Recently, iThemes released BackupBuddy 7 and we had a chance to review iThemes’ latest offering. How does BackupBuddy 7 compare to similar services like Automattic’s VaultPress and how much of an improvement is it compared to BackupBuddy 6? Check out our BackupBuddy 7 review after the break.
BackupBuddy Review: The Introduction
BackupBuddy has always been known to time out even on small sites. This was due to a combination of faulty hosts, the lack of memory on shared hosting and the size of the site that is being compressed before being sent to a remote location. This opened the door to services like VaultPress and competing plugins like UpdraftPlus to prosper.
Well, iThemes has responded and came up with BackupBuddy 7, a plugin that is more like a SaaS model (Software as a service). With the recent update to the seventh version of BackupBuddy, iThemes launched Stash Live, a service to send your data over to their secure, off-site storage.
So, what is the main difference between BackupBuddy 6 and the new BackupBuddy 7? For us, BackupBuddy 6 does not listen to changes to your site. Only a service like VaultPress did back then. And BackupBuddy 6 had issues with certain hosting environments.
Testing Out BackupBuddy 7
But with BackupBuddy 7, it was as if our prayers were answered. BackupBuddy 7 suddenly had the ability to track changes to your site and push them to the secure Stash Live service. But does Stash Live actually work? We decided to put it to test with Leokoo.com.
After two weeks of having BackupBuddy 7 and Stash Live, we took a look at our Stash Live account and found all copies of the databases and full site backup accounted for. Stash Live does work as promised, and is a viable option to VaultPress while ensuring your site gets a full backup.
BackupBuddy 7 Review: Should You Switch Over?
If you are on another solution like UpdraftPlus and VaultPress, you don’t necessarily need to switch over. But with Stash Live being an affordable USD 60 for an additional 10GB of storage and USD 97 for 25GB, Stash Live not only solves your problem of storing backups but also increasing costs if you have multiple sites.
Rather than paying USD 60 annually for each site, you can get more value for money by purchasing an additional 10GB and share it between multiple sites.
The weakness of the BackupBuddy Stash Live service is that it does not have unlimited space to store all changes that take place. That means you need to manage your space wisely. Even the large 25GB space can be finished if you keep too many backups.
In comparison, VaultPress works more like Git and subversion, where it keeps all changes and enables you to revert your site back to any moments in between your latest update and the first time you used VaultPress.
That makes VaultPress more valuable if you run a larger site need the ability to revert back to changes months or years ago. VaultPress does not back up your images and uploads folder though.
BackupBuddy 7 Review Conclusion
Getting a backup solution is crucial for your blog, website or ecommerce store. As BackupBuddy is now on lifetime, you only need to pay once for the plugin and then yearly for your needs on Stash Live. We fully recommend BackupBuddy
