Security incident on teamupdraft.com: what happened, what we’ve done, and what you need to do

Last updated: 23nd October 2026 05:26 BST. We may update this page as our investigation continues.

 

Update 22nd Oct 14:42BST –
Our support form was back up and available on our site late last night.

We’re asking our users to continue to be vigilant. It’s especially worth logging into UpdraftCentral via ‘My Account‘ and looking at the sites listed there.
If a site is listed that you didn’t knowingly connect since the 19th Oct, please check it for signs of compromise.

Here are some things to check on those sites:

• Any unusual/unexpected users (we’re seeing a pattern of unexpected ‘editor’ roles especially
• Any unrecognised plugins
• IPs you don’t recognise in the logs

If in doubt, please contact our customer support team.

Update 21st Oct 15:35BST –

We want to emphasise the importance for users of UpdraftPlus Premium to check your websites for signs of unusual activity. This could range from unexpected plugins to new admins. This is worth checking even if you’ve never used UpdraftCentral.

Secondly, in light of the ongoing issue affecting the PHP foundation – we’re taking our support form temporarily offline. Customers wishing to contact support can do so via the support forums. https://teamupdraft.com/support/ Choose between “premium support forums” and “ask for help (users of free plugins).

Update 21st Oct 10:23BST –

We just wanted to update you with a quick tl;dr list of established facts. As this is an ongoing incident, we don’t have all the answers yet – we’ll get them to you as soon as we do.

• We immediately took steps to lock down access and secure our site – there’s currently no evidence the attacker still has access
• We know the attacker used a compromised key to access our site.
• The speed of the exploits following the breach combined with the initially faulty backdoor plugins suggest that the hackers used AI to accelerate their attack.
• We have bought in an external leading cyber security firm to assist as an extra precaution (as well as our-in-house experts).
• We have contacted the relevant authorities (including the police) about this and are co-operating with them as they investigate.
• The update to UpdraftPlus pushed on the 19th (1.26.13 & 2.26.13) automatically disconnects user sites from UpdraftCentral by revoking connection keys.
• The attacker exploited the connection to users’ sites to create admin accounts, install malicious plugins etc – the extent of that is unknown so it’s important to check your sites for unexpected plugins, activity and users.

Update 20th Oct 16:25BST –

We’ve seen reports on other publications suggesting there is an ongoing attack. To be clear – the unauthorised access was resolved and an update to UpdraftPlus (1.26.13 and 2.26.13) published just after 10pm BST on the 19th revoked UpdraftCentral connection keys thus blocking any access across that vector. WordPress.org have pushed that out to all users so you don’t need to manually update (though it’s always worth checking you’re on the latest version).

It’s still important that users check over their sites for suspicious activities as listed in this blog post.

Original post

Over the weekend of 17-18 October we identified unauthorised access to the teamupdraft.com website. Our team responded straight away and worked through the night to contain it – we closed the access route, signed out every account and replaced the keys and credentials that could have been affected.

This page explains what happened, what we have already done to protect you, and the steps to take for each of our products. Most users only need to change their password. If you use UpdraftCentral, please read that section and act on it today.

What happened

We believe our customer database was accessed. It holds:

• names, email addresses, billing addresses and order history
• account passwords, stored only in hashed (scrambled) form and never in plain text
• two-factor authentication settings
• connection keys for UpdraftCentral, UpdraftVault and UpdraftClone

We do not store any card details. All card payments are handled by Stripe and PayPal.

The UpdraftPlus plugin itself and its downloads were not affected. Backups sent to your own remote storage, such as Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon S3, are not affected. However, if your site was accessed through UpdraftCentral, please also re-authorise your remote storage and change any storage access keys, as a precaution.

Self-hosted UpdraftCentral is not affected.

What we have already done

• Closed the access route, deployed a fix for the underlying weakness, and continued to strengthen the website’s security
• Signed out every teamupdraft.com account and reset login security across the site
• Released UpdraftPlus 1.26.13 (free) and 2.26.13 (Premium), which automatically disconnect every UpdraftCentral connection made before 13:07 BST on 18 October, so the old keys stop working
• Disconnected every site from UpdraftVault and issued new credentials
• Replaced every UpdraftClone client key
• Rotated our keys with payment providers and other connected services
• Put additional monitoring in place, which we will keep running while we investigate
• Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and other relevant authorities

What you need to do

Everyone with a teamupdraft.com account

1. Change your teamupdraft.com password. Type teamupdraft.com into your browser rather than following a link.
2. If you use the same password anywhere else, change it there too.
3. If you use two-factor authentication on teamupdraft.com, reset it in My Account.
4. Be cautious of unexpected emails that claim to be from us. We will never ask for your password or keys.

UpdraftCentral (cloud) users: please do this today

Your UpdraftCentral connection keys can send commands to your connected sites, so please secure each site directly. For each site:

1. Log in to the site’s own WordPress dashboard, not through UpdraftCentral.
2. Update UpdraftPlus to version 1.26.13 (free) or 2.26.13 (Premium) or later.
3. Disconnect it from UpdraftCentral: go to Settings > UpdraftPlus > Advanced Tools > UpdraftCentral and delete the connection key.
4. Go to Users and check for any administrator accounts you don’t recognise. Remove them.
5. Go to Plugins, including the Must-Use tab if you can see it, and check for anything you don’t recognise. Remove it.
6. Change the passwords for all administrator accounts on the site.
7. If you find anything suspicious, consider restoring the site from a backup taken before 17 October.
8. Reconnect the site to UpdraftCentral.

UpdraftPlus 1.26.13 and 2.26.13 automatically disconnect the old connections, so please update every site, including any you don’t manage day to day. If you have already reconnected a site using the steps above, the update will not disconnect it again.

If you reconnect a site using the steps above, the update will not disconnect it again. We will update this page as soon as the release is available.

UpdraftVault users

All sites have been disconnected from UpdraftVault, so backups won’t reach Vault until you reconnect. For each site:

1. Log in to the site’s WordPress dashboard and go to Settings > UpdraftPlus > Settings.
2. Under remote storage, click UpdraftVault, then under “Already got space?” click Connect.
3. Enter your teamupdraft.com email and your new password, then click Connect.
4. Click Save Changes, then run a manual backup to confirm it’s working.

UpdraftClone users

Every client key has been replaced and the old keys no longer work. If you’ve never created a client key, you don’t need to do anything. If you’ve shared keys with your own clients, copy the new keys from My Account > UpdraftClone > UpdraftClone Key Management and send them on. Any clone using an old key will fail.

Free UpdraftPlus users without a teamupdraft.com account

You don’t need to take any action, though we always recommend keeping UpdraftPlus up to date. We recommend bookmarking this page for updates.

Support

We know you trust us with your sites and backups, and we’re sorry for the concern this causes. Premium customers can contact us through the Premium Support form. Everyone else can find updates on this page.

A few small design problems can make an otherwise great WordPress website feel harder to use than it should. Maybe the homepage feels a little cluttered, the fonts and colours don’t quite work together or everything looks great on your laptop but falls apart when you open it on your phone.

It’s easy to assume that fixing these problems means redesigning your entire website. Fortunately, that’s rarely the case.

Some of the most effective WordPress web design improvements are surprisingly simple. Cleaning up a busy layout, making your styling more consistent or rethinking your navigation can make a noticeable difference without changing your theme or rebuilding your pages from scratch.

Good web design is about more than making your website look attractive, too. The way your site is designed affects how easily visitors can find information, navigate between pages, read your content and take the actions you want them to take. Performance matters as well. Even a beautifully designed page can create a poor experience if visitors have to wait for it to load.

In this guide, we’ll walk through five easy WordPress web design tips you can use to improve your site fast. We’ll cover everything from simplifying your layout and creating a more consistent visual style to improving mobile usability, navigation and performance.

You don’t need to be a professional web designer to put them into practice, either. These are practical changes you can start making to your WordPress site today.

Key takeaways

• You don’t need a complete redesign to make a noticeable improvement to your WordPress website
• Simplifying busy pages and adding more whitespace can make content easier to read and important elements easier to spot
• Using consistent fonts, colours, buttons and spacing can make your website look more polished and professional
• Designing with mobile visitors in mind can prevent usability problems that aren’t obvious when working on a desktop
• Simple navigation helps visitors find important information without having to hunt through complicated menus
• Website performance is an important part of web design, as slow pages can undermine an otherwise great user experience
• Small, focused improvements are often easier to implement and maintain than trying to redesign everything at once

1. Simplify your layout

When you’re designing a website, it’s tempting to keep adding things. Another button here, another image there, a new section to promote an offer and perhaps a pop-up to make sure nobody misses your newsletter.

Before long, visitors are being asked to look at everything at once.

One of the easiest ways to improve your WordPress web design is actually to remove things. A simpler layout gives your most important content more room to stand out and makes it easier for visitors to understand what they should do next.

This doesn’t mean your website needs to be minimalist. You can still use bold colours, images, illustrations and creative layouts. The goal is to make sure every element on the page has a purpose.

Give your content room to breathe

Whitespace is the empty space around text, images, buttons and other elements on a page. Despite the name, it doesn’t actually have to be white. It simply gives individual elements some breathing room.

Without enough whitespace, headings can blend into paragraphs, buttons can compete with each other and separate sections can feel like one enormous block of content.

Look at one of your most important pages and pay attention to the spacing between:

• Headings and paragraphs
• Individual sections
• Images and surrounding text
• Buttons and other interactive elements
• Columns, cards and content boxes

If everything feels tightly packed together, increasing the spacing can make the page feel cleaner almost immediately.

You can often adjust margins, padding and block spacing directly within the WordPress editor. If you’re using a block theme, you may also be able to control spacing across your website using global styles rather than editing every page individually.

Create a clear visual hierarchy

A good layout should help visitors understand what matters most before they have even read every word.

This is known as visual hierarchy. You create it by making important elements more prominent than supporting information.

Your page title, for example, should usually be more visually prominent than an H2. An H2 should stand out more than an H3 and your headings should be easy to distinguish from regular paragraph text.

The same principle applies to buttons and calls to action. If every button is large, brightly coloured and competing for attention, none of them feels particularly important.

Instead, decide what the primary action on each page should be.

On a product page, that might be buying the product. On a blog post, it could be reading another useful guide. On a service website, it might be requesting a quote or booking a consultation.

You can then make that action visually prominent while giving secondary actions a less dominant design.

Remove elements that are not helping

You don’t need to delete half your website, but it is worth questioning whether every element deserves its place.

Go through an important page and ask what each section is doing for the visitor.

You might find:

• Multiple calls to action asking visitors to do the same thing
• Large images that add little useful information
• Old promotional banners that are no longer relevant
• Widgets nobody really needs
• Long introductions that could be shortened
• Repeated information appearing in several sections
• Sidebars packed with links, adverts or other distractions

Removing even a few unnecessary elements can make the important parts of the page much easier to notice.

Think about a homepage with a hero banner containing three buttons, followed immediately by a newsletter sign-up, a promotion and several product cards. A new visitor has to decide between multiple actions before they have really understood what the website offers.

A simpler version might introduce what the business does, provide one clear primary action and then guide the visitor towards additional information as they move down the page.

Make every section earn its place

Once you’ve simplified the individual elements, zoom out and look at the page as a whole.

There should be a logical journey from the top of the page to the bottom.

For example, a simple service page might follow this order:

1. Explain what the service is and who it is for
2. Show the main benefit
3. Explain how it works
4. Provide evidence such as testimonials or results
5. Answer common questions
6. Finish with a clear call to action

That structure makes it easier for someone to scan the page and understand the story you’re trying to tell.

You can apply the same thinking to blog posts, product pages, landing pages and your homepage. Rather than asking where you can fit another element, ask what information the visitor needs next.

Check your WordPress theme too

Sometimes a cluttered website isn’t entirely down to the content you’ve added. Your theme controls much of the underlying appearance and layout of your WordPress site.

If you constantly find yourself fighting against your theme to achieve a clean design, it may be worth reconsidering whether it’s still the right choice for your website. If you decide to switch, make sure you know how to safely change your WordPress theme without affecting your live site.

Look for a theme that gives you control over important design elements such as typography, colours, layouts and spacing without adding unnecessary visual clutter.

If you’re considering a change, our guide to the best WordPress themes covers some popular options and what to consider when choosing one.

You don’t necessarily need to switch themes to make your current website look better, though. Start by simplifying one important page and see how much difference you can make with the design you already have.

2. Make your colours and fonts consistent

You don’t need an elaborate brand identity to make your website look polished. Simply using the same colours, fonts and styles consistently can make a big difference.

Problems often creep in as a WordPress site grows. You create a new landing page and choose a slightly different button colour. Someone adds a heading at a different size. A new plugin introduces its own styling. Eventually, individual pages might look fine on their own but the website as a whole starts to feel disconnected.

Creating a few simple design rules can prevent this and you don’t need to be a designer to do it.

Keep your colour palette simple

Start by looking at how many colours your website currently uses.

You might have your main brand colour, several slightly different shades of it, multiple button colours and different background colours scattered across your pages.

Try narrowing these down to a small, reusable palette.

A basic website colour palette might include:

• One primary brand colour for important elements
• One secondary or accent colour
• A dark colour for headings and body text
• A light neutral colour for backgrounds
• White or another contrasting background colour

You can still use additional colours where they serve a purpose, such as success or error messages. The important thing is that colours have a reason for being there rather than changing from page to page.

Your primary CTA is a good example.

If the main button is green on your homepage, blue on your product page and orange on your contact page, visitors lose that visual consistency. Keeping your primary actions styled in the same way makes your interface easier to recognise and your website feel more cohesive.

Contrast matters too. A colour combination might look attractive but still make text difficult to read.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommend minimum contrast ratios for text, so it’s worth checking your colour combinations rather than judging them by eye alone. You can use a contrast checker when creating or updating your website palette.

