This morning I used the Golden Ticket I received from DreamHost to purchase the basic VaultPress plan. Do a quick Google search if you don’t know what VaultPress is and what it does.
Initially when I first heard of VaultPress and later when I got my Golden Ticket, I didn’t want to spend an extra $15 a month on a backup service when I already backup my database and have old snapshots of my WP installation. Why would I want to pay more money when I already pay that much for my DreamHost account? I’m an impoverished grad student. That $15 could go toward beer or food.
Finally it dawned on me what VaultPress really is. It’s insurance. Just like car insurance or renters insurance. In fact, it’s better. Were I to get in a car accident, I would have to pay a deductible before the insurance would start paying out. With VaultPress, I only pay $15/month and have zero “deductible.” If something happens to my WP install, a few mouse clicks and I can restore it to its proper condition. And just like car insurance, there are several tiers of service. If I had the money, I’d go for the $40/month “pro” plan for peace of mind. It’s the same for my motorcycle insurance. If I had the money, I’d pay the extra to have full coverage .
So when you get your Golden Ticket, don’t think of it as a backup service. Think of it as insurance.
I’ve never really though about it that way, however now that you have mentioned it that way, it is very much like an insurance premium. Great analogy!!
Now if only my insurance premiums were as inexpensive as VaultPress!
I hadn’t heard about vaultpress till this post – thanks for the link! what i particularly like isn’t just that its a backup of files, but database + settings + config as well. all that in one package sounds awesome. I already use svn to backup the files of my wp install, but knowing the database+config+uploads are safe as well will let me rest easier 🙂
I used to keep snapshots of my WP install including copies of the database but the backups were infrequent (once a month?). Now with VaultPress, I still make the occasional offline backup for peace of mind but I know that I can get my site back up and running quickly from VaultPress’s snapshots. Plus, if my site goes down for whatever reason, I know I can go back to the last good site configuration before something went wrong. That’s real peace of mind.
Now if only I could afford better hosting than DreamHost…
I’m a pro subscriber to VaultPress. While it is true that it is insurance against disaster, it is not true that restoring your site from VaultPress simply involves a couple of mouse clicks. I recently had such a disaster and was thankful to have a good compliment of snapshots to choose from. However, restoring my site was as complicated as if I was using any other manual backup and restore system. In fact, BackupBuddy, which I also use, is far easier to restore from.
VaultPress is still an experts’ tool. I’m happy to pay my $40 per month, but restoring from it is not nearly as simple as a layperson would like it to be. On the other hand, there is no easier way to have a real time backup.
As I recall from some literature from VaultPress, layperson restore will be available in a forthcoming update. For those of us who are at least capable enough to install and manage WordPress on our own, VaultPress takes only a comparatively few mouse clicks. Such is the life of early adopters though. At least we’re supporting Automattic 🙂
We are also on Vaultpress and reviewed it too. But naming it as blog insurance is a great new way to look at it.
Automatic WordPress Backup does the same thing and it’s free. And you can restore right from your dashboard. I’ve used it for a while now and restored several times. It works great! And it uses the amazon cloud to store your backups. Or you can download them to a local flash drive for extra back up.
Is the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin still being actively developed? Looks like the last release was in September…
In addition to the backup service that VaultPress provides, I also look at it as a bit of a donation and tip-of-the-hat to the Automattic team. Support those who help create what you love to use, right?
Well yes. Which is why I donated to the plugin developer 😉
There’s not much to further develop in the plug-in unless WP developers decide to change the directory structure. All it does is wrap everything up in a zip file and send it to the cloud account. I suppose if WP makes some major overhauls that would affect that process, then I’d have to come up with another solution if the plugin isn’t in development any longer. I think it is though.
BTW, I’ve tipped the hat and donated to Automattic and I’ve helped make them popular by using their stuff 🙂
I was just pointing out that there was another solution for those on a tight budget. Vaultpress is great if one wants to pay for it.
For some reason, I’ve found it easier to fork over the money for VaultPress than donate to plugin developers. I’m sure there must be some psychology research that explains why I am stingy with one group but not another…
Why did you choose to use two separate backup methods? Just more redundancy?
Yep. Plus it’s easy enough to do. The plugin is designed to upload each backup to my Amazon Cloud account (about thirty cents a month for the backup storage) and it also keeps a reference link to each backup on the dashboard so one can easily download a backup to a local PC or flash drive or what have you. If it’s easy to do, it never hurts to have redundancy. It just depends on how important the data is to you. It’s all about that. Unfortunately, many people don’t decide it’s important until it’s gone forever 😉
I also have got a golden ticket from my hostgator.
I didn’t bought the vaultpress then because I also thought it as a backup service.
But looks like I need to see again and think.
This seems to be by far the most important investment I made. Servers do crash. Computer backups do get lost.