The good news for WordPress users, is that along with automated backups provided by your website hosting company and the option to download a copy of your site via FTP, you also have a number of excellent plugins available to do the job for you.
Below, I run down just five of the best free and premium WordPress backup plugins currently available.
VaultPress
One of the most widely-used backup plugins available with over 25,000+ installs over its five year lifespan, VaultPress is the go-to tool of choice for many leading WordPress experts.
Though VaultPress is a premium plugin, it does come with a three-month trial period, after which, the investment is well worth it thanks to its advanced features, which include daily security scans, the ability to fix up threats in a single click, anti-spam tools and site stats.
Backups are done in real-time and can be downloaded to your hard drive or uploaded to a cloud storage solution.
UpDraftPlus
Though not quite as sleek nor well laid out as VaultPress, UpDraftPlus still does an impressive job in creating scheduled WordPress backups, and is the most actively used free plugin of its type.
UpDraftPlus offers the ability to create separate backups of your WordPress databases, files, and themes, and do either download them to your hard drive or send them to a number of cloud storage solutions including:
- DropBox
- Google Drive or Cloud Storage
- Microsoft OneDrive
- DropBox
- Amazon S3
And numerous others.
If you opt for the paid version, you can automate and restore backups, and even use backups created with other plugins. The premium version also includes file encryption, which is always useful for added security, though even with just the free version, you’ll have plenty of features at your disposal to create full backups whenever you need them.
BackWPup
Boasting over 400,000 downloads, BackWPup is a powerful free plugin that creates a single archived file of all your files, extensions and databases, with the option to use .zip or .tar.
Again, backups can be downloaded or sent to services including:
- Dropbox
- Microsoft Azure
- Rackspace Cloud
Or an FTP server.
If you upgrade to the premium version, you can also store your backups on Google Drive and Amazon Glacier.
Much as with Vaultpress, BackWPup scans your database for errors and vulnerabilities and provides simple-yet-effective repair solutions.
BackupWordPress
Another well-used plugin with over 200,000 active installations at time of writing, Backup Press-like many of the tools on this list- comes with both a free and paid for Pro version.
One of the easiest tools to setup that I’ve personally used, the free version does a great job of scheduling automated backups, and provides the option of having each one emailed to you.
I’ve found you can get by quite happily with just this and the option to download backups from your site, though if you’re looking to store them on a cloud hosting platform, you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version.
BackUpBuddy
Possibly one of the best paid-for backup plugins available for WordPress, Backup Buddy does all the things you’d expect and a few more besides.
Scheduling automated backups is straight forward, and comes with a number of options for storing your files. As with most backup tools, you can download them straight to your computer, or upload them to a number of different cloud platforms including:
- Dropbox
- Rackspace Cloud
- Amazon S3
There’s even the option to backup to your own FTP server. Like BackupWordPress, you can also have backed-up files emailed directly to you. Yet where this one comes into its own is with the inclusion of 1GB storage on its own cloud platform, Stash. This is a particularly good option if you want a quality backup tool without having to pay extra for remote storage.