Choose fonts that are easy to read

Typography has a huge influence on how a website feels.

A decorative font might look great in a logo or occasional heading, but it can become tiring when used across paragraphs of text. For most websites, readability should come first.

You usually don’t need lots of different fonts. One font family can work perfectly well across an entire website by using different sizes and weights. Alternatively, you might use one font for headings and another for body copy.

Whichever approach you choose, keep it consistent.

Your typography system could define styles for:

• Page titles
• H2 headings
• H3 headings
• Body copy
• Buttons
• Captions and supporting text

You should also consider line height and the width of your text. Long lines stretching across a large desktop monitor can be surprisingly difficult to read, even when the font itself is perfectly legible.

Keeping paragraphs at a comfortable width and adding enough space between lines can make longer pages much easier to scan.

Use consistent styles across your site

Colours and typography are only part of the picture.

Look at other design elements that appear repeatedly across your WordPress site. Buttons, forms, cards, images and content boxes should feel like they belong to the same design system.

For example, if your buttons normally have rounded corners, you probably don’t want square buttons appearing unexpectedly on another page. If blog images normally have gently rounded corners, using a completely different treatment halfway through the site can feel accidental.

Consistency is particularly useful for interactive elements. Visitors quickly learn what a button or link looks like on your website. Keeping those patterns predictable makes the site easier to use.

You don’t have to make everything identical. The aim is to create a recognisable set of patterns that you can reuse.

A polished website doesn’t need dozens of design elements. A few colours, fonts and styles used consistently can make even a simple site feel much more considered.

Use WordPress global styles

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to update every page individually.

If your website uses a compatible block theme, WordPress Styles lets you control many design decisions across your website from one place. You can manage elements including typography, colours, layouts, spacing and individual block styles, helping you create a more consistent design without editing every page individually. See the official WordPress Styles documentation for a full overview.

Depending on your theme, you can define site-wide settings for elements such as:

• Typography
• Colours
• Layout
• Spacing
• Buttons
• Individual WordPress blocks

You can access these options through Appearance > Editor > Styles when using a block theme.

Changing a heading colour or font here can apply the update consistently across your site rather than requiring you to hunt through dozens of pages.

Global Styles also makes future design decisions easier. Instead of choosing a new colour every time you create a button, you already have a visual system to work from.

If your current theme doesn’t give you enough control over these elements, it may be worth exploring other options. Our guide to the best WordPress themes can help you compare themes and find one that better suits the way you want to design your site.

Create a mini style guide

You don’t need a 50-page brand manual to keep a WordPress website consistent.

A simple one-page style guide can be enough.

Record the colours, fonts and basic styles you want to use so that you have something to refer back to whenever you create a new page.

This becomes even more useful if several people work on your website. Rather than everyone making their own design decisions, they have a simple reference for how new content should look.

Take five minutes to look through a few pages of your website side by side. If the colours, headings or buttons look noticeably different between them, standardising those elements could be one of the quickest design improvements you make.

3. Design with mobile visitors in mind

It’s easy to build and edit your WordPress website on a laptop, get everything looking just right and assume the job is done.

Then you open the same page on your phone.

The headline wraps awkwardly across five lines, the hero image takes over the screen and a button that looked perfectly positioned on desktop is suddenly difficult to find.

Responsive design allows your website to adapt to different screen sizes, but that doesn’t mean every design decision will automatically work well on mobile. It’s still important to check how your pages actually look and feel on smaller screens.

This matters for search visibility too. Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking through mobile-first indexing, so your mobile website shouldn’t be treated as a secondary version of your desktop design.

Check more than whether the page fits

Testing your website on mobile isn’t just about making sure nothing falls off the edge of the screen.

Think about how somebody actually uses the page.

A desktop visitor has a large display, precise mouse pointer and plenty of room for navigation. Someone using a phone has much less space and is usually tapping elements with their fingers.

That means you should pay particular attention to:

• Text that becomes too small to read comfortably
• Headlines that take up most of the first screen
• Buttons and links that are difficult to tap
• Interactive elements positioned too close together
• Images that dominate the page unnecessarily
• Columns that stack in an awkward order
• Pop-ups that cover important content
• Navigation menus that become difficult to use
• Large gaps created by desktop spacing settings

A page doesn’t need to look exactly the same across every device. In fact, trying to preserve an identical desktop layout on a small screen can sometimes make the mobile experience worse.

The goal is to maintain the same content and purpose while presenting it in a way that works for the available space.

Pay attention to what visitors see first

The top of a page is particularly important on mobile because there is much less room available.

Imagine a desktop homepage with a large hero image, headline, paragraph and CTA sitting side by side. There may be enough space to see all four elements immediately.

Stack those elements vertically on a phone and the experience can be very different.

A huge image might push the headline or CTA much further down the page. Excessive padding can have the same effect.

Check the first screen of your most important pages and ask yourself:

• Can visitors quickly tell what this page is about?
• Is the most important information easy to spot?
• Can they find the primary action without excessive scrolling?
• Is anything taking up more space than it needs?

Sometimes the fix is as simple as reducing a heading size or adjusting the spacing around a section.

Make buttons easy to tap

Buttons deserve some extra attention on smaller screens.

A desktop user can accurately click a fairly small link with a mouse. A mobile visitor has to tap it with their finger.

Buttons should therefore be large enough to use comfortably, with enough space around them to prevent someone accidentally tapping the wrong thing.

This becomes particularly important when several interactive elements appear close together, such as navigation links, form controls or multiple buttons.

It’s also worth checking the text inside your buttons. A CTA that fits neatly on one line on desktop might wrap awkwardly when space is limited.

Short, descriptive button labels generally work better.

Check how columns behave

Multi-column layouts are common in WordPress.

You might have three product cards side by side, an image next to some text or several features arranged across a row.

On smaller screens, those columns will usually stack vertically.

Check the order carefully.

For example, imagine a desktop page containing three rows where images and text alternate:

Image | Text

Text | Image

Image | Text

When those columns stack on mobile, you could accidentally end up with two images followed by two blocks of text. The desktop design looks intentional, while the mobile version becomes confusing.

Responsive settings in your theme or blocks may allow you to change the stacking behaviour. Even when they don’t, knowing how the layout behaves can help you structure the content differently.

Preview your WordPress pages on different screens

WordPress includes responsive preview tools that let you view your design at desktop, tablet and mobile widths while you work. You can also manually resize the editor canvas to check how the layout behaves between those preset sizes. The official WordPress responsive preview guide explains how to use these controls.

Use these previews throughout the design process rather than waiting until an entire page is finished.

But don’t rely on previews alone.

Open the finished page on your own phone and interact with it as a visitor would. Tap the menu, follow links, use forms, scroll through images and try your calls to action.

If possible, check more than one screen size too. A page that works beautifully on a large smartphone might still have problems on a narrower device or tablet.

TeamUpdraft already has a full guide to optimising WordPress for mobile covering responsive themes, layouts, images, database optimisation, navigation and performance.

Use this quick mobile design checklist

Before publishing a new page, spend a few minutes checking the following:

• Read the page without zooming in
• Open and use the navigation menu
• Tap every important button
• Check that links aren’t positioned too closely together
• Make sure images fit the screen properly
• Look for headings with awkward line breaks
• Check that columns stack logically
• Test forms and input fields
• Check that pop-ups can be easily dismissed
• Make sure your primary CTA is easy to find
• Scroll through the entire page looking for unusually large gaps

You don’t need specialist equipment to catch many of the most common mobile design problems. A few minutes testing the page on your own phone can reveal issues that are easy to miss while working at a computer.

Don’t forget mobile performance

Mobile design and performance also go hand in hand.

Large hero images, background videos and other visually impressive elements can add significant weight to a page. Their impact can be particularly noticeable for visitors using slower mobile connections.

Before adding a large visual element, ask whether it genuinely improves the page enough to justify the additional resources it requires.

Images can often be compressed and appropriately sized without making a noticeable difference to how they look. Lazy loading can also prevent images further down a page from loading before they’re needed.

Caching can help too. WP-Optimize includes page caching and can generate a separate cache for mobile devices when required, which can be useful when your site serves mobile-specific content.

We’ll look more closely at performance in Tip 5. For now, remember that a great mobile design should not only look good on a smaller screen. It should feel quick and easy to use too.

4. Make your navigation easier

A visitor shouldn’t need to understand how your website is organised to find what they need.

Good navigation quietly guides people around your site. Visitors can find your products, services, contact information or useful content without having to stop and think about where it might be hiding.

As a WordPress site grows, though, navigation can become complicated surprisingly quickly. New pages get added to the menu, dropdowns gain more levels and important content ends up competing with pages that very few people actually need.

Simplifying your navigation can make your website feel easier to use almost immediately.

Keep your main menu focused

Your main navigation doesn’t need to contain a link to every page on your website.

Instead, prioritise the destinations that are most useful to your visitors.

Depending on the type of website you run, that might include:

• Products or services
• Pricing
• About
• Blog or resources
• Contact
• Account or login

Less important pages can usually live elsewhere. Privacy policies, terms and conditions and similar information, for example, are often better suited to the footer.

The goal is to make choices easier rather than giving visitors every possible option at once.

Dropdown menus can help organise larger websites, but be careful about adding too many layers. If someone has to open a menu, hover over another menu and then navigate through another submenu, finding a page starts to feel like work.

Group related pages together and keep the hierarchy as shallow as you reasonably can.

Use labels people immediately understand

Creative navigation labels can sound interesting, but clarity is usually more useful.

If a visitor wants to find your services, a menu item called “Services” immediately tells them where to go. Something vague like “Discover” could mean almost anything.

The same principle applies throughout your site.

Choose navigation labels that describe what visitors will actually find when they follow the link.

For example:

This doesn’t mean every website needs to use exactly the same labels. Your navigation should still reflect your brand and content. Just make sure personality isn’t getting in the way of understanding.

Make important actions easy to find

Your navigation can also help draw attention to the action you most want visitors to take.

You might include a prominent button for:

• Start free trial
• Get a quote
• Book a demo
• View pricing
• Buy now

Try to keep this focused. Filling your navigation bar with several brightly coloured buttons brings you back to the same problem we discussed earlier, everything is competing for attention.

One clearly prioritised action is usually easier to understand.

Consistency matters here too. If “Get started” is your primary CTA in the navigation, but the same action is called “Join now”, “Sign up” and “Start today” elsewhere, consider whether those labels could be standardised.

Visitors should quickly learn what your important actions look like and what will happen when they select them.

Use internal links to guide the next step

Navigation isn’t limited to the menu at the top of your website.

Internal links within your content can help visitors naturally move from one useful page to another.

For example, someone reading an article about choosing a WordPress theme might benefit from a guide explaining how to test a WordPress theme before making it live. A visitor reading about WordPress performance could be directed towards a more detailed guide on caching or image optimisation.

These links are useful because they appear at the point where the visitor is most likely to need the additional information.

Use descriptive anchor text that explains where the link leads rather than generic phrases such as “click here” or “read more”.

For example, learn how to test a WordPress theme without going live gives the reader much more context than click here.

Internal linking can also help search engines understand the relationship between pages on your website, so improving it can support your wider site structure as well as helping human visitors navigate.

Don’t forget your footer

The footer gives you another opportunity to help visitors find their way around without overcrowding the main menu.

It can be a useful home for:

• Important secondary pages
• Contact information
• Help and documentation
• Social media links
• Legal pages
• Account links
• Key product or service categories

Avoid treating it as somewhere to dump every link that didn’t fit elsewhere, though.

Organise footer links into clear groups and use descriptive headings so visitors can scan them quickly.

A well-designed footer acts almost like a second navigation system, particularly for someone who has reached the end of a long page and is deciding where to go next.

Try the three-click navigation test

You can get a surprisingly good sense of your navigation by pretending you have never seen your website before.

Choose three important things a typical visitor might want to do.

For example:

1. Find the price of your main product
2. Learn what your business offers
3. Contact you with a question

Start from your homepage and try to complete each task.

Pay attention to how many decisions and clicks are required along the way.

There isn’t a strict rule that every piece of content must be reachable within exactly three clicks. What matters more is whether the journey feels logical and predictable.

If you find yourself wondering which menu item to choose, going backwards or opening several pages before finding the right one, your visitors may experience the same problem.

Check navigation on mobile too

Your carefully organised desktop menu may look completely different when condensed into a mobile menu.

Open your site on a phone and check:

• Whether the menu is easy to open and close
• Whether menu labels are easy to read and tap
• Whether dropdowns are straightforward to expand
• Whether important links are still easy to find
• Whether the menu takes up an excessive amount of the screen
• Whether your primary CTA remains visible or accessible

This is particularly important if you have a large menu. What feels manageable across the width of a desktop screen can become a long list of links when displayed vertically on mobile.

You don’t necessarily need to rebuild your navigation from scratch. Removing a few unnecessary links, renaming an unclear menu item or reorganising one confusing dropdown

5. Make your website faster

A beautiful website can quickly lose its impact if visitors spend several seconds waiting for it to appear.

Performance might sound like a technical issue rather than a design decision, but the two are closely connected. Large images, videos, animations, custom fonts and complex layouts can all affect how quickly a page loads.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice your design to make your WordPress site faster. Often, it’s about being more intentional with the elements you use and optimising what’s already there.

Start with your images

Images are one of the easiest places to start because they can make up a significant portion of the data visitors need to download when opening a page.

Uploading a 5,000-pixel-wide photograph and displaying it in a 700-pixel-wide space, for example, means visitors could be downloading far more image data than they actually need.

Before uploading images to WordPress:

• Resize them to appropriate dimensions
• Compress them to reduce the file size
• Use modern image formats such as WebP or AVIF where appropriate
• Avoid uploading unnecessarily high-resolution images
• Think carefully about how many large images a page really needs

WordPress can generate multiple image sizes when you upload an image, which allows appropriately sized versions to be served in different situations.

