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In a digital world susceptible to malicious practices like hacking and ransomware, backups have become crucial. If you maintain a website, backing up can be the most vital step to protecting yourself from such threats. If you manage a WordPress site, you can use a backup plugin to ease the task.
Backup plugins automate the backup and restoration of your website. They create a copy of your entire database – posts, comments, links, plugins, themes and uploads of your site – and store it off-site, making them an excellent tool to protect your site from errors, crashes or attacks. Let’s visit some of the best WordPress backup plugins now.
What Are the Benefits of Using WordPress Backup Plugins?
In addition to protecting your data, here are a few reasons to consider a backup plugin for your WordPress site.
Safe and secure backup
Backup plugins copy all your website content and store it safely off-site on a cloud or server. They protect your data from unintended deletions, threats, data synchronization issues or other errors. Most plugins also provide secure encrypted backup storage, limiting vulnerabilities when recovering and restoring your site.
Convenience and accessibility
WordPress backup plugins enable you to create automatic backups on schedules and save the time to create backups manually. They eliminate the inconvenience of backing up data and also protect you from the risks of forgetting to create backups of your data. Because these plugins can store the backup in the cloud, you also have access to the backup at any time.
Easy and instant recovery
The backup plugins for WordPress offer you the ability to recover your site instantly. These plugins create multiple levels of redundancy to avoid data loss due to a single point of failure. Instant availability lets you restore your website within minutes, preventing downtime and interruption to workflows.
Efficiency
In case of an attack or website crash, WordPress backup plugins reduce wasted time and improve work efficiency, controlling damages done during such technical disasters. And since backup plugins don’t require you to purchase any physical drives or server space, they are also cost-efficient.
What Do you Need to Look for in the Best WordPress Backup Plugin?
If you need the best backup plugin for your WordPress site, some features that make the best WordPress backup plugin are below.
Lightweight and easy integration
Since plugins can affect the speed of your WordPress site, they need to be lightweight – something that won’t use a lot of your memory and slow website loading times during the scheduled backups. Ensure the plugin that you install is lightweight and can integrate with your WordPress site easily. Look for a plugin that also offers an easy one-click solution if you need to migrate your site.
Storage size and incremental backups
More storage is always better for backups. But to save the cost associated with storage, consider a plugin that does incremental backups. A backup plugin that supports incremental backups creates the backup of the entire site for the first time. After that, it only adds the changes to the original backup, saving you space and reducing redundancies. If needed, choose the plugin that uses storage platforms like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Security
The security of a website should be the foremost priority for any website operator. Therefore, ensure the backup plugin you use has security features such as encrypted storage, real-time security scans and anti-spam checks. Choose a plugin that creates redundant copies of your website so that you can quickly restore your site in the event of a disaster.
Customer reviews and pricing
Quite a few WordPress backup plugins may be great but not necessarily the best plugin for you. Before committing to a plugin, scan for customer reviews. You might also want to compare the price-feature ratio of different plugins to choose the one that provides you with the best value for the money.
Best WordPress Backup Plugins
Based on the factors above, we have prepared a list of the Best WordPress Backup Plugins that can help you with your search.
BackWPup is among the most popular and best free backup plugins for WordPress sites. It creates complete backups (database, files, WordPress XML export files, plugins) for free and stores them on cloud services like Dropbox and Amazon S3 or your computer.
Pros: Its most notable feature is the 1-click, backup-file download. Using this plugin, you can easily export your backups to its file server, a list of cloud services like Dropbox, Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure or email. Additionally, it encrypts everything – connections, external services, directory access and local files.
Cons: It can be a complex tool for beginners as it has a learning curve. Its free version doesn’t let you restore your backup automatically, only manually.
Best For: Site creators or developers with knowledge of websites and WordPress
Price: BackWPup offers a generous feature-packed free plan. Its paid plans start at $69 per year. You can renew its plans for $39 per year. It also offers 4 tiers of pricing for Business, Developer, Supreme and Agency that go for $119, $199, $279 and $349 per year, respectively.
