Backup Recommendations for WordPress

The single most important plugin that you can install in your WordPress website is a backup solution. While your hosting plan may be keeping a snapshot of your site going back 24 hours or so, WordPress relies so heavily on the database component, your backup should have a full database capture and restore specific to WordPress.

In this case, I recommend using a premium plugin. Believe me, I hate spending money where I don’t have to, and website expenses can add up!  WordPress has so many great plugins that are free, but this is one place where you want to make sure you are covered and supported. Also, the benefit of the premium plugins is if you do need to do a restore, they will help you, where the free options create the backup files, but leave the restore up to you.

Below please find my backup recommendations for WordPress, two are premium plugins and one is free with a pro option.

Vaultpress

Vaultpress is created and maintained by automattic. Automattic is the for-profit corporation that runs wordpress.com and was founded by Matt Mullenweg who created WordPress. These guys (and girls!) are core contributors to every wordpress.org release. They know the program inside & out. For that reason, they are poised to provide the best backup.

Also, they are very reasonably priced. For most WordPress websites, including photographers and other creative professionals who blog only once a week, the lite option is enough, and at $55/year you can’t go wrong. The basic option offers additional security and real time backup, but if price is a concern, the lite should be everything you need.

Backup Buddy

Another premium plugin, they come very highly recommended by the WordPress and web development community. They are a bit more expensive than Vaultpress, but a great alternative. I have not used them personally, but know many people who have, and feel comfortable offering them an an alternative.

BackWPup

This is the free plugin that I have used. The positive side is that it is free and it gives you the ability to schedule backups automatically both via email and into Dropbox, which is a nice feature. The downside is that if your site does get hacked or go down, you will need to do the work (or pay a developer) to reconstruct your site from the backup files. Also, I have found that this plugin works better with newer sites. More established sites with larger databases tend to have problems creating the first backup. They recently added a pro option, which could take away from the free version in terms of support and updating, but for now, it has worked for me as a good alternative.

These are just a few of the plethora of backup options available. As you can see, I prefer Vaultpress and use it on my own sites, but every business and website have different needs and options, which is why so many are available.

Good luck finding the right one for you!