6 Best WordPress Backup Plugins Compared (Pros and Cons)

WordPress Backup Plugins are a lifeline for your website. Having a regular backup of your site is the best thing you can do for your website. With a reliable backup, you will have peace of mind and can save you and your hard work from situations such as your website getting hacked, technical error or mistakenly deleting something important.

There is always a debate on the best WordPress Backup Plugins, but there are several free and paid ones that you can try. We personally use and recommend UpdraftPlus. In this article, we will share the Best Backup Plugins for WordPress that your site should have.

Notice: Many Hosting providers offer backup services and restore facilities. Those facilities are limited and we don’t recommend you to store the backup on the same server where your website hosts and at the end of the day, its your responsibility to keep a regular backup of your site.

So, if you are not using any backup service or plugin for your website then this article is a must for you.

Disclosure: I may receive affiliate compensation for some of the links below at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

1. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is the most popular WordPress Backup Plugin and is currently #1 in the market. Its been used by over 2 million websites.

Why UpdraftPlus?

UpdraftPlus allows you to backup your entire WordPress site automatically and also allows you to backup extra folders and files inside the WordPress directory. Moreover, it also allows you to backup the entire database of your WordPress site.

UpdraftPlus gives you the power to choose your remote destination to save your backups on regular basis. It also supports the most widely used cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon AWS, and several others.

How UpdraftPlus is the Best Backup Plugin?

UpdraftPlus has both manual and automatic backup system that backs your WordPress Files and Database. It also provides you the option to choose incremental backups and delete backups automatically after a certain number of backups or dates.

Besides automatic backup, it also provides you the option to restore your entire site or a part of it like posts, plugins, themes, or the entire database.

Is Reliable?

Yes, 100%. UpdraftPlus is a very reliable plugin and is being used by millions of sites on daily basis. On BloggerSprout, we use UpdraftPlus to backup our site. (see our step by step guide on how to backup & restore your WordPress site with UpdraftPlus).

Why Premium?

The premium version of the plugin comes with additional features and addons like automatic backups, remote storage options, migrating or clone websites, database search and replace, and also comes with Priority Support.

Pricing: Free ( Premium Version for $70 )

Our Verdict of UpdraftPlus:

UpdraftPlus is the most loved and downloaded WordPress Backup Plugin in the market. With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 Stars and over 2 million active installs. A free version is a great option for most beginners but we strongly recommend the Premium version for your site to unlock all its features.

2. WordPress Backup and Migrate Plugin – Backup Guard

Why BackupGuard?

BackupGuard is another backup and restores plugin that offers the same features as other plugins.

This plugin comes in 2 variants. Free & a Pro version

The Free version includes:-

• Backup WordPress site
• Backup files, database or both
• Choose which folders to backup
• Choose which database tables to backup
• Restore site
• Selective files or database restoration
• Download backups
• Import backups
• Multisite WordPress Network is supported

Why Premium?

The Pro versions features are as follows:-

• Migrate site
• Fully automatic migration
• Multiple scheduled backups
• Upload to Dropbox, G Drive, Amazon S3, Box, pCloud, OneDrive & SFTP/FTP
• Import from Dropbox, G Drive, Amazon S3, Box, pCloud, OneDrive & SFTP/FTP
• Mail notifications
• Alert before updating
• Customize backup naming
• Backups retention
• Backups cloud path
• Background backup mode
• Emergency support – up to 24 hours

Pricing: Free ( Premium Version for $39 – 5 Websites with Lifetime )

Our Verdict: Best for users who want a Lifetime deal and it covers 5 of your website for just $39.

3. BackupBuddy

Why BackupBuddy?

BackupBuddy is the same as UpdraftPlus but it is a premium backup plugin for WordPress. BackupBuddy is another most popular WordPress Backup plugin after UpdraftPlus.

