Are you looking for the best WordPress backup plugins? We have got you covered as here we are going to share a list of the best backup plugins for WordPress that you can use in 2022.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started.
The 8 Best WordPress Backup Plugins 2022
Taking regular backups of a WordPress website is a great habit that can help you in many ways, especially during cyberattacks, incorrect plugins or WordPress updates, or making some changes to the code or something.
In such a catastrophic scenario, if you have a backup of your website, you can revert all the changes that have been made recently by restoring that backup. The good thing is that many leading web hosting providers have started offering automatic regular backup services, but these services come at a very high cost.
Even though they make the complete process automatic, spending that much amount just for backup seems like a very unfair deal unless you are a big company or your WordPress website is making 100x of the investment.
Therefore, if you are tight on budget or have no budget at all, WordPress backup plugins can be a great choice to go with. Most of these WordPress backup plugins come with a free version that seems sufficient for basic users.
However, you can unlock premium features such as automatic backups and more by spending some bucks. Plus, these backups will cost much less than the cost you will pay to your web hosting provider for backing up your site.
So, here we have our list of the best WordPress backup plugins –
1. UpdraftPlus
Website: https://updraftplus.com/
UpdraftPlus is arguably one of the best free WordPress backup plugins on the internet. After all, over 3 million people are using it on their WordPress website, and even after 6000+ reviews on the WordPress.org website, it has a superb 4.8-star rating.
Not only that, but UpdraftPlus is the only WordPress backup plugin that has crossed the milestone of 2 million downloads. It is also the highest-ranking free WordPress backup plugin on WordPress.org. This shows how popular UpdraftPlus is and how much people trust it.
UpdraftPlus is compatible with WordPress version 3.2 or above, making it available for almost all WordPress websites, even with older WordPress installed ones. Plus, if you really have a dated WordPress installed on your site, you should upgrade it.
This WordPress plugin allows you to create a complete backup for free and save it directly on the cloud or your local storage. When you connect UpdraftPlus with the cloud storage, you will be able to schedule an automatic backup option.
Even though the free version of UpdraftPlus is more than sufficient to create and restore backups, the premium version of UpdraftPlus is also available that offers some additional functionalities. These functionalities include website migrator, website duplicator, creating backups of non-WP files and databases, and more.
The premium version also supports database encryption and WP-CLI. The premium version cost $70 for the first year with the support of two websites. After the first year, this pricing will reduce to $42 per year. At this price, I don’t think UpdraftPlus is too costly. So, if you need access to those functionalities, you can consider going for the premium version of the plugin.
2. BackWPup
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/
BackWPup is another top-rated WordPress backup plugin on the WordPress.org repository. It has over 700K active installations, making it the second most installed free WordPress backup plugin. Plus, BackWPup has a superb 4.5-star rating on WordPress.org.
Your website needs to have PHP 5.6 or above installed to install this plugin. The good thing is that the plugin is compatible with WordPress 3.9 or higher versions, and it has been tested for up to version 5.8.2 of WordPress. This makes the plugin available for a wide range of websites, even for websites with a dated WordPress installed.
Additionally, this plugin requires PHP 5.3.3 with MySQLi, FTP, gz, bz2, ZipArchive, and curl to access full functionality. However, if any of the functions don’t get displayed in your WordPress Admin area, that would be because of your server settings. You can visit the WordPress.org page to see the detailed requirements to access specific features.
The free version of BackWPup is good for people who want to take backups of their website and store it on the FTP server, SugarSync, DropBox, Microsoft Azure, and a few. However, if you want to store your website’s backup on Google Drive, OneDrive, HiDrive, or Amazon Glacier, you need to upgrade to the Pro version.
One great feature of BackWPup is that it lets you repair a broken database. Additionally, you can also use this tool to optimize the database for efficient usage and performance, and the good thing is that these features can be accessed completely for free.
The Pro version of this plugin lets you restore backups within a few clicks only from your WordPress dashboard. Another notable feature of the Pro version is that it lets you encrypt your backup archives and restore your website directly from the encrypted backups, adding a layer of security.
3. BlogVault
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/blogvault-real-time-backup/
The next WordPress backup plugin on our list is BlogVault. According to BlogVault’s website, BlogVault has offered its services to over 450K websites, while WordPress.org says that the free version of this plugin has over 90K+ active installation as of the time of writing this article.
