BackupBuddy Reviews

The deployment feature would be very interesting, if it worked as promised.

I'm very unsatisfied with BackUpBuddy. After months of thinking about whether it was the right product for me or not, I decided to give it a go, and it's such a shame they don't give you any way to try it before you buy it, nor do they give you your money back if it doesn't work or you don't like it.

Support is ridiculous, each ticket takes between 3 and 7 days to get a reply.

There is no forum to ask your question or browse previously addressed issues.

The many cool functionalities the plugin provides, work like 10% of the times, on the same installations in which other free plugins work perfectly.

The migrator needs you to type in DB details manually, even if a previous wp-config.php already exists. Every time you do a migration/push you have to clear the whole directory, and import the new site.

Deployment is useless, it never works for a reason or another. When it does, it takes forever to transfer a few files because they are being sent one by one instead of being zipped on the source and unzipped on the destination.

I would personally avoid it. Use other plugins like UpdraftPlus, Duplicator, or Migrate DB Pro

I was meant to use this to solve migration/deployment problems, but it turned out to be a waste of time.

it backs everything up, and can save to their cloud storage

Terrible support.

They take over a week to reply (and this has happened multiple times over the last year). If requiring support on more complex issues is frustrating with any back and forward if they read the issue wrong because you are back waiting for a reply.

If using their hosting - its a long time to be offline and very frustrating (so their hosting is not a smart choice if you need uptime or reliability).

If using the backup product - its a long time to offline trying to restore and the tool not working.

Either they are understaffed, don't care, or have given up and are just letting things run themselves.

Support is important, and they don't have any, so its best to steer clear - its too risky and stressful.

Another note, the products are expensive but that's OK if the support was good - but it's not.

don't purchase until their support get better - its too stressful & they don't care

migrating sites between servers

Nothing - The whole process from start to finish is just about getting your money,

They hide their refund policy at the bottom of the page and when you complain that you can not use their products because they are incompatible with your hosting provider, they just refuse to give the money back. They don't even offer to contact your host. They've had $42 out of me for doing nothing. Daylight robbery. When they sell back up buddy, they should have a pop-up or warning to check with your host provider first.

Don't use them. If you do, check their refund policy first. They never give them!

None

I like how easy it is to back up, migrate and duplicate a Wordpress website. Though there are necessary steps, but I think there is no better way of doing a safe migration other than BackupBuddy. The backing up is very simple, one click and it is readily doing it's job. Best thing is, you can schedule the backups when to happen automatically without you worrying. Every month you can ran as many backups as you like schedule depending on the how often you make changes on your website.

Probably the lengthy steps. You have to go to MySQL page and set everything up. But I guess it is a necessary step in order to start a database from scratch, rather than overwriting from an existing one.

I highly recommend this plugin tools whenever you create a duplicate, migrating or backing up your Wordpress website.

We were able to cut the development time by 30%. Because we don't have to always start developing a Wordpress website from scratch, so we prepare a template that we follow for every new website to be developed and simply customize from there. Backup, Migrate and Duplicate. Rinse and repeat. We were also able to spend less time worrying about getting our website backed up. Before, we have to ask our hosting provider of a copy of our backup files, which is usually sent in a DVD via mail. We have to wait months before we receive a copy of our website's backup from last year. Very inconvenient. With Backupbuddy, we have an up to date backup of our website always, right when we need it.

We now use backupbuddy on all our wordpress sites. You can schedule it out and daily or weekly. We have used it to migrate & restore sites. This is not the least expensive option - but worth the cost.

We typically host all our clients accounts - but some prefer to use their own. So many, many issues with Go Daddy - and quite frankly, we encounter the most annoying issues (time-outs) with Go Daddy. There have been several updates as of late which have helped - but IMHO you do have to really go through the tutorials and learn how to use it. When I see issues that others are having - you can generally tell they have not set it up correctly.

Recommend that setup is done by someone tech savvy. Don't be afraid to reach out to their customer support team - they are very helpful and responsive. Be sure to look at the settings carefully to insure you are doing the type of back-up you want and where you want it to be saved.

This is the first plugin we install on any website build. We feel safe and secure using BackupBuddy for ourselves and our clients. We mostly use it to migrate sites - but it has saved our butt on a few occasions where we needed to do a full restore.

It has a friendly name and they have a gold license you can own this piece of garbage for life. Yay!

Backups continually timeout and never work consistently. If you have anything, but the most basic of Wordpress installs with very minimal data, this plugin just won't work. And if you have any sort of advanced setup with your Wordpress config for a dev, staging and production environment, ImportBuddy will fail cause it's confused.

Update July 31: Just an update on this review. I actually managed to get a backup to work. I was bringing on a new client so I tried to use Backup Buddy on their old server. Backup Buddy failed on this server as usual. I had help from their support and they said the old server was underpowered. I ended up using Wordpress Time Capsule to perform a full backup on the old server and after moving the site to the new server, I tried Backup Buddy again, since the new server is beefier and it actually worked. So Backup Buddy might just work as long as you have a powerful server to run it on.

Find something better. Use WP Migrate DB Pro to sync files and data between sites. And use a product like WP Time Capsule that doesn't require a stash subscription. Back up your data where ever you like whenever you like.

I'm trying to get a reliable backup system for my site that will let me sync data between sites, but this plugin just does not work.

The ease of use and installation and the fact that it runs backups in your sleep—and notifies you if anything is awry.