You should also pay particular attention to the images visitors see immediately when a page loads. A huge hero image might look impressive, but if it significantly delays the rest of the page, it could be doing more harm than good.

If images are one of the biggest contributors to your page size, start there. Our complete guide to optimising images for WordPress walks through choosing the right format, resizing images and compressing them without unnecessarily sacrificing visual quality.

Lazy load content further down the page

Not every image needs to load immediately.

If you have a long page containing 20 images, there is little benefit in making someone download all 20 before they have even scrolled past the first section.

Lazy loading delays certain off-screen resources until they are needed.

WordPress supports native lazy loading for many images, helping reduce the amount of content that needs to load initially.

Be careful with content at the top of the page, though. Important images that visitors see immediately generally shouldn’t be unnecessarily delayed.

The goal isn’t to lazy load everything. It’s to prioritise the resources visitors need first.

Be selective with fonts and visual effects

Fonts can have a surprisingly noticeable effect on both design and performance.

It can be tempting to use several font families with multiple weights and styles, particularly when you’re trying to create more visual variety.

But each additional font file may mean another resource the browser has to load.

This is another reason why the simple typography system we discussed earlier can be useful. One or two carefully selected font families are usually enough to create hierarchy without introducing unnecessary complexity.

The same principle applies to visual effects.

Animations, background videos, sliders and interactive elements can make a page more engaging when they serve a clear purpose. Adding them simply because your page builder makes it possible can result in a site that feels busy and takes longer to load.

Before adding an effect, ask yourself whether it helps the visitor understand or use the page.

If the answer is no, the simpler option may be better for both design and performance.

Use caching to make pages load faster

When someone visits a WordPress page, the site may need to retrieve information, run PHP and assemble the page before sending it to their browser.

Caching can reduce the amount of work required by storing a ready-made version of the page and serving that to visitors instead.

For many WordPress sites, this can make a noticeable difference to loading times without requiring changes to the visible design.

A performance plugin such as WP-Optimize can help you manage page caching alongside other optimisation features from within WordPress.

WP-Optimize can also help with tasks such as image compression, database optimisation and minification, giving you several ways to improve performance without having to manage a collection of separate tools.

If your website serves different cached content to mobile visitors, WP-Optimize can also create a separate cache for mobile devices when required.

Keep your WordPress database tidy

Over time, your WordPress database can accumulate information you no longer need.

This might include things such as:

• Old post revisions
• Auto-draft posts
• Spam and trashed comments
• Expired transient options
• Other unnecessary database data

Cleaning this up won’t suddenly transform every slow website into a lightning-fast one, but regular database maintenance can be part of keeping a WordPress site healthy and efficient.

Before making significant database changes, create a backup of your website first. That gives you a way to restore your site if something unexpected happens.

WP-Optimize includes database cleaning tools and can show you which types of data are available to optimise, so you can review them before running a cleanup.

Test before and after you make changes

One of the best ways to improve performance is to measure it rather than guessing.

Google PageSpeed Insights can analyse a page and highlight potential performance problems. It also reports metrics related to Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals focus on three important parts of the user experience:

These metrics are useful because they connect technical performance with experiences visitors can actually notice.

Cumulative Layout Shift is a particularly good example of the relationship between performance and web design. If an image suddenly loads and pushes a button down the page just as someone tries to tap it, that’s both a performance problem and a design problem.

Test an important page before making changes and record the results. Then optimise your images, caching or other problem areas and test it again.

This gives you a much clearer picture of whether your changes are actually improving the experience.

Don’t optimise away the personality

Performance optimisation doesn’t mean your website needs to become a blank page with nothing but text.

Images, illustrations, video, animation and custom typography can all contribute to a memorable website.

The trick is deciding which elements earn their place.

Keep the visuals that strengthen your brand, explain something or improve the experience. Optimise them wherever possible and be more critical of elements that add extra weight without giving much back.

That principle ties all five of these WordPress web design tips together.

Good design isn’t about adding as much as possible. It’s about making deliberate choices so the elements that matter have the space, consistency and performance they need to work well.

5 quick WordPress design fixes at a glance

You don’t need to tackle everything at once. If you only have an hour to improve your WordPress website, start with the area that currently causes the most friction and work from there.

Pick one important page, such as your homepage, most popular landing page or main product page, and work through these five checks.

You may be surprised by how different the page feels without changing your theme or rebuilding it from scratch.

Small changes can make a big difference

Improving your WordPress web design doesn’t have to mean starting again.

Some of the most effective changes are relatively small. Give your content more breathing room, create consistent design rules, check your pages on mobile, simplify the way visitors navigate your site and make sure your design choices aren’t slowing everything down.

Most importantly, look at your website from your visitor’s perspective.

Can they understand what the page is about? Can they comfortably read it? Is it obvious where to go next? Does everything work just as well on their phone? Does the page load quickly enough that they actually stick around to see your carefully considered design?

If the answer to one of those questions is no, you’ve found a good place to start.

You don’t need to fix everything in one afternoon. Choose one of the five tips in this guide, improve an important page and compare the experience before and after. Then move on to the next.

Over time, those small improvements can add up to a WordPress website that looks better, feels easier to use and works harder for the people visiting it.

FAQs

AI website builders can now turn a short prompt into a working website in minutes, but that doesn’t mean every tool is equally useful. Some can produce surprisingly polished sites that are easy to customise and publish. Others look impressive at first but become frustrating once you start editing the design, adding functionality or trying to move your site elsewhere.

The AI itself isn’t necessarily the most important thing to consider. You also need to think about how much control you’ll have once your site has been generated, how easy it is to customise and whether the platform can meet your longer-term needs around SEO, performance and maintenance.

For WordPress users in particular, there’s another important question: does the AI builder work with WordPress, or will it lock your website into its own platform?

In this guide, we’ll compare some of the best AI website builders available, looking at what each one does well, where it falls short and which options make the most sense if you want the flexibility of WordPress.

Key takeaways

• AI website builders can significantly reduce the time it takes to create a new website, generating layouts, content and design ideas from a simple prompt.
• Some AI website builders are hosted platforms, while others work with WordPress or can be used as part of a WordPress workflow.
• WordPress-based AI tools can speed up tasks such as creating layouts, writing content and customising designs without giving up the flexibility of WordPress.
• AI-generated websites should still be reviewed before publishing, particularly for content accuracy, SEO, accessibility, performance and user experience.
• The best AI website builder depends on what happens after your site is generated, not just how quickly the AI can create the first version.

What is an AI website builder?

An AI website builder is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to help create and design a website. Instead of starting with a blank page or manually choosing every element, you typically answer a few questions about your website or describe what you want using a text prompt.

The builder can then generate a starting point based on your instructions, which might include page layouts, navigation, colours, images and written content. Depending on the platform, you can then customise the generated website using a visual editor or continue working on it within WordPress.

The biggest advantage is speed. AI can take care of much of the initial setup, giving you a website or design to work from rather than requiring you to build everything from scratch. However, the amount of control you have over the finished site varies considerably between platforms.

How AI website builders work

The exact process varies between platforms, but most AI website builders start by asking you for information about the site you want to create. This might include your industry, target audience, preferred style, brand colours and the pages or features you need.

Based on those instructions, the AI can help to:

• Generate an initial website structure and page layouts
• Suggest colours, fonts and other design elements
• Create draft copy and, in some cases, images
• Build common sections such as hero banners, service areas, testimonials and calls to action
• Adapt layouts for different screen sizes

You can then review the generated site and customise the content and design before publishing. How much you can change – and how you make those changes – depends on the builder you choose.

Why AI website builders matter for WordPress users

If you already use WordPress, an AI website builder might sound unnecessary. After all, WordPress already gives you enormous flexibility over how your website looks and functions.

But AI doesn’t have to replace WordPress. Used well, it can simply make parts of the website creation process faster.

For example, freelancers and agencies can use AI to quickly explore different layouts or create an initial site for a client before refining it themselves. WordPress users can also use AI-powered tools within their existing workflow to help create layouts, draft content, generate images or speed up repetitive design tasks.

The important distinction is what happens after that first AI-generated version. If you want to retain the flexibility to customise, optimise, back up and move your website as it grows, it’s worth considering how much control your chosen platform gives you from the outset.

AI website builders are excellent at getting a site off the ground, but the first version is rarely the finished product. The real value comes from using AI to handle repetitive work while keeping human control over the content, design, performance and user experience.

Standalone AI website builders vs WordPress AI tools

One of the biggest differences between AI website builders is where your finished website actually lives.

Some are fully hosted platforms that provide the builder, hosting and website management tools in one ecosystem. Others work with WordPress, either by generating a WordPress site for you or adding AI functionality to your existing WordPress setup.

Understanding that difference is important because it can affect how you manage, customise and move your website in the future.

Standalone AI website builders

Hosted platforms such as Wix and Squarespace provide the website builder, hosting and other tools within their own ecosystems. This can make getting started particularly straightforward because you don’t need to arrange hosting or manage WordPress separately.

The trade-off is portability. Your website is built around that platform’s tools and infrastructure, so moving to another CMS or hosting environment later may require considerably more work than migrating an existing WordPress site.

WordPress AI tools

WordPress-focused AI tools take several different forms. Some help generate a new WordPress website, while others work as plugins or features within an existing WordPress setup to help with tasks such as creating layouts, writing content or generating code.

The main advantage is that you can combine the speed of AI with the flexibility of WordPress. You’re still working within an open-source CMS, with the ability to choose your own hosting, install plugins and themes, manage your site’s files and database, and migrate your WordPress site when needed.

Standalone vs WordPress AI website builders at a glance

How we compared the best AI website builders

To compare the tools in this guide, I looked beyond how quickly each one could generate an attractive first draft. I tested them by creating a typical small business website and considered how practical each platform was once the initial AI generation was complete.

Each AI website builder was assessed across three main areas:

• Speed: How quickly could I go from an initial prompt to a usable website or design?
• SEO: What tools and controls were available to help optimise the finished website for search engines?
• Ease of use: How straightforward was the process of generating, editing and managing the website?

I also considered factors such as design flexibility, WordPress compatibility, portability and how much manual editing was needed after the initial generation.

The overall scores provide a quick way to compare the builders, but they shouldn’t be the only factor in your decision. A beginner creating their first website will have very different priorities from a freelancer or agency building and managing WordPress sites for clients.

The 9 best AI website builders available right now

I have tested the most popular tools on the market to see how they actually perform in real-world scenarios. Here are my top recommendations based on our established metrics.

1. 10web ai builder

Premium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10 | Overall Score: 8/10

Best for: Small business owners, freelancers and WordPress users who want to create a site quickly while staying within the WordPress ecosystem.

10Web combines AI website generation with WordPress, making it an interesting option if you want to speed up the initial build without switching to a completely separate website platform.

You start by providing some information about your business and the type of website you want to create. 10Web then generates a WordPress website that you can customise using Elementor. This gives WordPress users a familiar environment for making further changes and adding plugins or functionality as the site develops.

Key features

• Generates complete WordPress websites using AI
• Uses Elementor for further design and customisation
• Can recreate the structure and design of an existing website using AI
• Works within the WordPress ecosystem

Pros

• Combines AI website generation with the flexibility of WordPress
• Plenty of scope to customise the generated site after creation
• Compatible with WordPress plugins and other WordPress functionality
• Suitable for freelancers and agencies that need to create initial site designs quickly

Cons

• More to learn and manage than with a fully hosted website builder
• You’ll still need to consider WordPress maintenance, including plugin and theme updates
• Some features and functionality depend on your 10Web plan

Verdict

10Web is a strong option for anyone who likes the speed of an AI website builder but wants their finished site to be built on WordPress. It’s particularly useful for freelancers, agencies and small businesses that want AI to handle some of the initial setup while retaining the flexibility to customise and develop the site further.

2. Wix AI

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 7/10 | Ease of Use: 10/10 | Overall Score: 8.6/10

Best for: Beginners who want to get a professional-looking website online quickly without managing hosting or technical setup themselves.

Wix is an established all-in-one website builder with AI tools designed to make the initial setup particularly straightforward. Its AI website builder uses a conversational interface to learn about your business, goals and requirements before generating a website based on your answers.

Once the initial site has been created, you can use the Wix editor to customise the layout, text, images and other elements. Hosting is managed as part of the platform, so there’s no need to set up WordPress, arrange separate hosting or manage the technical side of maintaining a website yourself.

Key features

• Conversational AI website creation process
• Visual editor for customising AI-generated designs
• Built-in tools for e-commerce, bookings and other business requirements
• Managed hosting and website infrastructure

Pros

• Beginner-friendly setup and editing experience
• Hosting and much of the technical maintenance are handled for you
• Wide range of built-in features and third-party apps
• Suitable for getting a relatively simple business website online quickly

Cons

• Less flexibility over hosting and the underlying platform than with WordPress
• Moving a Wix website to WordPress isn’t as straightforward as migrating between WordPress hosts
• Users who need extensive customisation may find a self-hosted WordPress setup more flexible

Verdict

Wix is a good option for beginners who prioritise simplicity and want their website builder, hosting and business tools in one place. The trade-off is flexibility: if you expect to move between hosting providers or want greater control over how your website is built and managed, a WordPress-based option may be a better long-term fit.

3. Elementor AI

Premium | Speed: 7/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 7/10 | Overall Score: 7.6/10

Best for: Designers and developers who already use WordPress and want AI tools to speed up their existing workflow.

Elementor is a little different from some of the other tools on this list. Rather than taking you away from WordPress to build your site elsewhere, it brings AI tools directly into the Elementor editor.

If you already use Elementor, that makes it a fairly natural addition to your existing workflow. You can use AI to draft content, generate images, create custom CSS and code, or help build and refine sections of a page without constantly switching between different tools.

It’s particularly useful for speeding up the smaller jobs that can eat into your time when you’re building a site, while still leaving you in control of the final design.