BackupBuddy has over half a million active installs and allows you to easily create a backup for your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

With this plugin, you can create automatic backups and upload them to cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon AWS, and other cloud services. You can also choose to FTP your backup or email it to yourself.

Is BackupBuddy Reliable?

BackupBuddy is a great plugin and you can completely rely on it as it gets regular updates from its developers and it comes with premium support forums.

Want to Know more about BackupBuddy, Check our review of BackupBuddy
More details

It also comes with a Stash service, that allows you to do real-time backups and the best part is that it is not a Subscription-based service.

Stash service provides you 1GB of storage that syncs your website in real-time and with the help of iThemes Sync, you can manage up to 10 WordPress sites from a single dashboard.

Pricing: ( Premium Version Only for $80 )

Our Verdict: BackupBuddy is a very powerful and cost-effective WordPress backup plugin that provides you real-time backup services.

4. Jetpack Backup

Why JetPack?

VaultPress is created by Automattic and the WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. This is a subscription-based service with several types of plans and pricing.

VaultPress is an automated real-time cloud-based backup solution that starts at $5 / month, which is cheap and affordable for most WordPress users.

Setting up VaultPress is just a matter of clicks and restoring from backups is also as easy as a click of a button. VaultPress’s top-level plan provides malware scans and offers security scans.

Pricing: Free ( Premium Version for $0 )

5. BackWPup

Why BackWPwp?

If you want to try a free plugin for Backing up your WordPress then BackWPup is a great choice. The Plugin has over 700,000+ active installs and a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

The plugin has a premium version too, but we recommend this plugin only for free users. Using BackWPup you can backup your entire WordPress and send it to remote cloud services like Dropbox, S3 and etc and you can restore your entire site with a single backup.zip file.

Some of its features are like backup database, XML export, Optimize Database, Check and repair database, File Backup in zip, tar, and other formats.

Pricing: Free

Our Verdict: A Good Fit for those who are finding a Free alternative of UpdraftPlus.

6. Duplicator

Why?

The name of the plugin is enough to express the job it does. Duplicator is used to migrate WordPress Sites but it also has backup features.

This plugin doesn’t have advanced features like automated scheduling of backups and sending it automatically to remote servers. This plugin is for those users who like to manually back up their own WordPress site and their sites are rarely updated.

The plugin is widely used mainly for its few features like:-

• Move, migrate or clone a WordPress
• Download live site to localhost for development.
• Transfer a WordPress site to another Hosting
• Duplicate a live site to a staging area.
• Bundle up an entire WordPress site for easy Distribution

Pricing: Free ( Premium Version for $0 )

Our Verdict: As we said, this plugin is the best fit for developers who want to download their entire site to local development or staging area.

WordPress Backup Plugin Features

When scoping out your backup plugin options, there are a few features that all backup plugins should come with:

1. Automation. To be honest, there’s little point going for a backup plugin if it’s not automated; you may as well conduct the backup manually every time.
2. Ease of use. Depending on how tech savvy you are, the easier it is to restore from a backup, the better.
3. The ability to backup your entire site. You don’t just want your database, but also all of your media files, themes, etc. A backup that only restores part of your site leaves you with a lot of work to do.
4. Support. If you suddenly encounter a problem when restoring your backup, you need to have a resource to turn to. Whether it’s a well-stocked FAQ (a good start) or dedicated support (now we’re talking) – check that help is at hand.

Final Thoughts

Each WordPress Backup plugin has its own Pros and Cons, but all of them are capable to do a complete backup of your site.

We use UpdraftPlus as it’s easy to use, has incremental backups, and give you all the option that you need in a backup and restore plugin. It also gives you the ability to choose the time of backup and the frequency of backup.

Moreover, it gives you the option to upload all your backup files to remote storage services like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc, and one-click restore to the files you want.

That’s all.

However, your needs may be different from mine. Which plugin is your favorite, and are you currently using it on your site? Do you have any other recommendations to add? Please voice your thoughts in the comments below!

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