Restoring data is a tad cumbersome. You don't have to be a total techy, but technophobes will be overwhelmed and turned off, and even people who are somewhat tech savvy but are in a stressful situation (of potential data loss) will find it scary and overwhelming.

BackupBuddy is a great solution for small websites and bloggers who need to safeguard their work. Be sure to have it back your site up to multiple destinations, and also install at least one other type of backup so your data is secure. Set up and use is a breeze. It's an all-in-one solution and it's affordable. The only drawback is that restoring your data is not quite as simple—but it's a hundred times better than the alternative, and you can relatively easily restore your data in case of loss—but if you're not tech savvy, you might need some help with this part of things. Luckily, it doesn't happen very often!

I've secured my client's websites for them and saved lots of time and money when we have lost data—both in terms of potentially lost sales, and also in the money they would've spent restoring sites the long and hard way. Also, they can relax and sleep better at night, knowing that their hard work is all secure.

Everything. Seriously... this is an amazing tool. As a 20+ year developer, I can say that after having tried a dozen backup tools, both free and paid. This tool just works.

Nothing. It works solidly every time. Updates by the developers are frequent and bugs are fixed quickly.

I backup with this tool daily on all of my sites. It's the best tool out there for Wordpress backups.

BackupBuddy continues to get better and better as time goes on. We started using it when we started to use other iThemes plugins (iThemes Security). We were offered a great deal on BackupBuddy and have not turned back. The plugin is very easy to us on our Linux-based hosting servers and there is almost no setup. On other servers you only need to change a few options (however, some web-hosting companies have this plugin blacklisted: see dislikes). Almost every migration from our development servers to our live hosting has gone off without a hitch.

My only dislike of BackupBuddy is that they have not created a plugin that allows ONLY off-site data backups. GoDaddy, for instance, blacklists BackupBuddy because it uses too much data and takes too much processing. I may be wrong, but I feel if BackupBuddy came up with a solution for such a large web-hosting company that they might be able to sell their product more. We have had some issues with BackupBuddy not realizing Unicode differences from one database (MySQL) to another. We have to manually edit the SQL and upload on our own.

I highly recommend that you check with your hosting company before purchasing BackupBuddy. There are many hosting companies, not just GoDaddy, that ban the use of BackupBuddy or ban the use on Shared Hosting packages.

Our clients need reliable WordPress site backups. BackupBuddy accomplishes this in almost every way. We can send backups to just about any cloud storage or to a local spot on the server. The greatest benefit is being able to provide peace of mind to our clients.

I use the BackupBuddy plugin for a wordpress website, it allows the option to download back ups for the site itself and the back-end database, very easy and quick process to give some ease of mind that data won't be lost. It will also tell you the date your site was last backed up which can be useful.

Not a dislike but a nice addition would be that BackupBuddy runs automatomatically after a set amount of time and sends the download to an offline location.

Provides a secure and easy form of back up and security of a public website.

BackupBuddy is one of the most user-friendly platforms I've encountered to date. As soon as you activate the plugin, they provide you with a simple form, where you can fill out your backup preferences. You can also customize how often you'd like automatic backups to be performed, which has saved me a lot of time from having to remember to perform manual backups. Additionally, BackupBuddy is not a subscription based service, so there is no monthly fee.

The customer service aspect of BackupBuddy has declined recently. It is difficult to find a knowledgeable service rep that can help you determine the root of your problems, and to have your problems fixed quickly, especially if it involves restoration.

Helps me preserve my data, which is essential in my role of maintaining our group's website.

This app never actually did what it said it would, so there is nothing good for me to say about it.

I purchased Backup Buddy to protect my wordpress site before I migrated it from a slow server. It timed out every time, and was unable to complete a full back up. I had to download a free app which had no trouble backing everything up before I could safely move my site. I had the app for less than a day and they refused to refund anything. Waste of my time and money, very disappointed.

This app was unable to back up my wrodpress site before I migrated it, so there was no benefit to it what so ever.

Has all the features I need, Cloud Backup with Stash for all my client sites, fully automated

Some site backups to cloud crash when having extremely large files. Didn't have time to troubleshoot yet. You can still download via Web interface.

Use iThemes Stash for cloud backup, no hassle with disk space, server maintenance, etc.

Faster maintenance of customer's websites

Backup buddy has saved me many times and its easy to roll back.

I ready dont have anything I dont like support could be a bit faster.

Migrating clients websites from staging to production. As well as backing up the entire website.

It is very easy to set up. You are guided through the whole process of creating a backup schedule and file destination.

I do not have any dislikes. Sure there are some hoops to jump through when setting the backup destination (Google Drive for example) but that's not BB's fault.

I'm using it on my Wordpress sites, to do daily backups. I have done a restore before and it really works.

Ease of use - setup - support - wordpress migrations.

Depending on the server, backupbuddy uses a lot of resources and can create some minute havoc when attempting migrations.

Definitely a great choice - worth paying for the support, in the event you run into issues.

Migrating client websites from our build server to launched server.

It's easy to add to the website and setup

I have never found that it gets a full backup. Things like widgets or custom CSS are missed.

Even if you use this auto-backup, I still highly recommending getting a custom manual backup every month and include screenshots of all pages and settings. I don't rely on auto-backups to get all my data. They rarely do.

Backing up website data but I don't use anymore.

Migration of websites and connecting to Google Drive

Fails often when server resources are low or for unknown reason

use Stash if on a shared environment

Security and Safety of client websites.