Key features

• Generates text, custom code and CSS within Elementor
• Helps create and refine layouts and page sections
• Generates and edits images within your website-building workflow

Pros

• Works directly within a familiar WordPress page builder
• Can save time on repetitive content, design and coding tasks
• Gives you plenty of scope to edit and refine what the AI produces
• Useful for freelancers and agencies working across multiple WordPress projects

Cons

• You’ll get the most value from it if you already use Elementor
• It’s more of an AI-assisted website-building experience than a completely hands-off site generator
• AI-generated content, code and designs still need to be reviewed before publishing

Verdict

Elementor AI makes the most sense if Elementor is already part of the way you build WordPress sites. It won’t suddenly do the whole job for you, but that’s arguably part of its appeal. You can use AI to speed up some of the more repetitive parts of building a site, then step in and fine-tune the result yourself.

4. Zipwp website creator

Freemium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10 | Overall Score: 9/10

Best for: Freelancers and agencies that want to quickly create WordPress sites or initial concepts for clients, then customise them further.

ZipWP is built specifically around WordPress and is designed to take you from a short description of your website to a working first draft very quickly. Tell it what kind of site you’re creating and it can generate the pages, layouts, content and imagery needed to give you a starting point.

For freelancers and agencies, this can be particularly handy when you need to get an initial idea in front of a client without spending hours building it from scratch. Because the generated site is built on WordPress, you can then customise it further rather than treating the AI-generated version as the finished product.

Key features

• Generates complete WordPress websites from a short description
• Creates initial page layouts, content and imagery
• Uses the WordPress block editor and compatible tools for further customisation
• Lets you move the finished site to your preferred WordPress hosting

Pros

• Very quick way to create a starting point for a WordPress website
• Useful for client concepts, prototypes and new site builds
• You can continue customising the site using familiar WordPress tools
• Removes much of the repetitive setup involved in starting a new site

Cons

• AI-generated designs can still need plenty of personalisation before they’re ready to publish
• You’ll need to review generated copy and imagery rather than assuming they’re ready to use
• Some features and usage limits depend on the plan you choose

Verdict

ZipWP is a particularly useful option for freelancers and agencies that already work with WordPress. Instead of starting every new project with a blank site, you can use AI to get the foundations in place quickly and spend more of your time refining the design, content and functionality that actually make the site unique.

5. Framer AI

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 7/10 | Ease of Use: 6/10 | Overall Score: 7.3/10

Best for: Designers and creatives who want to build visually striking portfolios and landing pages without needing lots of complex functionality.

Framer takes a more design-led approach to AI website building. Originally created as a prototyping tool, it has developed into a website builder that’s particularly well suited to portfolios, landing pages and other sites where visual design plays a big part.

Its AI tools can help you get started with a page from a prompt, while the editor gives you much more control over details such as typography, layouts, animations and interactions. If you’re familiar with design tools like Figma, the interface may also feel more familiar than a traditional website builder.

Key features

• AI tools for generating initial page layouts and content
• Detailed control over animations, interactions and responsive layouts
• Flexible typography and design options
• Built-in hosting and publishing tools

Pros

• Plenty of creative control once the initial design has been generated
• Particularly well suited to portfolios and visually led landing pages
• Strong animation and interaction options
• Useful for designers who prefer a visual editing environment

Cons

• Can take longer to learn if you’re new to web design
• Less suited to users who specifically want to build and manage their site with WordPress
• More complex websites may require functionality beyond what Framer is designed for

Verdict

Framer is worth considering if design is one of your biggest priorities. It gives you plenty of freedom to take an AI-generated starting point and make it your own, particularly for portfolios and landing pages. For WordPress users, though, it’s a different proposition from tools like 10Web or ZipWP because you’re choosing Framer as the platform your site will live on, rather than using AI to speed up a WordPress build.

6. Durable AI

Freemium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 6/10 | Ease of Use: 10/10 | Overall Score: 8.6/10

Best for: Small business owners and service providers who want to get a simple website online quickly without dealing with much of the technical setup.

Durable is aimed squarely at small business owners who want to create a website without spending hours designing one. Give it some basic information about your business and the AI generates a starting site with relevant sections, copy and images that you can then customise.

What makes Durable slightly different from some of the other builders on this list is its focus on running a small business, rather than website design alone. Alongside the website builder, it offers tools for tasks such as managing contacts, invoicing and other day-to-day admin.

Key features

• Generates a small business website from a few initial details
• AI-assisted content and website creation
• Built-in CRM and business management tools
• Hosting included as part of the platform

Pros

• Quick and straightforward setup for beginners
• Little technical knowledge needed to get started
• Website and business management tools are available in one place
• Particularly suited to simple service-based business websites

Cons

• Less design flexibility than more advanced website builders
• Not designed for users who want to build and manage their site with WordPress
• Moving away from the platform may involve rebuilding parts of your website elsewhere

Verdict

Durable makes the most sense for someone who simply wants to get their business online without becoming a website expert in the process. A plumber, consultant or other local service provider could use it to create a straightforward site and start taking enquiries relatively quickly.

If you already know you’ll want more control over your site’s design, hosting, plugins or functionality as it grows, a WordPress-based option is likely to give you more room to work with.

7. Dorik AI

Freemium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10 | Overall Score: 8/10

Best for: Freelancers, designers and small businesses that want to create landing pages or content-focused websites quickly, with plenty of room to customise the result.

Dorik sits somewhere between a straightforward website builder and a more flexible CMS. Its AI tools can generate pages from a text prompt, giving you a starting layout and content that you can then edit using its visual builder.

There’s also a built-in CMS, so you’re not limited to creating one-off landing pages. You can use Dorik for blogs and other content-focused websites too, making it a useful option if you want something relatively simple to get started with but still need room for your site to grow.

Key features

• Generates website layouts and content using AI
• Visual editor for customising generated pages
• Built-in CMS for blogs and content-heavy websites
• Code export available on eligible plans

Pros

• Straightforward way to create an initial website or landing page
• Plenty of flexibility to customise the generated design
• Built-in CMS makes it suitable for more than simple static sites
• Code export gives developers additional flexibility on supported plans

Cons

• The editor may take a little time to get used to if you’re completely new to website builders
• Smaller ecosystem than platforms such as WordPress
• If you want to manage your site with WordPress, you’ll need to consider that before building it on another platform

Verdict

Dorik is a useful middle ground if you want the simplicity of an AI website builder without being limited to a basic one-page site. The built-in CMS gives you room to add more content over time, while its customisation options make it easier to move beyond the initial AI-generated design.

For WordPress users, the main question is whether those benefits outweigh starting with a WordPress-based AI builder and keeping the rest of your existing workflow in one place.

8. Squarespace blueprint AI

Premium | Speed: 7/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10 | Overall Score: 8/10

Best for: Artists, photographers, creatives and small businesses that want a polished, design-led website with built-in e-commerce options.

Squarespace takes a slightly different approach to some of the prompt-based builders on this list. Rather than asking you to describe an entire website and simply generating the finished design, it guides you through a series of choices to help shape the initial site.

You can choose things like your preferred layout, colour palette and typography, with AI helping to bring those decisions together. It’s a more hands-on approach, but that can be useful if you have a clear idea of how you want your site to look and don’t want the AI making every design decision for you.

Key features

• Guided AI website creation process
• Choice of layouts, colours and typography
• Built-in e-commerce and marketing tools
• Hosting and website management included

Pros

• Gives you plenty of input into the initial look and feel of your site
• Strong focus on visual design and presentation
• E-commerce functionality is available within the same platform
• Hosting and technical website management are handled for you

Cons

• The guided setup may take a little longer than builders that generate a site from a single prompt
• Less flexibility over hosting and the underlying platform than with WordPress
• Moving a Squarespace site to another platform can require more work than migrating an existing WordPress site

Verdict

Squarespace Blueprint AI is a good fit if you care about design but don’t necessarily want AI making every decision for you. The guided process gives you more say over the direction of the site while still using AI to speed things up.

It’s particularly appealing for portfolios, creative businesses and smaller online stores. As with Wix, though, you’re choosing an all-in-one platform rather than building on WordPress, so it’s worth thinking about how much flexibility you’ll want as your site grows.

9. Webflow AI for advanced developers

Freemium | Speed: 6/10 | SEO: 10/10 | Ease of Use: 5/10 | Overall Score: 7/10

Best for: Developers and experienced designers who want to use AI to speed up more complex client builds without giving up detailed control.

Webflow is aimed more at designers and developers who want detailed control over how a website looks and behaves. Its AI features fit into that existing workflow, helping with parts of the design and development process rather than simply generating a finished website and leaving you there.

That makes Webflow quite different from beginner-focused tools like Wix or Durable. There’s more to learn, but in return you get much finer control over layouts, interactions and CMS-driven websites. The AI tools can help speed up parts of that process, making them more useful for experienced users who already know what they want to build.

Key features

• AI assistance within the Webflow website-building workflow
• Tools to help generate and refine website content and page sections
• Flexible CMS for creating structured, content-driven websites
• Detailed visual control over responsive layouts and interactions

Pros

• Plenty of design and development control for experienced users
• Well suited to more complex, custom website projects
• Flexible CMS and visual development tools
• AI can help reduce some of the repetitive work involved in building a site

Cons

• Takes more time to learn than beginner-focused AI website builders
• May be more than you need for a simple website
• Not designed for users who specifically want to build and manage their site with WordPress

Verdict

Webflow makes the most sense for experienced designers and developers who want AI to speed up parts of their existing workflow rather than take over the entire build.

It’s not the easiest option on this list, and that’s really the point. You get more control over the finished site, but you’ll need to spend more time learning how to use it. For WordPress users, the decision ultimately comes down to whether that design control is worth moving your website onto a different platform.

AI website builders compared

Here’s a quick comparison of the AI website builders we’ve covered, based on the scores and criteria used in our testing.

How to write a good prompt for an AI website builder

The quality of the site an AI website builder creates will depend partly on the instructions you give it. A vague prompt such as “make a website for my plumbing business” gives the AI very little to work with, so you’re more likely to end up with something generic.

Instead, give it the kind of information you’d include in a brief for a designer. Explain what your business does, who the website is for, how you want it to look and what you want visitors to do once they arrive.

The more useful context you provide at the beginning, the less time you’re likely to spend correcting or completely reworking the first version.

A simple AI website builder prompt formula

A useful starting point is:

Business + Industry + Target audience + Visual style + Required pages + Primary goal

Here’s a template you can copy and adapt:

“Create a website for my [type of business, product or organisation] called [business name]. Our main audience is [target audience].

The visual style should feel [e.g. modern, clean and trustworthy]. Use [brand colours or colour preferences] and [font or typography preferences].

The website should include [e.g. Homepage, About, Services, Blog and Contact] pages.

For the homepage, include a hero section with a clear headline, an introduction to our main services, customer testimonials and a prominent call to action that says [CTA text].

The main goal of the website is to [e.g. generate enquiries, sell products, encourage bookings or showcase our work].”

You can also add any requirements that are particularly important to your project, such as mobile usability, accessibility, e-commerce functionality or specific sections you want included.

Why giving the AI more context helps

• It gives the design some direction: Sharing your preferred colours, typography and overall style reduces the amount of guesswork involved.
• It defines the site structure: Listing the pages you need gives the builder a clearer idea of how your website should be organised.
• It provides a starting point for the homepage: Specifying important sections can reduce the amount of restructuring you’ll need to do afterwards.
• It explains what the website needs to achieve: A clear goal helps the AI understand whether the site should prioritise enquiries, bookings, purchases or another action.

Don’t worry about writing the perfect prompt on your first attempt. Treat the initial result as a starting point, review what the AI has produced and then refine your instructions. A couple of specific follow-up prompts will often get you closer to what you had in mind than trying to squeeze every requirement into one enormous prompt.

Moving an AI-generated site to WordPress

What if you’ve created a site with an AI website builder but ultimately want to manage it with WordPress? How straightforward that is depends largely on the tool you’ve chosen.

If your AI builder creates a WordPress site from the outset, moving it to your preferred hosting provider can be relatively straightforward. With a standalone platform, you may need to rebuild some or all of the site in WordPress instead.

Moving a site created with a WordPress-based AI builder

If you’ve used a WordPress-based tool such as ZipWP or 10Web, the process will typically look something like this:

• Generate your initial WordPress site using your chosen AI builder.
• Review and customise the generated design before moving it.
• Set up WordPress with your preferred hosting provider.
• Migrate your WordPress site, including its files and database, to the new hosting environment.
• Test the migrated site carefully before pointing visitors to the new version.

If you haven’t moved a WordPress site before, our step-by-step WordPress migration guide explains the process in more detail, including how to prepare your site, complete the migration and check everything is working afterwards.

Moving from a standalone AI website builder to WordPress

Moving from a standalone platform is usually a different process. Because the site isn’t built on WordPress, you may not be able to migrate the entire website in the same way you would move an existing WordPress installation.

Instead, you may need to:

1. Choose a WordPress hosting provider and set up your new site.
2. Install a theme or page builder that suits the design you want to recreate.
3. Export or download any content and images your existing platform allows you to take with you.
4. Recreate your pages and add your content to the new WordPress site.
5. Check your URLs, internal links, metadata and redirects before switching over to the new site.

The exact process will depend on the platform you’re moving from and what it allows you to export. If there’s a chance you’ll want to move to WordPress later, it’s worth checking a builder’s export and migration options before committing to it. Starting with a WordPress-based AI builder can make things simpler if flexibility and portability are important to you.

Conclusion

There isn’t one AI website builder that’s right for everyone. If you want to get a simple site online quickly without worrying about hosting or maintenance, a hosted platform like Wix or Durable may be the easiest option. If you already use WordPress, or want more flexibility over how your site is built and managed, tools such as 10Web, ZipWP or Elementor AI may be a better fit.

