Announcing Duplicator WP-CLI Commands (And How They Speed Up Backups)
Looking for a smarter way to manage site backups? Explore Duplicator's new features, including customizable WP-CLI commands and permission settings!
Announcing Duplicator WP-CLI Commands (And How They Speed Up Backups)
Joella Dunn
Joella Dunn
John Turner
John Turner
Ever wish you could copy and paste your entire WordPress site?
With a cloning plugin, you can create copies of any WordPress website. It’s just as easy as Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V.
Whether you’re creating a staging site or setting up a pre-configured installation for a client, these plugins make duplicating WordPress a breeze.
In this guide, I’ve reviewed the best plugins to clone WordPress sites. Ready to instantly replicate your website? Let’s dive in!
When you first start a website, you’ll set it up on your hosting company’s server. However, you might need to make a copy of your site and move it to a new location. This is called cloning.
Cloning involves creating an exact copy of your site. Unlike a backup, a clone will be fully operational. You can make changes to this duplicate copy without affecting the live site.
Here’s when you might want to clone your WordPress site:
Ultimately, creating a clone (or duplicate) of your site can help you perform many necessary maintenance tasks. If you need to perform an update or implement new coding, you can simply clone your site to a local server. This gives you a functional copy to edit without affecting the live site.
Although you could manually create a cloned copy of your site, this can be time-consuming. Often, an easier option is to install a plugin designed to clone websites.
Since there are many WordPress cloning plugins available, you may not know which is best. To help you decide, let’s compare some of the most popular options!
If you’re looking for the best plugin to clone a WordPress site, we’d recommend Duplicator Pro. This feature-packed tool has everything you need to clone, migrate, and even back up your website.
When you want to make a copy of your site, simply create a new backup. Duplicator will save your WordPress files, plugins, themes, content, and MySQL database into a single archive file. This instantly makes your website easy to move to a staging environment, different host, or new domain name.
You can choose a custom cloud storage location to save your clone off-site. If you need to, use filters to exclude unnecessary data from your site.
Once you build the backup, you can download it and move it to another location. As we mentioned earlier, the archive file will contain all the data for your site. The installer will help redeploy the archive in cPanel or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client.
The Duplicator plugin also supports drag-and-drop migrations. After you create a backup, download the archive file. Then, feel free to import it directly into another WordPress installation.
As you can see, Duplicator Pro can clone websites without any downtime. Here are some extra features that come with the plugin:
Pricing: Duplicator is available as a free WordPress plugin. To access drag-and-drop site migrations, you’ll have to upgrade to Duplicator Pro. This starts at $49.50 per year.
Duplicator simplifies website cloning by packaging your entire site into a single, moveable file. You can use it to create staging sites, move to a new host, and automatically back up your data.
If you want to clone your website quickly, consider using WP Stagecoach. This plugin offers a staging solution that you can set up with one click.
Using your new WordPress staging site, you can perform updates without breaking your live site. If a plugin or theme update causes a critical error, you can safely troubleshoot it. This prevents publishing live broken links and other issues that could put off your visitors.
As you’re working on your staging site, your live website is likely adding new posts or receiving customer orders. When you make your staging site live, you won’t want to overwrite your database and lose this information. What makes WP Stagecoach unique is that it merges your database, so these new updates will stay intact.
Key features:
Pricing: WP Stagecoach is a premium plugin that starts at $99 per year. You can also try out the plugin using the 5-day free trial. If you purchase WP Stagecoach and regret it, you’ll be able to get a full refund.
WP Stagecoach offers one-click staging, perfect for testing updates without site disruptions. Its selective migrations and database merging make it a great management tool.
Another plugin with cloning and migration features is UpdraftPlus. With the premium version, you’ll be able to use the UpraftClone add-on. This allows you to set up a cloned site by simply selecting the version of WordPress and PHP that you want to use.
UpdraftPlus is useful for cloning your live WordPress site to a sandbox, where you can test new changes safely. This testing site is hosted on UpdraftPlus’s servers, so you won’t have to worry about setting up a new hosting account.
Keep in mind that the UpdraftClone feature operates on a token system. You can create a 24-hour sandbox with one token and extend it for 7 days for another token. You’ll receive some free tokens with UpdraftPlus premium, but you may need more.
Key features:
Pricing: The UpdraftClone feature starts at $12 for 5 tokens. Alternatively, UpdraftPlus Premium comes with 10 UpdraftClone tokens and starts at $70 per year.
The UpdraftCone add-on allows you to create cloned copies of your site with custom WordPress and PHP versions. This ensures that new updates don’t cause compatibility issues.
Migrate Guru is a cost-effective cloning plugin created by the same developers behind BlogVault. It was designed as a free, beginner-friendly tool to migrate and clone WordPress sites.
Since Migrate Guru will handle website transfers on BlogVault’s servers, it won’t put any strain on your own server. This means you won’t overload your WordPress hosting plan during the migration process.
Plus, Migrate Guru is capable of cloning or migrating large sites. Hosting the migrations off-site means that you won’t experience server import limits from your personal hosting account. Using Migrate Guru, you can clone a site as big as 1GB in under 30 minutes.
Although the plugin has some benefits, you won’t be able to move a site to and from a localhost server. You’re also limited to 5 migrations every month.
Key features:
Pricing: Migrate Guru is a free WordPress plugin.