To be frank, I don’t care much about the exact numbers because the plugin is really very powerful, and it is one of the best plugins to backup WordPress site. To install and run BlogVault efficiently, you need to ensure that your website is running on PHP 5.4 or above, and the WordPress version must be 4.0 or higher.
However, one of the biggest deal-breakers for this plugin is that it is not free. BlogVault only offers premium services whose prices start from $89 a year and go up to $249 a year for one website. Therefore, if you are looking for a free WordPress backup plugin, BlogVault would not be an option for you.
However, if you can invest such a big amount for backing up your WordPress website, I would say BlogVault can be a great option to consider. It is a great plugin with some amazing features.
One of the best features of BlogVault is that it offers an offsite backup storage option for 90 days, which can be extended to up to 365 days. It is a great feature as all of your website’s backup will be stored on a separate server, and in catastrophic situations, you will have your backup even if your entire web hosting dies.
BlogVault also has a staging feature that lets you update and modify your website without breaking the live site. This feature can be helpful while rolling updates, making changes in features, or doing other stuff. Plus, the customer support of BlogVault is highly active, and they are available almost all of the time.
4. BackupBuddy
Website: https://ithemes.com/backupbuddy/
BackupBuddy is another premium plugin for creating WordPress website backups very effortlessly. This plugin has been developed by iThemes, and so far, it has been downloaded and used for over a million websites, making it one of the most popular backup tools of all time.
Sadly, BackupBuddy doesn’t have any free tier. So again, if you are looking for the best free WordPress backup plugin, BackupBuddy is not an option for you. However, BackupBuddy offers a 30 days money-back guarantee, allowing you enough time to test their premium services without any worry.
BackupBuddy isn’t only a good backup plugin, but it also takes your WordPress website’s security to the next level with its intuitive security features. For example, BackupBuddy boasts a malware scan tool that scans your website on a regular basis to find out bugs and harmful files that can have a negative impact on your website.
This plugin also features a database scan and repair function that can help you fix common issues with your database and optimize it. Changing web servers can be a complicated task for non-tech people, but BackupBuddy makes the entire server-changing process extremely easy.
There is also a change your domain feature that lets you change your website’s domain name effortlessly without worrying about any database-related issues. All of your previous domain’s URLs will be automatically replaced with the URL of your current domain.
BackupBuddy also has a WordPress deployment and staging feature that lets you make changes very easily. You can also use BackupBuddy as a website migration tool to migrate your websites from one domain to another.
5. Duplicator
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
With over 25 million downloads and over a million active installations, Duplicator is another great WordPress plugin out there. Duplicator is most popular as a website migration plugin, but it has a strong WordPress feature that makes it an excellent choice for people who want to take backup of their websites.
Duplicator has a superb 4.9-star rating on WordPress.org even after 4000+ reviews. This shows how much people trust this plugin to migrate websites and create backups. Your website needs to have PHP version 5.3 or higher and WordPress version 4.0 or higher to run this plugin.
This plugin has been tested for up to WordPress 5.8, which is the latest as of now. Plus, the team behind Duplicator is continuously working to improve this plugin. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about compatibility-related issues in the future.
One of the best features of Duplicator is its website cloning function. This feature lets you make a copy of any of your live sites or migrate it with zero downtime. You can also use this feature to pull down your live website to localhost for development or modification.
In the free version, the automatic backup option isn’t available. The only way to create backups is by manually performing the task. However, the good thing is that the process to create backups is extremely simple, and it hardly takes a couple of clicks.
The pro version of Duplicator is also available at just $69 a year for three websites. Duplicator Pro comes with some additional functionalities such as drag and drop installs, automatically backup to cloud storage, recovery points, a special two-step streamlined installer, and more.
6. WP Clone by WP Academy
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clone-by-wp-academy/
Looking for the best free WordPress backup plugin? WP Clone by WP Academy can be a perfect option for you. This free tool lets you backup, migrate or clone your WordPress website from one domain to another domain or one hosting provider to another hosting provider very easily completely for free.
This is the main reason this free WordPress backup plugin has over 100K active website installations. The minimum requirement to run this plugin is that your server needs to have PHP 5.5 or higher and the WordPress on your website needs to be WordPress version 3.3 or above.
