The History of MainWP Backups
When we first started on the journey that has become MainWP, we didn’t even have a backups section in the plugin. It wasn’t until it was suggested by a few users in the Beta that we even thought of adding it.
As first time Plugin developers we jumped at the chance to add something “cool” to the plugin without fully vetting the idea and to this day that decision has eaten up more development and support time than I care to admit. We have spent so much of our resources on backup development and backup support that I feel it has become detrimental to improvements and innovations of MainWP in other areas.
As a wholly bootstrapped small company, we do not have the resources to continue chasing the backup dragon at the expense of other areas of the plugin. The fact is, Chris and I are no longer excited by backups and even though, I think, our Backups have become very good they are never going to be to the level of a plugin that is fully dedicated to backups and that is supported by people who truly love backups.
The Resolution
That is why it has come time for a slight pivot for MainWP and we are going to start turning over backups to the true experts, to the teams that do have the passion, excitement and who enjoy working on backup solutions.
I am very happy to announce that moving forward MainWP will offer a type of “choose your own Backup Solution”. This means we are going to start releasing Extensions that integrate existing WordPress backup plugins into your MainWP Dashboard.
MainWP UpdraftPlus Extension
The first in our all-new Backup Integration series is the Free MainWP Updraftplus Extension.
With over 400,000 active installs (source wordpress.org) and a nearly 5-star rating we felt this would be a great plugin to get started with.
With the MainWP UpdraftPlus Extension, you can control the UpdraftPlus Plugin settings for all your child sites directly from your MainWP Dashboard. This includes giving you the ability to create and restore your child site backups and even set Backup schedules directly from your MainWP Dashboard.
The Future
We plan to release another 3 Backup Extensions by the middle of next month. These extensions will focus on some of the most popular backup plugins.
Once those Extensions are released we are going to refocus the large portion of our resources that went towards MainWP Backup development to other areas that we want to explore within the system.
Update on 5-28-2015
We released our second Backup plugin integration with the Free BackUpWordPress Extension
Update on 10-26-2015
The third Backup Extension is released supporting BlogVault Incremental Backups
Update on 3-25-2016
Our Fourth Backup integration is with BackWPUp
Update on 8-30-2016
Added MainWP Buddy Extension that integrates with the BackupBuddy plugin!
We would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, and suggestions.
Thank you,
Dennis
12 thoughts on “MainWP begins integrating the most popular backup plugins”
That’s great news, because BackWPUp is really good plugin and thanks for integrating it with MainWP. Yet I still insist you should develop Duplicator and Duplicator Pro extensions which not only can backup but also easily restore the site.
I would really love to see support for Duplicator Pro.
Me too!!
Just wanted to drop an honest “thank you” for the backup solution you guys created. Maybe it’s not as fancy and doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles like dedicated solutions. And yes, there were/are a few issues but it’s easy to setup, straight forward and works for me, especially with the remote backup extension.
Already automatically backing up more than 100 sites this way since a year so I hope it will continue working and receive a bit of your support in the future!
Do any of these new backup solutions give the ability for groups and different backup schedules like the MainWP solution does? I would love to change to a different solution but it seems the integration is too simplistic. It’s just how many database backups do you want, how many file backups do you want, and where should they be stored. Having the ability to split sites into groups and assign multiple backups schedules to these groups is essential. Depending on the sites we have daily DB backups, weekly or bi-weekly file backups, and monthly backups. Each of these have their own retention number so we always have a good mix of backups to use for a client if there’s an issue.
I really hope you will integrate the best backup plugin out there: BackupBuddy!!
No, it’s not free, but there is none compare to it… and other plugins, like Updraft, cost as much when you buy the premium version to have similar features to what BB brings…
A BackupBuddy Extension is now available!
Thanks guys, your passion and dedication to continually improve your service is very much appreciated. Keep it up
Thanks Angie!
Any plans to add Backup Creator to the available options?
I just checked the New Extension Roadmap and it does not look like that has been requested.
If it is something you would like I would recommend submitting it as a new idea.
I want to buy your product for my agency but, like others, the lack of support for the #1 backup and migration utility makes me shrug my head…
Please consider in the strongest of terms adding support for the Duplicator/Duplicator Pro plugins respectively.
Take care
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