VaultPress Backup Plugin Review

Today, I will be doing a review on VaultPress plugin, a premium WordPress backup plugin that provides a cloud backup for your wordpress websites. To tell you the truth, before I built this blog, I was really not into using a paid WordPress backup service, and what I used to do is I just install the free backup plugin for wordpress that is available at the plugins directory, and to tell you honestly, I was already satisfied with that kind of setup; however after I built this site, I just realized that I have already put so much time, effort, and money in building this, so I really cannot afford if something bad happens to my site, and because of this, I began to consider in getting a real website backup plugin – a plugin that I could really use in case something happens to my website, and among the best WordPress backup plugin that really stood out is the VaultPress plugin, and I was actually very thankful that I got this, and I will tell you later why.

What is Vaultpress

So what really is the VaultPress plugin? VaultPress is actually a feature of the Jetpack WordPress plugin, developed by the Automattic Team, and it is a website backup tool that automatically creates a backup copy of your website and store it on their server. I am currently subscribed to the personal plan and with this plan, it creates a website backup on a daily basis which you can see on your VaultPress Dashboard. Storing your website backup outside of your server is actually a good thing because if something bad happens to your server, you can still have that peace of mind, knowing that a copy of your website is safely intact outside of your server, and you can use these website backup files to restore your website anytime.

How Does VaultPress Work

The VaultPress plugin is more like a set and forget plugin, because after you install it, there is really nothing much to do because everything is done automatically, and it only come again into importance once something bad happens to your website and if you need to restore it or revert your website back to its previous working condition, so there’s nothing much to say here and what I’ll just do is show you the inside look of VaultPress

Inside VaultPress

Below I will show you a sneak peak inside the VaultPress WordPress backup service Dashboard

Main Dashboard

On the main dashboard of VaultPress, you will see your websites with VaultPress subscription. In this account, I currently have 2 websites, but I actually have 3 subscription in total including the one featured in my dropshipping journey but is on a different VaultPress backup account.

Main Dashboard – Adding a New Site

If you need to add a new website in this WordPress backup tool, just click the “Add a New Site” button located at the upper right corner of the dashboard and just follow the procedure. This WordPress backup service has 3 plans to choose from, with Personal Plan being the cheapest at $3.5 a month.

Back Ups

When you click “Back Ups”, you will be redirected to the page where you can see all your website backup files, created on a daily basis. You will also notice in my account the notice in red background, stating that I still have not setup my server access. You can actually set it up at a later time, so don’t worry if you still haven’t done it because  you really don’t have to do it right away.

If you want to restore or revert back to your previous website backup file, just choose which one you would like to revert to and click “Restore”. I will not delve too much into this for now because I will be creating a tutorial for restoring your website with Vaultpress backup at a later time.

Stats

Here at the Stats area you will find some data about your website like most productive day, most productive time, most popular day, and most popular time. It also measures the “Vital Signs” of your website, where it is defined by VaultPress as the measure of the total number of posts, pages, comments, and uploads created per day and in addition to that, vitality score represents the daily activity being secured by this WordPress backup service, with 0 being the lowest and 8 being the highest Vitality Score.

Activity

Here you will see the activities that this WordPress backup tool performs to your website. If you made a new post, installed a new plugin, or changed something in your website, VaultPress will capture those activities and sync it with its back up file.

Settings

Here in the Settings area is where you set up your account details so that VaultPress can access your website in case something go wrong along the way. This WordPress backup service has several options to access your server which includes SSH, SFTP and FTP. If you are going to migrate your website to a new server, you can also do this via VaultPress by providing the details in the “Alternate” option

Inside WordPress Admin

Inside your admin area in WordPress, you can see the summary of the backup files that VaultPress has done. You can access this page via JetPack > VaultPress

So that’s basically what you’re going to see if you get yourself subscribed to this WordPress backup tool, and as you can see, there’s really nothing extraordinary about this product, and there’s not really much this plugin can do except for one thing, which is backing up your site, and if you may ask if it’s really working? Well, I am actually a living testament that this plugin really works, and I am really thankful that I got this website backup tool just before my site went down, because if not, I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

VaultPress in Action

So as I have told you in my previous posts, I have an ecommerce website that I featured on my dropshipping journey, and on its week 5, everything is doing fine and nothing much is really happening and I just got a notice from my WordPress admin that there is a new version of my Alidropship plugin, so the normal thing to do is to update it, and what I didn’t know is that the simple task of updating the plugin would actually result to this.

I was actually startled by this message from the JetPack WordPress plugin, and I didn’t actually notice this email immediately because I was doing something else, it’s just on my hourly ritual to look at my email to see if there is something new, and yes, there was this message. At that point, I was actually dumbfounded because I don’t know the reason why it happened, and during that time, I was still not aware that the updating of the plugin was the culprit, and it was really just fortunate that I was able to activate the error logging on my server, and on the log file, I saw this this message:

So the reason was that the new plugin is encrypted with a newer version of IonCube, and my server cannot decode it with its current version. So at this point, I have to act quickly, and the first thing that came to my mind is to restore my website to its previous working condition, and here is where VaultPress really became my superhero.

Restoring with VaultPress was actually very easy to do because all you need to do is to provide the access details of your server, and in my case I provided a ftp access to my root folder where the WordPress application was installed, and that’s it, after that, everything was taken care of by this WordPress backup service, and all you need to do is just wait for a few minutes, and based from my actual experience, the restoration took around 4-5 minutes, and everything is back to normal. JetPack emailed me again saying that my website is now online

The only reason that my website was down for about an hour is because of my delayed response, but if I have just responded as soon as I received this message, the downtime would have just taken around 20-30 minutes.

Just imagine the hassle that I will have to go through again if I don’t have VaultPress! Setting up the website, adding and editing the products – these actually took me about 2 weeks based on my journey, and I really don’t want to go through that again, and I am really very lucky that my site is secured with VaultPress, as you can really have a peace of mind.

Wrapping Up

I guess there’s really nothing more to say about this product, but if you ask about its effectiveness, my actual experience can speak for itself that this product really works. Getting this WordPress backup plugin could potentially save your online business in case something bad happens to your website or server in the future. If you are a serious website owner who wants a peace of mind, getting a backup plugin for WordPress should be a must and actually, any backup plugin could really do as long as the files can be safely stored away from your server, and if you still don’t have one or still deciding what to choose one, I really recommend VaultPress to be considered as one of your options, and though Vaultpress may not be the best WordPress backup plugin, but it certainly is effective.

VaultPress have three plans that you can choose from, and you can actually get VaultPress as a premium feature of the JetPack WordPress plugin. The Personal Plan is the cheapest at $3.5 per month, and as I have told you earlier, three of my websites are currently subscribed to VaultPress including this blog, so you can now imagine how much I trust this plugin. If you want to try Vaultpress and have that peace of mind just like me, just click the link below.

Try VaultPress

How about you? Do you already have a backup for your website? What are you currently using? And what do you think is the best WordPress backup tool? Share it below