Whichever route you choose, think of the AI-generated website as a starting point rather than the finished product. Take the time to review the content, design, SEO, accessibility and performance before you publish, and make sure the site is something you’ll be comfortable managing as it grows.

If you’re experimenting with AI tools on an existing WordPress site, it’s also worth having a recent backup before making significant changes. UpdraftPlus can automate your WordPress backups and gives you the option to restore, migrate or clone your site when needed.

AI can make building a website much faster, but speed isn’t everything. The best AI website builder is ultimately the one that gives you the right balance of simplicity, flexibility and control for the site you actually want to build.

FAQs

A full WordPress backup copies everything included in the backup each time it runs, even when only a small amount of data has changed. On a growing site with a large media library, years of content and a busy database, that can mean more storage, longer backup times and additional server load.

Incremental backups take a different approach by backing up changes made since the previous backup. So, if a 1 GB set of website files changes by just 20 MB, the next incremental backup only needs to capture those changes rather than copying the entire 1 GB again.

For WordPress sites that need frequent backups, this can make backups faster and significantly reduce the amount of storage they require. In this guide, we’ll explain how incremental backups work, how they compare with full and differential backups, when they’re most useful and how to use incremental file backups with UpdraftPlus Premium.

Key takeaways

• Incremental backups capture changes made since the previous backup, reducing the amount of data that needs to be processed, transferred and stored.
• They can make frequent backups more practical for large, frequently updated or media-heavy WordPress sites.
• Incremental backups usually depend on a full backup as their baseline, so maintaining a reliable backup chain is important for restoration.
• WordPress files and the database may need different backup approaches. UpdraftPlus Premium uses incremental backups for changed files, while database backups are scheduled separately.
• A sensible backup strategy combines periodic full backups, incremental backups where appropriate, remote storage and retention rules that give you enough recovery points.

What is an incremental backup?

An incremental backup captures data that has changed since the previous backup rather than creating another complete copy of everything each time.

Imagine a WordPress site with 2 GB of files.

On Monday, I create a full file backup containing 2 GB. On Tuesday, I upload 50 MB of images and modify a few theme files. Instead of copying the entire 2 GB again, an incremental backup only needs to capture those changes.

On Wednesday, I add another 20 MB of images. The next incremental backup captures the changes made since Tuesday.

The backup sequence could look something like this:

The exact sizes will depend on your site, the backup software and what changes between each backup. The key point is that unchanged files don’t need to be copied again with every incremental backup.

This can make incremental backups particularly useful for large or frequently updated WordPress sites where only a relatively small proportion of the site’s files change between backup runs.

It’s also important to distinguish between your WordPress files and database. Your files include themes, plugins and uploaded media, while the database stores content and other dynamic information such as posts, pages, comments and settings. A complete WordPress backup needs to account for both, but they don’t necessarily need to be backed up in the same way or on the same schedule.

How do incremental backups work in WordPress?

An incremental backup works as part of a backup chain. The process usually begins with a full backup, which provides the baseline. Each incremental backup then captures the changes made since the previous backup.

A simplified backup chain might look like this:

Full backup > Increment 1 > Increment 2 > Increment 3 > Increment 4

If you need to restore the site to the point represented by Increment 4, the backup system uses the full backup together with the relevant increments in the chain to reconstruct that restore point.

This dependency is an important difference between incremental and full backups. An incremental backup isn’t usually a completely independent copy of your site. Its smaller size comes from storing only what has changed, but that also means the backup chain needs to remain intact and be managed correctly.

A reliable backup solution should manage this relationship automatically, rather than requiring you to manually piece backup files together. It’s also worth understanding how to restore WordPress from backup files and a database before you need to recover a live site.

What happens when a file changes?

Imagine your site already contains this image:

wp-content/uploads/photo.jpg

If you edit the image and upload a new version, an incremental backup can identify that the file has changed and include the updated version in the next backup. The same principle applies when you add new files, such as uploading new images to your media library.

Instead of creating another full copy of all your website files, the incremental backup only needs to capture the files that have changed since the previous backup.

This is particularly useful for large WordPress sites where most files remain unchanged between backups. A site might contain several gigabytes of media, themes and plugins, while only a small number of files are added or updated each day.

Exactly how file changes are detected and stored varies between backup solutions, so it’s worth checking what your chosen WordPress backup plugin includes when it describes its backups as incremental.

Full vs incremental vs differential backups

Full, incremental and differential backups all protect your data, but they differ in how much information they copy each time.

A full backup copies everything included in the backup.

An incremental backup captures changes made since the previous backup, whether that was a full or incremental backup.

A differential backup captures all changes made since the most recent full backup.

Here’s how they compare:

For example, imagine you create a full backup on Monday. You then make 10 MB of new changes on Tuesday, another 20 MB on Wednesday and another 30 MB on Thursday.

With incremental backups, each backup captures only the changes since the previous backup:

• Tuesday: 10 MB
• Wednesday: 20 MB
• Thursday: 30 MB

With differential backups, each backup contains all the changes made since Monday’s full backup:

• Tuesday: 10 MB
• Wednesday: 30 MB
• Thursday: 60 MB

This is why incremental backups can significantly reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed and stored between full backups. Differential backups generally require more storage as changes accumulate, but restoration can be simpler because fewer backup sets may be needed.

There isn’t one approach that’s best for every website. The right choice depends on how frequently your site changes, how much data you need to protect and the functionality offered by your backup solution.

Incremental backups are most valuable when they make frequent protection practical without creating unnecessary storage overhead. The key is not simply backing up less data, but having a reliable system that maintains the backup chain and makes restoration straightforward.

Why incremental backups save storage

Storage is one of the clearest benefits of incremental backups. A simple example shows why.

Suppose your WordPress files total 1 GB and you want to keep 10 backup points. If each one were a full 1 GB file backup, you could be storing roughly:

1 GB × 10 = 10 GB

Now imagine you keep one 1 GB full backup followed by nine incremental backups averaging 50 MB each:

1 GB + (9 × 50 MB) = 1.45 GB

In this simplified example, the incremental approach requires 1.45 GB of storage rather than 10 GB because unchanged files aren’t being copied into every backup.

Actual backup sizes and savings will vary depending on factors such as compression, how much your site changes between backups and how your backup solution stores incremental data. However, the example demonstrates why incremental backups can make frequent restore points more practical as a site grows.

This can be particularly useful if you’re paying for remote backup storage or need to retain multiple backup points over a longer period. The less unchanged data you repeatedly store, the easier it can be to manage your storage requirements and costs.

Large, media-heavy WordPress sites can benefit in particular. A photography site, news site, membership site or WooCommerce store might contain several gigabytes of images and other uploads, while only a relatively small proportion of those files change between individual backups.

Why incremental backups save time

A full file backup may need to process a large amount of data even when only a small proportion of your files have changed. If your website contains 3 GB of files but only 30 MB have changed since the previous backup, an incremental backup can focus on those changes rather than creating another full copy.

This can reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed, compressed and transferred to remote storage, helping backups complete more quickly.

The exact time saving will depend on your site, hosting environment, remote storage and backup solution. However, incremental backups can make frequent backup points more practical, particularly for larger WordPress sites where only a relatively small proportion of files change between backups.

Instead of repeatedly creating full file backups throughout the day, you can combine periodic full backups with more frequent incremental backups to capture changes between them.

How incremental backups reduce WordPress server load

Creating a WordPress backup requires server resources. Depending on the backup solution, your server may need to scan files, read data, compress backup archives and transfer them to remote storage.

For a small website, the impact may be minimal. On a larger WooCommerce store, media-heavy website or site running on limited hosting resources, repeatedly processing a large volume of files can place more demand on the server.

Incremental backups can reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed during each incremental run. When only a small proportion of your files have changed, this can mean less work for the server compared with creating another full file backup.

Incremental backups still use server resources because the backup software needs to identify and process changes. The benefit is that unchanged files don’t need to be repeatedly included in every backup.

When incremental backups make the most sense

Not every WordPress site needs the same backup strategy. How often you back up your WordPress site should depend on how frequently it changes, what type of data is changing and how much recent data you can afford to lose.

Incremental backups can be particularly useful for sites that are:

• Frequently updated – Sites where files are regularly added or changed can benefit from more frequent, smaller incremental backups rather than repeatedly creating full file backups.
• Large – If your site contains several gigabytes of files, repeatedly creating full backups can require considerably more time, storage and server resources.
• Media-heavy – Photography sites, portfolios, news sites and stores can accumulate large media libraries while only a relatively small proportion of those files change between individual backups.
• Running WooCommerce – Online stores change constantly through orders, customer activity and product updates. Much of this information is stored in the database, so database backup frequency is particularly important alongside your file backup strategy. Our guide to backing up a WooCommerce database explains how to protect this frequently changing data.
• Managed by an agency or freelancer – If you’re responsible for 20, 50 or 100 WordPress sites, repeatedly creating full backups can quickly increase your overall storage requirements. Incremental file backups can make managing frequent backups across multiple client sites more efficient.
• Hosted on limited resources – Sites on shared or resource-constrained hosting may benefit from reducing the amount of data processed during frequent backup operations.

Why databases are treated differently than files

A WordPress site consists of both files and a database, and the two contain different types of information.

Your files include themes, plugins, uploaded images and other media. These can account for a large proportion of your site’s overall size, particularly if you have an extensive media library.

Your database stores information such as posts, pages, comments, settings and user data. On a WooCommerce site, it also contains frequently changing information such as orders and customer data.

UpdraftPlus Premium’s incremental backups apply to your WordPress files. When an incremental backup runs, it can capture file changes without repeatedly backing up all of your unchanged files. The database is backed up separately according to the database schedule you configure.

This means you can use frequent incremental backups for changing files while setting your database backup frequency according to how often its data changes. For a relatively static site, that might mean less frequent database backups, while a busy WooCommerce or membership site may need them much more often.

Step by step guide to configuring the system with UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus Premium lets you combine periodic full file backups with more frequent incremental backups, while scheduling your WordPress database separately.

You can choose how often full backups are created, then set incremental backups to capture file changes between them. This gives you more frequent restore points without repeatedly creating a complete copy of all your website files.

Your database backup schedule can be configured independently, so you can choose a frequency that reflects how often your site’s data changes.

Below, we’ll walk through how to configure this backup strategy in UpdraftPlus Premium, including your schedules, remote storage and the settings worth checking before relying on it.

Step 1. Install and activate UpdraftPlus Premium

If you haven’t already installed UpdraftPlus Premium:

• Download UpdraftPlus Premium: Download the plugin ZIP file from your TeamUpdraft account.
• Remove the free version if necessary: If UpdraftPlus Free is already installed, deactivate and delete it before installing Premium.
• Install the plugin: In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, select the Premium ZIP file and click Install Now.
• Activate UpdraftPlus Premium: Activate the plugin, then connect your TeamUpdraft account from the Premium / Extensions tab to activate your purchase on the site.

You can then open UpdraftPlus from your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2. Connect your remote storage

Storing backups remotely means you can still access them if your website’s server becomes unavailable. Read our guide to storing WordPress backups offsite to learn more about why this matters.

• Open the UpdraftPlus settings: Go to UpdraftPlus Backups > Settings.

• Choose your remote storage: Select your preferred storage provider, such as Google Drive, Dropbox or Amazon S3. You can also follow our guide to backing up WordPress to Google Drive automatically.
• Connect your account: Follow the instructions shown for your chosen storage provider to authenticate the connection.
• Save your settings: Once you’ve configured your storage, save your changes.

Step 3. Configure your full and incremental backup schedules

Open the Settings tab in UpdraftPlus and find the file and database backup schedule options.

• Choose your full file backup schedule: Decide how frequently UpdraftPlus should create a full backup of your files and how many backups you want to retain.
• Set your incremental backup frequency: Choose how often UpdraftPlus should add an incremental backup between full backups. Incremental backups can be scheduled every hour, every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, or daily.
• Configure your database schedule: Choose a separate database backup frequency based on how often your site’s data changes.
• Review your retention settings: Decide how many backups you want UpdraftPlus to retain.
• Save your settings: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.

Once configured, UpdraftPlus will automatically create full and incremental backups according to your schedules. You can view them under Existing backups in the Backup / Restore tab.

Step 4. Create your first full backup

• Save your settings: Scroll to the bottom of the Settings tab and click Save Changes.

• Return to Backup / Restore: Open the Backup / Restore tab in UpdraftPlus.

• Create a full backup: Click Backup Now and follow the prompts to create your first full backup.
• Check your backup: Once the backup has completed, check that it appears under Existing backups and has been successfully sent to your chosen remote storage.

This full backup provides a baseline for your incremental backups. UpdraftPlus can then automatically add incremental file backups according to the schedule you configured, with new full backups created according to your main file backup schedule.

How to troubleshoot common setup mistakes

Once your backup schedule is configured, it’s worth checking a few common issues that can prevent backups from working as expected.

Ignoring backup warnings or errors

Pay attention to any warnings or failed backup notifications from UpdraftPlus. A problem with your remote storage connection, available storage or scheduled backup could mean that a backup hasn’t completed or been stored where you expected.

If you receive an error, check your recent backup activity and confirm that your latest backup appears under Existing backups and in your chosen remote storage location.

Backing up unnecessary files

Cache directories, temporary files and other data that can easily be recreated don’t always need to be included in your backups. Including unnecessary files can increase backup size and require additional processing and storage.

UpdraftPlus lets you configure which directories and files are included or excluded from your backups. Review these settings carefully rather than excluding folders unless you’re confident they aren’t needed for restoration. You can do this in the settings tab.

Choosing the wrong backup frequency

Running incremental backups more frequently isn’t automatically better. Your schedule should reflect how often your site’s files actually change and how much data you could afford to lose between backups.

For example, a frequently updated site may benefit from incremental file backups every few hours, while a more static site may not need them as often. Remember to consider your database separately, particularly for WooCommerce, membership or other sites where database content changes frequently.

