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5 Excellent WordPress Backup Solutions

E

Elvis Plesky

Guest
Imagine the unthinkable – you pull up one of your many websites and what the – it’s gone! What if you installed the latest update and a faulty theme or plugin stuck a spanner in the works? Maybe a laughing skull shows someone hacked you and slipped you some ransomware. Send money or lose everything – yikes! What if your client was dabbling with unprotected things and broke the site?

Without a WordPress Backup Solution to save your site, all ‘what ifs’ become plausible. Because at some point it’s happened to someone, somewhere. Your hosting service might provide regular backups. But is it enough? Back up before it is too late. Luckily, you’ll find plenty of functional and intuitive plugins created to make the process simple. Here are five of the best for you to consider.

1. BackupBuddy


iThemes offers this extensively featured WordPress Backup Plugin as a comprehensive solution for clients with lots of websites.

Pros

  • You can move sites (and staging sites with some of the developer plans) between domains, hosts, or servers using the migration feature.
  • A tool called ImportBuddy makes restoring your site from the backup easier.
  • Additional tools include malware, database, and server scanners.
  • You can back WordPress up to a compressed folder or to cloud facilities like Amazon, Dropbox, Google Drive.
  • WordPress backups, restorations or site migrations are achieved in just a few steps.
  • What gets backed up is up to you. It could be just the database or the whole WordPress installation.
  • You can decide on how frequently backups occur, anytime from every hour to once a month.

Cons

  • iThemes’s backup storage, Stash Live, is free. But for most of their plans, you’ll need to pay for it after year one.
  • It can be expensive to cover all your clients’ sites.
2. BackWPup


This WordPress Backup Plugin comes in two flavors, free and premium. So you have nothing to lose. Try the free one first, you may find that it does everything you need. It only differs from the premium version in the number of sites it coveres and the type of support and updates you can get.

Pros

  • Has database optimization, repair and scanning features
  • It backs up your whole WordPress installation and can push them to your third-party storage service, directory, or FTP.
  • Quick response to customer complaints and priority support for premium service customers along with automated updates.
  • Can handle a number of sites

Cons

  • Bugs are evident here and there.
  • High price for the premium version considering what it does.
3. BackUpWordPress


If you don’t need restoration or migration assistance, then BackUpWordPress may be ideal for you. Simple, but powerful. And if you’re not sure, you can try the limited free version and then upgrade to premium later on if it’s a good fit.

Pros

  • A year of priority support offered with premium plans.
  • You can customize backup frequency schedules to your requirements.
  • Different premium offerings mean you only pay for what you use. So if you’re a developer with just a few sites then that’s all you’ll pay for.
  • Free and premium editions available. Ideal for ‘try before you buy.’
  • Premium gives you plenty of choice about where you save your backup. File storage service, zip or even your own server.
  • Troubleshooting yourself is easier thanks to a comprehensive knowledge base on the BackUpWordPress site.

Cons

  • Customers say that the free plugin can be slow or buggy when backing up. Devs state that this can happen when customers back up at times when server resources are low. So just be mindful.
  • Restoration or migration services are not available.
4. UpdraftPlus


Like other backup and restore plugins here, this one’s available in both paid and unpaid versions. The free one does a great job, so much so that it’s highly rated by users. But the premium version’s worth going to straight away for its advanced features:

  • Bottom of Form
  • You can extend for multisite-compatibility using the UpdraftCentral plugin.
  • Developers can choose how the plugin handles clients’ sites, configuring backups to run without their awareness or intervention.
  • One-click backup of specific files or an entire installation. Minimum effort for maximum result.

For

  • The free plugin gives users the basics: backup and restore. The premium version is relatively cheap, and with that you can do migrations too.
  • Send your backups to yourself via email or to the usual third-party services.
  • The excellent migration tool automatically backs up your site prior to any core, plugin or theme updates.
    And you can use it to retrieve backed-up versions of your site if you were using another WordPress Backup Plugin with no restore capabilities.

Con

  • Although they respond to complaints quickly, UpdraftPlus seem to cause a great deal of frustration amongst users. It would be nice to see a few more apologies and offers of assistance.
5. VaultPress


VaultPress by Automattic is only accessible if you purchase the premium Jetpack plugin. So if you don’t like Jetpack or don’t want to spend time getting to know it, then it’s probably best to look elsewhere.

Pros

  • Some of the plans on offer include a set-and-forget backup, one-click restoration and options for site migration.
  • If you are a Jetpack premium user, then switch backups on and you’re done. With free Jetpack you can buy this as an add-on.
  • Security features include spam protection, brute force attack prevention and uptime monitoring.
  • You also get video hosting and Google Analytics integration.

Cons

  • Only your dashboard and content files will be backed up with this plugin. And not your full WordPress installation.
  • This isn’t an expensive service but it’s a shame that there’s no free trial version.
  • This plugin’s tied to JetPack too. So if you don’t like this piece of bloatware but you like VaultPress, you have a hard choice to make.
Our Suggested WordPress Backup Solutions


Treat your WordPress site like your home’s front door – and keep it locked. Moreover, add to your safety with a reliable backup solution, like the above 5 offerings. Choosing the right one can be tough. So, here are our recommendations:

  • UpdraftPlus – This is a must-have plugin if you run a WordPress development business. Functionality, flexibility, and affordability mean that it ticks all the most important boxes. Developers are treated to some great features that give them extensive control over backups once clients have control of their sites.
  • BackWPup – If you’re taking care of smaller client websites and looking for something that doesn’t cost much money and is easy to use too, this does the job. Its ease-of-use means you shouldn’t encounter many problems, but if any should prove unavoidable then it’s good to know that you can count on a quick response from the developer.
  • Plesk Onyx Hosting Platform – The easiest way to do avoid the headache of choosing a WordPress backup plugin is to switch to this all-inclusive platform, backup included. You’ll enjoy the full might of the WordPress Toolkit – a single management interface that lets you simplify all management routines. Clone a WordPress site, including all website files, database and settings, without the need for any third-party plugins.


