How To Install UpdraftPlus Backup Plugin (2024)

It’s devastating.

Watching your website crash because of a bad plugin.

Or losing your website to a hacker that got into the system.

That’s why you need to keep a regular backup of your website. It helps restore your website. Get your business up and running. And prevent hackers from holding your website at ransom.

In this post, I’ll show how you can install the free UpdraftPlus backup plugin. You’ll see how to schedule it for daily backup. And push your backup to a cloud storage like Google Drive.

Let’s begin.

What is UpdraftPlus?

UpdraftPlus is a WordPress plugin you can use to back up and restore your WordPress website.

You can schedule the backup or create it manually. You can upload the backup to a cloud storage like Google Drive.

How much does UpdraftPlus cost?

UpdraftPlus has a free and premium version. I think the free version is sufficient for most beginner websites. The premium version costs $70/year for 2 websites.

The premium version is useful if you have several websites and you need functionality, such as cloning websites. Or having incremental backups to save time. And having pre-update backups, which means automatic backup of the site before any plugin updates.

How to install the free version of UpdraftPlus

Go to Plugins -> Add New under the WordPress dashboard. Search for UpdraftPlus. Install and activate the plugin.

How to perform your first backup with UpdraftPlus

Go to the UpdraftPlus Backups under the Settings. Switch to the Backup/Restore tab.

Click the Backup Now button to create your first manual backup.

Include the database and files in the backup. Click the Backup Now button.

You’ll see that the backup has started. It will take a few seconds to finish.

How to set up automatic daily backup with UpdraftPlus

Go to the UpdraftPlus Backups under the Settings. Switch to the UpdraftPlus Settings tab.

Set Files backup schedule to Daily. Set Database backup schedule to Daily.

Hit the Save Changes button.

How to set up UpdraftPlus to upload to Google Drive

Go to the UpdraftPlus Backups under the Settings. Switch to the UpdraftPlus Settings tab.

Under the Choose your remote storage option, click on Google Drive.

Click the Save Changes button.

Scroll down to the Google Drive settings. Click on the Sign in with Google button.

Choose your Google Account where you want to automatically upload the backup.

You will see the UpdraftPlus page below. Click the Complete Setup button.

Conclusion

If you followed the steps, you should have a fully automated website backup that runs on a daily schedule.

You can check that this is working by going to the Google Drive you used for the setup. You’ll see an UpdraftPlus folder created with the daily backup in it.