Are you in search of top-rated WordPress plugins? Here is all you need.
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, with more than 40% of websites on the internet powered by it. While WordPress is easy to use and comes with a lot of useful features, it’s important to have a backup strategy in place to protect your website’s data in case of a disaster.
In this article, we will discuss the best WordPress backup plugins that can help you back up your website’s data and restore it when needed.
What is the Need to Back Up your WordPress Website?
Backing up your WordPress website is one of the most important tasks you can do to protect your website from various issues that can cause data loss or website downtime. In this article, we will discuss the reasons why it’s important to back up your WordPress website regularly.
Protection Against Website Crashes:
Website crashes can happen for many reasons, including hacking attempts, server errors, and software issues. If you don’t have a backup of your website, you risk losing all of your data, including your posts, pages, media files, and customizations. A backup of your website allows you to quickly restore your website to its previous state, reducing downtime and ensuring your website is up and running as soon as possible.
Protection Against Hacking Attempts:
Hackers can target your website for various reasons, including stealing data, defacing your website, or using your website as part of a botnet. If your website is hacked, you risk losing all of your data, including your posts, pages, media files, and customizations. A backup of your website allows you to quickly restore your website to its previous state, reducing downtime and ensuring your website is up and running as soon as possible.
Protection Against Human Errors:
Human errors can also cause issues on your website, such as accidentally deleting important files or customizations. If you don’t have a backup of your website, you risk losing all of your data, including your posts, pages, media files, and customizations. A backup of your website allows you to quickly restore your website to its previous state, reducing downtime and ensuring your website is up and running as soon as possible.
Easier Website Migration:
If you decide to move your website to a new hosting provider, having a backup of your website makes the migration process much easier. Without a backup, you risk losing all of your data, including your posts, pages, media files, and customizations. A backup of your website allows you to quickly migrate your website to a new server, reducing downtime and ensuring your website is up and running as soon as possible.
Compliance with Best Practices:
Backing up your website regularly is considered a best practice in the industry. Most hosting providers recommend that you back up your website regularly, and many even provide tools to help you do so. Following best practices ensures that your website is protected from various issues that can cause data loss or website downtime.
What is a WordPress Backup Plugin?
A WordPress backup plugin is a tool that allows you to create backup copies of your WordPress website, including all the files, databases, media, and settings. Backup plugins automate the process of creating backups, making it easier and faster to perform regular backups of your website.
There are two main types of backup plugins: full backup plugins and incremental backup plugins.
Full Backup Plugins:
Full backup plugins create a complete backup of your entire website, including all files, databases, media, and settings. Full backups are ideal if you are making significant changes to your website or if you want to create a new staging environment to test changes before implementing them on your live site.
Incremental Backup Plugins:
Incremental backup plugins only backup the changes made since the last backup, rather than creating a complete backup of your entire website. Incremental backups are ideal if you make small changes to your website regularly, as they take less time to create and take up less storage space.
Other ways to Back Up your WordPress Site:
While WordPress backup plugins are a popular and convenient way to create backups of your website, there are also other alternative methods to consider. Here are a few:
Manual Backups:
If you prefer a hands-on approach, you can manually back up your website by using FTP to download all of your website’s files and a database management tool to export your database. This method requires more time and technical skill, but it gives you complete control over the backup process.
Hosting Provider Backups:
Some hosting providers offer automated backup services that create backups of your website at regular intervals. These backups are typically stored on the hosting provider’s servers, making them easy to restore if needed. However, it’s important to note that these backups may not be as customizable as those created with a backup plugin, and you may have to pay extra for this service.
Cloud-Based Backup Services:
There are also cloud-based backup services, such as CodeGuard or UpdraftPlus, that allow you to create and store backups of your website in the cloud. These services typically offer automated backups, customizable backup settings, and one-click restore options. However, they may require a monthly fee or have limitations on storage space.
Website Maintenance Services:
Website maintenance services often include backup services as part of their packages. These services can provide regular backups, as well as other services like security monitoring and site optimization. While these services can be more expensive than other backup options, they can save you time and provide additional benefits for your website.
10 Best WordPress Plugins worth using in 2023
1.UpdraftPlus:
UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular WordPress backup plugins with over 3 million active installations. It’s a comprehensive backup solution that can back up your entire WordPress site, including your files, database, plugins, themes, and more. You can schedule automated backups to run daily, weekly, or monthly and store them on cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more. UpdraftPlus also comes with a one-click restore feature that makes it easy to restore your website from a backup.
Key Features:
UpdatePlus is a WordPress plugin designed to help website owners keep their websites up to date with the latest updates for WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Some of the key features of UpdatePlus include:
- With UpdatePlus, you can update WordPress core, themes, and plugins with just one click. This saves time and ensures that your website is always running the latest versions of these essential components.
