Picking the best WordPress backup plugin sounds easy until you look at the options. There are free plugins with surprisingly good features, paid services that cost more than your hosting, and a few big names that quietly changed how they work. If you choose wrong, you find out on the worst day possible: the day you need to restore.
I have been building websites and online stores since 2010, and I run several WordPress sites for my businesses right now. In this guide I compare 8 popular WordPress backup plugins and services side by side: UpdraftPlus, Jetpack VaultPress Backup, BlogVault, WPvivid, Duplicator, BackWPup, Solid Backups (formerly BackupBuddy) and Total Upkeep.
For each option I cover what the free version actually does, what the paid plans cost as of November 2026, whether backups are scheduled or real-time, where the backups can be stored, and how restores work. All pricing comes from each company’s own pricing page, and I flag anything you should double check before you buy.
If you are still getting your head around backups in general, read my full guide on how to backup a WordPress site first. It explains files vs database, the 3-2-1 rule and how to test a restore. And if you are brand new to hosting, my web hosting for beginners guide is the best starting point.
All right, let’s get into it.
Heads up: some links on Web Hosting Paradise may become affiliate links down the road. See our affiliate disclosure. This roundup is research-based, built from official pricing pages and documentation, and I do not claim hands-on testing I did not do.
Quick Picks
Short on time? Here is where I would start based on the type of site you run.
- Best free WordPress backup plugin for most sites: UpdraftPlus
- Best for WooCommerce stores that need real-time backups: Jetpack VaultPress Backup or the BlogVault WooCommerce plan
- Best for hands-off backups with storage included: BlogVault
- Best free plugin with staging: WPvivid
- Best for backup plus migration in 1 tool: Duplicator Pro
- Best for developers who like flexible job settings: BackWPup
- Best low-cost add-on with auto rollback on failed updates: Total Upkeep
WordPress Backup Plugin Comparison Table
Here is the side-by-side view. Prices are what each vendor listed in November 2026. Plugin names link to the official pricing or product page.
| Plugin | Free version | Paid price (starting) | Backup type | Off-site storage | Restore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UpdraftPlus | Yes, scheduled backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3 and more | $70/year for 2 sites | Scheduled, incremental in Premium | Your own cloud, plus UpdraftVault in Premium | Dashboard restore, choose components |
| Jetpack VaultPress Backup | No backup in free Jetpack | $4.95/month first year, billed yearly, then $9.95/month | Real-time | Jetpack cloud, 10GB to start | 1-click restores |
| BlogVault | First backup free, no card | $49.50/site/year listed (list price $99) | Daily, 12-hourly, or real-time on WooCommerce plan | BlogVault cloud, 9 encrypted copies | 1-click restore, staging |
| WPvivid | Yes, with cloud storage and basic staging | $49/year or $99 lifetime for 2 domains | Scheduled, incremental in Pro | Your own cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, OneDrive, SFTP and more) | 1-click restore |
| Duplicator | Lite: manual backups and migration | Normally $79 for 2 sites, intro discount in year 1 | Scheduled in Pro (hourly from Plus) | Your own cloud in Pro, or Duplicator Cloud | Recovery points, 1-click restore |
| BackWPup | Yes, scheduled jobs to Dropbox, S3, FTP and more | $49/year for 2 domains | Scheduled, from hourly to monthly | Your own cloud | Pro restores from cloud, free restores uploaded backups |
| Solid Backups | No | Check the current price | Scheduled (NextGen) | SolidWP cloud only (NextGen) | Restore from Solid Central |
| Total Upkeep | Yes, with FTP/SFTP and auto rollback | $2.50/month billed annually | Scheduled | FTP/SFTP free, S3 and Google Drive in Premium | Dashboard restore, single-file restore in Premium |
1 quick reminder before the reviews. Every price above can change, and many vendors show a first-year discount. Always check the renewal price on the checkout page, the same way I recommend in my guide to cheap WordPress hosting.
