If you maintain a WordPress blog and value your content you need to have a backup; otherwise, it’s like driving a car without a spare tire… Bad things happen – websites got hacked, infected with malware, corrupted, sometimes you unintentionally mess things up but it shouldn’t paralyze or stop your business.
Couple of month back my website got hacked and my hosting account got permanently suspended; I wasn’t able to access my blog or any of the files, if it were not for the BackupBuddy I would have lost 3 years’ worth of data and solid stream of revenue. Having reliable backup solution for your blog is extremely important if you don’t want to be a flash in the pan.
When it comes to WordPress backup solutions there are plenty of free plugins that would backup your MySQL database, but they won’t backup all other data like images, plugins, theme files… so when it comes to restoring your blog those backups are pretty useless.
Now let me tell you about features that make BackupBuddy the best backup plugin for WordPress.
Backup Buddy – Best WordPress Backup Plugin
WordPress Backup
Backup Buddy allows you backup your entire WordPress install – images, self-hosted videos, theme files, plugins and any other customizations that you have made to your site, BackupBuddy will create .zip archive that you can use to create exact copy of your website.
Scheduled Backups + Remote destinations
True power of BackupBuddy lies in its ability to create backups based on the schedule you define and then send them to secure remote destination like Amazon S3, DropBox, Rackspace Cloud, FTP/FTPS. So if you want to bulletproof your WordPress blog you could set schedule to backup your entire website every day (or even every hour if you feel paranoid :)) and send it to secure Amazon S3 account for example; this way if something happens you could always retrieve last good copy of your website and restore it in minutes and have everything up and running like it should be.
Watch the video below to see how to use BackupBuddy for one click backups:
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Flexible Settings
In my opinion, BackupBuddy is the best WordPress backup plugin, it is very flexible, advanced users can configure it exactly to suit their needs, take a look at some of these features:
- BackupBuddy access permission – specify who can perform backups (admin/editor/author/…)
- Backup reminders
- Error notifications – get notified by email if something goes wrong
- Local archive storage limits – set limit on prevent local backups from piling up on your server
- Directory and database table exclusions – exclude certain files, folders and tables from backup
BackupBuddy Settings Video Tutorial
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BackupBuddy Stash
BackupBuddy Stash is basically free backup storage that comes with purchase of BackupBuddy. Currently iThemes offering 512MB of free space and you can upgrade if you need more space:
- 512MB – Free
- 5GB – $35/year
- 10GB – $60/year
- 25GB – $97/year
BackupBuddy Stash is very easy to use, there is nothing to configure, you just need to enter your iThemes member credentials and you’re set. Backups are transferred over encrypted SSL and are stored on a secure server, so if you have one or two small website this may be all you need for backup storage. But if you plan to use BackupBuddy on multiple websites or backup really large WordPress installs I would recommend use Amazon S3.
BackupBuddy Stash Video Tutorial
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WordPress Restore
There is no point to have backup in the first place if you can’t restore your website from it, using BackupBuddy restore script you could restore your website with all your data on the same server or move it a new destination. Watch the video below to see how to restore your WordPress blog in minutes using BackupBuddy:
Migration – Clone WordPress Site
Have you ever wanted a way to make an exact clone of your website – with all the settings, plugins, widgets, images, text, theme options on another domain? With BackupBuddy migration function it is dead simple and takes minutes to do! For all my niche sites we use very specific set of plugins with optimized settings that help drive traffic, increase conversions and sales. Now when we launch a new website instead of installing and tweaking everything from scratch we simply migrate one of our optimized sites to a new domain, make couple of tweaks to adjust it to the niche and website is ready. Now what used to take hours takes minutes so if you create new websites for yourself or for your clients on a regular basis BackupBuddy migration option would be extremely valuable for you.
Watch the video below to see how easy it is to migrate WordPress blog to a new domain:
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Automated Migration
Since version 3 BackupBuddy supports automated migration, meaning that you can migrate/clone/copy website to a new domain right from the WordPress admin dashboard. There is no need to FTP or manually move any files from server to server.
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Malware Scan
BackupBuddy comes with malware scanner that would scan your site for any malware, viruses and spam, let you know about any unusual links, hidden iframes, if your domain was blacklisted.
Server Compatibility
BackupBuddy performance will greatly depend on your hosting environment – available archive methods, memory limit, allowed script execution time etc… If you want to make sure that BackupBuddy will work in your hosting environment before purchasing plugin you can use free plugin – Server Buddy. Server Buddy tests server configuration to look for problems with hosting configuration and determine compatibility with various WordPress themes and plugins. Additionally it provides easy to understand explanations of various server settings and generates reports and samples of what to ask your hosting provider if a problem is found with any server configuration. You can download Server Buddy here.
Comparison with VaultPress, BlogVault…
BackupBuddy is not the only premium WordPress backup solution – there are backup solutions like myRepono, BlogVault or VaultPress that have limited features but also charge you monthly fee per website so if you have more than one website like me – it is not an option. Take a look at this comparison chart to see how BackupBuddy compares to VaultPress. The bottom line is – backup solutions with monthly fee are way more expensive and don’t really provide any added value over what BackupBuddy offers you for one-time payment.
Conclusion
If you have a website or websites that are valuable to you and making you money than you need to protect those assets and backup is essential part of that. Backup is only as good as its restore so don’t rely on free plugins that only backup part of your WordPress site because when the time comes you’ll be pulling hairs out because those backups won’t work as you expect them to. I honestly think that BackupBuddy is the best backup plugin for WordPress and every website owner that is serious about their business should have it.
