WordPress-Setting-Up-tipsThe key for having a great life with your website is having a good quality WordPress backup. WordPress is one of the most reliable CMSs (content management system) available, with 100s of hours of testing behind it, but every system needs redundancy.

Unfortunately, when something goes wrong, it can be a real bear to fix the problem if you don’t have an up to date, easily recoverable backup of the physical files as well as the database.

Many people still just rely on backups by their hosting provider. This is not completely reliable; there is a reason why your hosting provider is only charging you $3.00 month to host your website!

Hosting providers are often the target of attacks and it’s possible their WordPress backup might not be up to date. I have been in the unfortunate situation of having to tell a client that the last backup that their hosting can provide is three to six months old and customer orders or other great content is basically totally lost!

See here now– you don’t really want to be one of these people, do you? So what can you do to protect yourself from this situation and what are the best options?

One of the other key factors you have to consider is what your time is worth to you and your business. To get an insight into this here’s a great article from Pat Flynn:

So THIS is What Happens When Your Server Goes Down for a Week.”

This article provides some excellent insights even though most people don’t have thousands of nvisitors hitting their website every week. The basic principles still apply to anyone making money from their website. It’s important not to rely totally on cheap hosting providers when it comes to backup systems.

So let’s look at what solutions are out there in the WordPress world to help you have a secure and reliable backup not only of your physical files but of your central database which is the core of WordPress.

The key for having a great life with WordPress is having a good quality backup. WordPress is one of the most reliable CMSs (content management system) available, with 100s of hours of testing behind it, but every system needs redundancy. Unfortunately, when something goes wrong, it can be a real bear to fix the problem if you don’t have an up to date, easily recoverable backup of the physical files as well as the database. Many people still just rely on backups by their hosting provider. This is not completely reliable; there is a reason why your hosting provider is only charging you $3.00 month to host your website!

Hosting providers are often the target of attacks and it’s possible their backups might not be up to date. I have been in the unfortunate situation of having to tell a client that the last backup that their hosting can provide is three to six months old and customer orders or other great content is basically totally lost! See here now– you don’t really want to be one of these people, do you? So what can you do to protect yourself from this situation and what are the best options? One of the other key factors you have to consider is what your time is worth to you and your business.

To get an insight into this here’s a great article from Pat Flynn: “So THIS is What Happens When Your Server Goes Down for a Week.” This article provides some excellent insights even though most people don’t have thousands of n visitors hitting their website every week. The basic principles still apply to anyone making money from their website. It’s important not to rely totally on cheap hosting providers when it comes to backup systems.

So let’s look at what solutions are out there in the WordPress world to help you have a secure and reliable backup not only of your physical files but of your central database which is the core of WordPress.

WordPress Backup Plugins and Services: Free and Premium Solutions WordPress Backup Plugins

1 – BackupBuddy

Publisher: ithemes

Version Type: Pro only

Price: From $80 for a single site; one year support basic license

Rating 5 stars (great product but can be expensive)

Let’s start with one of the most popular and oldest backup plugin solutions on the market BackupBuddy . This plugin will allow you to backup to almost all the leading cloud storage solutions available– Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, FTP, and Stash (their cloud service). Also, BackupBuddy provides 1GB of cloud storage to store your backups. I’ve used this plugin and highly recommend it.

However, it can become a quite expensive plugin solution if you go with one of the top license solutions at $150 per year for unlimited websites. A number of sophisticated options allow you to move a website to a whole new hosting solution with a couple of clicks. This plugin is supported and developed by one of the most respected WordPress companies iThemes and has a very clear interface that makes it pretty easy to use.

2 – BackWPup

Publisher: MarketPress

Version Type: Free and Pro versions

Price: From $75 for a one site, one year support, basic license.

Rating: 4 Stars (great product but not the best solution)

This is another popular solution, which unlike iThemes, has a free version, downloadable from WordPress.org. The free version has over 300K+ active installs. Basically, the free version only lets you do manual backups to external storage solutions like DropBox. You have to buy the pro version if you want to schedule backups.

I have used this plugin myself in the past with mixed success and was not impressed with the support, either. Still, that was 18 months ago… It will backup to all the normal cloud storage providers: Email, S3 (Amazon, Google Storage, Hosteurope…), Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP-Server, SugarSync, Amazon and Glacier. The other options that this plugin offers aren’t as sophisticated as BackupBuddy. However, one selling point of this plugin is that supports WordPress Multisite.