How I Compared These Plugins
I did not run lab tests on these plugins, and I am not going to pretend I did. This is a research-led comparison. I went through each vendor’s pricing page, plugin listing on WordPress.org and documentation, and compared them against the backup rules that actually matter.
The Criteria That Matter
- Free tier: can you get real off-site backups without paying?
- Price and renewal: what does year 2 cost, and how many sites are included?
- Backup type: scheduled, incremental or real-time?
- Storage: does it send backups to your own cloud account, or keep them in the vendor’s cloud?
- Restore: can you restore from the dashboard, and is there a path when wp-admin is down?
- Extras: staging, migration, encryption and automatic backups before updates.
Those criteria line up with the official WordPress backup guidance, which says to back up both files and the database, keep 3 to 5 recent copies, and store them in more than 1 place.
1. UpdraftPlus: Best Free Backup Plugin for Most Sites
UpdraftPlus is the plugin I see recommended most often, and for good reason. The free version does more than most free plugins, and the WordPress.org listing shows more than 4 million active installs.
What the Free Version Includes
The free plugin lets you run manual or scheduled backups, with schedules like every few hours, daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly. You can send backups straight to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 and S3-compatible services, Rackspace, FTP, DreamObjects, OpenStack Swift or email.
Restores happen from the dashboard, and you can pick which components to restore, like plugins, themes, uploads or the database. That is a big deal when a single plugin update breaks your site and you do not want to roll back your whole database.
What Premium Adds
UpdraftPlus Premium adds incremental backups, automatic backups before updates, more destinations (OneDrive, Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, pCloud, WebDAV and UpdraftVault), backups to multiple locations at once, database encryption, WP-CLI control and a premium migrator.
UpdraftPlus Pricing (November 2026)
- Personal: $70/year for up to 2 sites
- Business: $95/year for up to 10 sites
- Agency: $145/year for up to 35 sites
- Enterprise: $195/year for unlimited sites
- Gold: $399/year for unlimited sites with 50GB of storage and UpdraftCentral
All plans include 1 year of premium updates and support. The pricing page lists these as yearly prices, so check the checkout page for any renewal difference.
Who UpdraftPlus Is Best For
Bloggers, small business sites and anyone who wants solid off-site backups without paying. The main tradeoff is that the work runs on your own server, so on a very large site on cheap shared hosting, big backup jobs can be slow or time out.
Get Off-Site WordPress Backups Running Today
Free version sends scheduled backups to Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3. Premium starts at $70/year for 2 sites and adds incremental backups.
2. Jetpack VaultPress Backup: Best Real-Time Backups for WooCommerce
Jetpack VaultPress Backup is made by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce. It is a paid service, not a free plugin, and the big selling point is real-time cloud backups.
How It Works
Instead of zipping your whole site on a schedule, VaultPress Backup saves changes as they happen and stores them in Jetpack’s cloud. Every new order, post edit or comment gets captured. That is exactly what you want on a busy store, because it shrinks the window where new data can be lost.
The plan includes 1-click restores and a 30-day activity log, and Jetpack says there is no individual backup size limit. You start with 10GB of storage, and the Jetpack page says you will be warned before any service change if a backup would exceed your storage.
Jetpack VaultPress Backup Pricing (November 2026)
- VaultPress Backup: $4.95/month for the first year, billed yearly, then $9.95/month
- Jetpack Security (backups plus security tools): $9.95/month for the first year, billed yearly, then $19.95/month
The Jetpack page states that the discount only applies to the first year and renewals are at full price. So budget around $119.40 a year for VaultPress Backup alone after year 1.
Who It Is Best For
WooCommerce stores, membership sites and anyone who wants backups with very little setup. WooCommerce’s own guide on backing up and restoring a WooCommerce store recommends it for real-time protection. The tradeoff is that your backups live in Jetpack’s cloud, not in a storage account you own, so I would still download an occasional copy for your own records.
