Tech

10 Essential WordPress Backup Plugins To Keep Your Website Safe And Secure

WordPress Backup Plugins

Published on April 14th, 2023

Backing up your WordPress site is essential to protect it from data loss or corruption. In the event of a security breach, server crash, or human error, having a reliable backup plugin is crucial to restore your website to its previous state. Here are the top 10 WordPress backup plugins to ensure your website stays safe and secure.

Looking For The Best WordPress Backup Plugins?

Backups are important to keep your website safe. Whenever your website crashes for any reason, you can quickly retrieve your site from the most recent backup without losing content and files.

In this article, we will help you choose the best WordPress backup plugin for your needs by comparing the most popular WordPress backup plugins on the market.

Choosing the WordPress Backup Plugin

Regardless of the size of your business, investing in the correct WordPress backup plugin is totally worth it, because the most expensive backup is the one you never did!

Since there are dozens of WordPress backup plugins available, it can be tricky to choose the right one that fits your needs. Below are a few things you will need to look for in a WordPress backup plugin:

Backup Methods:

  • Database backup: Some plugins allow you to only backup your WordPress database.
  • Complete backup: Some plugins let you backup your entire website, including your WordPress database backup and all files.
  • Scheduled backup: With this option, you can schedule a backup to run automatically, giving you peace of mind.

Backup location:

Back in the day, most WordPress backup plugins let you store your backup files only on your own server. Now, to improve security, all good WordPress backup plugins support sending your backup files to remote locations such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3. That way, you can easily restore your files, even if your entire website gets hacked.

Now it’s time to take a look at the best WordPress backup plugins on the market!

The Best WordPress Backup Plugins

No time to read the full list right now? No worries. You can download our free PDF of the following list to take with you for later.

The PDF comes with all the plugins listed below, a description, and links to the plugin itself for faster access.

1. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is one of the best WordPress backup plugins on the market. It’s been rated as the most popular backup solution for WordPress, with over a million active installs.

Even with the free version of the plugin, you can easily set up full, manual, or scheduled backups of all your website files including your database, plugins, and themes. Restoring your files is simple, and you can do it with minimal technical knowledge.

Best of all, it supports multiple cloud storage options including Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon S3.

While the free version is fully-packed with all the essential features, you can easily enhance the core functionalities with their premium version.

Get started with UpdraftPlus today.

2. BackupBuddy

Backup Buddy has been around since early 2010, protecting a half a million WordPress websites.

With just a few clicks, it enables you to backup your entire website from your WordPress dashboard. You can schedule automatic backups, send your backup files to a remote secure location, and restore your files quickly.

The ability to repair and optimize your database is one of the unique features Backup Buddy offers. With every plugin purchase, you will get 1 GB of free Stash Live storage.

Stash Live continuously backs up your database changes such as new or modified posts, putting your mind at ease. Best of all, Stash Live works perfectly well even if your site is hosted on cheap shared hosting.

Get started with Backup Buddy today.

3. Jetpack Backups

Jetpack Backups is a real-time WordPress backup plugin. It automatically saves your site changes in the backup, so when your website crashes, you can restore the most recent version in 1-click.

It provides an activity log to find out the actions taken on your site. This way, you’ll know who’s responsible of breaking your site. Jetpack Backups has a mobile app that lets you restore your website from anywhere.

With this plugin, your website comes back to the original shape in just a few minutes. If you don’t like the updates on your site, you can also revert changes to go back to an earlier version.

Get started with Jetpack Backups today.

4. WP Time Capsule

WP Time Capsule is a real-time WordPress backup plugin. It automatically saves your site changes in the backup, so when your website crashes, you can restore the most recent version in 1-click.

It provides an activity log to find out the actions taken on your site. This way, you’ll know who’s responsible of breaking your site. Jetpack Backups has a mobile app that lets you restore your website from anywhere.

With this plugin, your website comes back to the original shape in just a few minutes. If you don’t like the updates on your site, you can also revert changes to go back to an earlier version is a perfect solution for you if you want to back up only your recent files, and not your entire WordPress site.

With WP Time Capsule, you can back up your website to your favorite cloud storage sites like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3.

The main benefit of WP Time Capsule is that it consumes considerably fewer server resources since it doesn’t compress and zip your backup files.

In order to use WP Time Capsule on your site, register for an account on WP Time Capsule, install the free plugin and then connect the cloud app with your plugin so that you can send your WordPress backup files to your preferred location. After completing a full backup, you can schedule a time for backing up your recently-changed files.

Get started with WP Time Capsule today.

5. BackWPUp

BackWPUp is yet another backup plugin that backs up your complete WordPress installation and saves them to a remote location of your preference such as Dropbox or Amazon S3.

The premium version allows you to store backup files to Google Drive and Amazon Glacier.

Some of the unique features of the premium version are:

. Back up to multiple destinations per job.
. Synchronize files on remote backup location like Google Drive, Dropbox.
. Backup specific file path of your site per your needs.

