12 Best WordPress Backup Plugins for Your WP Powered Websites

Is your site on the verge of losing data? Well, it might happen anytime to you and that too without prior warning. So what steps are you bringing into action to deal with this? You cannot afford your website to be down for even a few moments, right?

The data that you put up and store on WordPress can be lost anytime. Hence, you need to protect it at all costs. Fortunately, there are plenty of plugins available that would backup your pages, blog posts, photos, product descriptions and whatsoever is present on your WordPress website. Which WordPress plugins are the best? Which one should you choose? Well, you would have to keep reading this article to find out.

Before we delve deeper into the details, let’s first talk about a few technical reasons due to which our website might fail anytime. Better safe than to be sorry!

What Might Be Technical Causes for a Website to Fail?

Website failure is a common issue; but is least talked about. It is only possible that one fine day, all you see on the website is a blank screen with no information or pages. You could troubleshoot it and all you will see is that the data has been erased and the database has been wiped clean. So, what are the potential causes of a website failure?

• Malware Infection

This is one of the most common problems leading to website failure. If it happens that there is some malware infection on the site, the host tries to shut the pages down in order to get rid of the issue.

• Payment Delays/Failure

If your payment hasn’t gone through or it has been delayed, the host might take control of your website and shut it down.

• Emergency Issues

There are situations when a fire or a blackout might affect the data center of your website. In such a situation, you might lose all your data.

• Accidental Deletion of Data

Yes, this is a rather uncommon phenomenon, but if your host erases all your data, you would be left with no option to recover it if you don’t have a backup.

• Improper Coding

Sometimes it is also possible that a bug in the website code can lead to the whole site crashing down.
These were just a few of the reasons due to which your website may go down anytime. There may be plenty of more. So, how to deal with this? Fortunately, there are various plugins available at your disposal, and choosing one out of them is a tedious task. Thus, always look out for a few factors in your backup plugin before settling on one.

Features to Consider Before Opting for a Back-Up Plugin

Even though you would be greeted with a number of free and paid plugins for your WordPress site, you need to be careful with your choice. Here are some features you could focus on before getting a backup plugin.

• Backup of Your Site

A good backup plugin for your site should be such that it keeps a backup of the entire website, instead of just the database or the theme selections.

• Automated Functions

It would be a lot easier for you if you chose a plugin that would keep the backups on its own at regular intervals.

• Easy Restore

It is not just enough to be taking a lot of backups at regular intervals; you should always be able to restore the database whenever required.

What are the WordPress Backup Rules to Follow?

WordPress backup is not as simple or easy as it sounds. You need to be equipped with a few do’s and don’ts in order to have a secure database. Here are some ideas:

• Upgrades

Before making any upgrade to your WordPress site, make sure that you have taken the backup of all the data.

• Backup Schedule

You could adjust the backup schedule taking into consideration the upgrade plans and blogging frequency.

• Multiple Backups

Backups are meant to keep your data secure. Hence, you should have at least 3 backups stored in your computer, external hard disk and a DVD perhaps.

• Manual Backup

Maintain two copies of your backup for those worst moments when even your original backup seems to be not working. Having one more copy of backup would serve as savior then!

Now that you are fully equipped and know about backups inside-out, let’s explore a few plugins that would help you in backing up your site flawlessly:

The Best WordPress Backup Plugins:

1. WP Time Capsule

WP times Capsule is a free backup plugin that backs up your WordPress website daily to Dropbox, Amazon S3 or Google Drive.

Features:

• Capable of keeping a backup of the files in which particular changes have been made, instead of storing the entire site every time.
• The data is stored in the cloud storage applications like Dropbox.
• Restores data based on revision history

Plugin rating: 4.5/5
Price: Free

2. Backup Guard

This is one of the easy to use WordPress backup plugin and aims to simplify and backup and restore process.

Features:

• Facilitates unlimited backup.
• Unlimited restores.
• Cancellation of the backup process when it is still not complete.
• Customized backups allow the user to choose specific folders for keeping a backup.
• One-click backup of data indicating a quick process.

Plugin rating: 4.1/5
Price: Free for Starters, $14.95 for Personal, $34.95 for Business, $94.95 for Developers

3. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy claims to have protected more than half a million WordPress websites since 2010 with its easy to backup, restore and move feature.