Migrate Guru can handle large site migrations without overloading servers. So, it’s a reliable tool for data transfers.
A well-known plugin for performing WordPress migrations is All-in-One WP Migration. With over 5 million active installations, it’s one of the most popular WordPress cloning solutions you can find.
The All-in-One WP Migration plugin was designed with beginners in mind. With one click, you can export your website and clone it to a different location. Similar to other WordPress migration plugins, All-in-One WP Migration also comes with backup and restore features.
Since it doesn’t have dependencies, All-in-One WP Migration is supported by many different hosting providers. However, this tool might not be best for large migrations. The free version is only capable of importing up to 512MB.
To increase this limit, you’ll have to purchase an add-on. Likewise, other premium features like Multisite support are also limited to paid extensions.
Key features:
Pricing: There is a free version of All-in-One WP Migration. You can also purchase premium extensions to increase the WordPress upload limit and integrate cloud storage services. These add-ons start at $69.
All-in-One WP Migration is a simple and beginner-friendly import/export tool. Its straightforward interface leads to easy site migrations.
XCloner is a free plugin for backing up, migrating, and restoring websites. It supports both manual and automatic backups, so you can ensure that your site is secure. Unlike other backup plugins, XCloner can generate differential backups that only save changes after a certain time.
Using XCloner, you can sync a staging site to your live website. This tool can also be useful for migrating your content to a new host or domain name. If anything happens during a migration, there are rollback features to restore a backup without the error.
Before you install XCloner, it’s important to note that it’s not very beginner-friendly. You may need some technical knowledge to receive the full benefits the plugin has to offer.
Key features:
Pricing: You can download XCloner for free. If you want to pair the plugin with a web developer toolbox, you can integrate XCloner with Watchful. Watchful starts at $1.83 monthly for each site.
XCloner’s differential backups and staging site sync make it a great developer tool. Its advanced features and flexibility are perfect for those with technical expertise.
If you run a WordPress Multisite, you may not be able to find a cloning plugin that can support your network. With NS Cloner, you can solve this problem. This plugin can clone a subsite within your network and set it up as a new site with the same WordPress theme settings, plugin configurations, and content.
NS Cloner can be an effective tool for developers. You can create websites for your clients in your Multisite network that use your favorite configurations and plugins. When you’re ready, you can move a client’s site out of the network.
The basic version of NS Cloner is only compatible with WordPress Multisite. However, the premium plugin can also clone single sites.
Key features:
Pricing: There is a completely free version of NS Cloner. You can also upgrade to a premium version starting at $298.
NS Cloner simplifies site cloning for WordPress multisite users.
When you want to clone your live website to a staging site, you can use WP Migrate (formerly WP Migrate DB). This plugin can link your production and staging sites. Then, you can push and pull changes between them.
WP Migrate specializes in database migrations. Rather than having to manually export SQL files, this plugin makes it easier to export and import any database changes. Plus, it can also back up your database before migrations.
Unlike other migration tools, WP Migrate also allows you to sync your media library across different sites. You can choose to migrate the entire library or new uploads. This can save valuable time during development.
Key features:
Pricing: WP Migrate is available for free. Alternatively, there is a premium version that starts at $49.
WP Migrate allows you to easily migrate your database or media library to another location. It’s a great plugin for syncing your production and staging site.
With WP Staging, you’ll have a tool that supports website cloning, staging, backups, and migrations. It enables you to create a cloned copy of your website with one click.
When you clone your live site, WP Staging will create a staging site on a subdirectory of your domain. You can also clone a site to another database to keep it separate from your production site.
Additionally, you can use this plugin to transfer your data to a new host or domain. WP Staging automatically does a search and replacement of your URLs after the migration.
Key features:
Pricing: The core plugin is free and comes with basic cloning features. However, you may want to clone a Multisite or migrate your website to a new server. To do this, you’ll need to purchase WP Staging Pro, which starts at $7.99 per month.
WP Staging is a comprehensive solution for cloning, staging, backups, and migrations.
Duplicator Pro is the best plugin to clone a WordPress site. It allows you to easily back up all of your site’s content, themes, plugins, and database information into a single zip file. Then, you can simply drag and drop this backup into another WordPress installation to clone your site.
If you’re looking for a simple way to duplicate a WordPress page, we’d recommend installing SeedProd. With this page builder, you can save pages as templates and export them as needed. This can save you valuable time as a designer.
Yes, you can clone your WordPress site by installing a cloning plugin like Duplicator Pro. Simply create a backup that contains all of your files, plugins, themes, media files, and database tables. Then, install this backup on a new server to clone the original site.
You can duplicate a page or parts of a page using SeedProd. This page builder allows you to copy specific content and paste it onto a new page. Plus, you can even export a page as a template, which can be used on a different WordPress site.
You can clone your entire site by creating a backup with Duplicator Pro. Then, you’ll need to download the archive file that contains your site files and database. After this, simply drag and drop the zip file into the new website.
The Duplicator plugin on WordPress.org is completely free. Using this version, you can clone your entire website, migrate it to another location, or simply save a backup in case of an emergency.
We hope that you now have all you need to find the best plugin to clone your WordPress site!
While you’re here, check out these extra tips and tricks for WordPress:
Are you ready to clone your WordPress website? Download Duplicator Pro today!
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