If your WordPress website has any value to you, I can’t stress how important it is to back it up regularly. This can be accomplished manually, or through a WordPress plugin. In this article, I’m going to talk about two of the most popular WordPress backup plugins: VaultPress and Backup Buddy.
Both of these plugins do cost money, but you’ll have to weigh that against the cost of losing your site and have to re-create it from scratch. Usually it’s a no-brainer that paying for automated offsite backups is worth every penny!
Both of these plugins will automatically back up your entire WordPress site including files and database, without any intervention from you, once you set them up. Both have provisions to store your backups offsite, which is important (if you store your backups on the same server as your site, and the server goes down, you could lose your backups as well!)
But, there are some important differences which can be critical depending on your hosting and technical abilities!
Ease of Setup – Winner: VaultPress
VaultPress has a lot fewer setup steps. Right off the bat, the VaultPress plugin is available in the WordPress plugin repository. You just install it with a few clicks and enter an activation code. With Backup Buddy, you have to download a zip file, then upload that to your WordPress site to install it. No big deal if you’re familiar with WordPress, but I can see a lot of folks who are not web developers wondering what to do with that zip file.
Furthermore, with Backup Buddy, if you want to store your backups offsite (and there’s almost no point in doing backups unless you do), you’ll have to configure offsite storage. You can choose your own storage service like Dropbox, or use 1GB of free storage that they provide on Stash. It’s not hard, but just an extra step. With VaultPress, the storage is configured for you.
Next, you’ll have to set up a schedule for your backups on Backup Buddy. Again, not hard, just a bit of a hassle. With VaultPress, it’s set for you (daily for the low-cost plan, and real time for the higher-end one).
Finally, you’ll have to change some of the default settings on Backup Buddy to stop it from storing unlimited backup files on your server, which can be really bad if you have server storage limits. This is not a problem with VaultPress, since it doesn’t store anything on your local server. Everything is offsite.
These setup issues are no problem if you’re familiar with WordPress, but many WordPress users are not web developers, and I can see them having some difficulty setting up Backup Buddy.
Support – Winner: VaultPress
I had some questions about VaultPress before and after I installed it. In each case, it was easy to find their customer service email address on their website and I got an answer within 24 hours.
After installing Backup Buddy, I also had some issues (which I’ll go into below). Their email address was not as easy to find. When I went to their contact page and selected “I have a technical question”, it directed me to their forum (not an email address). When I tried to log into the forum, it rejected my login. I finally did find a contact email address and told them about my forum difficulties. They got back to me very quickly, but didn’t provide a solution other than to change my password, which I didn’t want to do because I had just set up five websites and offsite storage with it, and I would have to do that all over again. So, to this day, I have not visited Backup Buddy’s forum,partially out of laziness. But why didn’t it work with my first password?
I also asked about the problems I was having below and didn’t get an answer on that.
So, overall, VaultPress customer service was a clear winner with me.
Storage Space – Winner: VaultPress
Backup Buddy comes with 1GB of storage space on their storage service called Stash. You can purchase additional storage though.
VaultPress comes with unlimited storage. Since one of my sites is over 4GB, I wondered if was really still unlimited. Sure enough, it is!
Server Compatibility – Winner: VaultPress
By their own admission, Backup Buddy doesn’t work very will with Go Daddy hosting. This is what their own website says:
- The bottom tier of Godaddy hosting services are known for not being able to complete backups within the maximum PHP runtime configured on their servers (usually 30 seconds), causing backups to fail.
- Solutions:
- Choose another quality hosting provider such as Hostgator.com (recommended)
- Upgrade to a higher tier of Godaddy hosting (not recommended as even better Godaddy servers are poor performers)
So, even the “higher-tier” of Go Daddy hosting is not recommended! If Backup Buddy doesn’t work well with Go Daddy, it should be clearly stated on their website, in an area that you see prior to purchasing it, but it isn’t! I feel this is misleading!
And to me, changing hosts seems like a completely unacceptable solution! Am I supposed to tell my client to change hosts just to run Backup Buddy? Or, if you are a small business owner with an informational website, are you expected to hire a web developer to move it to a new server just so you can run Backup Buddy?
Go Daddy, although widely hated, is one of the most popular hosting companies in the world. Not mentioning this incompatibility is inexcusable, in my opinion.
So, how did Backup Buddy work with my Go Daddy sites? On Deluxe Hosting (not Economy), it worked on the smaller sites, but on bigger ones (over 100 MB, which is actually not that big), it timed out and failed. On those sites, I had to set up Backup Buddy to backup only the database. I will have to backup the files manually.. A huge drag.
I also tried Backup Buddy on a Micro Amazon EC2 instance. The backup worked fine, but pegged the CPU at 100%, rendering the site inaccessible afterwards. So, again, I was relegated to using Backup Buddy to backup just the database, which didn’t seem to cause the CPU problem. Next, I tried allocating more memory to MySQL which sped things up, but then Backup Buddy failed with error code #8329754. I looked on their site for this error code and couldn’t find it. In spite of the error, the backup did complete, but I’m not sure if it’s good or not.
Well, how about VaultPress? I’ve used VaultPress on numerous client sites including many Go Daddy sites and a huge Amazon EC2 site and never had a single problem!! It just works!!
So, as far as compatibility is concerned, Backup Buddy had some big problems with me. If you or your client has Go Daddy hosting, or if you are not sure how to set PHP timeouts and things like that, I’d strongly recommend VaultPress over Backup Buddy.
Why VaultPress Has Fewer Server Issues
Backup Buddy and VaultPress work quite differently.
Backup Buddy first creates a backup zip file on your server, then uploads this to your specified offsite storage. This method is prone to running into timeout and file size limits, which will prevent the backup from completing. Furthermore, it leaves backup files on your server, unless you change the settings to avoid this.
VaultPress leaves no backup files on your server, and doesn’t generate a big zip file. It archives one file at a time directly to the offsite server. This can be slower in some cases, especially initially, but I think it’s a better way to go, since it avoids server timeout and file size problems, and leaves no file “droppings” on your server.
Cost – Winner: It Depends
If you have a single website to back up, VaultPress is cheaper, at $55 per year (as of the time of this writing, 2014). Backup buddy is $80 per year for two sites, but if you have only one, you still have to pay for two. In addition, if your site is larger than 1GB, you’ll have to pay for additional storage with Backup Buddy, whereas with VaultPress you get unlimited storage. So, for one site, VaultPress is clearly the winner.
For a large number of sites, VaultPress can get really expensive though. There is no volume discount with VaultPress, whereas the cost per site of Backup Buddy goes down the more sites you have. A ten site license costs $100 per year. An unlimited site license costs $150 per year. For that price, you can only get fewer than three VaultPress licenses!
Overall Winner: VaultPress
So, here’s the bottom line: If you have one only site, go with VaultPress.
If you have a large number of sites, AND you are sure Backup Buddy will work with your host, AND you have done the math about the cost of additional external storage, then Backup Buddy can be a much better value. Be advised that iThemes (the maker of Backup Buddy) has a “no refund” policy. So, if Backup Buddy doesn’t work on your server, you’re out for the money you spent on it!
I should stress that many people love Backup Buddy and there are many positive reviews of it. This article just reflects my experience. Personally, I recommend VaultPress over Backup Buddy for all of my clients, hands down, mainly because of the Backup Buddy server problems I mentioned above.
I’ve heard good things about Manage WP, but haven’t tried that yet. Also, reader Haydrion recommends Sucuri below, with similar pricing as VaultPress. Please let me know about your experience with that or VaultPress or Backup Buddy! – Brian
Original Article by Brian Shim
