Best WordPress Backup Plugin (2026): 8 Picks, Real Restores
UpdraftPlus is a good free starting point for scheduled backups and cloud storage, with WPvivid a capable alternative. For a busy store, consider an offsite service such as BlogVault or Jetpack. Whatever you choose, test a restore: one of our UpdraftPlus restore attempts broke the test site.
The Best WordPress Backup Plugins
1. UpdraftPlus: Best overall
UpdraftPlus offers free schedules, partial restores and one remote destination at a time. Google Drive, Dropbox and S3 are among the free choices; several other destinations and extra automation require Premium. Free backups omit WordPress core and wp-config.php, so keep a separate copy of that configuration file.
Most restores recovered our deleted post, setting and image. One of four attempts instead broke the database connection while still reporting success. We could not reproduce it and the test server may have contributed, but it makes checking the restored site essential. Our full review covers another test of the backup and partial-restore tools.
Premium adds incremental and pre-update backups, migration, multiple destinations and more scheduling control. It costs $70 a year for two sites, $95 for ten, $145 for 35 or $195 for unlimited sites, including 1 GB of UpdraftVault storage.
2. WPvivid: Best free alternative
WPvivid backed up and restored all three changes successfully. The archive included WordPress core. Its free cloud options include OneDrive and SFTP as well as Google Drive, Dropbox and S3, with one schedule, migration and one staging copy included.
Pro adds incremental backups, custom contents, more schedules and push-to-live. Annual prices are $49 for two domains, $69 for ten, $99 for 50 or $149 for unlimited; lifetime licenses cost $99, $139, $199 and $299. Our staging comparison explains the free copy’s access limitations.
3. Duplicator: Best for full-site copies and moves
Duplicator packages the whole site into an archive and installer. Its free Restore button recovered the visible content, but two runs left database warnings and missing Yoast tables. Our full migration review explains the collation fix. A build also stalled until the server allowed loopback requests.
Lite has no scheduled backups or third-party cloud storage; its paid Duplicator Cloud option starts at $29 a year for 2 GB. Pro’s introductory annual prices range from $69.30 for two sites to $239.60 for 100, with higher renewals. Check the tier: hourly backups and staging are not in every plan.
4. All-in-One WP Migration: Best for one-off moves
All-in-One WP Migration made a portable backup and restored our test content through Import. The free Restore button is locked, and the host’s upload limit initially blocked the import. Raising that limit allowed it to finish.
Free exports go to a local file and omit WordPress core. The Unlimited Extension costs $69 a year for up to 50 sites and adds the restore button and larger uploads; Pro is $99 a year for cloud options. Schedules also require payment. Use our migration tutorial for the actual move.
5. BackWPup: Best for free scheduled archives
BackWPup includes schedules and several remote destinations for free. Its default uncompressed TAR archive was much larger than the ZIPs from other plugins, although compressed formats are available. Restoring required uploading the archive rather than selecting it from the backup list.
The restore returned us to login without a success message, but all three test changes were fixed. Pro adds easier restores, more storage choices, encryption and migration for $49 a year for two domains, $99 for five or $199 for 20.
6. Total Upkeep: Best low-cost premium upgrade
Total Upkeep restored the test changes successfully once the server had the required PDO MySQL extension. Without it, the first backup failed even though the preflight check passed. The dashboard is busy, but free schedules and FTP/SFTP storage are useful.
Premium adds Google Drive, S3 and single-file restores. At $30 a year, with coverage for sites owned by you or your business, it is the lowest-cost premium option here. See Total Upkeep.
7. BlogVault: Best off-server backups for busy sites
BlogVault stores and processes backups away from your host. Full restore recovered our deleted post, disabled plugin and changed title; a folder-only restore repaired a broken theme without changing the rest of the site. Incremental backups transferred only the changes, and full downloads also worked. Renamed leftover folders still needed manual cleanup.