Duplicator is a migration plugin that allows you to back up and migrate to other locations and servers. It is a favorite among website operators who need to back up sites frequently.
Pros: A significant advantage of Duplicator is it allows you to clone your pre-configured sites. You don’t have to manually configure your favorite themes and plugins or import/export SQL scripts while restoring and migrating. It configures a single site, bundles it and relocates it to different locations without downtime. It also offers automatic scheduled backups and cloud storage.
Cons: Duplicator reserves its key features for the Pro plan, including scheduled backups and cloud storage. It also requires in-depth knowledge of websites and WordPress that can make it a complex tool for beginners.
Best For: It’s primarily suitable for developers who need migration features along with backups.
Price: Its pricing plans come in 4 tiers. The personal plan goes for $69 per year and renews at $42 per year. Its other plans are Freelancer, Business and Gold, which go for $89, $149 and $549. The Gold Plan is a 1-time purchase, while you have to renew the other plans.
BlogVault is a reliable, all-in-one backup plugin, making it one of the best WordPress backup plugins for your website. It can also be a sound choice for beginners.
Pros: BlogVault is an intuitive backup plugin, making it the best choice for the beginner. Its centralized dashboard enables you to manage multiple sites at once. It even backs up your website when it is down, letting you access any backup via its dashboard and visit your site once it is live. It also offers performance measurement with uptime and downtime status checks, multiple backup copies, upload in cloud storage servers and easy 1-click restoration.
Cons: You might have to struggle to work with the BlogVault dashboard on some devices due to its incompatibility. Its support can be slow at times.
Best For: Anyone who works with websites, especially beginners with little technical knowledge
Price: It offers 3 plans. The Personal plan starts at $7.40 and goes up to $20.75. The Business plan starts at $16.58 and can go up to $45.75 a month. Finally, its Developer plan starts at $49 and can reach up to $149 per month. BlogVault only offers a trial without a free version.
UpdraftPlus is the most popular backup plugin in the ecosystem and one of the best free WordPress backup plugins. It has a lot to offer in its free and paid versions and has an all-in-one intuitive and user-friendly layout.
Pros: It offers a generous list of features in the free version. It lets you run full backups – both manual and scheduled – of your database, themes and plugins and restore it quickly. It also optimizes the backup for server performance, using fewer server resources. With its paid plan, you can also get additional features such as incremental backups, multisite compatibility, database encryption, advanced analytics and site migration tools.
Cons: The speed with which UpdraftPlus creates backup can be slow. It also does not back up when you’re updating the plugin.
Best For: Small website operators who don’t want to spend money on a backup plugin
Price: While its basic version is free and generous, it offers its premium plans in 4 tiers. Its Personal plan is the cheapest and goes for $70 per year, while its Business, Agency and Enterprise plans cost $95, $145 and $195 per year, respectively.
BackupBuddy is another household name when it comes to the best backup plugins for WordPress. It is best for website operators with little or no experience with WordPress sites.
Pros: BackupBuddy can do all the things other plugins can do in this list. It provides you with a complete backup of your website, from website pages and posts to settings, tags and themes. It also allows you to back up selective components of your site and lets you store the backup in your choice of remote storage locations such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Stash Live. BackupBuddy offers scheduled backups and an easy restoration process as well. It also aids your site migration with its migration tools.
Cons: BackupBuddy can have weak support at times. It can also end up using a large portion of server resources.
Best For: Anyone who uses a WordPress website and beginners
Price: BackupBuddy has 3 plans – Blogger, Freelancer and Gold, which start at $80, $127 and $199 per year, respectively. You can also buy additional Stash storage if needed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a free plan.
Back Up Your WordPress Website now
Each WordPress backup plugin has its pros and cons. The best plugin for your website solely depends on the features you want and your know-how of WordPress.
If you want popular and freemium choices, you won’t go wrong with UpdraftPlus. However, for something simple, BlogVault and BackupBuddy can work great. And if you know your way around and want something more advanced, you can consider Duplicator or BackWPup. Before purchasing any plugin, practice with a trial version to confirm that its features suit your needs.