3. BlogVault: Best Hands-Off Backup Service With Storage Included
BlogVault is a SaaS backup service. Like Jetpack, it does most of the heavy lifting on its own servers, which keeps the load off your hosting account.
Key Features
BlogVault includes encrypted cloud storage in the price, with 9 encrypted off-site copies across 2 providers according to its pricing page. Every plan includes 1-click restore, 1-click migration and a staging site. You can connect a site and let the first backup run without a credit card, and paid plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
BlogVault Pricing (November 2026)
BlogVault was showing 50% off list prices when I checked, billed annually per site:
- Personal: $49.50/year (list $99). Daily backups, 3 on-demand backups a day, 30 days of history, sites up to 20GB.
- Business: $149.50/year (list $299). Backups every 12 hours, 10 on-demand a day, 90 days of history, sites up to 50GB.
- WooCommerce: $249.50/year (list $499). Real-time plus hourly backups, 25 on-demand a day, 365 days of history, sites up to 100GB.
5-site bundles are also available. The page does not clearly say whether the 50% discount carries over to renewal, so confirm that at checkout.
Who It Is Best For
Site owners who want backups, staging and migration in 1 dashboard without managing their own cloud storage. The WooCommerce plan is a strong pick for stores that need real-time backups and a full year of history.
4. WPvivid: Best Free Plugin With Staging
WPvivid is a newer name than UpdraftPlus, but the free version is very generous.
What the Free Version Includes
The free plugin handles full backups, database-only or files-only backups, basic scheduling and a basic retention rule. It can send backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, OneDrive, DigitalOcean Spaces, FTP and SFTP. It also includes 1-click restore, migration and a subdirectory staging site, which is rare in a free plugin.
What Pro Adds
WPvivid Backup Pro adds incremental backups, multiple staging sites, push staging to live, selective restore, backup encryption, more storage options (WebDAV, Wasabi, pCloud, Backblaze and S3-compatible) and multisite support.
WPvivid Pro Pricing (November 2026)
- Blogger: $49/year or $99 lifetime, 2 domains
- Freelancer: $69/year or $139 lifetime, up to 10 domains
- Small Business: $99/year or $199 lifetime, up to 50 domains
- Ultimate: $149/year or $299 lifetime, unlimited domains
The lifetime option is the standout here. If you plan to run your sites for years, a 1-time payment can work out cheaper than an annual subscription.
Who It Is Best For
DIY site owners who want free backups plus a free staging site to test updates. Like UpdraftPlus, it runs on your server, so very large sites on weak hosting may struggle.
5. Duplicator: Best for Backups Plus Migration
Duplicator started as a migration tool, and that is still where it shines. If you move sites between hosts a lot, it is worth a look. I cover the migration side in more detail in my roundup of the best WordPress migration plugins.
Duplicator Lite vs Pro
Duplicator Lite, the free version, lets you create full backups manually, store them locally or in Duplicator Cloud, restore with 1 click, and package a site to move it to a new host or domain.
The catch is that scheduled backups are a Pro feature. Most cloud destinations, like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon S3 and FTP/SFTP, are Pro features too. So Lite is great for migrations and 1-off backups, but not as your daily automated backup.
Duplicator Pro Pricing (November 2026)
Duplicator lists these as its normal prices, with an introductory discount on the first purchase and renewals at full price:
- Basic: normally $79 for 2 sites, scheduled backups (not hourly), 1 cloud destination
- Plus: normally $199 for 5 sites, hourly schedules, unlimited destinations
- Pro: normally $399 for 20 sites, adds multisite and staging
- Elite Bundle: normally $599 for 100 sites
Duplicator also sells its own cloud storage, starting at $29/year for 2GB. There is a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Who It Is Best For
Agencies, freelancers and anyone who migrates sites regularly and wants backup and migration in the same tool. If you are about to move hosts, pair it with my step-by-step guide to migrating a WordPress site to a new host.
