BackupBuddy Review
April 7, 2012 
10 Comments
Being in the internet marketing business for such a long time made me learn a very important lesson… to always learn from my own mistakes.
That is why when I had my first money making site being hacked and caused me to lose a very important income stream; I knew I have to start backing up my sites.
I was just too naive to think there are so many websites on the net so the statistics are in my favors and my sites are safe.
So Why BackupBuddy of All Other Options?
Well, after doing my research I decided to go with Backup Buddy because I found it to do the backing up process very easily, even for those who have zero technical skills.
With BackupBuddy you will be able to migrate your entire site to a new site without installing WordPress on your new site. That is an awesome feature I use all the time. You can literally set up a whole new website in minutes using BackupBuddy (and the importbuddy.php file as you will read below).
Also, with BackupBuddy you will be able to send your backups anywhere you want: your email, Dropbox, Rackspace, Amazon S3 or your FTP. We backup WishlistMemberPlugins.net on a daily basis and we send all our backup files to our Amazon S3 account and it’s awesome.
Backup Buddy is definitely an All in One solution or backups, restoration and migration and it really gives you a peace of mind all your hard work won’t go down the drain.
Get BackupBuddy 3.0 with 69 New EnchantmentsBackupBuddy Features
Backup, Restore and Migrate:
- Data Backup – lets you back up only your content
- Full Backup – lets you do a full back up of your site, data and files
- ImportBuddy.php – a very powerful version of the most important and required Backup Buddy commends that allows you to work with any backup file on any other site without having WordPress installed. You simply need to fill-in your host’s database to let the importbuddy access the data and take care of the restore or migration process and have an entire site work in just minutes.
Scheduled Backups:
Here you can schedule when a new backup will be done. You can backup only your database or you can run a full backup (database + files).
You can also set the backup to be schedules every month, twice a month, week, day or hour, depending on your needs and set a specific date and hour for your next backup to run.
How to Migrate to a New Site with BackupBuddy in Just Minutes
The process of backing up you site is simple (you can also see screenshots below):
- Go to the site you want to migrate, click “Backup & Restore” and then “Full Backup”.
- Once the backup process is done, click to download the backup ZIP archive.
- Go to “Backup & Restore” and download the ImportBuddy.php
- Upload the backup zip file and the ImportBuddy.php file to your new site through the FTP
- Go to the new site’s URL and click on the “importbuddy.php” link
- Follow the steps and insert your database details and finish the migration process
That’s it… you just migrated your existing website to a new one.
BackupBuddy Screenshots
BackupBuddy Prices
The personal license costs $75 for 2 sites. If you are a single website owner this license is perfect for you.
The business license costs $100 for 10 sites.
The developer license costs $150 for unlimited number of sites. If you are a WordPress designer or developer you might consider buying the unlimited license.
Once you will purchase Backup Buddy you’ll realize it is not as expensive as it sounds, when you take into consideration all its features, so if you are planning on building a complete network of sites, I recommend you to get the unlimited number of sites license.
My Final Conclusion on BackupBuddy
Though Backup Buddy is not the only backup plugin exists, in my opinion it is the easiest to work with, and it also makes the backup process a lot quicker, with no need to install anything.
I have been using Backup Buddy for quite some time now and I found it to be very reliable and easy to manage.
Go to BackupBuddy Homepage
“Just wanted to let you know that the plugin is working great and incomplete registrations have gone to zero! I’m definitely going to do a review of the plugin and get it for my own site.” MaAnna Stephenson BlogAid.net
“Bob Tolbert’s Wish List Member plugins have made life easier on us by automating processes that would normally eat up a ton of admin time. I especially appreciate Bob’s quick response time and customer service. Fact is, our membership website would not function without these plug ins.” Michael Burwell TheHangoutHelper.com
“This plugin is the best way to supercharge your membership signups. I was especially impressed by the developers prompt customer service!” Stan Smith PushingSocial.com
“The Wishlist Auto Registration plugin is really great, I love it! And the support you guy’s deliver are really outstanding! Thank you so much!” Johan Skalberg kalisikaran.info
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT. I purchased it about 1 month ago. Installed in my server that is managed by Rack911. My server is supposed to be 100% compatible with this software but the software did not work.
