No matter how good your website host is or how robust your suite of security plugins, no website is completely safe from harm. Accidents and bugs can still happen.
In cases where your website becomes broken beyond repair, restoring it to a previous version is imperative for avoiding unnecessary downtime, which can be a potential mark on your company’s reputation.
Backups are also important if you plan on updating or making changes to your website. Sometimes changes that look good in a staging environment interact in funny ways with plugins and themes. The last thing you want is for a planned update to break your site when it goes live. Keeping a backup of your site as it was right before the update goes live allows you to restore the site to that previous state so you can troubleshoot your update without losing website uptime.
A solid backup plugin isn’t your first line of defense, but it might be your last – so you want to be able to rely on it.
In this article:
- Factors to consider when looking for a backup plugin
- Manage WP
- Akeeba
- Updraft Plus
- Jetpack Backup
- BlogVault
- Total Upkeep
- WP Vivid
- Duplicator
- Conclusion
Factors to consider when looking for a backup plugin
There are numerous backup plugins for WordPress on the market. While many provide similar features, no two are exactly alike. When you consider which backup plugin to use with your website, there are some key features to look for. The speed at which a backup is create, the ease with which you can restore your site to a previous backup, and the location that the backup files are stored, are all important things to consider.
Here are a few of our favourite WordPress backup plugins in 2023.
ManageWP
https://managewp.com/features/backup
Manage WP is a managed WordPress hosting service, so backups are only one small part of what the full suite offers. The service has both a free and premium tier of backup service. The free is designed for single, small websites, while the premium version offers a more robust suite of features that are suitable for business owners and enterprise websites, as well as for multi-site networks.
Features:
- Automatic pre-update backups and restore points
- Client reports
- Offsite storage
- 1-click restore
- Ability to exclude certain files and folders
- Outage notifications to email or Slack
Akeeba
https://www.akeeba.com/products/akeeba-backup-wordpress.html
Akeeba backup offers a free version called Core, and a subscription service called Akeeba Professional. As the name might suggest, the free version provides everything you need to back up and restore a single website, while the professional version gives you more flexibility to customize your backup schedule and dashboard.
Akeeba also allows you to select your preferred file format for backups, making storage easier, and saving space when processing power is at a premium.
Features:
- 1-click backup service
- Customizable backup profiles
- Incremental backup options
- Automated backups are a premium-only service
Updraft plus
Updraft plus is a popular backup plugin – in fact, according to their website, they are the most popular free backup plugin on the web. Updraft plus has over 3 million active users as of 2023. Updraft plus offers both a free plugin version, and a premium version with more granular features, ideal for companies with IT departments or web experts who can customize the plugin to suit their specifications.
The free version of Updraft Plus offers automatic backups with customizable frequency in increments of as little as two hours and as long as 1 month. You can also restore backups directly from your WordPress control panel. All in all, Updraft Plus is a solid general-purpose backup plugin with lots of features and tools for a customizable experience.
Features:
- Easy to use interface
- Custom scheduling
- 1-click backup and restore
- Manual or scheduled backups of WP files, databases, plugins and themes
- Site cloning and migration (premium)
- Incremental backups (premium)
Jetpack Backup
https://jetpack.com/upgrade/backup/
Jetpack backup bills itself as the “best real-time WordPress backup plugin. Real-time backup simply means that every change a user makes to the site is automatically backed up. This is convenient because you don’t have to worry about minor changes breaking your site, however, it can also take up a fair amount of server space.
Jetpack’s VaultPress backup stores these real-time backups remotely, on the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about them cluttering up your website server. The mobile app service also allows you to easily restore your website even when you’re away from your computer – helpful when a security issue arises after work hours, or during your commute.
Features:
- 1-click backups and restores
- 10GB of backup storage to start
- 30-day archive + activity log
- Mobile app so you can restore from anywhere
- Restore even if your site is offline
- Database + file backups
- Compatible with WooCommerce (backup customer + order data)
- Off-site and cloud backups
- Encrypted backups
BlogVault
Blog vault boasts reliability, and backups that always restore successfully. Currently, BlogVault is used by more than 1 million websites, backed up on more than 5000+ web hosts. This plugin is aimed primarily at businesses, and especially ecommerce. They understand the impact that a website outage can have on a business’ reputation and operations, and are sensitive to the speed with which business owners need to be able to restore their site.
BlogVault stores backups on their own servers, rather than with your WordPress hosting provider. This means that your backup files don’t take up precious bandwidth on your server, keeping your website running smoothly and your backup files secure.
Features:
- WP backups for business critical websites
- Incremental backups
- Secure cloud storage
- 1-click restore
- Free signup
- Encrypted backups
- Web host migration
- Real-time backups for Woocommerce sites
Total Upkeep (by Boldgrid)
https://www.boldgrid.com/wordpress-backup-plugin/
Total upkeep by Boldgrid is a backup plugin with free and premium tiers like many of the others on this list. The premium option of Total Upkeep is fairly affordable, starting at $2.50 per month billed annually.
Boldgrid boasts a variety of robust features, including an automatic rollback for failed restores, easy automated backups, and remote backups to Amazon S3 or Google Drive. With Total Upkeep you can also enjoy site monitoring to ensure you are alerted as soon as a security breach or website issue occurs.
Features:
- Create a backup at any time with a single click
- Safe and consistent backups
- One license works on an unlimited number of websites
- Automatic backups before WP updates
- Individual file restorations (premium)
WP Vivid
WP Vivid is a backup plugin that is ideal for website owners, freelancers, and agencies. It’s a robust and stable WordPress backup solution with optional add-ons for staging and image optimization, making site building and improvements easier.
As of 2023, WP Vivid has over 280,000 active installations. Its built-in learning mode makes it an effective tool for website owners who need to back up on shared hosting. It’s also an economical choice for users with many websites.
Features:
- Customization options (exclude or include specific files and folders in a backup)
- Advanced migration features
- Automatic backups before WordPress or plugin updates
- Compatible with many different WordPress themes
- Incremental and general backup scheduling options
- Cloud storage
- Flexible backup retention rules
- Multi-email notification option
- WordPress multi-site support
Duplicator
https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
Duplicator bills itself as a migration and backup plugin, and though migration is its bread and butter, if you need a complete site backup this can be a useful plugin. With the premium version, Duplicator Pro, you can schedule automatic backups and back up your site to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud to save space on your own website server.
Duplicator makes cloning or copying a website easy, which is helpful if you’re making significant edits to an existing site, or migrating to a new web host. The plugin allows you to have a backup of your entire site including all files, plugins, and themes, so you can rest easy that your website will be migrated with little to no downtime.
Features:
- A range of cloud storage options
- Simple interface
- Expert support
- Multisite migrations (with Pro version)
- Fast emergency restores with Recovery Points
Whether you’re a small business owner, or an ecommerce enterprise, the ability to back up your website can be a real life-saver when issues arise. Installing a reliable, well-supported WordPress backup plugin can mean the difference between business as usual, and a costly website outage.
Need to back up your site but not sure where to start? Want advice on which backup plugin might be right for you? Contact WordZite today and secure your WordPress website.