Making a backup for your WordPress website is an essential part of your website’s security.
Because you really can’t bear thinking about the website no longer working after having done an update. Or in the worst case, you could get the White screen of death.
So it is essential to make sure you have a good backup of your website.
There are different WordPress backup plugins that will help you make a backup of your website.
Website backup plugins
When you make a backup of your website, you should use a plugin which carries out backups automatically. This way you can make automatic backups every day, week or month.
You can often enter how many backups you want to store with your hosting party. This is a good idea because you don’t want to store a 100 backups yourself.
You often get a certain amount of gigabytes (GB) with your hosting package to store your website’s database and files. If you go over this amount you can no longer make backups within your hosting package.
Not all hosting parties are happy with website backup plugins. When a backup is made, this takes a lot of calculation power and takes up a lot of memory. In other words, there is a lot of data interchanging during a backup and this asks a lot from the servers. Hosting parties want you to be as economical as possible with this calculation power. Not all servers can handle it. Result: there is a chance the backup will fail as a result of a lack of calculation power.
Luckily you will get a notification when the backup was not successful.
The hosting parties often indicate that they also have an option for backup. And these are often very good because you can make a backup with just few clicks. And you often have the option to restore one of your website’s backups.
But…
Imagine something going wrong with the backup with your hosting party. Then it would be a good thing to make a good backup with a plugin yourself. This way you are in complete control!
BUT NOTE: a website consists of two parts: the database and the files. Make sure you make a backup of both! The regular WordPress website plugins will often do this, but you should check to make sure this actually happens.
Well, would you like to know more about these plugins? I will tell you which plugins are most often used and are also trustworthy.
A backup plugin I regularly use is BackWPup, a simple way to backup your website. There is a free and a paid version, but the free version will get you a long way.
First you create a task for the automatic backup (daily, weekly or monthly) and then this will, depending on your settings, backup your website at certain time: of both the database and all the files.
BackWPup also has the option to make a quick backup from just your database with the ‘backup in one click’ button.
Moreover this free version also offers the option to make a backup on your hosting party’s server, but you can also store a backup in the cloud to for example Dropbox or Google drive.
Moreover this free version also offers the option to make a backup on your hosting party’s server, but you can also store a backup in the cloud to for example Dropbox or Google drive.
The most popular WordPress backup plugin of this moment is UpdraftPlus, which has been downloaded by more than two million users. With this you do not only make a good backup, you also have the option to restore a backup when something goes wrong with your website.
UpdraftPlus offers you the option to save the backup on both your server and in the cloud.
You also have the choice to determine which files you want to save and which ones you don’t.
UpdraftPlus also has a paid version where it is possible to migrate the website from one place to another. But with the free version you already have quite a lot of options.
BlogVault is a slightly less popular WordPress backup plugin but has the advantage that the backup is made on BlogVault’s servers, which means you have no loading time on your own hosting party’s server.
This backup plugin allows you to make a daily backup and you also have the option to restore your website with an older version of the backup.
The only downside is that this plugin doesn’t have a free version and it is quite expensive in comparison to the other paid backup plugins.
Moreover this free version also offers the option to make a backup on your hosting party’s server, but you can also store a backup in the cloud to for example Dropbox or Google drive.
BackUpWordPress is a backup plugin which is entirely free and very simple to use. The downside is that you have limited options because you for example can’t make automatic backups to Dropbox or Amazon.
There used to be a paid version, but the plugin has been taken over by another party which no longer offers this option.
Duplicator in first instance meant to migrate websites, but this plugin also has the option to make a backup.
The advantage of this plugin is that it is free and combines a lot of functions. Aside from making a backup and migrating your website, you can also create a test website.
Downside is that you have to backup your website manually. This plugin doesn’t have the option to make automatic backups.
This is a backup which can’t be found in the WordPress catalogue, but it is very good. This one is by WPMU DEV, a website for WordPress developers.
The plugin can automatically place backups on your hosting party’s server, but you can also send backups to the cloud, like Dropbox or OneDrive by Microsoft.
Snapshot is a very user friendly backup plugin. I have noticed that this plugin uses a lot of calculation force and with larger backups with a lot of gigabytes it happens that the backup fails.
The advantage is, if you are a WPMU DEV member, you have the option to store backups on WPMU’s servers.
Conclusion
I often get the question which is the best WordPress backup plugin. This is not an easy question to answer, because every website has different requirements and wishes.
But there is enough choice to get a free backup plugin for your website. If you want extra options and more reliability and support, then you have to choose a paid version.
Because most free backup plugins don’t have the restore option and so they can’t restore an older (good) version of your website after it has crashed.
Also important websites, those that really can’t afford to be out of use for a longer period of time, often use a paid backup plugin.
There are more good backup plugins, like VaultPress by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. But VaultPress has the disadvantage that it is linked to JetPack. Then you need a WordPress.com account and you automatically get a complete package of plugins with it. This makes your website a lot heavier with all these added plugins.
It’s important to regularly make backups of your website and preferably automatically, so you don’t have to keep doing it manually.