- it can also automatically update WordPress core, themes, and plugins as new updates become available. This ensures that your website is always running the latest versions without any manual intervention.
- It automatically creates a backup of your website before updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins. This ensures that you can quickly restore your website to its previous state if anything goes wrong during the update process.
- It sends email notifications to website owners or administrators when updates are available or have been completed. This helps keep website owners informed and ensures that they are aware of any updates that need to be made to their website.
- With UpdatePlus, you can customize which components of your website are updated, as well as the frequency of updates. This allows you to tailor the update process to your specific needs and preferences.
- It checks for compatibility issues before performing updates, ensuring that updates do not cause any conflicts or issues with your website.
- It allows you to roll back to a previous version of WordPress core, themes, or plugins if the update causes any issues or conflicts with your website.
Drawback:
One of the main drawbacks of UpdatePlus is that it is a premium plugin, meaning that it is not free to use.
Pricing:
Free, with premium licenses starting at $70 (and then $42 per year).
2. Jetpack Backup:
Jetpack Backup is a backup solution that comes with the Jetpack plugin. It’s a premium service that offers automated daily backups, real-time backups, and easy restores. Jetpack Backup also offers a 30-day archive that allows you to restore your website to a previous version, which is great for undoing mistakes or rolling back to a previous version of your website.
Jetpack Backup is a WordPress plugin developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. It is a premium plugin that provides website owners with a comprehensive backup and restores solution.
Key Features:
Some of the key features of Jetpack Backup include:
- It automatically backs up your entire website, including all content, media, themes, and plugins, on a daily or real-time basis.
- It provides unlimited storage for backups, so you can store as many backups as you need without worrying about running out of space.
- It makes it easy to restore your website to its previous state with just one click. You can choose to restore your entire website or specific parts of it, such as posts or media.
- It encrypts your backups and stores them in secure offsite locations, ensuring that your data is safe and secure.
- It monitors your backups to ensure that they are running smoothly and notifies you if any issues arise.
- It allows you to customize your backup settings, including the frequency of backups, the types of files and data included in backups, and the retention period for backups.
- It provides a backup history that shows all of your backups, including the date and time of each backup, so you can easily track your backup history.
- It makes it easy to migrate your website to a new server or hosting provider with its one-click migration feature.
Drawback:
It has partial backup only. Also, its optimized elements change the appearance of the website. It has no multisite support.
Pricing:
$100/year
3. BackupBuddy:
BackupBuddy is a premium WordPress backup plugin that offers complete backup solutions. It allows you to schedule automated backups and store them on cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more. BackupBuddy also offers a one-click restore feature, which makes it easy to restore your website from a backup.
Additionally, it comes with a migration feature that allows you to move your WordPress site from one server to another.
Key Features:
Some of the key features of BackupBuddy include:
- It allows website owners to create full-site backups of their WordPress website, including all files, databases, themes, and plugins.
- It enables users to set up automated backups on a schedule, ranging from daily to monthly backups.
- It provides customization options for backup settings, including the ability to exclude certain files or directories from backups.
- It allows users to store backups remotely, including in cloud services like Amazon S3, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
- It makes it easy to restore your website with just one click. You can choose to restore your entire website or specific parts of it, such as posts or media.
- It includes a migration feature that enables users to easily migrate their website to a new server or hosting provider.
- Its Stash Live feature enables users to store incremental backups in real-time, which can help to minimize data loss.
- It includes security features like Malware scans and restoration to help protect your website from security threats.
Drawback:
Restoring for large sites is difficult and prone to failure. Also, its external dashboard doesn’t work as intended.
Pricing:
Starts at $80 per year
4. Duplicator:
Duplicator is a free WordPress backup plugin that allows you to create a backup of your entire WordPress site, including your files, database, plugins, themes, and more. You can then store the backup on your computer, external hard drive, or cloud service.
Duplicator also comes with a migration feature that allows you to move your WordPress site from one server to another.
Key Features:
Duplicator is a popular WordPress backup and migration plugin that allows users to create backups of their entire WordPress website, including all files, databases, themes, and plugins, and easily migrate or copy their site to a new location or server.
Some of the key features of Duplicator include:
- It allows users to create complete backups of their WordPress website, including all files, databases, themes, and plugins.
- It provides a one-click migration process that makes it easy to migrate or copy a website to a new server or location.
- It offers a simple and intuitive installation process that makes it easy to set up and use.
- It Duplicator provides customization options for backup settings, including the ability to exclude certain files or directories from backups.
- It enables users to create duplicate copies of their website, which can be useful for creating staging environments or testing new updates before going live.
- It provides integration with cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3, allowing users to store backups remotely.
- It allows users to easily restore their website from a backup with just a few clicks.
