13 Free Open-source WordPress Backup Scripts, Tools, and Plugins

WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites. It provides a user-friendly interface and a wide range of customizable themes and plugins, making it accessible to both beginners and experienced users.

Why is WordPress Popular?

WordPress gained popularity due to its ease of use, flexibility, and extensive community support. It offers a wide range of features and functionality, allowing users to build various types of websites, including blogs, business websites, online stores, and more.

WordPress is incredibly popular and powers a significant portion of the websites on the internet.

In 2023, WordPress has a market share of 63.5% considering the websites whose CMS we know. This number has grown by more than 10% over the years. In 2010, WordPress was known to be used by 51% of the websites, which is still over half. (src)

Why Should You Backup Your WordPress Install?

Backing up your WordPress installation is crucial to protect your website and its data. It provides a safety net in case of data loss, website errors, hacking attempts, or other unforeseen issues. Regular backups ensure that you can restore your website to a previous working state if necessary.

There are several use-cases where having a backup of your WordPress website is essential:

1. Disaster Recovery: In the event of a server crash, hacking, or accidental data loss, a backup allows you to restore your website and minimize downtime.
2. Plugin or Theme Updates: Sometimes, plugin or theme updates may cause compatibility issues or errors. Having a backup allows you to revert to a previous version if needed.
3. Content Management: If you accidentally delete or overwrite important content, having a backup ensures you can recover the lost data.
4. Migration or Website Transfer: When moving your website to a new hosting provider or domain, a backup ensures a smooth transition without data loss.

Remember, always follow best practices for backing up your WordPress installation to keep your website safe and secure.

In this post, we offer you the best open-source and free WordPress backup and restore tool for Web admins.

1- XCloner WordPress Backup Plugin

XCloner allows you to back up your WordPress site, restore to any web location, send your backups to Dropbox, Amazon S3, Azure, FTP, SFTP, and many others with XCloner backup plugin.

XCloner design was specifically created to generate custom backups of any LAMP website through custom admin inputs, and to be able to restore the clone on any other location with the help of the automatic Restore script we provide!

XCloner Backup tool uses Open Source standards like TAR, MySQL and CSV formats, so you can rest assured your backups can be restored in a variety of ways, giving you more flexibility and full control.

Features

• Backup and Restore your WordPress site easily
• Create compressed and uncompressed backups using TAR open source format
• Create encrypted backups archives with AES-128-CBC algorithm
• Create automated backups from your Scheduled Backups Section
• Received email notifications of created backups
• Generate automatic backups based on cronjobs, it can run daily, weekly, monthly, or even hourly
• To restore your backups on any other location, XCloner will attempt to extract the backup archive files for you, as well as import the mysql dump and update the WordPress config details
• Upload your backups to Remote Storage locations supporting FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, AWS, Azure Blob and many more to come
• Watch every step of XCloner through its built in debugger
• Although we have optimized XCloner to run properly on most hosts, we give Developers options to customize its running speed and avoid backup timeouts, all from the XCloner Config-> System Options
• Ability to split backups into multiple smaller parts if a certain size limit is reached

Backup, Restore and Migrate WordPress Sites With the XCloner Plugin

XCloner is a backup plugin that allows you to safely back up and restore your WordPress sites. You can send site backups to SFTP, Dropbox, Amazon, Goo …

WordPress.orgmiguelsdp

GitHub - watchfulli/XCloner-Wordpress: Backup and Restore Plugin for Wordpress

Backup and Restore Plugin for Wordpress. Contribute to watchfulli/XCloner-Wordpress development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubwatchfulli

2- Backups

GitHub - manoj-wpzonify/backuplift: Never worry about backing up your WordPress site again with backuplift. Send wordpress backups to hetzner storagebox

Never worry about backing up your WordPress site again with backuplift. Send wordpress backups to hetzner storagebox - GitHub - manoj-wpzonify/backuplift: Never worry about backing up your WordPres…

GitHubmanoj-wpzonify

3- WP BackUp Script

This is a simple yet powerful WordPress full backup script that offers a full S3 and password support.

GitHub - PRyC/WPBackUp: WordPress BackUp Script

WordPress BackUp Script. Contribute to PRyC/WPBackUp development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubPRyC

4- Wordpress to Markdown Converter

This is a command line tool for converting a WordPress backup XML file into a bunch of markdown files for posts and pages (and other types).

