5 Best WordPress Backup Plugins

Here’s an activity for you. Sit down, close your eyes, and reach upon a ballpark figure of the number of hours you have invested in your website. Content creation, page designs, comment moderation, images, SEO – everything. We’re the number is staggering. Now, imagine logging in to your WordPress account, and seeing a blank page instead of your website. Sounds shocking alright, but this happens more often than you’d assume.

Here are some of the several reasons that can cause your WordPress website’s data to disappear:-

• A malware attack could delete your data.
• Your hosting payment might not go through, and the host could just delete your data.
• The data center hosting the servers where your WordPress website data is kept could be struck by a natural calamity.
• Buggy code could take the entire website down, and you will not be able to identify it soon enough.
• The web host accidently deletes your website data.

Now, that’s a scary reality every WordPress website owner needs to be prepared for. The solution – automated backups provided by your web hosting service, and backup plugins. However, there’s more to these than meets the eye.

5 Top Rated WordPress Backup Plugins

Most web hosting services only create partial backups of your website, and somewhere in the terms and conditions, will have a fine line placing the sole responsibility of data on you. Also, most WordPress plugins out there are guilty of only creating backup of the database, leaving behind theme customizations and the awesome images you created so painstakingly.
The solution – these 5 top rated WordPress backup plugins.

BackupBuddy

This premium backup plugin comes to you from iThemes, and does a lot more than setting automatic backup schedules for your WordPress data. With BackupBuddy, you can define what all you want backed up, right from the database to your uploaded files. The kind of granular control it offers is amazing, letting you exclude tables and files from the backup scope. Consider an arrangement where you set up daily database backup, and bi-monthly media backup – such arrangements balance the load on the website and offer sufficient security.

Additional features include anti-malware scanning, full database scans, and mass text replacement in database (useful for developers). BackupBuddy is all you need to create backup for your WordPress website database, plugins, themes, media content, and everything worth archiving. The interface is user friendly; you can set it up quickly. Then, you can set up multiple automated backups with different settings. The backups can be saved to BackupBuddy Stash (supplementary service with free 1 GB space), Dropbox, Rackspace, FTP, Amazon SE, or even your email account.

BackWPUp

Looking for a free backup plugin for WordPress? BackWPUp is right up your alley. It is user friendly, easy to understand, highly automatic in its operations, and above all, available for free. Of course, there’s a more powerful BackWPUp Pro version available, with a lot more features to create automatic backups and secure your WordPress website in general. The premium version even comes with functionalities to scan, repair, and optimize your WordPress website database.The backup capabilities of this tool include plugin and theme backups as well. You can store the backup data in Amazon S3, Google Drive, your website directory, DropBox, RackSpace Cloud, among other options.

Daily and weekly backup creation wizard helps beginners secure their WordPress website’s data for the future. You can even choose the format in which you want the backup data to be saved. Then, there is a restoration wizard that will hand hold you in the scenario where you want to use the backed up data to restore your WordPress website to a last known stable state. The database scanning and repair tool also adds a lot more functionality to the tool from a security point of view . The pro version of BackWPUp comes with customer support.

MyRepono

MyRepono is not a dedicated WordPress backup tool, but with its WordPress add-on, it does surface as a great pick. This tool helps you backup anything, right from the database to your WP themes and plugins. MyReponi can be set up in a jiffy, and then you can automate backups by scheduling tasks in the tool.

You can specify details such as how many backups to keep in storage, which tables and databases to include, how often to carry the backups out, etc. Once you install the WordPress plugin for MyRepono, you can control everything from the MyRepono website. Restoring the entire website or specific files is equally simple and easy.

What’s more, MyRepono keeps your backup data secure using AES encryption and 256 bit encryption. Also, automatic compression of backup helps you minimize the storage space it takes. Because it’s a web based tool, you can manage the backup and restore functions even if you can’t connect to your WordPress website. MyRepono also offers technical support to help you with any technical queries you might have.

VaultPress

VaultPress has been created by Automattic, the team that created WordPress. This backup and security tool is right up there in any list of premium backup solutions for WordPress. If you use Jetpack on your WordPress website, you might notice being offered VaultPress as a premium option.

Although you can get the plugin for free from WordPress.org, you will need to subscribe to a premium plan to make it work. There are three plans – Lite, Basic, and Premium.

Lite: Automatic daily backups for one WordPress website, with 30 day archiving. Plus, there’s an automatic restoration tool.

Basic: You get full backup archive and real time backups apart from Lite plan’s features.

Premium: Adding on to the Basic plan, Premium offers priority support and routine security scans.

Among the most useful features of VaultPress is the daily backup option. Also, storage is included in the premium plans. You can either use the dashboard on your WordPress website (via VaultPress plugin), or the service website to manage everything about its settings. For newbies, it is always helpful to have customer support in backup and restoration, and VaultPress offers this service. Also, because it comes with malware detection, threat protection, and vulnerable code issues, apart from single click repairs (in the Premium plan), it is a lot more than just a backup facility.

For anybody looking for a premium backup plugin and a premium security plugin, VaultPress is a great 2-in-1 option. Also, it comes with 30 day money back, so give it a shot.

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus This highly rated WordPress backup plugin has everything you need to keep your website backed up and secure. You can set up site-wide backups, or choose to back up specific database tables, media files, etc. Even for the restoration, you can choose specific files, as well as complete website restoration. The kind of flexibility you get in setting up automated schedules for backups is awesome. The backed up data can be stored on Rackspace Cloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3, Google Drive, SFTP, and WebDAV, among several other storage services.

UpdraftPlus encrypts your database backups for complete security. You can even use backups made from other plugins to restore content; that makes it easy for anybody to switch to UpdraftPlus. The plugin is available translated in 16 languages already, which is a testimony to its popularity. The premium version comes with customer support.