6. BackWPup: Best for Flexible Backup Jobs
BackWPup has been around for a long time and is popular with developers who like to set up specific backup jobs.
What the Free Version Includes
The free version backs up the full database and files, or either part alone, and supports multisite. You can schedule jobs hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, and combine several destinations in 1 job: your server, Dropbox, FTP, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3 and compatible storage, SugarSync and Rackspace Cloud Files. It also supports WP-CLI.
The big limitation is restore. In the free version, you can only restore backups you upload manually.
What Pro Adds
BackWPup Pro adds direct restore from cloud storage, Google Drive, OneDrive, Amazon Glacier and HiDrive destinations, backup encryption, migration to a new domain or host, and a standalone restore app.
BackWPup Pricing (November 2026)
- Starter: $49/year for 2 domains
- Advanced: $99/year for 5 domains
- Pro: $199/year for 20 domains
Who It Is Best For
Developers and tinkerers who want granular control. Beginners will probably find UpdraftPlus or WPvivid easier.
7. Solid Backups (Formerly BackupBuddy): Know What You Are Buying
BackupBuddy was 1 of the original premium WordPress backup plugins. It became Solid Backups under SolidWP, which is part of the Liquid Web family. In 2026 the product is changing again.
What Changed
According to the Solid Backups NextGen documentation, Solid Backups is becoming Kadence Backups, and both names may appear during the transition. NextGen no longer uses third-party cloud storage providers. Backups go to SolidWP’s own cloud storage, with a choice of US or EU data center regions.
NextGen lets you pick retention of 7 days, 30 days, 120 days or 1 year, and it needs SSH or SFTP access to your server. The docs also note there is no migration wizard, only a workaround through restoring to a new server.
Pricing
I could not find a current public pricing page for Solid Backups while writing this, since the old SolidWP pricing link now redirects. Check the current price with Liquid Web or Kadence before you buy.
Who It Is Best For
Existing BackupBuddy or Solid Backups customers who want to stay in that ecosystem. If you are starting fresh, I would look at the other options on this list first, mainly because the product is mid-transition.
8. Total Upkeep: Best Budget Add-On With Auto Rollback
Total Upkeep is made by BoldGrid. It is a smaller name, but it has 1 feature I really like.
What the Free Version Includes
The free plugin runs automated and manual backups, full or selective, with remote storage over FTP or SFTP. The standout feature is auto rollback: it takes a backup before updates and restores the site automatically if an update fails. It also includes site cloning and migration.
What Premium Adds
Total Upkeep Premium adds Amazon S3 and Google Drive storage, single-file restore, historical versions of files, and a search for recently modified files. That last feature is handy when you suspect something on the site was changed without your knowledge.
Total Upkeep Pricing (November 2026)
BoldGrid lists Total Upkeep Premium at $2.50/month, billed annually, which works out to $30 a year.
Who It Is Best For
Budget-conscious site owners who want a safety net for updates. If your main fear is “an update broke my site,” the auto rollback feature speaks directly to that.
Free vs Paid WordPress Backup Plugins
Do you actually need to pay? For a lot of sites, no.
When Free Is Enough
If you run a blog or a small business site that changes a few times a month, a free plugin like UpdraftPlus, WPvivid or BackWPup can cover you. Set a daily or weekly schedule, send backups to your own cloud storage, keep at least 30 days, and take a manual backup before updates.
When Paid Is Worth It
Pay when the cost of losing data is higher than the subscription. That usually means:
- You run a WooCommerce store or membership site where data changes all day
- Your site is large and backup jobs time out on your host
- You want restores that work even when wp-admin is down
- You need incremental backups, encryption or backups to multiple locations
- You manage several client sites and want them in 1 dashboard
Backup Plugins for WooCommerce Stores
Stores need extra care. When you restore a database backup, every order placed after that backup disappears from WordPress. The payment still went through in Stripe or PayPal, but your store no longer has the order.
