I’d like to tell you a little story, if you could bear with me for a minute.
A couple years ago, I was playing around in the FTP client in my cPanel trying out some new stuff I had read on some blog or the other. I was trying to accomplish a certain task (I don’t remember what), but what I ended up doing was deleting the WordPress installation for my blog.
Yes. I deleted my blog. The blog into which I had poured blood, sweat, and tears (minus the blood). The blog in which I had invested hundreds of hours and a tidy sum of money.
The one thing that saved the whole affair from becoming a more significant setback was my foresight in installing a backup plugin. The plugin backed up my database once every week and then sent the backup file to my email.
With the file from the most recent backup in hand, I quickly hopped onto a live chat with one my hosting company’s support technicians (at that time I was using HostGator) and my blog was back up and running in no time at all.
That experience was a significant lesson for me: ever since then, the first thing I’ve always done on any new WordPress installation is install, activate, and configure a backup plugin. Priority numero uno. I highly recommend that you do the same.
If you’re not yet sure which backup plugin is right for you, then read on. I’ve collected a list of the top seven backup plugins for WordPress; there’s a solution here for every budget, need, and tech level.
Jetpack Backups is a premium backup & security plugin from WordPress’s own parent company, Automattic. It’s also the backup plugin we use here at WP Kube, so you know it’s good!
To use Jetpack Backups, you’ll have to first subscribe to one of the offered plans. The plans start at only $5/month (lite) or $55/year if you go for annual payments, so the plugin is really quite budget-friendly. The highest-priced plan (security bundle) will set you back $29/month or $299/year.
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BackupBuddy is another popular premium backup plugin, this time from the popular WordPress development studio iThemes.
The cheapest BackupBuddy pricing plan starts at $80 for the plugin + a year of ticketed support and updates. In that plan, you also get up to 1 GB of BackupBuddy storage space and 10 iThemes sync sites (more info on the latter here).
Upfront, BackupBuddy is more expensive than VaultPress. But in the long run this plugin is much more cost-efficient because it doesn’t require an ongoing subscription (at the same time, however, you don’t get the same security features VaultPress offers).
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UpdraftPlus is a highly popular free backup plugin. The plugin has over half a million active installs, and it even boasts a near-perfect 4.9 star rating. It’s been ranked several times on other websites and blogs as the #1 free backup plugin available today.
I’m inclined to agree.
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BackUpWordPress is yet another top-quality backup plugin, albeit somewhat less functional than UpdraftPlus. It’s also one of the most popular free tools on this list, with over 200,000 downloads and a very respectable 4.7 star rating.
BackUpWordPress is an ideal plugin if you just want something you can set and forget. There aren’t all that many features here—the major focus appears to be ease of use and simplicity.
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BackWPup was the plugin I first used for my website backups, and it was the solution I had in place at the time when I accidentally deleted my blog content. Although I’ve moved on to another solution since (read till the end to find out which one), I still recommend it quite highly if you’re in the market for a free plugin.
BackWPup is very widely used as well; it’s been downloaded nearly 2,000,000 times, although WordPress.org shows just over 300,000 active installs and a 3.8 star rating.
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blogVault is surprisingly the least-popular plugin on this list with only 9,000+ active installs. But don’t let that relatively low figure fool you—blogVault is a very functional plugin and has some neat capabilities.
blogVault isn’t free, though—once you download the plugin you’ll be prompted to purchase a subscription. This isn’t very clear on the plugin description page at WordPress.org, so make sure you’re aware that there is no lite option.
Prices start at $9/month or $89/year (basic plan). Unlike BackupBuddy, blogVault does require an ongoing subscription, making it the plugin with the most expensive entry-level pricing on this list.
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Read our review to learn more about blogvault.
Of all these plugins, UpdraftPlus is the one that fits my needs the best (and consequentially it’s the one that I currently use across my websites). The many options it comes with and the backup customization abilities are simply too good for me to pass up. Additionally, I don’t need the migration tools that the premium ones offer, so I don’t personally have a reason to opt for a paid solution.
Though, if I did need a premium option, I’d probably go with Jetpack Backups. You can’t go wrong when you’re choosing Automattic’s own product!
However, your needs may be different from mine. Which of these plugins 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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WOW Thanks so much for sharing this great post and awesome plugin info. for wordpress backup was searching best plugin for my site too. Thanks again for this post.
Glad you liked the list, Amit. Thanks for the nice comment.
Thanks a lot for this awesome list,great Back-up plugins.Keep Posting.
Nice collection of wordpress backup plugins.
I used to manually take backup of my blog but now I think using one of these plugin might make my task a little bit easier.
Thanks for sharing.
I did use few of those which are Free. But, now I do my database backup with All in One WP Security & Firewall. It's a Security Plugin with many options.
Heyy
Can you please tell me which is the best free wordpress backup plugin?
Ive heard good things about backup buddy if you can afford the outlay.
One of the key things that new bloggers always forget is to backup their blogs. Then when the times comes when they install a dodgy plugin and they lose everything they panic!
Great list of options to choose from and hopefully everyone will be blogging happily for a while ;)
Hi Devesh,
Very good list. I agree with Karen that newbies (and extra busy or non-techie bloggers) forget to backup their sites, so great roundup, Devesh and excellent advice Karen!
I am so paranoid, I use a variety of backup methods -- a combination of server-side backups (from hosting control panel), a dump of the database straight from a MySql tool (like PhpMyAdmin), etc.
But on the plugin side, I recently discovered #6 BackWpUp. Not only does it have a wide variety of options, the 2nd Most Important one is the ability to backup FILES.
Thanks for bringing these together, Devesh.
Simply awesome list. Earlier I used another premium backup plugin but that one restores really too slow. Later I purchased the paid license of Backup Buddy plugin and so far it is good.