Best practices for a reliable WordPress backup strategy

Configuring incremental backups is only one part of a reliable backup strategy. You also need to think about how long backups are retained, whether they can be restored successfully and how securely they’re stored.

Set appropriate retention rules

Keeping more restore points isn’t always better. Over time, old backups can consume a significant amount of remote storage, particularly if you’re managing a large site or multiple WordPress websites.

UpdraftPlus Premium includes advanced retention rules that let you keep backups for different periods. For example, you might retain recent backups more frequently while keeping selected older restore points for longer.

Choose retention rules based on how far back you’re realistically likely to need to restore your site and the amount of storage available.

Test your restoration process

A backup is only useful if you can successfully restore from it. Periodically testing your backups can help confirm that they’re working and make you more familiar with the restoration process before you need it on a live website.

Our guide to preparing to restore your WordPress site explains what to check before starting a restoration.

Where possible, test restores in a staging or other safe test environment rather than experimenting on your live site.

Secure your remote storage accounts

Your remote backups may contain sensitive website data, including database information, user details and other information you wouldn’t want an unauthorised person to access.

Protect accounts such as Google Drive or Dropbox with a strong, unique password and enable two-factor authentication where available. You should also review who has access to your backup storage and remove access that is no longer required.

Conclusion

Incremental backups can make frequent WordPress backups more efficient by reducing the amount of unchanged data that needs to be processed, transferred and stored. They work alongside periodic full backups rather than replacing them, helping you maintain frequent restore points without repeatedly creating complete copies of your website files.

With UpdraftPlus Premium, you can schedule incremental file backups between full backups, configure your database backup schedule separately and store your backups remotely. Together with appropriate retention rules and regular restore testing, this gives you a flexible backup strategy that can grow with your WordPress site.

FAQs

WordPress gives you the freedom to build almost any type of website, from personal blogs and portfolios to business websites and online stores. The right website builder makes that process even easier, allowing you to create professional-looking pages without writing code.

With so many WordPress website builders available, choosing the right one can be difficult. Some focus on simplicity and speed, while others offer advanced design tools, greater flexibility and deeper customisation for experienced users.

In this guide, we’ll compare some of the best WordPress website builders based on ease of use, design flexibility, performance, features and pricing. Whether you’re building your first website or looking for a more powerful solution, this comparison will help you choose the builder that’s right for your needs.

Key takeaways

• The best WordPress website builder depends on your experience, the type of website you’re creating and how much flexibility you need over design, functionality and performance.
• Elementor and SeedProd are excellent choices for beginners, while Bricks and Oxygen offer greater control, cleaner code and more advanced customisation for experienced users.
• Your website’s speed won’t depend on the builder alone. Your hosting, theme, plugins, images and overall site optimisation all play an important role.
• Think about the long term before choosing a builder. Some make it easier to switch themes or redesign your site, while others can leave behind layouts or shortcodes that require significant rebuilding.
• Before changing builders or redesigning an existing website, test everything on a staging site and create a recent backup so you can restore your site if anything goes wrong.

Why your choice of WordPress website builder matters

Choosing a WordPress website builder can affect much more than how your site looks. The builder you choose can influence performance, design flexibility, ease of maintenance and how straightforward it is to make changes as your website grows.

Your builder can affect site performance

Some website builders add more HTML, CSS and JavaScript to a page than others, particularly as layouts become more complex or additional widgets and features are used. This can affect page size and loading performance if the site isn’t properly optimised. When comparing builders, it’s therefore worth considering performance alongside design features and ease of use.

Switching builders isn’t always straightforward

Website builders often use their own approach to creating and storing layouts. If you later decide to move to another builder, some pages or design elements may need to be recreated rather than transferred automatically. The more complex your website becomes, the more work switching can potentially involve.

Think about what you’ll need in the future

It’s easy to focus on the features you need today, but your website may become more complex over time. Consider whether a builder can support future requirements such as new page layouts, WooCommerce functionality, dynamic content or more advanced design controls. It’s also worth looking at ongoing development, compatibility and support before committing to a particular tool.

How I compared the WordPress website builders

To make this comparison useful, I looked beyond individual features and considered the factors that matter most when choosing a WordPress website builder:

• Performance: How efficiently the builder handles page structure and assets, along with the performance features and controls available.
• Ease of use: How intuitive the editing experience is and the level of technical knowledge needed to get started.
• Design flexibility: The level of control available over layouts, styling, responsive design and other visual elements.
• Features: The range of built-in tools available, including templates, dynamic content, WooCommerce support and other functionality where relevant.
• Cost: Whether a free version is available, what the paid plans include and whether more advanced features require an upgrade.

I also considered who each builder is best suited to, because the strongest option for an experienced developer won’t necessarily be the best choice for someone building their first WordPress website.

Best WordPress website builders

Based on the factors above, I’ve selected eight WordPress website builders that stand out for different types of users and websites. I’ve ranked them based on their overall combination of performance, ease of use, design flexibility, features and value, but the best choice for you will ultimately depend on what you’re building.

1. Bricks builder

Premium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 10/10 | Ease of Use: 6/10 | Customization: 10/10 | Overall Score: 9.0/10

Best for: Experienced designers and developers who want strong performance and a high level of control over how their site is built.

Bricks takes a more developer-focused approach than many traditional WordPress page builders. Rather than working as a standalone plugin alongside your existing theme, Bricks is itself a WordPress theme with a visual site-building interface.

One of its main strengths is the level of control it gives you over your site’s structure and styling. It also places a strong emphasis on performance and efficient code output, making it particularly appealing to developers and experienced WordPress users who want the convenience of visual editing without giving up more advanced controls.

Key features

• Query Loop Builder for displaying dynamic WordPress content
• Support for dynamic data and custom fields
• Advanced responsive design and styling controls
• Accessibility-focused features and controls to help you build more accessible websites

Pros

• Strong focus on performance and efficient code output
• Extensive design and development controls
• Well suited to dynamic and custom WordPress websites
• Active development and community

Cons

• Steeper learning curve than more beginner-focused builders
• Works as a WordPress theme rather than a standalone page builder plugin
• Some of its more advanced features are better suited to users with an understanding of HTML and CSS

Verdict

I’ve ranked Bricks first because it offers a particularly strong combination of performance, flexibility and advanced design control. It’s best suited to experienced WordPress users and developers rather than complete beginners, but it’s a strong choice if you want a visual builder without sacrificing control over how your site is structured.

2. SeedProd

Freemium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10 | Customization: 8/10 | Overall Score: 8.5/10

Best for: Beginners and business owners looking for an easy-to-use builder for landing pages and complete WordPress websites.

SeedProd started as a coming soon and maintenance mode plugin but has since developed into a more comprehensive drag-and-drop WordPress website builder. Its visual interface is designed to be accessible to users without coding experience, with templates and pre-built blocks that make it easier to create pages quickly.

SeedProd also includes AI-powered tools that can help generate website content and assist with creating and refining page designs. Combined with its landing page features and theme builder, this makes it a particularly useful option for business owners and marketers who want a straightforward way to build and customise a WordPress site.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop page and theme builder
• Built-in coming soon and maintenance modes
• AI-assisted tools for creating and refining website content and designs
• WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads integrations
• Library of templates and pre-built page sections

Pros

• Beginner-friendly visual editing experience
• Strong selection of landing page and marketing features
• Can be used to create custom WordPress themes without coding
• Free version available for users who want to try the builder first

Cons

• The free version is more limited than the paid plans
• Some advanced features and integrations require higher-tier plans
• Experienced developers may find it less flexible than more developer-focused builders such as Bricks

Verdict

I’ve ranked SeedProd second because it offers a good balance of ease of use, design tools and features for users who don’t need the deeper technical control offered by Bricks. It’s particularly well suited to beginners, business owners and marketers who want to build landing pages or customise a WordPress site without relying heavily on code.

3. Oxygen builder

Premium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 4/10 | Customization: 10/10 | Overall Score: 8.2/10

Best for: Experienced developers and technical WordPress users who want extensive control over site structure, styling and dynamic content.

Oxygen takes a more technical approach to visual WordPress website building. Rather than relying on your existing WordPress theme for the site’s design, Oxygen gives you control over templates, layouts and styling through its visual builder.

Its interface and range of controls are aimed more towards developers than complete beginners. An understanding of HTML, CSS and how WordPress sites are structured will help you get much more from the builder, so I wouldn’t recommend Oxygen as a first choice for someone looking for the simplest drag-and-drop experience.

Key features

• Visual control over site-wide templates and layouts
• Dynamic data support for creating content-driven WordPress sites
• Advanced CSS controls and support for custom code
• Responsive design controls for different screen sizes

Pros

• High level of control over site structure and styling
• Well suited to custom and dynamic WordPress websites
• Strong option for users who want visual editing alongside more advanced development controls
• Designed with efficient code output in mind

Cons

• Steeper learning curve than beginner-focused builders
• Best suited to users who are comfortable with HTML and CSS
• The range of technical controls may be more than a beginner or casual site owner needs

Verdict

I’ve ranked Oxygen third because it offers a high level of flexibility and control for technical users, particularly those building more complex or dynamic WordPress sites. It isn’t the easiest builder to learn, but for developers who want a visual workflow without giving up more advanced controls, it’s a strong option to consider.

4.  Breakdance

Premium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 7/10 | Customization: 9/10 | Overall Score: 8.2/10

Best for: WooCommerce store owners, agencies and experienced WordPress users looking for extensive built-in design features.

Breakdance is a visual WordPress website builder that combines a user-friendly editing interface with more advanced design and development controls. It includes a large collection of built-in elements, helping users create more complex layouts without relying as heavily on third-party add-ons.

WooCommerce is one of Breakdance’s key strengths. Its WooCommerce elements and visual editing tools give you greater control over the design of important store pages and elements, making it particularly useful for anyone building or customising an online store.

Key features

• Large collection of built-in design elements
• WooCommerce elements and visual store customisation
• Built-in form builder with conditional functionality
• Responsive design and advanced styling controls

Pros

• Strong range of features included within the builder
• Extensive WooCommerce design options
• Combines visual editing with more advanced controls
• Reduces the need for additional design add-ons for many common features

Cons

• No permanent free version, although a demo is available for trying the builder
• The range of features and controls may take time for beginners to learn
• Smaller ecosystem than longer-established builders such as Elementor

Verdict

I’ve ranked Breakdance fourth because it offers a strong combination of built-in features, design flexibility and WooCommerce customisation. It’s particularly worth considering for online stores and more complex WordPress projects where you want plenty of functionality within the builder itself rather than relying heavily on additional design plugins.

5. Spectra

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10 | Customization: 7/10 | Overall Score: 8.2/10

Best for: Bloggers, content creators and site owners who want more design flexibility while continuing to use the native WordPress block editor.

Spectra extends the WordPress block editor with additional blocks and design controls, rather than introducing a completely separate page-building interface. Built by the team behind the popular Astra theme, it can be used to create more advanced layouts while keeping the familiar WordPress editing experience.

Its block-based approach makes Spectra particularly appealing if you already enjoy working with the WordPress editor but find the core blocks too limiting for the layouts you want to create. It also includes performance-focused features designed to avoid loading unnecessary assets where possible.

Key features

• Additional blocks for creating more advanced WordPress layouts
• Container and responsive layout controls
• Templates and pre-built design patterns
• Performance settings designed to load assets more efficiently
• Additional styling and customisation options within the block editor

Pros

• Works directly within the native WordPress block editor
• Familiar editing experience for existing WordPress users
• Strong selection of additional blocks and design controls
• Free version available for users who want to try it first

Cons

• Less granular design control than some standalone visual builders
• Some more advanced features are reserved for the paid version
• Users looking for a completely visual, standalone page-building experience may prefer another option

Verdict

I’ve ranked Spectra fifth because it offers a good balance of ease of use, additional design flexibility and integration with the native WordPress editor. It’s a strong choice if you want to expand what you can create with WordPress blocks without moving to a completely separate page-building system.

6. Kadence blocks

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 7/10 | Customization: 8/10 | Overall Score: 8.2/10

Best for: Content creators, marketers and site owners who want more detailed layout and design controls within the native WordPress block editor.

Kadence blocks extends the native WordPress block editor with additional blocks and design controls for creating more customised layouts. Like Spectra, it lets you continue working within the familiar WordPress editing experience rather than introducing a separate page-building interface.

Kadence offers detailed controls for areas such as spacing, typography and responsive layouts, making it a good option for users who want more flexibility than the core WordPress blocks provide. It can also be paired with the Kadence theme, although you don’t need to use the theme to take advantage of Kadence Blocks.

Key features

• Additional blocks for creating more advanced page layouts
• Detailed spacing, typography and responsive design controls
• Pre-built design sections and templates
• Global styling controls for maintaining consistency across your site

Pros

• Works directly within the native WordPress block editor
• Detailed control over layouts and responsive design
• Free version available for users who want to try it first
• Integrates closely with the wider Kadence ecosystem

Cons

• The number of available settings may take some time for beginners to get used to
• Some advanced features are limited to the paid version
• Users wanting a completely separate visual page-building interface may prefer another builder

Verdict

I’ve ranked Kadence Blocks sixth because it offers a strong combination of native WordPress integration and detailed design controls. It’s particularly well suited to users who like the block editor but want greater control over layouts, styling and responsive design without moving to a standalone visual builder.

7. Thrive Architect

Premium | Speed: 7/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10 | Customization: 8/10 | Overall Score: 7.9/10

Best for: Marketers, affiliate site owners and businesses that want a visual builder with a strong focus on landing pages and lead generation.

Thrive Architect is a visual WordPress page builder with a strong focus on marketing and conversions. Alongside standard page-building tools, it includes elements and templates designed for landing pages, calls to action and other marketing-focused content.