I went to their support site forum … and saw that many people were having exactly the same problem (infinite constant pings). Nevertheless I wrote a post asking for help … after 48 hours of not getting a response and seeing that nobody else was getting a response either I asked for a refund.
The company basically IGNORED MY REQUEST of a refund. I went to Paypal and filed a claim but that did not go well either as this is a NONTANGIBLE ITEM.
BASICALLY iThemes STOLE $100 from me. I warn you … DO NOT BUY BACKUP BUDDY!!!
I am a real person … you can see my facebook account in this post.
Hi Richard,
We are very sorry that BackupBuddy didn’t work on your server, but your conclusion for not buying the product at all is very rush.
We have more than 50 active websites on many different servers and we haven’t encountered the problem you described.
Although we did have one situation when we used WordPress MU and BackupBuddy and it caused endless pings, but the problem was that BackupBuddy was not 100% compatible with WordPress MU.
There are only few backup solutions that we trust and we can definitely say that BackupBuddy is one of them.
iThemes is a very known company that develops very good products.
You can try to contact them on their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ithemes
We are sure that they will respond to your request.
ithemes is very reputable ? Really ? I DON’T THINK SO. I bought the plugin got just pings…. Never worked from day 1. Went to the support forum and posted the issue -After 2 days they post something so useless. I am not going to waste hours of my time to troubleshoot a PREMIUM plugin that I just bought and installed on clean wordpress installation especially when its a critical plugin to backup my site and the plugin shows error’s from day 1 ! No thanks I rather go with other alternatives. I got into the hype by reading all the fake reviews online about this plugin. But boy was I in for a suprise. I would totally understand if it was a free plugin.
I asked for a refund – NO RESPONSE.
Paypal DISPUTE FILED – awaiting response.
ithemes = ITHIEVES !
I have the same issues as you had.I wish I had investigated further. But its a great lesson for the future. Read all reviews thoroughly. Check the support forums for issues others have had and how they were resolved before purchasing any plugins !
@richard
I’m the BackupBuddy developer. I looked into this and see that your first post (October 14th, 2:02pm) in the forum was replied to within 19 hours of posting (9:46am) the very next morning. This is certainly not 48 hours as you stated and you never replied to us after we asked you several questions to determine the issue. I’m sorry you had trouble and if you answer the questions we asked we can get this straightened out for you. We pride ourselves on our excellent support so I’m sorry that you did not give it a chance to help you. Thanks and best wishes!
@Dustin – If you pride yourself so much why don’t offer a refund for the plugin like other vendors do. Why just rip-off people. your support forums are JUST USELESS. The so called moderators are either over-worked or simply plain old dumb
I am using it, and am very happy with it. Great product. NIce and easy backup. Love the ‘remote server’ function as well.
Thanks for that review, Jen.
Unfortunately, like many (MANY) others, we are struggling with BackupBuddy and the dreaded “endless ping.” We have a paid developer’s license for BackupBuddy, enthusiastically purchased on the basis of prior experience. But …
We have dozens of websites, on multiple hosting services, using several high-end, popular, premium themes (including Genesis and OptimizePress). After searching the web for solutions, including disabling caching plugins (W3TC and WP Super Cache, depending on the servers), and even after adding lines of code to wp-config.php, the endless ping continues.
The paid-member forums at iThemes have, as other suggest, less than helpful.
Whereas I won’t jump up and down and tell others not to buy BB, but proceed with caution! For whatever reason, we are still unable to get it to play nice on a variety of sites. After unsuccessfully searching for a solution to keep using BB, we are now actively searching for an alternative.
Russ