- It provides security features like malware scans and restoration to help protect your website from security threats.
Drawback:
One of the main drawbacks of Duplicator is that it may not be suitable for novice users who are not familiar with the technical aspects of WordPress.
Pricing:
Free
5. WP Time Capsule:
WP Time Capsule is a backup solution that offers incremental backups, which means it only backs up the changes made to your site instead of the entire site. This makes the backups faster and more efficient. WP Time Capsule also offers a one-click restore feature and allows you to store your backups on cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon S3.
Key Features:
WP Time Capsule is a backup plugin for WordPress websites that offers several key features, including:
- It uses incremental backups to save changes made to your website in real time, ensuring that all the latest updates and modifications are stored.
- The plugin makes it easy to restore your website with just one click. You can select a specific backup version and restore your entire site or just specific files and databases.
- It offers a staging environment that enables you to test your website changes before pushing them live.
- You can set up the plugin to create backups at any frequency you choose, from every hour to every month, depending on your needs.
- It also provides an option to limit the size of your backups, ensuring that your server storage is not overwhelmed.
- The plugin is compatible with WordPress multisite installations, making it easy to manage backups for multiple sites from a single dashboard.
Drawback:
Backups take a long time and also its restores are not quick or effective. It has no offsite storage.
Pricing:
$49/year
6. BackWPup:
BackWPup is a free WordPress backup plugin that allows you to back up your entire WordPress site, including your files, database, plugins, themes, and more. You can schedule automated backups to run daily, weekly, or monthly and store them on cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more. BackWPup also comes with a restore feature that makes it easy to restore your website from a backup.
Key Features:
BackWPup is a WordPress plugin that allows you to backup your website’s files and database and includes several key features, such as:
- You can choose to save your backups to multiple destinations, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more.
- You can schedule backups to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and set the time of day that the backup should occur.
- You can create multiple backup jobs with different settings, such as which files and folders to include or exclude, and whether to include the database.
- It can compress your backup files into ZIP or TAR archives, and can also encrypt them for added security.
- You can use BackWPup to migrate your website to a new server or domain and restore your backups with just a few clicks.
- It supports backing up WordPress multisite installations and allows you to back up each site individually or all sites at once.
- It provides detailed logs of each backup job, including any errors or warnings encountered. You can also set up notifications to be emailed to you when a backup job completes or encounters an error.
- It integrates with other plugins, such as WP-CLI, to provide even more advanced backup and restore options.
Drawback:
The plugin dashboard is not as user-friendly as other plugins in this list. Also, its interface is not intuitive.
Pricing:
Free, with premium licenses starting at $69 per year
7. BlogVault:
BlogVault is a comprehensive backup and security solution that offers advanced features and ease of use, making it a popular choice for WordPress users who want to keep their websites safe and secure.
Key Features:
BlogVault is a comprehensive backup and security solution for WordPress websites that offers several key features, including:
- It automatically backs up your website on a daily basis, ensuring that you always have the latest version of your site stored.
- The plugin uses incremental backups to store only the changes made to your site, minimizing the backup file size and allowing for faster restoration.
- You can restore your entire website or select specific files and databases to restore with just one click.
- It provides a staging environment that enables you to test your website changes before pushing them live.
- You can use BlogVault to migrate your website to a new server or domain or create a clone of your website for testing purposes.
- The plugin offers a malware scanner that checks your website for any malicious code and alerts you if any is found.
- It provides additional security features, such as two-factor authentication and IP blocking, to keep your website safe from hackers.
- You can choose to save your backups to multiple destinations, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more.
Drawback:
It does not take partial backup not it supports local backup. It is cloud-only.
Pricing:
Starts at $89 per year
8. WP Database Backup
WP Database Backup is a useful plugin that focuses on creating backups of your website’s database, providing unique features that help you keep your website safe and secure.
Key Features
WP Database Backup is a WordPress plugin that enables you to create backups of your website’s database, offering several unique features, including:
- It can automatically create backups of your database on a regular basis, ensuring that you always have an up-to-date backup.
- You can choose to save your backups to multiple destinations, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP, and email.
- The plugin can compress your backup files into ZIP archives and encrypt them for added security.
- You can schedule backups to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and set the time of day that the backup should occur.
- You can restore your entire database or select specific tables to restore.
- You can use WP Database Backup to migrate your website to a new server or domain or create a clone of your website for testing purposes.
- You can create a backup of your database with just one click.
- It supports backing up WordPress multisite installations and allows you to back up each site individually or all sites at once.
Drawback
It does not take complete backups. Also, most of its features don’t unlock in the free version.
Pricing:
The premium version of this plugin, WP All Backup, costs between $22 and $49.
9. Everest Backup:
Everest Backup is a WordPress plugin that provides backup and restores functionality for WordPress websites, offering incremental backups that save only the changes made since the last backup, reducing the backup size and saving storage space.
