8 Best WordPress Backup Plugins To Keep Your Data Safe In 2024

Looking for the best WordPress backup plugins? You’re in the right place.

You can never be too safe when it comes to WordPress. Every new update and installation runs the risk of breaking your site. And if that happens, you want to make sure you have a backup in place so you can roll back those changes and fix it.

I tried and tested all the leading WordPress backup plugins so that you don’t have to. In this post, I’ll review and compare all of my top picks.

The best backup plugins for WordPress compared

#1 – WP STAGING

WP STAGING is the best option for most situations. It’s lightning-fast, easy to use, and has a lot of powerful features. What more could you want?

My favorite thing about WP STAGING is how fast it is. Backups take less than a minute, so you’re not waiting around forever like you are with other plugins.

That speed is largely thanks to its sophisticated backup algorithms. But it’s also due to the fact that it doesn’t do any third-party data transfers—all your backup data is stored internally, on your own servers. This has benefits for data privacy and security too.

And WP STAGING does more than backups. You can also use it to clone your WordPress website and set up staging sites for development that are completely separate from your production site. Plus, migrate your site to another server or domain with ease. 

Key features

• On-demand backup & restore. Backup and restore your WordPress website in one click, with configuration options that let you choose which database tables, files, and folders to include.
• Scheduled backups. Create backup plans to automatically backup your site at regular intervals, e.g. hourly, daily, etc.
• Cloning. Create a copy of your WordPress website in one click. Includes authentication options for staging sites and the ability to push changes to the production site. 
• Website migration. Transfer your WordPress site to another server/domain. The plugin will do all the heavy lifting for you, including automatically searching for and replacing links.
• Multisites. Clone and push multisites and convert networks to single WordPress sites.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $16/month, and get up to 50% off with yearly billing. 14-day money-back guarantee available.

Read our WP STAGING review.

#2 – BlogVault

BlogVault is an all-in-one solution that offers WordPress backups, security, malware removal, plugin management, staging, and much more in one plugin. It also has some powerful features that I like. 

Unlike WP Staging, BlogVault runs incremental backups and stores data on its own servers, rather than yours. This keeps your site running fast and reduces server costs.

One thing I particularly like about it is that it’s one of the only backup plugins I’ve tried that lets you run a test before you restore your site from a backup. 

Usually, with other plugins, you only find out a backup is broken when the restore fails. And by that point, the damage is done. This isn’t an issue with BlogVault as you can test them first.

I also really like their Emergency Connector. You can use it to restore your WordPress site even if it’s completely crashed and you can’t access the dashboard, which is a problem I’ve had before—BlogVault could have saved me a huge headache at the time.

BlogVault is a great choice for WordPress management companies too thanks to its fully white-label Agency plans. You can add clients and team members to your account, and resell backup and management services under your brand.

Key features

• Incremental backups. Backup your site manually or automatically and store your data off-site on BlogVault’s secure servers.
• Differential restores. BlogVault checks existing data when restoring your site to a backup, and only copies changes, significantly speeding up the restore process.
• Staging sites. Create a staging site to test changes before pushing them to the live version. And if anything goes wrong, restore your backup quickly from your dashboard.
• Security features. Malware scanning, WordPress firewall, bot detection, vulnerability scans, and more.
• WordPress management. Update your themes, plugins, etc from your BlogVault dashboard.
• Activity Log. Track changes to your site and debug issues to find out what went wrong.
• Site migration. Migrate your website effortlessly and let BlogVault do all the heavy lifting for you.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start at $149/year and are backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee. Get started with a 7-day free trial.

#3 – Jetpack Backup

Jetpack Backup—also known as Jetpack VaultPress—is one of the most popular backup plugins out there. It was built specifically with WooCommerce in mind, so it’s a good choice for WooCommerce stores.

Jetpack Backup backs up your data to the ultra-secure Jetpack Cloud in real-time, as you edit your site, so you don’t need to manually schedule them. 

It stores redundant backups on its globally distributed cloud network. If something breaks, you can restore your site to a previous, backed-up state, even if your host is down.

I like the fact it keeps a 30-day activity log, so if something goes wrong, you can look back and see exactly what action broke your site before you restore it. 

My main gripe is that, while its core backup and restore functionality is great, VaultPress doesn’t offer one-click staging like the other backup plugins we’ve looked at above.

