- Store database backup on Dropbox Google Drive FTP email and Amazon S3 etc
- Creates database backup with a single click
- Automatic backup scheduling as well manual backup option
- Send backup reports and backups by email
- Exclude specific database table option
Active installations: 70,000+
#7 VaultPress: One of the Best WordPress Backup Plugins
VaultPress Backup plugin is developed and supported by Automattic – the company behind WordPress.com and other products such as JetPack.
This backup plugin is popular among WordPress users who love to use WordPress official services. Since the plugin is developed and offered by the company behind the gigantic WordPress ecosystem, this definitely adds credibility to VaultPress backup plugin.
You will need a paid subscription of JetPack in order to use VaultPress. Also, you will need to create a WordPress.com account to integrate JetPack & VaultPress with your WordPress.org site.
Even the basic plan of VaultPress offers 30 days automated backups archive so you will never have to worry.
However, you will need to choose from a monthly paid subscription that can add up to some dollars if you are using many sites. The payment is per-site basis.
Key features of VaultPress WordPress Backup Plugin
- Real-time backups
- Everyday website scanning for security
- Automatic backup & restore
Active installations: 80,000+
#8 Total Upkeep by BoldGrid Backup
Total Upkeep (formally known as BoldGrid Backup) plugin is another popular backup plugin for WordPress.
This plugin offers site back up features as well as site migration ability. It comes in two versions – Free and Premium version.
Total Upkeep WordPress backup plugin allows you to automate scheduled backups.
In addition to doing backups and restoring your website after hacks or errors, the plugin also allows you to move your site across hosts.
Update Control & Update Protection features make things quite easy and relaxing for WordPress users.
Update Control feature creates automatic backups before your website get updates. And Update Protection makes sure that you are able to restore your site with a single click if anything went wrong after an update.
This is how the plugin comes with fault protection feature out of the box.
With Premium version you get additional features like – Single File Restoration, Update History, extra remote storage options, and premium support, etc.
Key features of Total Upkeep Backup Plugin for WP
- Both manual and automatic backup support
- Everyday website scanning for security
- Full backup and customize backup options
- Auto rollback feature to create backups before updates
- Useful for site cloning, migration and staging
Active installations: 30,000+
#9 BlogVault Backups: Backup & Staging Plugin
BlogVault Backups plugin is known for incremental backups with free cloud storage. They also offer Free Staging Environment with some of their plans.
This plugin powers site migrations for web hosts like Cloudways, FlyWheel, LiquidWeb, and WPEngine, etc.
The plugin is most suited for developers and webmasters who need to maintain and manage multiple websites.
Key features of BlogVault Backups & Staging Plugin
- Multisite backup support
- Asynchronous incremental backup to avoid server overload
- Steering environment support
- WooCommerce supported
Active installations: 50,000+
Conclusion
There are many backup plugins to choose from. The WordPress repository has both free and premium plugins to choose from. However, it is usually difficult to choose the best WordPress backup plugins from among the many that we have.
Fortunately, we have compiled a list of the best plugins for WordPress backups so that you do not need to hustle much. As far as our favorite picks are concerned, we recommend UpdraftPlus, VaultPress and BlogVault Backups.
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Thanks a lot for this amazing post about WordPress backup plugins. It really helped me choose the backup for my WordPress site.
Hey Edward,
Glad that you liked it.
Thanks for dropping by!
Hey Shashank, Thanks for this really insightful article. I decided to go with UpDraft Plus.
I start using Updraft Plus backup plugin for my blog.
Hi Charlotte,
Glad that I could help.
Thanks for dropping by!