UpdraftPlus are thrilled to announce that as part of one of the biggest and most important updates in our history, UpdraftPlus Premium users will now have access to the amazing new UpdraftPlus Incremental Backups feature!

What is Incremental Backups and how does it work?

When backing up your WordPress site content such as images, media, video, plugins, themes, etc. using UpdraftPlus or another backup plugin, you usually have to create a whole new backup file of the entire site – every time! But thanks to UpdraftPlus, this is no longer necessary.

To give the user as much control as possible, you now have the ability to arrange your incremental file backups to the hourly schedule of your choice. Once UpdraftPlus has taken the initial full backup, it will subsequently only backup any new changes that have occurred between the period of hours you have selected. The changes could range from something as small as a new image you added, to something as big as an entire website and theme overhaul.

This is a massive new development from UpdraftPlus that will help to reduce the excessive resources used to perform a full site backup, which will also help users who have low resource servers.

How are UpdraftPlus Incremental Backups different?

Unlike other vendors’ (e.g. BackupBuddy) incremental backups (which use proprietary software and locks you into its service), we have made a point of keeping UpdraftPlus Incremental Backups as regular ZIP files, giving you full control over your backups and website.

By performing incremental backups over the next month following your preferred hourly schedule, UpdraftPlus can offer a cheaper and faster service that only includes the changes made since the original or last incremental backup. To ensure your files are properly backed-up and up to date, UpdraftPlus will run and produce a brand-new full backup of your site at the start of every month. UpdraftPlus will then continue to perform the regular incremental backups as requested.


Yet another amazing benefit of Incremental Backups is the ability to check when your last incremental backup was taken by just checking the existing backups list.

Finally, if you should ever need to restore from an incremental backup due to an issue with your site, you will have the freedom to restore up to a certain point (useful if a recent update was the cause of your problems) or even restore the entire site!

Incremental Backups is available with UpdraftPlus Premium – if you need the latest version you can update it here, and be sure leave your comments and feedback below.

More information on the feature is available on the main documentation page, here.

A handy in-depth guide on how to use Incremental Backups can also be found here

A ‘how to’ video tutorial on how to use Incremental Backups is also available below.

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