It also forms part of the wider Thrive Suite, making it particularly relevant for users who want to combine their page builder with other Thrive tools for areas such as lead generation, quizzes and conversion optimisation.

Key features

• Visual drag-and-drop page editing
• Landing page templates and marketing-focused design elements
• Lead generation forms with email marketing integrations
• Responsive design and styling controls

Pros

• Strong focus on landing pages and conversion-focused content
• Visual editing makes it easy to update page content and layouts
• Integrates with a range of email marketing services
• Works closely with other products in the Thrive Suite

Cons

• No free version is available
• Some functionality requires additional products within the Thrive Suite
• May offer more marketing functionality than users building a simple blog or informational website need

Verdict

I’ve ranked Thrive Architect seventh because its real strength lies in its marketing-focused features rather than trying to be the best fit for every type of WordPress site. It’s particularly worth considering if landing pages, lead generation and conversion-focused content are central to your website.

8. Elementor

Freemium | Speed: 6/10 | SEO: 7/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10 | Customization: 9/10 | Overall Score: 7.7/10

Best for: Beginners, freelancers and business owners looking for an accessible visual builder with a large template and add-on ecosystem.

Elementor is one of the most widely used visual page builders for WordPress. Its drag-and-drop interface lets you build and customise pages visually, making it accessible to users who don’t want to work directly with code.

The free version provides many of the tools needed to create standard page layouts, while Elementor Pro adds features such as theme building, forms, pop-ups and more advanced design controls. Its large user base has also resulted in an extensive ecosystem of templates, integrations and third-party add-ons.

Key features

• Visual drag-and-drop page editing
• Large library of templates and pre-designed elements
• Responsive design controls for desktop, tablet and mobile
• Theme Builder and Popup Builder available with Elementor Pro
• Wide range of integrations and third-party add-ons

Pros

• Beginner-friendly visual editing experience
• Free version available with a useful range of design features
• Large ecosystem of templates, integrations and extensions
• Extensive documentation and learning resources
• High level of visual customisation without requiring coding knowledge

Cons

• Complex pages and extensive use of widgets can add additional code and assets that may affect performance
• The number of settings and available add-ons can become overwhelming
• Some of the more advanced site-building features require Elementor Pro

Verdict

I’ve ranked Elementor eighth in this comparison because other builders in the list offer stronger advantages for some of the factors I’ve prioritised, particularly performance or more specialised functionality. However, Elementor remains a strong option for beginners and non-technical users thanks to its accessible visual editor, extensive ecosystem and range of design features. If ease of use and flexibility are your main priorities, it may be a better fit for you than some of the more technical builders ranked above it.

Comparison table

Common mistakes to avoid with WordPress website builders

Website builders give you a lot of design freedom, but that can also make it easy to overcomplicate your site. Here are a few common mistakes to avoid when getting started.

1. Using multiple website builders

Using more than one website builder on the same site can add unnecessary complexity and may lead to compatibility, styling or performance issues. It can also make your site more difficult to maintain over time. Where possible, choose one  builder that meets your needs.

2. Overloading pages with design effects

Animations, custom fonts and other visual effects can make a page more engaging when used carefully, but adding too many can distract visitors and affect performance. Keep your designs consistent and only use additional effects where they genuinely improve the user experience.

3. Forgetting about mobile users

A layout that looks great on a desktop screen won’t necessarily work as well on a phone or tablet. Use your builder’s responsive design controls to check elements such as font sizes, spacing, images and navigation across different screen sizes before publishing.

How hosting can affect your website builder

Your hosting environment can influence both your website’s performance and how smoothly a visual builder runs. More complex pages and feature-rich builders may require additional server resources, so hosting is worth considering when choosing and configuring your builder.

PHP memory and server resources

Visual builders can require more server resources when editing complex pages, particularly when you’re working with lots of elements, images or dynamic content. If your hosting plan has restrictive PHP memory or resource limits, you may experience a slower editing interface, failed saves or timeout errors.

Check the recommended server requirements for your chosen builder and compare them with the resources available through your hosting provider.

Caching and the editing experience

Caching can improve the performance of your published website, but the logged-in editing experience works differently from the cached pages served to visitors. As a result, a site that loads quickly for visitors can still feel slower when you’re working inside a visual builder.

Choosing suitable hosting

You don’t necessarily need expensive hosting to use a WordPress website builder, but your hosting plan should meet the builder’s recommended requirements. For larger or more complex websites, a plan with sufficient PHP memory, processing resources and WordPress-specific support can make the editing experience more reliable.

How to test a WordPress website builder

Before committing to a new website builder, it’s worth testing how it works with your site and whether the editing experience suits you. This is particularly important if you’re considering changing the builder on an existing website.

1. Create a safe testing environment. Use a local WordPress installation, staging site or temporary clone rather than experimenting with major changes on your live website. UpdraftPlus can help you back up your existing site, while UpdraftClone lets you create a temporary copy for testing.
2. Check the builder’s requirements. Some builders work alongside your existing theme, while others replace the traditional theme system. Check the recommended WordPress, PHP, theme and hosting requirements before installing it.
3. Try the builder before committing where possible. If a free version, demo or trial is available, use it to explore the interface and key features before purchasing a paid plan.
4. Build a realistic test page. Rather than experimenting with a simple blank page, try recreating a layout similar to something you’d actually use on your website. This will give you a better idea of the builder’s workflow and design controls.
5. Test performance. Use a tool such as Google PageSpeed Insights to compare the performance of your test pages, remembering that hosting, images, plugins and configuration can also affect the results.
6. Check responsive layouts. Preview your test page on desktop, tablet and mobile to see how much control the builder gives you over different screen sizes.
7. Explore the documentation and support. Look for guidance on a feature or problem you’re likely to encounter. Good documentation and reliable support can make a significant difference once you’re using the builder regularly.

Testing a builder this way can help you understand its strengths and limitations before investing time and money in rebuilding or redesigning your website.

Conclusion

The best WordPress website builder is the one that fits your workflow, experience level and the type of website you’re creating. Beginners may prefer the simplicity of Elementor or SeedProd, while experienced users often choose Bricks or Oxygen for their flexibility, cleaner code and greater design control. If you’re building an online store, Breakdance is well worth considering, while Thrive Architect is a strong choice for marketers focused on conversions. Spectra and Kadence Blocks are excellent options if you prefer to build with WordPress’s native block editor.

Rather than focusing on the number of features, think about how the builder will perform over the long term. Consider its ease of use, performance, compatibility with your favourite plugins and theme, ongoing costs and how easy it will be to update or redesign your website as it grows.

Before committing, spend some time building the pages you actually need. Test the editing experience, responsiveness on different devices and page performance to make sure the builder suits both your workflow and your visitors.

If you’re trying a new builder on an existing website, it’s always worth taking precautions first. Create a full backup with UpdraftPlus before making major changes, or use UpdraftClone to create a temporary copy of your website where you can safely experiment without affecting your live site.

FAQs

All-In-One Security 5.5.0 brings clearer firewall logs and stronger login protection

All-In-One Security 5.5.0 is now available to download.

This release gives you a clearer view of your firewall with dedicated audit and debug logs, a new session mechanism and more control over audit log history. It also fixes a security flaw that allowed login lockouts to be cleared without a valid key and makes upgrades safer on larger sites.

Stronger protection for login lockouts

If you use login lockouts to slow down brute force attempts, this is the part of the release to read.

A security researcher, Filip Kowalski, responsibly disclosed a flaw in the way All-In-One Security handled the removal of login lockouts. A lockout could be cleared by sending a request containing an empty aiowps_auth_key value, without the nonce and unlock key that should have been required.

If exploited, the issue could allow an unauthorised party to remove a login lockout and weaken the site’s protection against repeated password attempts.

Version 5.5.0 requires a valid nonce and unlock key before a lockout can be cleared. We are grateful to Filip for responsibly reporting the flaw.

If you rely on login lockouts, update to 5.5.0 promptly. Check the minimum PHP and WordPress requirements below before upgrading.

See what your firewall is doing

The firewall now has its own audit log to record its activity and a debug log to help you investigate problems. We have also moved appropriate error_log calls into the debug log, keeping that diagnostic information in one place.

The firewall now uses a session mechanism to associate related requests, giving its logging and request-handling logic more context when analysing activity.

Manage your audit log history

A new dropdown lets you choose how many audit log entries appear on each page, making longer histories easier to review.

You can also choose how long to keep audit logs. The default is now 30 days, with a configurable retention period to suit your site.

Control where visitors go when they reach wp-admin

Rename Login Page now accepts an optional redirect URL. When someone who is not logged in tries to access wp-admin, you can send them to a page of your choosing instead of showing a “you do not have permission” message.

We have also fixed a canonical redirect issue that could expose your renamed login page through the non-www version of your address.

Lockout and redirect responses now include no-cache headers to prevent caching plugins and CDNs from storing them and serving them to other visitors.

Our guide to protecting your WordPress admin area covers the wider setup.

Connect your TeamUpdraft account

A new Integration tab in All-In-One Security settings lets you connect your TeamUpdraft account. It provides the authentication used by features that connect to the TeamUpdraft cloud.

More reliable scans and safer upgrades

File scans no longer fail on sites with many installed plugins. A live “Downloading Checksums” step also makes scan progress easier to follow.

The InnoDB migration no longer converts database tables larger than 10 MB automatically. Instead, All-In-One Security displays manual conversion instructions to help prevent timeouts and database lockups. The migration task also handles upgrades where an automatic conversion was previously skipped.

Keep your security settings consistent

Configuration fixes help you transfer settings and maintain your existing protections.

• Importing settings from another website now asks for confirmation before carrying across CAPTCHA keys and the admin email address.
• The firewall IP allowlist is now included in settings imports and exports.
• Failed updates to Google or Bingbot IP ranges no longer overwrite existing ranges.
• Google reCAPTCHA secret key validation has been fixed, and invalid configuration warnings disappear when CAPTCHA is disabled.
• Blocking an IP address within a range is now logged correctly.
• Cloudflare Turnstile site and secret keys are now verified when you save them.
• On WordPress Multisite, deleted users no longer remain in the Manual Approval table. Subsite admins can also permanently block IPs from their own subsite in the spammer IP list.

Work more easily in the admin area

The locked IP, debug log, logged-in users, smart 404 blocked IP and spammer IP tables now update without reloading the page. Filters and search remain visible when there are no records, and the bulk actions row appears immediately.

The Permanent Block List now supports filtering by block reason and applying bulk unblock actions to the filtered results.

Help text has moved into tooltips, badges are positioned more consistently and numeric settings use number inputs. The User Security user accounts tab now matches the PHP firewall rules tab. Settings sections can no longer be collapsed, and the scanner starts up faster.

The Have I Been Pwned tab and its settings have moved to User Security → Password Settings. The unused “Internet bots” and “6G firewall rules” tabs have been removed, and help links now point to TeamUpdraft documentation.

Safer file restores and updated compatibility

Restoring a backed-up .htaccess or wp-config.php file now includes a content hash check for added security.

Behind the scenes, audit log queries now use prepared statements, and appropriate htmlspecialchars() calls have been replaced with WordPress escaping functions. We have standardised custom hook prefixes to aios_*, moved script loading to admin_enqueue_scripts and removed unused logging code, the message store and the aios_loaded action.

Version 5.5.0 fixes a potential deprecation notice on PHP 8.1 or later. It also raises the minimum requirements to PHP 7.4 and WordPress 5.3. If your site runs an older version of either, update it before installing this release.

New options for developers and advanced users

The new aios_file_scan_completed action hook passes file change scan results to other integrations.

To disable the setup wizard, add this line to wp-config.php:

define('AIOS_DISABLE_SETUP_WIZARD', true);