That is why I lean toward real-time or hourly backups for stores. Jetpack VaultPress Backup and the BlogVault WooCommerce plan both list real-time backups. Duplicator Pro offers hourly schedules from the Plus plan up, and UpdraftPlus Premium offers incremental backups.
Hosting matters here too. A good WooCommerce host should include its own daily backups and staging. I break down what to look for in my guide to the best WooCommerce hosting.
Do You Still Need a Plugin If Your Host Does Backups?
In my opinion, yes. Host backups are a great first layer, and they are often the fastest way to restore. But they usually live in the same account as your website.
If the account gets suspended, hacked or hit by a major outage, your backups can go down with the site. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommends the 3-2-1 approach in its guide to backing up business data: 3 copies, 2 types of storage, 1 off-site. A plugin sending backups to your own cloud account is the easiest way to get that off-site copy.
Backup policies also vary a lot by host and plan, which is 1 of the main differences I cover in managed WordPress vs shared hosting.
How to Choose the Right WordPress Backup Plugin
Here is the simple decision path I would follow:
- If you run a store or membership site, start with a real-time option (Jetpack VaultPress Backup or BlogVault WooCommerce).
- If you run a blog or brochure site and want free, start with UpdraftPlus or WPvivid.
- If you migrate sites a lot, consider Duplicator Pro.
- If you want granular job control and do not mind a learning curve, try BackWPup.
- If update failures are your biggest worry, add Total Upkeep for auto rollback.
- Whatever you pick, test a restore on staging before you rely on it.
Most people skip that last step. A backup is only as good as your last successful restore.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free WordPress backup plugin?
For most sites, UpdraftPlus is the best free option because the free version already supports scheduled backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 and other destinations, plus dashboard restores. WPvivid is a strong alternative if you also want a free staging site.
Which WordPress backup plugin offers real-time backups?
Jetpack VaultPress Backup includes real-time cloud backups on its plans. BlogVault lists real-time backups on its WooCommerce plan. Most other plugins on this list run scheduled or incremental backups instead.
Is UpdraftPlus free enough for a small business site?
Usually, yes. The free version handles scheduled backups to your own cloud storage and restores from the dashboard. Upgrade if you need incremental backups, automatic backups before updates, or backups to multiple locations at once.
Can I use 2 backup plugins at the same time?
You can, but I would not run 2 full scheduled backup plugins on the same site. They double the server load and can collide. A better setup is your host’s backups plus 1 plugin or service that sends copies off-site.
Do backup plugins slow down my website?
Plugins that run on your server, like UpdraftPlus, WPvivid and BackWPup, use server resources while a backup runs. Schedule big jobs for low-traffic hours. SaaS services like Jetpack VaultPress Backup and BlogVault do most of the work on their own servers. If your site is slow overall, my guide to speeding up a WordPress site covers the bigger fixes.
Where should my WordPress backups be stored?
Off your web server, in an account you control, like Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive or Dropbox, or in a backup service’s cloud. Keep 1 extra copy on your own computer for true 3-2-1 protection.
My Take
If you just want a recommendation: use UpdraftPlus free on a blog or small business site, and send backups to your own cloud storage. If you run a store, pay for real-time backups with Jetpack VaultPress Backup or BlogVault’s WooCommerce plan. Either way, keep your host’s backups running as a second layer.
Before you buy anything, write down what you actually need: number of sites, backup frequency, storage and budget. My Start Here page walks you through building that requirements sheet. Then set up your plugin using my complete WordPress backup guide.
Related Articles
- How to Backup a WordPress Site: The Complete 3-2-1 Guide
- Best WordPress Migration Plugins
- How to Migrate a WordPress Site to a New Host
- Best WordPress Hosting
- How to Speed Up a WordPress Site
Trevor Fenner publishes Hosting Paradise and Ecommerce Paradise. His guides cover web hosting, website migration, backups, and software for online businesses.