Choosing WordPress Backup Services

Choosing WordPress Backup Services

WordPress backups are like insurance for your blog or website – you kind of hope you never need to use them, but you’ll kick yourself if disaster strikes and you never made the investment!

WordPress doesn’t include built-in backups, so it’s up to you to find a reliable backup strategy that works for your site. There are tons of great WordPress backup services and plugins available, ranging from the basic to the comprehensive. Choosing a WP backup service that’s right for you will depend on your budget, your backup requirements, and the amount of time you want to dedicate to your backup strategy.

When selecting a WordPress backup service, here are a few things to consider:

  1. Are you looking to backup one site, or many?
  2. Do you have the time (and inclination) to dedicate to manual backups, or are you looking for an automated option?
  3. How much of a financial investment you willing to make in your blog or site backups?
  4. Do you want to only backup the basics such as your WordPress database, or your entire WordPress website including all WordPress files?
  5. Where will you be storing your backups? Do you want a service that includes storing your backup files in a safe and secure location, or are you happy to simply download your backups to your computer or current cloud storage?
  6. How confident are you with restoring your WordPress site from a backup? Do you want a service that takes care of restoration for you?

There’s a lot to think about! To help you on your way to find the best possible solution to meet YOUR website’s unique needs, we’ve highlighted the features and benefits of three of the most popular WordPress backup services currently available.

BackupBuddy

  • $80 – $297
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Need a premium option with all the trimmings? BackupBuddy backs up your entire WordPress website from within your dashboard with just a few clicks. Unlike many backup services which only backup the WP database, BackupBuddy backs up your entire WordPress installation – ensuring sure you have a copy of all your WordPress website files.

Backup all WordPress files, all files in the WordPress Media library, your WordPress themes and WordPress plugins, and more. Once BackupBuddy completes your backup, you get a downloadable zip file of your entire WordPress website.

BackupBuddy’s backup includes everything needed to run your WordPress website. Backup your:

  • Pages
  • Posts
  • Widgets
  • Comments
  • Theme files
  • Plugin files
  • Theme and plugin settings
  • WordPress settings
  • WordPress database
  • WordPress core files
  • Users
  • Media library uploads
  • Custom post types
  • Categories and tags
  • Menus
  • Images and videos

This service also allows you to easily schedule daily, weekly, or monthly backups, while automatically storing your backups in Amazon S3, Dropbox, or Stash – their own cloud service. Like the old-school method of emailing your backup to yourself? BackupBuddy let’s you do that, too. You can even use their service to duplicate, migrate and restore websites, making it a great option for developers and agencies.

BackupBuddy is available from iThemes. Pricing packages start from just $80 per year on a subscription service, or $297 for lifetime use across unlimited WordPress sites

UpdraftPlus

  • FREE and Premium Plugins

UpdraftPlus is a complete, general-purpose backup and restore plugin, trusted to backup more than one million WP users worldwide. Use the free UpdraftPlus WP backup service to perform complete manual or scheduled backups of all your WordPress files, databases, plugins and themes, set scheduled backups, and restore backups directly from your WordPress control panel.

Want to do more?

With UpdraftPlus Premium, you can backup your WP site to a range of supported remote cloud storage options, including Google Drive, Amazon S3, Rackspace, and Dropbox. You’ll also get access to:

  • Cloning and migration to move your WP site
  • Automatic backups before any updates to plugins, themes and cores
  • Multisite and network backups
  • Database encryption
  • Non-WP files and database backups
  • Reporting
  • And more
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UpdraftPlus is FREE to all WordPress users. For those interested in a more comprehensive solution with UpdraftPlus Premium, you can between three different pro license types:

  1. $70 for personal use (up to 2 sites)
  2. $95 for business use (up to 10 sites)
  3. $145 for developer use (unlimited sites)

BackWPup

  • FREE and Pro Plugins

BackWPup can be used to save your complete WordPress site installation files and push them to your email or an external backup or storage service such as Dropbox, S3, and FTP. Should you need them, you can restore your installation and WordPress website back to its original glory with a single backup .zip file.

BackWPup’s FREE version is available from the WordPress Plugin Directory, is regularly maintained, has more than 500,000 active installs, and an average user rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

For those users looking for additional features and support, BackWPup offers a number of Pro packages and licenses, ranging from $69 for one domain up to $349 for 100 domains.

Additional Pro features include:

  • Backups to Google Drive and Amazon Glacier
  • Wizard to import settings and backup jobs
  • Wizard for system tests and scheduled backup jobs
  • Custom API keys for Dropbox and SugarSync
  • Automatic updates
  • Premium support

We want your suggestions! What WordPress backup services do you recommend? Let us know in the comments.

Nikki is a professional freelance writer and story teller with a passion for the web and technology. She writes for WP Dev Shed and amongst a roster of other clients.

One thought on “Choosing WordPress Backup Services

  1. Justin March says:

    Have used all 3 options but now favour UpdraftPlus, which is feature rich and does what I need it too.

    I would suggest people try the free versions first and only go paid when they have found their preferred solution.

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