You can save your backups to multiple destinations, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP, and email. The plugin can compress your backup files into ZIP archives and encrypt them for added security.
Everest Backup can create backups of your website automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You can restore your entire website or select specific files and databases to restore. You can use Everest Backup to migrate your website to a new server or domain or create a clone of your website for testing purposes.
The plugin provides a staging environment that enables you to test changes to your website before pushing them live. Everest Backup includes a malware scanner that checks your website for any malicious code and alerts you if any is found.
You can use Everest Backup to back up and restore multiple WordPress websites from a single dashboard. You can create a backup of your website with just one click.
Key Features:
- Manual and scheduled backup options
- The free version supports Google Drive
- Includes migration and cloning tools as well as backup
- Supports WordPress Multisite
- Reporting tool built-in
Drawback:
One of the main drawbacks of Everest Backup is that it does not offer a free version, and the premium version can be relatively expensive compared to other backup plugins available for WordPress.
Pricing:
Everest Backup has a free version while the premium costs $79 per year.
10. WP ALL Backup:
WP ALL Backup is a WordPress plugin that allows you to back up your entire website, including files, databases, and settings, and can save your backups to multiple destinations, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more.
You can set up the plugin to create backups at any frequency you choose, from every hour to every month, depending on your needs. It can compress your backup files into ZIP or TAR archives, and can also encrypt them for added security.
You can schedule backups to run automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and set the time of day that the backup should occur. You can restore your entire website or select specific files and databases to restore.
Key Features:
- Multisite support
- Scheduled automatic backups
- Send email notifications
- Multiple backup destinations
Drawback:
It is no offsite storage and includes unreliable restores.
Pricing:
Mostly free, with a Pro plan available at $22/year.
How to choose the Best WordPress Backup Plugin?
Choosing the best WordPress backup plugin can be a daunting task, as there are many options available on the market. However, here are some factors to consider when choosing a backup plugin for your WordPress website:
- Features: Consider the features offered by the plugin. Look for features like automatic backups, selective restores, migration and cloning, compression and encryption, multiple backup destinations, malware scanning, and staging environments.
- Compatibility: Ensure that the backup plugin is compatible with your WordPress version and any other plugins or themes installed on your website.
- Ease of use: Look for a backup plugin that is easy to use and offers a user-friendly interface. You don’t want to spend hours learning how to use the plugin or struggle to find the backup and restore settings.
- Support: Ensure that the plugin offers adequate support in case of any issues or questions. Look for plugins that offer documentation, FAQs, and support through email, forums, or live chat.
- Cost: Consider the cost of the plugin, as some plugins may be more expensive than others. Some plugins offer free versions with limited features, while others require a one-time or subscription-based payment.
- User reviews: Read user reviews and ratings to get an idea of the performance and reliability of the plugin.
Considering these factors, you can choose a backup plugin that suits your needs and helps you keep your WordPress website safe and secure.
FAQs:
1. Are backup plugins necessary for WordPress websites?
Yes, backup plugins are necessary for WordPress websites as they help protect your website’s data and ensure that you can recover from any issues or data loss.
2. Can backup plugins slow down my website?
Some backup plugins may slow down your website, especially during the backup process. However, many plugins offer features like incremental backups that can help reduce the impact on website performance.
3. How often should I back up my WordPress website?
It’s recommended to back up your WordPress website on a regular basis, at least once a week or more frequently if you make frequent updates or changes to your website.
4. Can backup plugins be used for migrating or cloning websites?
Yes, many backup plugins offer migration and cloning features, which can be useful when moving your website to a new server or domain or creating a staging environment for testing.
5. Can backup plugins protect my website from malware and hackers?
While backup plugins may include malware scanning and other security features, they are not a substitute for a comprehensive website security solution. It’s important to use additional security measures like firewalls, anti-virus software, and secure login credentials to protect your website from malicious attacks.
6. How do I restore my website from a backup created by a backup plugin?
Most backup plugins offer a simple restore process that involves uploading the backup files and following the on-screen instructions. However, it’s important to follow the instructions carefully and ensure that the backup files are compatible with your current WordPress version and plugins.
Final Thoughts:
In conclusion, choosing the best WordPress backup plugin is an essential step toward ensuring the safety and security of your website. With the wide variety of options available on the market, it’s important to consider the features, compatibility, ease of use, support, cost, and user reviews when deciding. A good backup plugin should provide regular backups, easy restore options, multiple backup destinations, malware scanning, and other advanced features. Ultimately, investing in a reliable backup plugin can help give you peace of mind and protect your website from data loss, downtime, and other issues.
We hope that this article has made up your mind about which WordPress plugin is best suited for backup purposes.
