BackupRidge vs Solid Backups
If you bought BackupBuddy, your plugin has since been renamed to Solid Backups, split into a feature-frozen Legacy edition and a cloud-only NextGen, and — as of May 2026 — folded into the Kadence bundle. If you are choosing a BackupBuddy replacement anyway, the honest question is which one leaves you in control next time: standard ZIP archives in storage you own, from a plugin whose entire product is backup.
Comparison data verified from liquidweb.com and its documentation on August 11, 2026. BackupRidge is not affiliated with Solid Backups, Kadence, or Liquid Web.
A forced decision either way — so decide toward control
Choose BackupRidge if…
- You want your archives as standard ZIPs in storage you control — local, FTP, SFTP, S3, or R2 — not only in a vendor’s cloud
- You want a free tier at all — Solid Backups has never had one, and backups now start at the $299/yr Kadence Pro bundle
- You want a standalone backup product under active development, not one feature inside a theme-and-security bundle
- You held a BackupBuddy lifetime license and want a pay-once landing spot — founder lifetime pricing is available while the launch offer lasts
Stay with Solid Backups if…
- You want backups that run from the vendor’s servers, with near-zero load on your own hosting — NextGen’s cloud-first design is genuinely good engineering
- You want zero-configuration offsite storage included in the price, with no S3 account or FTP credentials to manage
- You manage several sites from one central dashboard rather than per-site plugin screens
- You already use the Kadence theme and blocks — the Pro bundle covers theme, blocks, security, and backups in one subscription
Who holds your backups when things change?
BackupBuddy owners have now lived through an acquisition, two rebrands, a feature freeze, and a bundle consolidation. None of that is unusual in commercial software — which is exactly why where your archives live matters more than any single feature.
Standard ZIPs, your storage
BackupRidge writes plain ZIP archives to destinations you own — simultaneously, free. If you stop using BackupRidge tomorrow, every backup you ever made still opens with any unzip tool. NextGen stores backups only in the vendor’s cloud (US or EU), with retention up to one year.
Backup is the whole product
Solid Backups is now one line item inside the Kadence bundle, and the Legacy plugin no longer receives feature updates — its wind-down dropped Google Drive support, with security patches published through April 2027. BackupRidge is a standalone backup plugin whose changelog is all backup, restore, and reliability work.
Free means an exit is always open
Scheduled backups, restore, retention, and pre-update rollback are free in BackupRidge — the plugin keeps protecting your site whether or not you ever pay. Solid’s published terms keep existing customers on their current plans, but a lapsed subscription means re-buying at the new bundle tiers.
BackupRidge Free vs Solid Backups — NextGen
Solid’s current feature set is mid-transition, so this table is deliberately shorter than our other comparisons and sticks to what we could verify from the vendor’s own pages.
| Feature | BackupRidge Free | Solid Backups — NextGen (Kadence Pro, $299/yr) |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✓ Full backup/restore, free forever | — None — premium-only since 2010 |
| Scheduled automatic backups | ✓ Free | ✓ Incremental daily, flexible scheduling |
| Where backups live | ✓ Your storage: local, FTP, SFTP, S3, R2 — simultaneously | Vendor cloud only (US/EU) — no S3, Drive, Dropbox, FTP, or local option |
| Backup retention | ✓ Your rules, your storage · tiered GFS (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly) in Pro | 7 days to 1 year, on vendor storage |
| One-click restore | ✓ Free, any size | ✓ Included |
| Snapshot before plugin/theme/core updates, with one-click rollback | ✓ Free, on by default | Not listed on current feature pages |
| Load on your hosting | Runs on your server — auto-tuned to your host’s measured throughput | ✓ Near zero — runs from vendor infrastructure |
| Sold standalone | ✓ Yes — free plugin, optional Pro | — Bundle only (Kadence Pro or Elite) |
Solid Backups / Kadence details verified from liquidweb.com pricing and documentation on August 11, 2026. Their lineup is actively changing — spotted something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.
Where Solid Backups genuinely wins
Backups that never load your server. NextGen initiates and processes backups from the vendor’s own infrastructure, with incremental daily runs. On resource-starved hosting that is a real advantage — BackupRidge tunes itself to your host, but it still runs on your host.
Zero-configuration offsite storage. Storage is included and just works — no S3 bucket, no FTP credentials, no capacity planning. BackupRidge asks you to bring your own destination; that is the price of owning the copies.
Fleet management from one dashboard. NextGen is managed centrally across all your sites rather than site by site. BackupRidge is configured per site today.
Bundle value if you live in Kadence. If you already build on the Kadence theme and blocks, Kadence Pro covers theme, blocks, security, and backups in one $299/yr subscription — a fair price for the whole stack, even if it is a lot to pay for backups alone.