Get started with BackWPUp today.

6. BackUpWordPress

BackUpWordPress is an easy-to-use backup plugin because it doesn’t require any setup configurations on your end. Upon activation, it backs up your files directly out of the box.

By default, backup files are stored in /wp-content/backups location of your website, but you can easily change the path if you want to. Since all files, including your non-WordPress files, will be backed up in your site root, it’s strongly recommended to change the path so it’s secure.

The plugin can work on Linux and Windows servers alike. It also enables you to exclude the files you don’t want to back up.

Get started with BackUpWordPress today.

7. Duplicator

Duplicator makes it easy to back up all your WordPress files in zip format, so you can download them offline, migrating across the same or different servers.

One of the unique advantages of using Duplicator is its ability to clone your pre-configured sites. Rather than manually configuring your favorite themes or plugins, Duplicator allows you to configure a single site and bundle it up.

This way you can migrate your pre-configured WordPress sites to different locations, eliminating the need for reworking.

Like many other popular WordPress backup solutions, Duplicator allows you to schedule backups, send them to cloud storage, and send yourself email notifications.

Get started with Duplicator today.

8. Backup

Backup is a free WordPress backup plugin for manual and automated backups. After the installation, you can click on the create backup button to get started with backups.

It also lets you schedule backups on a daily or monthly basis. The Backup plugin has several premium-like configurations to define which files/databases should include in the backup, define the backup location, define the name of your backup, and so on.

Get started with Backup today.

9. WP Database Backup

WP Database Backup is yet another free database backup plugin.

With WP Database Backup, you can create and restore backups in just a single click. It offers slightly more features than WP-DB-Backup does, but is overall very similar.

Some of the key features you will find helpful are:

  • Easy configuration.
  • Store your database backup in a remote location.
  • Supports multiple storage destinations.
  • Sort and search backup from a list.
  • Provides extensive documentation to help walk you through the process.

Get started with WP Database Backup today

10. Migrate DB Pro

Migrate DB Pro is a powerful WordPress migration plugin made specifically for moving WordPress database from one install to another. However, it can also easily transfer media files, themes, and plugins with separate addons.

Pros:

  • Perfect when you quickly want to copy WordPress database from one site to another
  • Powerful features make it an excellent option for developers
  • Backup your existing database before replacing it with a new one
  • Find and replace any text in your database
  • Great for large websites and complex hosting server environments

Cons:

  • For complete migrations, you’ll need two addons which are only available under expensive developer license.
  • May not be as easy to use for beginners as some other plugins on the list

Price: Starting from $99 for a single site. You’ll need developer license to access media and files addons which will cost you $199.

Bonus Plugins

These WordPress migration plugins work in specific situations and are the best options for beginners.

Plugin Name Price Storage Options Key Features
UpdraftPlus Free / Premium ($42/year) Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more Incremental backups, scheduled backups, one-click restore
BackupBuddy $80 – $297/year Stash, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more Automatic backups, custom backup profiles, website migration
Jetpack Backup $7.95 – $79.95/month VaultPress (Jetpack’s own cloud storage) Daily backups, one-click restore, spam protection
VaultPress $39 – $299/month Amazon S3 and VaultPress Real-time backups, daily security scans, one-click restore
WP Time Capsule $49 – $299/year Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more Incremental backups, staging area, white label branding
BlogVault $89 – $249/year BlogVault cloud storage Incremental backups, malware scanning, one-click staging
BackupGuard Free / Premium ($25 – $120/year) BackupGuard cloud storage, Dropbox, Google Drive Scheduled backups, one-click restore, offsite storage
Duplicator Free / Pro ($59 – $999/year) Cloud storage, FTP, SFTP Full site backups, website migration, multisite support
WPvivid Backup Plugin Free / Premium ($149/year) Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more Incremental backups, migration, multisite support
WP Database Backup Free / Pro ($25 – $75/year) Email, FTP, Dropbox Database backups, scheduling, email notifications
Backup & Restore Dropbox Free Dropbox Automatic backups, easy restore, unlimited backups
XCloner Free / Pro ($39 – $139/year) FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more Full site backups, migration, one-click restore
BackWPup Free / Pro ($69 – $239/year) Dropbox, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, and more Scheduled backups, multisite support, one-click restore
Backup WordPress Free Email, FTP, S3, Rackspace Scheduled backups, easy restore, works on shared hosting
Snapshot Pro $49 – $499/year Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, and more Incremental backups, one-click restore, multisite support
WPvivid Backup Pro Free / Premium ($149/year) Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more Incremental backups, migration, multisite support
My WP Backup Pro $39 – $69/year Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more Scheduled backups, website migration, multisite support
Migrate Guru Free Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more Website migration, zero downtime, supports all hosts
Backupery $19 – $39/year Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more Scheduled backups, easy restore, unlimited backups
WP BackItUp Free / Premium ($99/year) Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more Scheduled backups, offsite storage, multisite support