Get to Know VaultPress

VaultPress is a real-time backup and security scanning service designed and built by Automattic, the same company that operates over 25 million sites on WordPress.com.

This guide details some of the features of VaultPress, and what you can expect as a potential or new subscriber. As always, you can contact us with any questions.

Real-time Synchronization

The VaultPress plugin uses WordPress hooks to receive real-time alerts when information on your site changes. VaultPress then immediately syncs your changes with our servers to generate a backup for your site. Any time you update your site, VaultPress is notified and immediately gets to work making sure your changes are replicated and synchronized.

About our Backups

VaultPress offers two options for backups: real time backups and daily backups. We don’t provide an option for you to initiate a backup manually if you are using a daily backup option. In either case, you’ll never need to schedule a backup. We believe it should just happen, and you shouldn’t have to remember to have peace of mind.

What does VaultPress back up?

VaultPress will back up your WordPress database, custom post types, plugins, themes, settings, and media library uploads. We also backup the following additional files:

  • /.htaccess
  • /apple-touch-icon.png
  • /apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png
  • /BingSiteAuth.xml
  • /crossdomain.xml
  • /favicon.ico
  • /LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml
  • /startup.png
  • /robots.txt
  • /wp-config.php
  • /wp-content/languages/
  • /wp-includes/languages/

Live Status

When VaultPress is activated by one of these changes, you can watch the backup live via the status bar in the VaultPress dashboard. The status bar describes exactly what’s happening at that moment—whether we’re backing up a comment, a new post, a plugin setting, or something else.

Hourly Snapshots

VaultPress creates a snapshot every hour, combining your recent changes with your past backups. This allows you to browse and download a complete backup for any hour in the past.

Daily Scans

Sometimes there are changes to your site that WordPress doesn’t know about—like files uploaded via FTP. To ensure a complete backup, VaultPress scans your site once a day to catch up on any changes made outside of your WordPress dashboard.

Security Scanning

Sites covered by the Premium or Professional plans are scanned daily for known security threats and patterns. VaultPress also takes proactive measures to fix known threats, and will notify you of any serious and potential security threats.