In March 2021, the OVH datacenter in Strasbourg caught fire. In a matter of hours, thousands of websites were physically destroyed. When panic-stricken clients contacted support asking for their backups, many received a chilling response: “Your website was on Server 1. Your backup was on Server 2. Both servers were in the same room. They are both ash.”
This tragedy taught us a brutal lesson: If your backup lives in the same building as your website, you do not have a backup.
At AgilePress, we follow a strict protocol to ensure that if the entire internet breaks, our clients’ businesses survive.
The Golden Rule: 3-2-1
In cybersecurity, there is a universal standard. We apply it to every WordPress site we manage:
- 3 copies of your data (Production, Backup A, Backup B).
- Stored on 2 different types of media (Server disk and Cloud storage).
- 1 copy must be Off-Site (physically in a different location).
Most website owners fail at the “Off-Site” part.
Level 1: Hosting Backups (Convenience, Not Safety)
SiteGround, Cloudways, Kinsta, and most premium hosts offer “Daily Backups.”
- The Good: They are incredibly fast to restore. If you accidentally delete a page, you can bring it back in 1 click.
- The Bad: They violate the 3-2-1 rule. If your hosting account is suspended (billing error), hacked, or the datacenter burns down, you lose the website and the backups simultaneously.
- Verdict: Essential for daily mistakes, but insufficient for disaster recovery.
The Tool Selection: UpdraftPlus vs. Duplicator
This is a common debate. Both are giants in the WordPress ecosystem. Duplicator is arguably the most powerful migration tool on the market, and its Pro version offers excellent encrypted backups. However, for the AgilePress Standard Stack (where we seek maximum efficiency with zero recurring costs), we choose UpdraftPlus.
Here is why:
The “Free Tier” Difference
- Duplicator (Lite): Fantastic for manually cloning a site or moving it to a new domain. However, features like Automated Schedules and direct Cloud Storage (Google Drive/Dropbox) are typically locked behind the Pro paywall.
- UpdraftPlus (Free): It allows us to schedule automatic backups AND send them to remote cloud storage (Google Drive, S3, Dropbox) for free.
The “Atomic” Restore
- Duplicator typically restores the “Whole Package” (Site + DB). It’s a “Nuke and Pave” approach, great for total disaster recovery.
- UpdraftPlus splits the backup into separate entities: Database, Plugins, Themes, and Uploads. If a plugin update breaks your site, you can restore just the plugins in 2 minutes without rolling back the database (and losing orders/comments).
Verdict: If you already pay for Duplicator Pro, keep it; it’s excellent. But for a universal, cost-effective safety net, UpdraftPlus Free is the winner.
Level 2: The “Local Storage” Bloat
Some users install a backup plugin and leave the default settings. The plugin creates a .zip file every day and saves it inside your /wp-content/uploads folder.
This is a critical error.
- Bloat: If your site is 1GB, after 10 days of backups, your server usage is 11GB. You will run out of disk space and crash the server.
- Security: Hackers scan specifically for these zip files. If they find them, they can download your entire customer database without logging in.
- Redundancy: If the server crashes, you cannot access the WordPress dashboard to download the backup file. It is locked inside the burning house.
Level 3: The AgilePress Solution (Automated Off-Site)
We need a tool that:
- Runs automatically.
- Sends the file to a remote cloud.
- Deletes the local file from the server after sending it (to save space).
The Setup (UpdraftPlus Free):
- Service: Connect it to a generic Google Drive account (or Amazon S3 for pros).
- Schedule: Weekly (for brochures) or Daily (for active blogs).
- Retention: Keep the last 4 backups.
The Alternative (WPVivid): If UpdraftPlus fails or conflicts with your server, WPVivid is our backup choice. It has a modern interface and also supports free cloud transfers, making it a worthy rival.
Level 4: The Enterprise Solution (Incremental SaaS)
If you have a massive WooCommerce store (20GB+), running a standard plugin might crash your server because creating such a huge zip file consumes 100% of the CPU.
The Tool: BlogVault (or ManageWP)
- How it works: It is a SaaS. The backup logic happens on their servers, not yours.
- Incremental: It only copies the files that changed since yesterday. It doesn’t copy the whole 20GB every night.
- Real-Time: For high-volume stores, it can back up every time an order is placed.
Schrödinger’s Backup
A backup file does not exist until you have tested it. We have seen clients with gigabytes of .zip files that were corrupted and empty (0kb) when they tried to unzip them.
The Protocol: Once a quarter, try to restore your backup to a Local environment (LocalWP). If it opens, you have a backup. If it doesn’t, you have nothing.
Conclusion: Sleep Well
The cost of losing your digital business is infinite. The cost of configuring UpdraftPlus to Google Drive is zero.
Don’t trust your hosting provider blindly. Automate the parachute.