Key features

• Real-time cloud backups. Automatically back up your site to Jetpack’s secure cloud servers in real-time.
• Hassle-free restores. Restore your site from a backup in a few clicks, even when your host is down.
• Activity log. Keep tabs on every change made to your website so you can see what went wrong in the event of a crash.
• Security bundle. Get the wider Jetpack Security plugin for more features including comment/form spam protection, firewall, malware scanning, etc.
• WooCommerce backups. Backup and restore your WooCommerce website including all orders, products, and tables while protecting your customer data.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $9.95/month, billed yearly. Get 50% off your first year. Plans are backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee.

#4 – Solid Backups

Solid Backups—by SolidWP—is another reliable offsite backup plugin for WordPress. It’s pretty fast even for larger WordPress sites, and I like how flexible it is. 

You can choose exactly what you want to backup—e.g. the whole database and file system, or just selected files, folders, and tables—and when with custom schedules and automated backups.

Plus, you also get to choose which cloud storage you want to use: Amazon S3, Dropbox, or OneDrive.

That same flexibility applies when you’re restoring your site too. If you want, you have the option of selectively restoring individual files, which comes in handy if you don’t want to revert every change and instead just fix whatever is broken. 

Alternatively, you can just restore your whole site and roll back everything in one click.

There aren’t many other features outside of that backup and restore functionality in the core plugin. But if you buy the whole Solid Suite, you also get access to lots of other site management and security features that you might find useful.

Key features

• WordPress backups. Archive your entire WordPress site or just specified files, folders, and database tables.
• Secure storage. Send your encrypted backup files to a secure location through S.FTP, email, or your preferred cloud storage platform.
• Selective restore. View the context of any text-based files in your backup archives and roll back individual files to their original location, or your entire database.
• Custom schedules. Set up custom backup schedules to automate the process.
• Site migrations. Move your site to a new location, or build a new site from your backup archives.
• Solid Suite. Get access to security and maintenance features including a firewall, brute force protection, vulnerability scanning, and more with the wider Solid Suite.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $99/year. Get started risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#5 – UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus has one of the best free backup plugins I’ve tried. You get all the essentials without spending a penny but have the option to upgrade to premium for advanced features.

UpdraftPlus’s reputation speaks for itself. With over 3 million active installations across WordPress and an average rating of 4.8 out of 5, it’s a user favorite.

Part of the reason for that is, of course, that it offers a generous free version. You can backup your site manually or schedule backups at recurring intervals (e.g. 2 hours, 4 hours, daily, weekly, etc.), and restore, clone, or migrate your site directly from the WP control panel.

The main drawback of the free version is that you can’t set a specific time (e.g. 3 AM) for backups, which would be better as then you can run them at low traffic times to conserve server resources during peak times. However, you can do that if you upgrade to premium.

Premium also gets you extra features like more remote storage options, automatic backups before WP or plugin updates, incremental backups (saving server resources), multisite compatibility, the option to anonymize backup data, and more.

Key features

• Manual backups. Back up your site manually at any time and choose which files/folders to include
• Scheduled backups. Automatically back up your site at set intervals, such as every 2 hours or each day.
• Restore. Restore your backups directly from inside the WordPress control panel.
• Migration. Clone or migrate your site in minutes from the dashboard.
• Premium features. Upgrade to premium to unlock incremental backups, retention rules, custom scheduling, more remote storage locations, detailed reports, and more features.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free version available. Paid plans start from $70/year

#6 – Sucuri Website Backups

Sucuri Website Backups is an add-on for the wider Sucuri security platform—a complete security solution that includes website monitoring, protection and firewall, backups, malware/hack cleanup and removal, optimizations, and more.

As you’d expect from a website security company, Sucuri Website Backups gets top marks for security. 

They take lots of precautions to keep your backed-up website files and databases safe. And everything is stored off-site in Sucuri’s safe cloud infrastructure to keep them out of reach of hackers. 

It’s super easy to configure. You’ll just need to add your site to your account and make a few DNS tweaks. Then customize the platform to work in the way you want.

From there, you can choose to add backups to your account (they’re a paid add-on). Then, you can run a full initial backup of your whole site. And from there, automate regular backups according to your custom schedule.