3 – BackUpWordPress

Publisher: Human Made Limited & Friends

Version type: Free and Pro version

Price: Single site $22 or $99 for developer multi-site license

Star Rating: 3 Stars

With 200k+ active installs, it’s one of the most popular free solutions on WordPress.org. With the pro version you get support and the ability to backup to all the leading cloud storage providers. Neither the free nor the pro have the ability to move a website to a whole new hosting solution easily. The pro version is good value but it is missing some key sophisticated option elements.

4 – UpdraftPlus

Publisher: Simba Hosting Limited, UK

Version type: Free and Pro version

Price: $75 to $145 per license type

Star Rating: 5 Stars (the interface is a mess but it works fantastic)

I use this plugin myself and highly recommend it. It is not cheap if you buy the pro version. However, the free version is rich featured and has 400k+ active installs. It is one of the highest-ranking backup plugins on wordpress.org (ranks in the top 40 out of 30,000 WordPress plugins for quality on rankwp.com – last checked Sep 2014). The free version will backup to all the leading cloud storage providers and also the free version does scheduled backups! I have the full developer license. Also, the support is just fantastic!

The developer is very approachable and has even answered questions during the weekend! It’s a solid solution that has helped me out on a number of occasions. There is just one problem with the plugin… the interface is a “dog’s dinner”! I mean it’s a real mess. I use it regularly and I still get lost trying to find the right button!

5 – WP-DB-Backup

Publisher: Austin Matzko (quite an amazing WordPress developer)

Version type: Free

Price: Free

Star Rating: 3 Stars (great free plugin but its options are basic)

This plugin is great, except that it only backs up your database. This is not a problem as long as you can remember to do a physical backup of your files using FTP. For this reason, I can’t really recommend it to beginners. It does have 500k+ active installs!

WordPress Backup Services

1 – VaultPress

Publisher: Automattic

Version type: Paid Service

Price: $299 per year to $29 per month per website.This is the full service price; they do offer a light version

StarRating: 5 Stars

Pretty pricey for the full Security Bundle. Still, in the near future, this is the one I will go to for my SAS product, Mail-Right. It is just so easy to use and has a fantastic backend interface.

2 – CodeGuard

Publisher: CodeGuard

Version type: Paid Service

Price: From $5 – $239 per month

Star Rating: 5 Stars

I have used CodeGuard and it a great service. Their Ronin product offers the best value for money at $39 per month — much affordable than VaultPress. At this level you can back up 12 websites, and you get almost all the features of the higher-level products that CodeGuard offers. CodeGuard is based in the U.S.

3 – BlogVault

Publisher: BlogVault

Version type: Paid Service

Price: From $19 – $39 per month per website or Unlimited plans or Unlimited plans starting at $99 per month.

Star Rating: Stars? I never heard of these people before I did some online research.

I can’t say what their service is like and their pricing structures seem quite complicated. They are based in India.

Hybrid Backup Service

1 – ManageWP

Publisher: ManageWP

Version type: Paid Service

Price: From $2.40 – $4.80 per website per month.

Star Rating: 5 Stars

ManageWP is much more than a backup and restore service– it offers a host of additional benefits. It offers a pricing module that is based on how many websites you have managed by ManageWP. This system is worth considering if you are looking for a great backup and management system. ManageWP is based in Norfolk, VA, USA.

2 – CMS Commander

Publisher: CMS Commander / Thomas Hoefter

Version type: Paid Service

Price: From $8.00 per month for 10 websites to $30 for 50 websites per month.

Star Rating: 5 Stars

CMS Commander looks like amazing value for money and if you have a lot of websites to maintain and backup– this is a service you should consider seriously. My only concern is that they don’t make it that clear where they are based. I think because of the background of the key developer, they are probably are based in Germany.

Services that do all this for you!

All the plugins and services we have looked at so far you have to do all the backup and, if necessary, the recovery. However, there are WordPress companies that specialize in doing all this for you. Here a list of leading providers that I’m happy to recommend to our audience:

WP Site Care Prices: from $29 per month to $239

WP VALET Prices on request

WP-Butler You basically build your own custom price using WP-Butler pricing table

WP-UPKEEP Price from $70 to $250 per month

WP-Tonic From $49.99 to 89.99 per month Yes! I run maintenance and updating service for WordPress! Naturally, I want to show you that my service is the best value!

Summary

We’ve covered a load of stuff here– have we not? You have a wide spectrum of choices when it comes to backup and recovery for WordPress.

DIY Plugins

1 – BackupBuddy

2 – UpdraftPlus

For backup and hyped services

1 – ManageWP

2 – CMS Commander

3 – VaultPress

Full service solution

I totally excuse myself from this because I’m totally biased! (Hint: WP Tonic).

048 WP-Tonic: 15 Of The Best WordPress Backup Plugins and Services In 2015 was last modified: by