There’s no disagreement on the importance of backing up your WordPress site.
Whether you’re a blogger, auto repair shop owner, or selling merchandise on an ecommerce site, backing up your site is essential.
It’s one of the most important steps in keeping your site secure.
When something goes wrong on your site, perhaps the web host server crashes and your files are lost. Or your site was hacked.
Or somehow a newly installed plugin or theme broke your site, you want the insurance of knowing you can restore a full working version of your site back to the way it was before the problem happened.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of WordPress backup solutions available.
You’ll find free and premium plugins as well as online services that will back up your files, database, or entire WordPress installation.
Heck, my search on Google this morning for “WordPress backup solution” served over 784,000 results.
And your web host may offer to back up your site, depending on your web hosting plan.
WordPress Backup Options
When you consider which backup plugin or service to use for your website, you want to identify your requirements.
Depending on your requirements, budget, and technical skill, you’ll find a range of options.
For example: do you want to back up to a specific online cloud platform, like Amazon S3, Dropbox, or Google Drive?
Do you want the option for an automatic restore with one click? Or will you have to manually restore your site? That requires a certain amount of technical skill, and time.
Almost all backup solutions offer scheduled daily, weekly, or monthly backup options to external sites.
Many services provide the ability to download backups to store locally on a hard drive. I often recommend to my clients to keep site backups offsite for security.
WordPress Plugin and Service Backup Features
Based on my WordPress backup research this week, I found solutions that:
- Back up the database
- Back up the database and files in your themes, plugins, and uploads folder
- Back up the database and files in your themes, plugins, and uploads folder and offer services to autorestore your site
- Back up the entire WordPress site, including WordPress core files
- Back up the entire WordPress site and offer services to autorestore your site
- Back up the entire WordPress site, offer services to autorestore your site, provide migration services to a new domain name
Phew!
So many choices, how do you know which one is the best solution for your site?
Read the Fine Print
When you do your research on solutions, carefully read what services are offered. Here are a few tips:
- Ask specifically whether the backup service provides a database backup, file backup, or full working version backup of your site.
- Does the plugin or service offer backup to external cloud services?
- Find out if there’s an automatic restore button, often called one-click restore.
- With some plugins, you may have to manually restore the site. Or install WordPress first before you can restore your site.
- Do you have the technical skills and time to manually restore or install WordPress?
As I mentioned earlier, each backup plugin and service offers a range of features. It can be easy to overlook critical features.
WordPress Backup Solutions
I’ve reviewed over a dozen different WordPress backup options over the past few years.
Two solutions stand out for me, in terms of customer support, features, ongoing development, and pricing.
VaultPress
VaultPress, now part of Jetpack, is an online service offering WordPress site backup plans with the one-click restore or migration of your site.
VaultPress offers three plans:
- Personal Plan: for small businesses, startups, and personal sites
- Jetpack Premium: Automated daily backups with unlimited storage space and 30-day backup archive
- Jetpack Business: Automated real-time backups with unlimited storage space and unlimited backup archive
Note: all Jetpack plans require you to have a WordPress.com account. This can be problematic for agencies or freelancers who maintain client sites.
ManageWP
ManageWP is a plugin and online service that offers a monthly full WordPress site backup online for free.
Or you can subscribe to their premium Backup add-on for $2/month (as of June 2020) and schedule hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups.
I’ve been a fan of ManageWP for several years.
One nice feature I like about it: all backups are stored on ManageWP servers. No need to set up a cloud account.
In addition, the premium ManageWP Backup add-on allows you to clone or migrate your site to a new site.
After You’ve Chosen a Backup Solution
Once you’ve selected a backup solution, you’ll want to document how to access that backup. You might do that with a password manager or some other method.
I met recently with a new client who had regularly scheduled site backups going to an external service, which was great.
Except no one knew the email address, username, or password for that external service, so they couldn’t access the backups.
Oops!
In Summary
Thankfully, there are many WordPress backup solutions to choose from. Make sure the backup service you choose matches your requirements for features and options.
Read the fine print about backup plugins and services so you’re not caught off-guard when your site goes down and your backup solution isn’t what you expected.
Excellent article Deborah! Really useful how you’ve broken down the decision points.
Another option I encourage site owners to consider are managed WordPress hosts. They have 1-click backup and restores along with SSL, staging and more. That’s a lot of value altogether and can be a simpler solution too.
Hi David,
Thank you! The article was prompted by some confusing information from different backup plugins and services.
You’re right, a managed WordPress host is another alternative that offers multiple features for site owners. Appreciate you sharing that information. Do you have any favorite managed WordPress hosts you recommend?