WP Clone has been tested for up to WordPress 5.8.2, ensuring that you don’t need to worry about compatibility. You can use this plugin to backup, migrate or clone a site from your local server to a web server or vice versa.
One of the things that I liked the most about WP Clone is that it doesn’t require FTP access to backup files or making clones. You just need to install the plugin, and you can do all the things right from your WordPress dashboard. This makes it extremely easy to use and beginner-friendly.
Another great thing about WP Clone is that it doesn’t backup or restore WordPress system files. Instead, it recreates user content, plugins and theme data, and database backups. This improves the security of your website and also reduces upload time.
WP Clone has a great success rate, and the good thing is that they address that they don’t have a 100% success rate. However, most of the time, backups or migration processes fail because of the unmatched configurations. In such a scenario, you can use WP Clone to create a backup of your database only and transfer the wp-content directory using FTP.
7. BackUpWordPress
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress/
The next free backup plugin for WordPress is BackUpWordPress by XIBO Ltd. The best thing about this plugin is that it is open-source, meaning it is available completely free. The best thing about open-source software is that independent developers can see and modify the plugin’s code to make it more functional.
The source code of the plugin is openly available on GitHub. So, if you want to see the code, you can get it from there. BackUpWordPress is quite popular as well. It has over 200K active installations, which is very impressive from a free WordPress plugin.
The minimum requirement to run BackUpWordPress is that your website’s server should have PHP 5.5 or a higher version installed, and the WordPress version on your website must be higher than 3.9. The plugin has been tested for up to WordPress 5.7, meaning you won’t have compatibility issues.
One of the reasons behind BackUpWordPress’s popularity is its simplicity. The plugin is very simple and easy to use, and even if you have zero technical knowledge, you will be able to use this plugin very easily. Plus, it is available in 13 different languages.
This plugin allows you to set up multiple backup schedules to automatically backup your website. You can select which file or folder you want to exclude from the backup, which is a great thing. However, all the backup files and databases will be stored on your web server and manually downloaded later.
Sadly, it doesn’t offer the backup to cloud option, which can be a deal-breaker for many. This is the only reason I mentioned BackUpWordPress at the lower positions of this article. However, you can select the option to send each backup file to you by email.
8. WPvivid Backup Plugin
Website: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpvivid-backuprestore/
Lastly, we have WPvivid on our list. WPVivid is comparatively a newcomer in the world of backup plugins, but despite that, it has over 100K active installations. Plus, it has superb 5-star ratings on WordPress.org.
WPvivid lets you create the backup of your website within a few clicks only. It further lets you choose whether you want to back up the entire website with all the files or just the database only. You can also manually select specific folders to be included in the backup, and WPvivid will save this selection for future backups.
You can also set up a scheduled backup option that will automatically create backups of your website in the period of every 12 hours, a day, a week, or monthly, depending on your selection. These scheduled backups can be automatically sent to offsite remote storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or more.
Along with that, WPvivid also has a strong clone and migration function that lets you easily migrate your website to a new server. Again, here as well, you can select what you want to migrate – the entire website, files, or just the database.
There is also a staging option that you can use to state the site in a subdirectory to safely test your development, theme, plugin, or other website changes. You get the option to select what you want to copy to the staging site from the live website.
However, the only drawback is that most of the features of WPvivid are only accessible by the Pro users. This is the only reason it is in the last position on our list. If you are willing to spend some bucks for a good backup plugin, you can surely consider WPvivid Backup Plugin, though.
Closing Comments
There you have a list of the eight best WordPress backup plugins 2022.
Using a backup plugin is the best way to back up your WordPress website and secure it from catastrophic situations. Even though using a backup plugin isn’t the only way to create backups of a WordPress website, it is the most efficient and budget-friendly option.
Instead of this, you can try the backing up service offered by your hosting provider, but that will become very pricey. On the other hand, you can try manual backup, but you need to have decent technical knowledge for that. That’s why using a backup plugin is the perfect option for backing up your WordPress website.
If you ask me for a recommendation, I suggest you try UpdraftPlus. That is the best and most feature-rich WordPress backup plugin available currently. You can also give it a try to other plugins from the list.
With that said, here I am wrapping up this article. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them in the comment section below. Our team will try to answer all your queries ASAP.