GitHub - rokde/wordpress-to-markdown: A cli application to convert wordpress backup xml into markdown files for posts and pages

A cli application to convert wordpress backup xml into markdown files for posts and pages - GitHub - rokde/wordpress-to-markdown: A cli application to convert wordpress backup xml into markdown fil…

GitHubrokde

5- mysql-backup

This project is a fork from deitch/mysql-backup, with additional features to back up and restore additional resources along with the database backup.

The rationale behind this is that most applications also have additional resources that make part of the application that also needs to be backed up, not just the database. For example, a WordPress install.

It has the following features:

• Backup and restore database and application files.
• Backup to local filesystem, S3 or SMB server.
• Scheduled backups.
• Delayed backup process start: define a delay before doing the first backup, whether time of day or relative to container start time (in seconds).

6- BackWPup – WordPress Backup Plugin

BackWPup WordPress plugin can be used to save your complete installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and many more, see list below. With a single backup .zip file you are able to easily restore an installation.

However, the free version is limited, if you want to use more features, you have to upgrade to the pro edition.

BackWPup – WordPress Backup Plugin

Schedule complete automatic backups of your WordPress installation. Decide which content will be stored (Dropbox, S3…). This is the free version

WordPress.organtoninh

7- UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup & Migration Plugin

UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks.

Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email.

The paid version also allows you to back up to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus.

Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly.

UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup & Migration Plugin

Backup, restoration and migration. Makes complete backups; manual or scheduled (backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, Rackspace, FTP + others).

WordPress.orgEpi Express

8- Backup Migration

This is a free plugin that allows you to back up your WordPress data easily with one click. It can also automate the backup of your database, and store them in different locations.

Backup Migration

Backup Migrate Restore

WordPress.orgluduing

9- Duplicator – WordPress Migration & Backup Plugin

Duplicator is the most powerful migrator available.

It enables you to:

• Move, migrate or clone a WordPress site between domains or hosts with zero downtime
• Pull down a live site to localhost for development
• Transfer a WordPress site from one host to another
• Manually backup a WordPress site or parts of a site
• Duplicate a live site to a staging area or vice versa
• Bundle up an entire WordPress site for easy reuse or distribution
• Perform a full WordPress migration without struggling with messy import/export sql scripts

Duplicator – WordPress Migration & Backup Plugin

WordPress migration and backups are much easier with Duplicator! Clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one location to another.

WordPress.orgbuglover

10- Total Upkeep – WordPress Backup Plugin plus Restore & Migrate

Yet another powerful plugin for WordPress backup that allows you to restore and migrate your database and file backups with simple steps.

Total Upkeep – WordPress Backup Plugin plus Restore & Migrate by BoldGrid

Automated backups, remote backup to Amazon S3 and Google Drive, stop website crashes before they happen and more. Total Upkeep is the backup solution …

WordPress.orgTrevor Holloway

11- Database Backup for WordPress

Database Backup for WordPress allows you to quickly back up your core WordPress database tables, and either download the backup as a gzipped file, or send it via email to an address you choose.

By default, the plugin will always back up all the core WordPress database tables. However, you may also selectively back up any custom tables that might be created by other plugins

Additional options include the ability to exclude spam comments from the comments table, or post revisions from the posts table, saving you space and bandwidth.

You can also enable scheduled backups to run automatically at set intervals, and configure the email address to send the scheduled backups to.

Database Backup for WordPress

Database Backup for WordPress is your one-stop database backup solution for WordPress.

WordPress.orgVu Tru So

12- CYAN Backup

Backup your entire WordPress site and its database into a zip file on a schedule. Remote storage options include FTP, SFTP and FTPS.

CYAN Backup is a fork of the great Total Backup by wokamoto.

Currently support schedules are hourly, daily, weekly and monthly with intervals for each (for example you could select a schedule of every 4 hours or every 6 weeks, etc.).

CYAN Backup

Backup your entire WordPress site and its database into a zip file on a schedule. Remote storage options include FTP, SFTP and FTPS.

WordPress.orgmistermsk

13- All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP Migration is verifiably one of WordPress’ most trusted and utilized plugins for moving websites with absolute ease.

Intently built with the non-technical user in mind, All-in-One WP Migration comes loaded with newbie-friendly functions that allow you to migrate your WordPress website with little to no technical knowledge or experience.

All-in-One WP Migration

Move, transfer, copy, migrate, and backup a site with 1-click. Quick, easy, and reliable.

WordPress.orgubaig54