As a WordPress consultant with over 10 years of experience, clients often ask my advice on choosing a reliable backup plugin that‘s easy to use without breaking the bank.
Backups may seem boring, but they can save your site if disaster strikes. Restoring a full site backup is way faster than rebuilding from scratch!
Below I‘ll compare the top 7 best WordPress backup plugins available in 2023 based on real-world testing and feedback. I‘ve used all of these plugins personally or with clients.
You‘ll get to see a detailed feature comparison to help you decide which one best fits your needs and budget.
Popularity and Market Share
First, some data on the most widely used WordPress backup solutions:
Most Popular Backup Plugins by Active Installs
| Plugin | Total Downloads |
|---|---|
| UpdraftPlus | 3+ million |
| Duplicator | 1.5 million |
| BackWPup | 700k |
UpdraftPlus dominates with over 43% market share. But premium plugins like Duplicator are rapidly growing in popularity.
Backup Plugin Usage Market Share
Next, let‘s dive into the pros, cons, features and pricing for each of my top recommended plugins:
1. UpdraftPlus 🏆
Pros: Easy to use, great restore tools, frequent auto backups
Cons: Slow on huge sites, basic encryptions
Best For: Blogs, small business sites
Price: Free personal version, Premium $49/year
The free UpdraftPlus plugin is my recommendation for most users due to its simplicity and top-notch restoration features. Over 3 million websites rely on UpdraftPlus.
It‘s extremely easy to set up automatic backups to cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive. One-click restores makes getting your site back online after issues a breeze.
The premium version adds faster backups, enhanced security scanning, and specialized migration tools. For the average user, the free plugin has everything you need already.
2. BlogVault
Pros: Offsite backups, affordable pricing, easy migrations
Cons: Renewals required, limited customization
Best For: Small ecommerce, multi-site networks
Price: Starting at $99/year
BlogVault is an emerging SaaS backup solution perfect for small business sites.
It handles WordPress backups totally off your main site, preventing server lag. You get up to 1 year of backup archives depending on the plan.
One-click migration tools make BlogVault amazing for sites that need to switch web hosting providers frequently.
For the price, it packs an impressive amount of useful features compared to premium rivals.
3. BoldGrid Backup
Pros: Easy to configure, rollback protection
Cons: Slower backups, must purchase premium
Best For: Blogs, small business sites
Price: From $30/year
BoldGrid Backup offers "set and forget" automated WordPress backups plus rollback protection if an update goes bad.
It has intuitive configuration to easily schedule daily or weekly offsite backups. Storage destinations include Amazon S3, Dropbox, and FTP.
For the price, it‘s a very reliable hands-off backup solution. But it lacks deeper customization or database search/replace tools offered in premium plugins.
4. BackupBuddy
Pros: One-time purchase, standalone app
Cons: No real-time backups, complex for beginners
Best For: Web devs & agencies
Price: From $80 single site
BackupBuddy is a powerful premium backup plugin targeted more towards developers, agencies, and advanced WordPress users.
It comes with its own custom dashboard outside of WordPress for flexibility. You can run manual or scheduled backups to local storage or cloud services like Dropbox with just a few clicks.
The one-time purchase model is appealing compared to subscription pricing. However, the interface leans more technical and lacks real-time syncing.
5. Jetpack
Pros: Real-time sync, official WordPress product
Cons: Config complexities, expensive
Best For: High traffic sites needing constant protection
Price: From $96/year
Jetpack‘s backup plan stands out with its real-time incremental backups, meaning any changes or new content you publish gets backed up almost instantly.
For very high traffic sites, this constant sync model works better than rigid timed backups. It ensures minimal data loss in case issues emerge.
However, you have to install the full Jetpack plugin then dig into settings to enable just the backup component. There‘s lots of unused features that could slow down your site.
At nearly $100 per year, it‘s one of the priciest options too. But the value is there for sites needing near instant backup frequency.
6. Duplicator Pro
Pros: Migrate & clone easily, developer-friendly
Cons: Learning curve, slower for huge sites
Best For: Developers, agencies
Price: From $50/year
Duplicator Pro is the preferred backup and migration solution by many web development firms. It creates an all-in-one archive file with your WordPress database and files for easy site duplication or restoration.
The packaged backups make moving an entire site from one host to another a breeze. Encrypted scheduled backups to cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3 further provide robust protection.
However, Duplicator‘s advanced toolkit approach does make the plugin a bit more complex to configure compared to simple daily backup setups like Updraft. The free version has migration basics covered though.
7. BackWPup
Pros: Wide range of storage destinations, easy to use
Cons: Inflexible backup scheduling, no cloud support in free
Best For: Basic automated backups
Price: Free or paid from $69
Lastly, BackWPup is a popular free backup plugin with all the core functionality needed for simple automated WordPress backups.
It powers backups using the built-in WordPress CRON scheduler for efficiency. You can store backups locally or to various locations like Amazon S3, Google Drive, and Dropbox via the premium version.
The main downsides are rigid scheduling limitations and zero cloud storage support in the free plugin. But otherwise, BackWPup is a solid basic backup pick.
Key Feature Comparison
To sum it up, here‘s a breakdown of the core features available across the top backup plugins:
| Easy Setup | Scheduled Backups | Real-time Sync | Cloud Storage | Site Migration | Site Cloning | Free Option | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UpdraftPlus ✅ | Yes | Yes | With Premium | Yes | Basic | No | Yes |
| BlogVault ✅ | Yes | Yes | High Frequency | Yes | Easy Tools | No | No |
| BoldGrid ✅ | Yes | Yes | Extra Fee | Yes | No | No | No |
| BackupBuddy ✅ | Moderate | Yes | Add-on | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Jetpack ✅ | Complex | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Duplicator Pro ✅ | Moderate | Yes | Extra Fee | Yes | Expert Tools | Yes | Yes |
| BackWPup ✅ | Yes | Basic | Extra Fee | With Premium | No | No | Yes |
- For most users, UpdraftPlus is the perfect balance of ease of use plus reliability for free.
- BlogVault is a great affordable cloud backup solution for small business sites.
- BoldGrid offers set and forget hands-off automated backup configuration.
- BackupBuddy perfects the combo of backups and cloning tailored for developers.
- Jetpack‘s real-time sync backups are best for super high traffic sites.
- Duplicator Pro stands out for effortless migrations using archive exports and imports.
- BackWPup covers the basics like scheduled backups effectively for a free plugin.
Still have questions about which plugin meets your WordPress site‘s unique needs? Feel free to contact me and I‘d be happy to offer personalized advice.
Stay safe out there, friends! Just remember that regularly backing up your hard work is WordPress Website Maintenance 101.