When WordPress returned a fatal error, the dashboard continued to report the site online. Restore then required FTP or SFTP credentials through its Emergency Connector. Our site had neither, so we could not complete that recovery route. Keep those credentials outside WordPress rather than assuming a dashboard button will always suffice. We opened the Test Restore tool but did not verify the temporary copy itself.
The observed sale listed Personal at $49.50 a year, normally $99, with daily backups and 30-day history. Business was $149.50, normally $299, with twice-daily backups and 90-day history. WooCommerce was $249.50, normally $499, with real-time backups and a year of history. The dashboard displayed different frequency-based prices, so confirm checkout. Our account allowed the tested features without a trial countdown; that does not establish a lasting free plan. See the staging comparison for merge limits.
8. Jetpack VaultPress Backup: Best real-time backups on a budget
Jetpack VaultPress Backup advertises real-time cloud backups and remote restores. It required a WordPress.com connection and was unavailable on our offline test site, so these features were not tested.
The entry offer is $4.95 a month billed annually in year one, renewing at $9.95 a month, with 10 GB of storage and 30-day history. The Security bundle adds scanning, a firewall and Akismet at a higher price.
We backed up the same small WordPress site with each available plugin, then tested recovery of a deleted post, a changed setting and a missing image. BlogVault used a separate temporary site accessible to its servers. These short tests show restore behavior, not long-term reliability or large-site performance.
What Happened to BackupBuddy? (Now Solid Backups, Then Kadence Backups)
BackupBuddy was one of the best-known paid backup plugins. Its maker, iThemes, became part of Liquid Web, and in October 2023 BackupBuddy was renamed Solid Backups. In 2026 Liquid Web folded the Solid products into its Kadence bundle and is renaming the plugin again, to Kadence Backups. The old BackupBuddy and Solid web addresses now redirect to Liquid Web’s Kadence pages. According to Liquid Web’s documentation, there are now two products:
- Kadence Backups Legacy (the old BackupBuddy plugin) is in maintenance mode, with only security fixes and small tweaks since 2025, the latest on July 26, 2026. It dropped Google Drive in November 2024 and still restores with the separate
importbuddy.phpfile. - Kadence Backups (formerly Solid Backups NextGen) is a separate, cloud-only service. It connects to your server over SSH or SFTP, keeps backups in its own US or EU cloud for 7 days to a year, and restores from the Kadence Central dashboard. Legacy backups can’t be moved into it.
Liquid Web no longer sells it on its own. Kadence Backups comes with Kadence Pro ($299/year, which adds security, WooCommerce and membership tools) or Elite ($499/year). That is fine if you already use Kadence (see our Kadence review), but steep for backups alone. If you still run BackupBuddy, UpdraftPlus is the closest in-dashboard replacement and BlogVault the closest off-server one. Keep the old plugin until your new backups run and one test restore works. More on the company in our Liquid Web review.
Your Host’s Backups Are Not Enough on Their Own
Most hosts back up your site, so check what yours does first. Here is what five hosts we cover include, as of October 2026:
Hostinger includes weekly backups on Premium and daily backups on Unlimited and above, with on-demand backups on Cloud plans. SiteGround stores daily backups in another data center for up to 30 days.
Kinsta keeps daily backups for 14 days on its entry plans, with longer retention on larger plans; external copies to S3 or Google Cloud cost extra. Cloudways backs up every 24 hours and keeps a week by default, charging $0.033 per GB for offsite storage. Liquid Web keeps daily backups for seven, 14 or 30 days depending on the plan.
Host backups are a good safety net, but they live with the same company as your site. If the host has an outage, closes your account, or a hack goes unnoticed for weeks, you want a copy somewhere else, and a plugin sending backups to your own cloud storage covers that. Our Hostinger review, Hostinger vs SiteGround comparison, Kinsta review and Cloudways review have the details.
Building a backup routine
Keep a copy outside your hosting account, and save it often enough that you can afford to lose the changes since the last backup. A quiet blog and a busy store need different schedules. Back up before major updates, retain more than one recovery point and test a restore on a separate copy. A completed backup notification does not prove recovery will work.