And a word for the classic plugin: BackupBuddy’s ImportBuddy restore tool was rebuilding WordPress sites onto empty servers a decade before most of the category existed. The frustration ex-BackupBuddy users feel is real precisely because the original product earned its reputation.
What free covers, and what paid costs
| BackupRidge | Solid Backups (via Kadence) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Scheduled backups, restore, retention, pre-update rollback, migration-receive, simultaneous destinations, no size caps | None |
| Entry paid tier | $49/yr — 3 sites | Kadence Pro $299/yr — includes backups (Essentials at $99/yr does not) |
| Top end | $199/yr — unlimited sites, every Pro feature | Kadence Elite $499/yr |
Kadence prices from liquidweb.com, verified August 11, 2026; per-tier site limits were not published on the pricing page we checked. Existing SolidWP customers keep their current pricing under the published transition terms. Founder lifetime pricing is available on BackupRidge Pro while it lasts (a launch offer, not a standing SKU), and all paid plans carry a 14-day money-back guarantee.
How to switch safely
Nothing gets deleted until you hold a verified backup.
Keep your existing archives
Before anything else, download or preserve your most recent Legacy archives (or confirm your NextGen retention window). Do not delete history you might need mid-switch.
Install BackupRidge alongside
Install and activate from the WordPress plugin directory — see Getting Started. The plugins coexist cleanly, and pre-update snapshots switch on automatically from this moment.
Set a schedule and destinations you own
Pick a schedule, then add one or more destinations — local, FTP, SFTP, S3, or R2, sent simultaneously, free. This is the step that ends vendor-held storage: from here, every archive lands somewhere you control.
Run, verify, then retire the old plugin
Trigger a manual backup, download the archive, and restore it on a staging site once. When your BackupRidge retention covers your recovery window, deactivate the old plugin — and keep its final archives for a while anyway.
Questions ex-BackupBuddy users ask
What actually happened to BackupBuddy?
BackupBuddy launched in 2010 as the original premium WordPress backup plugin. Its maker, iThemes, was acquired by Liquid Web in 2018 and rebranded to SolidWP in 2023, renaming the plugin Solid Backups. It was then split into Solid Backups — Legacy (the classic plugin, no longer receiving feature updates) and Solid Backups — NextGen (a cloud-first replacement). In May 2026 Liquid Web retired the SolidWP and StellarWP brands entirely; backups are now sold only inside the Kadence bundle, with critical security patches for the retired tools published through April 2027.
Is BackupRidge really free?
Yes. The free plugin includes scheduled automatic backups, one-click restore, pre-update snapshots with rollback, site-migration receive, and unlimited simultaneous storage destinations — local folder, FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, and Cloudflare R2 — with no size caps on backup or restore. Solid Backups has never had a free tier: BackupBuddy was premium-only from day one, and today the least expensive way to buy its successor is the Kadence Pro bundle at $299/yr.
Can BackupRidge restore my old BackupBuddy or Solid Backups Legacy archives?
No — and we would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise. Legacy archives restore through Legacy’s own tooling. The safe path is to keep your existing archives where they are, install BackupRidge alongside, take a fresh full backup, and verify a restore before you retire the old plugin.
Does BackupRidge run backups from the cloud like Solid Backups — NextGen?
No. NextGen initiates and processes backups from SolidWP’s own infrastructure, which keeps load off your hosting — a genuine strength we credit below. BackupRidge runs on your server, but measures your host’s actual throughput and tunes itself so backups finish even on slow shared hosting. The trade is control: BackupRidge writes standard ZIP archives to storage you own; NextGen stores backups only in the vendor’s cloud, with retention options up to one year.
What happens to my setup if my Solid/Kadence subscription lapses?
Per Liquid Web’s published transition terms, existing customers keep their current pricing and features, but if a subscription lapses, reinstatement requires purchasing one of the new Kadence plans. NextGen backups live in the vendor’s cloud rather than in storage you control. With BackupRidge, the free plugin keeps working regardless, and your archives are standard ZIPs in your own storage.
Is it safe to run BackupRidge and Solid Backups at the same time?
Yes. They store their files in separate directories and do not interfere. Run both while you switch: take and verify a BackupRidge backup first, and remove the old plugin only when you are confident.
Who is behind BackupRidge, and is it actively maintained?
BackupRidge is built by Stava Tech and released under GPL v2. Every release is documented in a public changelog, and the plugin ships frequent, incremental updates rather than big-bang rewrites — backup is the whole product, not one feature in a bundle.
The last backup migration you plan around a vendor
Install BackupRidge next to your current setup, send one backup to two destinations you own, and keep whatever happens to any vendor from ever touching your archives again.
BackupBuddy, Solid Backups, SolidWP, Kadence, and Liquid Web are trademarks of their respective owners. BackupRidge is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any of them. Feature and pricing information verified from public sources on August 11, 2026 and may have changed since — report an inaccuracy.