What’s cool is that from there onwards, it does incremental backups. That means that, instead of fully backing up your whole site every day, it only copies files and databases that have been modified. The result is less server load on your end and a faster website.

I also like that Sucuri retains your backups for 90 days, so if something breaks, you can roll back all the way up to 3 months. That’s longer than most.

My main issue with Sucuri, though, is that it’s expensive. You have to subscribe to Sucuri’s Platform plan first—which is expensive for small site owners, and includes a lot of features you might not need—and only then is Website Backups available as a paid add-on. 

You end up paying twice as much as most other backup plugins, so it’s probably only going to be worth it if you also want access to Sucuri’s website security and optimization features.

But if you want to keep your site secure or your site has been hacked, the fee for Sucuri’s paid plans are easy to justify. 

Key features

• Full site backups. Back up your complete WordPress file system over FTP/SFTP.
• Off-site storage. Website files and databases are securely stored in Sucuri’s cloud infrastructure.
• Automatic schedule. Set your own schedule for a hands-off, set-it-and-forget-it backup solution.
• Incremental backups. Only store the latest changes to your website to reduce server load.
• 90-day retention. Restore your site to any backup saved over the last 90 days.
• Security features. Get access to Sucuri’s robust site protection platform with malware and hack detection and removal, website application firewall (WAF), blocklist monitoring and removal, advanced DDoS mitigation, CDN speed enhancement, and much more.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Sucuri Platform plans start from $199.99/year, and Website Backups is available as a paid add-on for $5/month. Get started with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

#7 – Duplicator

Duplicator is another popular WordPress backup and migration plugin. It’s very user-friendly and offers a good balance between features and affordability.

With Duplicator, you can run backups manually or automatically according to your preferred schedule. Configuration is a breeze—it only took me a couple of minutes to get it installed and set up.

Files can be backed up to your choice of cloud storage site, e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. And archive files are protected and secured with AES-256 encryption.

I like how easy it is to restore your website in the event of a problem. It only takes one click—just select the Recovery Point and Duplicator will rollback the system to a working state in minutes.

If you plan on moving your site to a new domain, the Migration Wizard makes it easy. It takes a process that would usually take hours and condenses it into a couple of minutes, with no code or technical knowledge necessary.

Key features

• Scheduled backups. Automate your backup schedule to ensure you back up your site data regularly.
• Cloud storage. Store your backups on Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, FTP, and more cloud storage sites.
• 1-click restores. Roll back your system to a recovery point in one click.
• Migration. Use the WordPress Migration Wizard to transfer your website in two simple steps.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $99/year and get 50% off your first year. A 14-day money-back guarantee is available.

#8 – BackWPup

BackWPup is another popular free backup plugin that does a good job of the basics.

Last year, it probably wouldn’t have made the cut on this list as previously, it would only let you save backups on the free version—you couldn’t restore them without upgrading, which I didn’t like.

Fortunately, they’ve since moved the restore option to the free version, so it’s now up there with UpdraftPlus as one of the best free-to-use backup plugins. I just hope they don’t move it back to premium again in the future.

I like that BackWPUp lets you schedule backups at set times. And I appreciate how flexible it is when it comes to configuration. 

Backups can be stored locally on your own webspace or network or moved over to cloud sites like Dropbox, Google Drive, Azure, etc. 

Key features

• Complete WordPress backups. Create a backup copy of your entire WordPress site in minutes then store your archives locally or export to cloud sites.
• Automatic schedules. Schedule your backups to automatically run every day, week, month, etc.
• Restores. Restore your site to an earlier backup stage from the plugin dashboard.
• Site migration. Migrate your website to a new domain quickly and easily.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free version available. Paid plans start from $69/year.

Final thoughts

Those are my top picks for the best WordPress backup plugins this year.

Any of these plugins will be able to back up your website files safely and reliably. The best choice for you will depend on the specific features you need, whether you want to run backups offsite or onsite, and your budget.

Keep in mind also that some web hosts will do your site backups for you automatically so you don’t even need a plugin. Check out our roundup of the best Managed WordPress hosting for options.

If you’re just starting out with WordPress, see our guide on how to start a WordPress blog here. You might also find these WordPress statistics interesting.

And if you’re interested in selling subscription memberships through your WP site, don’t miss our roundup of the best WordPress membership plugins.

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