Features:

• Facilitates a full site backup.
• Backups can be scheduled based on the user’s convenience.
• Backup files and data can be stored in an offsite location.
• Easy restore process with ImportBuddy.
• Email notifications for backup procedures.

Plugin rating: 3/5
Price: Starting from $80

4. WordPress Backup to Dropbox

As the name suggests, WordPress Backup to Dropbox would automatically upload the backup of your WordPress website to Dropbox on a regular basis.

Features:

• Customizes backups by allowing you to choose specific files for storage.
• Store your backup in Dropbox, in convenient locations.
• Quick and easy install.
• Sleek and simple design to help navigation.

Plugin ratings: 3.7/5
Price: Free

5. MyRepono

MyRepono is another backup plugin that uses automated restoring tools to recover your files.

Features:

• Data and files on the backup are encrypted and stored securely with 256-Bit encryption.
• Compressed backup files, to sizes 10% of the original.
• Unlimited backups facilitated by a single account.
• Friendly technical support for any issue.

Plugin rating: 4.1/5
Price: Starting $0.02 USD per GB stored per day

6. Duplicator

Duplicator helps you in backing up your site instantaneously or you can schedule it for a later date.

Features:

• Clones a site from different locations.
• Scheduled backups based on your convenience.
• Large database support.
• Email notifications to keep the users updated.
• Easy backup and restore processes.

Plugin rating: 4.9/5
Price: Starting from $39

7. BlogVault

BlogVault is a WordPress backup service used by more than 85,000 WordPress websites. It automatically backups your website once any new changes are introduced on its own servers or on Amazon S3.

Features:

• Facilitates regular and automatic backups.
• Backup includes individual files and database.
• Facilitates easy restore from backed up files and database.
• Simple and easy dashboard for smoother navigation.
• Backups are made secure by encryption.
• Backup is done at cloud storage applications like Dropbox.

Plugin rating: 4.3/5
Price: Starting from $9 per month

8. UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is another backup plugin that is known for its easy to use interface and security.

Features:

• The backup data can be stored on different platforms like UpdraftPlus Vault, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, and the likes
• Sites and pages can be duplicated for different locations.
• Large files from large sites can be backed up by distributing the data in different archives
• Easy to use dashboards for remotely controlling the backup database

Plugin rating: 4.9/5
Price: Free

9. BackWPup

BackWPup comes with an array of specialties that makes it one of the most trusted plugins. It can backup your website to Microsoft azure or to Amazon S3.

Features:

• Allows complete backup of all the files and data
• Automatic backups can be scheduled whenever required
• WordPress XML Export
• Backup database and logs can be tracked via email
• Backup formats include zip, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, etc.
• Backup archives can be administered externally

Plugin rating: 4/5
Price: Starting $56.25 per year

10. WP Clone

This plugin helps you by copying or cloning your WordPress website to another domain or server.

Features:

• Keeps a backup and restores only the user content instead of storing the entire system files.
• From the host’s HTTP connection, the plugin can find the site backup details.
• Fastest backup procedures.
• The users can make copies of the site for developmental purposes.

Plugin rating: 4.2/5
Price: Free

11. WP-DB-Backup

If you are looking to back up the tables of your database, this is the plugin to choose.

Features:

• It is free for starters.
• Allows you to easily backup your core database tables.
• Schedules database backups.
• Restores backup both through phpMyAdmin and manually

Plugin Rating: 4.6/5
Price: Free

12. VaultPress

In addition to providing automated backups, VaultPress further conducts daily security scans on your website, thus making sure that your website is safe throughout.

Features:

• Developed by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress
• Provides both real-time and daily syncing to ensure that the backup of the latest version is available.
• Performs security scans on your website from time to time
• Automatically restores your website.

Price: Basic plan starts at $9 per month while premium is available for $29 per month.

In Nutshell

Backing up your website undoubtedly is of grave importance. Disaster won’t issue a second warning before happening to you. It always pays to be proactive. Choose the right plugin which can do the job for you without compromising your security and integrity.

Avoid procrastinating the task simply because you are having trouble in backing and restoring data. Seek the help of a professional WordPress developer who will do it for you, without keeping your website’s data at stake.

Are you already playing your card right and making use of backup plugins? Which plugins do you use? Let us know in the comments.