There’s a sliding scale of fates that could befall your site, from lost functionality in one area to wholesale destruction and data loss. Whatever happens, it’s up to you to get your site back online as fast as you can. You can wait for your hosting company to sort things out, wade through mountains of advice from the WordPress community. But your best option is to prevent rather than cure.

The post 5 Excellent WordPress Backup Solutions appeared first on Plesk.

Continue reading...
 
Thank for great article but BackupBuddy is horrible, I have literally tried every possible solution/combination and I successfully restored and logged into admin just once. Every other time the Plug-in fails... All in all I think anyone who would support back-up buddy might be paid by them somehow or the owner has a bunch of fake accounts and he posts ALOT.
Best regards
 
Last edited:
@Elvis Plesky,

How odd that a post about WordPress plugins appears on a forum.........

..........when Plesk has an excellent backup solution that backups the entire domain: files, websites, mail, databases, subscription data and so on.

The Plesk forum never stops to amaze me!
 
trialotto said:
@Elvis Plesky,

How odd that a post about WordPress plugins appears on a forum.........

..........when Plesk has an excellent backup solution that backups the entire domain: files, websites, mail, databases, subscription data and so on.

The Plesk forum never stops to amaze me!
Click to expand...

Have you read the whole blog post? ;)


@Elvis Plesky

If I can suggest something, add on forum "rel = canonical" to the original content on the blog.

Otherwise, you make yourself dulicate content.

By the way, you're doing a great job on the blog :)
 
Last edited:
@Tomek,

The whole problem with WP backup plugins is that they often

- involve wp-cron, as such a pain in the *** and often a root cause of a serious problem: WP instances that will stop working and/or resource overusage,
- are not secure at all: most plugins are not properly coded, unsafe transfer protocols are used and/or critical data becomes accessible,

and this is only a minor summary of the things that are wrong with WP backup plugins.

In essence, the whole concept of backup via WordPress is a wrong concept: it is allowing the power of backup to endusers, while this is a task for the sysadmin.

The endresult is often highly inefficient: the sysadmin has it's own automated tools to create safe backups, whereas the WP endusers are also doing unsafe backups of exactly the same and/or overlapping data, implying that endusers essentially use resources that should not be used (since the sysadmin already has safe backups).

And the major concern is something that nobody really thinks of nowadays.

A backup plugin is only valuable if the sysadmin does not make any backups at all......... and that sysadmin is doing a poor job.

Now turning this line of reasoning inside out: a good sysadmin does his job properly, implying that there should not be any need for endusers to control backups.

Even if you want to allow endusers to control backups, the Plesk Panel is the recommended method of making backups.

But it is just the general way of thinking: "if I can do it myself, why shouldn't I?".

And in essence, WordPress then often becomes a platform that allows for duplication of most functionality that already is arranged by the sysadmin and/or with Plesk.

WordPress itself will only perform more poorly, if a whole lot of plugins are installed.

Moreover, a typical WordPress instance often has plugins that actually do nothing: for instance, any .htaccess or any Apache based functionality will not have any value if the specific WP instance is behind a Nginx proxy that does a whole lot of offloading from Apache.

The only result of backup plugins is

- decreasing the overall performance of the WP instance,

- increasing the probability that (resource-hungry) Apache processes are overloaded, which can result to downtime of a WP based site,

- increasing the probability that scheduled (on the one hand) Plesk based backup processes and (on the other hand) WP based backup processes will coincide: this can cause severe corruption of the backup files!

- increasing the workload on the MySQL databases, since the major disadvantage of WordPress is that it is a database driven Content Management System,

- increasing the probability that the MySQL server will fail completely, with the remarkable endresult that ALL WP based sites will be down,

and all of the above is becoming more likely or more severe due to the fact that wp-cronjobs are not good at what they are intended for, not at all.


In short, the sysadmin that replaces Plesk based backups by WordPress based backups should not be a sysadmin!


Sure, it is a nice and enthousiastic article about WP plugins, but "nice" or "enthousiastic" is not a fundament upon which rock-solid hosting solutions are build

Don't believe the hype!


Regards........

PS You should put a timer function on a typical WP based backup solution and compare that to the time spent by a Plesk based backup solution, quite interesting!
 
Guys, have you seen header of this forum section? It is Plesk blog news.
It is just some kind of notification channel about new articles on official Plesk blog - Plesk Blog
If you want to discuss with article authors - go to comments on the blog :)
You can address your question to ElvisPlesky of somebody else, but they are persons from blog, but not from forum :)
 
IgorG said:
Guys, have you seen header of this forum section? It is Plesk blog news.
It is just some kind of notification channel about new articles on official Plesk blog - Plesk Blog
If you want to discuss with article authors - go to comments on the blog :)
You can address your question to ElvisPlesky of somebody else, but they are persons from blog, but not from forum :)
Click to expand...

Yes, I know it :)

That's why I suggested add on forum "rel = canonical" to the original content on the blog.

Otherwise, you make yourself dulicate content.

And maybe turning off comments on forum for "Plesk blog news." would be a good idea?
 
@IgorG and @Tomek

Nice to see the issue of (one the hand) having content suited only for a blog and (on the other hand) a simple referral on this forum (which is good) solved.

However, I am not actually sure what will be the endresult right now, but some summary of the blog article should be on this forum, otherwise it would become an odd link.

Regards.....
 
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