The full 5.5.0 changelog

5.5.0 – 30/Sep/2026

• SECURITY: Prevented unauthorised clearing of login lockouts via an empty aiowps_auth_key parameter by requiring a valid nonce and unlock key. Thanks to Filip Kowalski for disclosing this defect.
• FEATURE: Added an Integration settings tab to connect a TeamUpdraft account, providing the authentication used by features that connect to the TeamUpdraft cloud.
• FEATURE: Added an optional redirect URL to the Rename Login Page feature, so non-logged-in visitors who try to access wp-admin can be sent to a chosen page instead of seeing a “you do not have permission” message.
• FEATURE: Added audit and debug logging to the firewall.
• FEATURE: Added a session mechanism to the firewall.
• FEATURE: Added a pagination dropdown to the audit logs table, allowing users to customize the number of logs displayed per page.
• FIX: Added confirmation when importing settings from another website for captcha keys and admin email.
• FIX: Bulk actions row not visible on AJAX-driven list tables (e.g. Logged in users) until the page is manually reloaded.
• FIX: Deleted users no longer remain visible in the Manual Approval table on WordPress Multisite.
• FIX: Firewall IP allowlist setting is now included in settings import and export.
• FIX: Google and Bingbot update failures could overwrite existing bot ranges.
• FIX: Google reCAPTCHA secret key validation.
• FIX: Invalid Google reCAPTCHA configuration notice still displaying after disabling CAPTCHA.
• FIX: Improved InnoDB table migration task to handle upgrade scenarios where automatic table conversion may have been skipped.
• FIX: Large database tables (over 10 MB) are no longer converted automatically during the InnoDB migration. Manual conversion instructions are displayed instead to help prevent timeouts and database lockups.
• FIX: List table filters remain visible when no records exist.
• FIX: Non-WWW wp-login.php canonical redirect exposing the renamed login page.
• FIX: Potential PHP deprecation notice on PHP 8.1 or later.
• FIX: Prevented file scans from failing on sites with many installed plugins, and added a live “Downloading Checksums” step so scan progress is clearer.
• FIX: Search bar remains visible after an AJAX table refresh when no records remain.
• FIX: Password reset email body could be truncated when REMOTE_ADDR was not a valid IP address.
• FIX: Max file upload size setting in the .htaccess rules not reflected on the Add Media page in the admin area.
• FIX: UpdraftCentral integration audit log event details were blank.
• FIX: User deletion caused a HTTP 500 error on older WordPress versions leading to missing user details in audit logs.
• FIX: Various translation and translation-help comments.
• FIX: IP blacklisting within an IP range not being logged properly.
• TWEAK: Updated the minimum required of PHP version to 7.4.
• TWEAK: Updated the minimum required of WordPress version to 5.3.
• TWEAK: Enhanced the locked IP table to work with AJAX.
• TWEAK: Added AJAX support to debug logs table.
• TWEAK: Added AJAX support to the logged-in users table.
• TWEAK: Added AJAX support to the smart 404 blocked IPs list table.
• TWEAK: Added AJAX support to the spammer IP table.
• TWEAK: Added Cloudflare Turnstile site and secret key verification.
• TWEAK: Added an ‘aios_file_scan_completed’ action hook with file change scan results for other integrations
• TWEAK: Added a constant to disable the setup wizard. Add define(‘AIOS_DISABLE_SETUP_WIZARD’, true); to wp-config.php to disable it.
• TWEAK: Added audit log data retention settings.
• TWEAK: Added block reason filtering and filtered bulk unblock actions to the Permanent Block List table.
• TWEAK: Added handling for deleting 404 event logs when no logs are available.
• TWEAK: Added no-cache headers to lockout and redirect responses to prevent caching by cache plugins and CDNs.
• TWEAK: Allow subsite admins to permanently block IPs from their subsite in the spammer IPs list.
• TWEAK: Audit the firewall and replace appropriate error_log calls with the debug log.
• TWEAK: Changed default audit log retention period to 30 days.
• TWEAK: Changed script enqueue hook from admin_print_scripts/admin_print_styles to the more standard admin_enqueue_scripts.
• TWEAK: Changed the UI for User Security > user accounts tab to match the UI for the PHP firewall rules tab.
• TWEAK: Disabled the ability to collapse UI sections.
• TWEAK: Drop a redundant user_id index from the logged in users table.
• TWEAK: Enhance the security for .htaccess and wp-config.php restore by matching file content hash.
• TWEAK: Improved scanner start up time.
• TWEAK: Improved PHPCS naming convention compliance by standardizing custom hook prefixes to aios_* and adding PHPCS ignore comments where appropriate for WordPress core hooks.
• TWEAK: Improved badge positioning to be more consistent across admin pages.
• TWEAK: Moved “More info” help text to tooltips.
• TWEAK: Moved the Have I Been Pwned “HIBP” tab & related settings to User Security → Password Settings.
• TWEAK: Refactored comment commands class to use response helper method.
• TWEAK: Refactored the 404 log export to work with AJAX.
• TWEAK: Refactored user command class to use new AJAX response helper method.
• TWEAK: Replace htmlspecialchars() with WordPress escaping functions where appropriate.
• TWEAK: Updated AIOS documentation links to the TeamUpdraft Docusaurus documentation routes.
• TWEAK: Updated audit log SQL queries to use prepared statements, resolving unescaped database parameter warnings.
• TWEAK: Updated the review request notice design.
• TWEAK: Updated some help texts for better readability.
• TWEAK: Updated numeric settings to use HTML number inputs.
• TWEAK: Removed unnecessary stripslashes() usage to improve code consistency.
• TWEAK: Removed unused ‘aios_loaded’ action.
• TWEAK: Removed the legacy security log files and logs directory as they’re no longer used.
• TWEAK: Removed the message store as it’s no longer needed.
• TWEAK: Removed unused “Internet bots” and “6G firewall rules” tabs.

UpdraftPlus has reached an exciting milestone: more than 4 million active WordPress installations.

Every one of those installations represents a website that someone has chosen to protect with UpdraftPlus. Whether you’re backing up a personal blog, running an online store or managing hundreds of client websites, thank you for trusting us to help keep your work safe.

For everyone at TeamUpdraft, this milestone belongs as much to our community as it does to us. Your trust, feedback and support have helped shape UpdraftPlus into what it is today.

The UpdraftPlus listing in the WordPress Plugin Directory now displays “4+ million” active installations, a milestone we’re incredibly proud to share with the WordPress community.

Helping protect more than 4 million WordPress websites

Every website represents an investment of time, effort and ideas. From a personal blog to a busy WooCommerce store, there’s always something worth protecting.
A reliable backup gives you a way to recover that work when something goes wrong.

Choosing a backup plugin is about more than features. You’re trusting it with your website, your content and the time you’ve invested in building it. Reaching 4 million active installations is a reminder of that trust, and of our responsibility to keep backups and restores as reliable and straightforward as possible.

We’re proud to support the site owners, developers and agencies who make up this community. Your needs vary, but the goal is shared: knowing you have a backup to turn to when you need it.

If you’re reviewing your own setup, our guide to the best way to back up WordPress covers the essentials, including keeping copies away from your website’s server and testing your restores.

Reaching 4 million active installations is a fantastic milestone, but what matters most to us is continuing to earn the trust of the people who rely on UpdraftPlus every day.

Built to make WordPress backups simpler

Over the years, UpdraftPlus has grown alongside the WordPress community. Whether you want automatic backups, easy restores or a safer way to migrate your website, UpdraftPlus has continued to evolve around the needs of WordPress users.

Keeping up with WordPress is just as important. As WordPress, PHP and hosting environments evolve, we continue testing and improving UpdraftPlus so you can update your site with confidence.

Many users also choose tools such as UpdraftClone for safely testing changes before they go live, or UpdraftVault for integrated backup storage. Together, they give you more ways to protect and manage WordPress websites as they grow.

Thank you to our community

To everyone who uses UpdraftPlus, recommends it to a colleague or trusts it with client websites: thank you. Your support has helped make this milestone possible.

We’re equally grateful to everyone who reports bugs, suggests improvements, contributes translations or helps other users in the WordPress community. Every piece of feedback helps us make UpdraftPlus a little better.

And thank you to the wider WordPress community for the collaboration and shared knowledge that help plugins like UpdraftPlus grow.

Looking ahead

Reaching 4 million active installations is an incredible milestone, but it’s also a reminder of the responsibility that comes with earning the trust of so many WordPress users.

Our focus remains on dependable backups, easier migrations and making WordPress easier to manage. We’ll continue improving UpdraftPlus, listening to our community and investing in the features that make the biggest difference.

Please keep sharing your feedback. Whether it’s a small frustration or an idea that could save time, every suggestion helps shape what we build next.

Thank you for being part of the journey. Here’s to the next milestone together.

More ways to look after your WordPress website

You might know us best for UpdraftPlus, but backups are just one part of what we do. The wider TeamUpdraft family includes tools to help with other everyday jobs around your website:

• WP-Optimize helps speed up your site with caching, image compression and database cleaning.
• All-In-One Security (AIOS) helps protect your website with firewall and login security features.
• Burst Statistics helps you understand your visitors with privacy-friendly website analytics.
• Internal Link Juicer automatically adds internal links between relevant content, helping visitors and search engines find their way around your site.
• Easy Updates Manager gives you control over WordPress, plugin and theme updates, including which updates happen automatically.
• WP Overnight makes running a WooCommerce store easier, with tools for PDF invoices, packing slips and more.
• WPGetAPI connects your WordPress site to external APIs, letting you bring in data from other services.
• UpdraftCentral brings updates, backups and other management tasks for multiple WordPress sites into one dashboard.

They share a common aim: making WordPress easier to manage, so you can spend more time on the work your website is there to support.

Backing up your WordPress site once is easy enough to remember. Remembering to do it every day, week or month is another matter. Scheduling your backups removes that responsibility by automatically creating regular recovery points, so you’re not relying on memory when something goes wrong.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to schedule WordPress backups using UpdraftPlus, including how to choose the right frequency for your files and database, set retention rules and store your backups remotely. We’ll also look at backup timing, WP-Cron, testing your backups and the common scheduling mistakes to avoid.

Key takeaways

• Schedule WordPress backups based on how frequently your website changes
• Back up both your website files and WordPress database
• Consider backing up your database more frequently than your files on active sites
• Store at least one backup remotely rather than relying solely on your web server
• UpdraftPlus lets you automate separate backup schedules for your files and database
• Check that scheduled backups are completing successfully and test your recovery process
• Create an additional backup before making significant changes to your website

What is a WordPress backup schedule?

A WordPress backup scheduler is a tool or feature that automatically creates backups of your website at intervals you choose.

Instead of logging into WordPress every Friday and clicking a backup button, you can tell your backup solution to do it automatically. Depending on the tool, you might be able to schedule backups hourly, every few hours, daily, weekly or monthly.

The important distinction is between taking a backup and scheduling a backup.

A manual backup happens when you deliberately start the process. A scheduled backup is triggered automatically according to a predefined schedule.

For most WordPress sites, I recommend:

• Scheduled backups for routine protection
• Manual backups before significant changes
• Automatic backups before an update

That second point matters. If I were about to change a theme, install a major plugin, update PHP or make substantial code changes, I would still take a fresh backup immediately beforehand. An automatic backup that ran yesterday is useful, but a backup from five minutes before a risky change is much better.

What does a WordPress backup actually contain?

Before choosing a backup schedule, it helps to understand what you are actually backing up.

WordPress backups generally have two main components:

1. Your website files
2. Your WordPress database

WordPress itself describes these as separate parts of a complete backup. Your files and database are stored separately, so backing up one does not automatically mean you have backed up the other.

Website files

Your files include things such as:

• WordPress core files
• Plugins
• Themes
• Images and other uploaded media
• Custom code
• Configuration files
• Other files stored within your WordPress installation

Your wp-content directory is particularly important because it normally contains your themes, plugins and uploaded media.

The WordPress database

Your database contains much of the information that makes your website dynamic.

This can include:

• Posts
• Pages
• Comments
• Users
• Website settings
• Plugin data
• WooCommerce orders and related information
• Other content created or stored by plugins

This is why I don’t recommend thinking of a database backup as an optional extra. If your database disappears, having your theme and image files won’t magically bring your posts and settings back.

WordPress’s own documentation recommends backing up the database regularly and before upgrades.

How often should you schedule WordPress backups?

There isn’t one perfect backup schedule for every website. The easiest way to choose one is to ask yourself:

How much recent data could I afford to lose?

A useful starting point looks like this:

These are starting points rather than hard rules.

Your hosting resources, database size, storage capacity and recovery requirements should also influence the schedule.

I’ve covered this in more detail in our guide to how often you should back up your WordPress site, including a more detailed backup frequency matrix.

Why your database and files can have different schedules

One of the easiest ways to make your backup strategy more efficient is to stop treating every part of your website as if it changes at the same rate.

Consider a blog: You might upload a new image or install a plugin once a week, but your database could change every day because of new posts, comments, contact form submissions or other activity. Your files may therefore not need to be backed up as frequently as your database.

For example, you could use:

• Files: weekly
• Database: daily

For a busier website, you might choose:

• Files: daily
• Database: every four hours

This way you can protect frequently changing data without unnecessarily creating large file backups several times a day.

How to schedule WordPress backups with UpdraftPlus

For this example, I’ll use UpdraftPlus because it provides scheduled backups directly from the WordPress dashboard.

UpdraftPlus can back up your WordPress files and database and lets you schedule them at regular intervals. The available scheduling options include intervals such as every few hours as well as daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly schedules.

Step 1: Install and activate UpdraftPlus
From your WordPress dashboard:

1. Go to Plugins > Add New Plugin
2. Search for UpdraftPlus
3. Find UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup & Migration Plugin

4. Click Install Now
5. Click Activate

Once activated, you can access the plugin’s backup and settings controls from your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Open the UpdraftPlus settings
Go to:

• Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups

• Then open the Settings tab.

This is where you’ll find the controls for your backup schedule, retention and remote storage.

Step 3: Choose your file backup schedule

• Look for Files backup schedule and change the setting from Manual to your preferred backup frequency.

You’ll be able to choose how frequently UpdraftPlus should create a file backup.

For a relatively quiet website, weekly may be enough. For a site where plugins, themes or media are changing regularly, you may want to increase the frequency.

Don’t automatically choose the most frequent option just because it sounds safest.

More backups mean:

• More storage consumption
• More server resources used
• More data that needs to be transferred
• Potentially longer backup operations

The goal is to choose a schedule that reflects how often your site changes and how much data you could afford to lose.

Step 4: Choose your database backup schedule

Next, find Database backup schedule.

This can be different from your file backup schedule.

For example, I might use:

• Files: Weekly
• Database: Daily

Step 5: Choose how many backups to retain

You’ll also see retention settings for scheduled backups.

Retention determines how many previous backups you keep before older copies are removed.

For example, if you create one database backup every day and retain seven scheduled backups, you would generally have about a week’s worth of scheduled database backups available.

Retention is important because automatic backups can otherwise consume your storage indefinitely.

I recommend thinking about retention in terms of recovery history, not simply the largest number you can store.

You might decide that you want:

• 7 daily database backups
• 4 weekly file backups
• Additional longer-term backups for important sites

The right number depends on how much storage you have and how far back you may realistically need to restore.

Step 6: Choose remote storage

Don’t rely entirely on backups stored on the same server as your live website. If that server is compromised, damaged or becomes unavailable, your live website and your backup could disappear together.

UpdraftPlus supports several remote storage options, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3 and other storage services. Premium adds additional destinations and the ability to use multiple remote storage locations.

Step 7: Save your settings

Once you’ve selected:

• File frequency
• Database frequency
• Retention
• Remote storage
• Files to include

scroll down and click Save Changes.

Your scheduled backup system is now configured.

How to schedule WordPress backups for exact set times

Creating a backup can use additional server resources, particularly on larger websites. Scheduling backups during quieter periods can help reduce the impact on site performance and leave more server resources available when traffic is higher.

Why timing matters for server performance

With the free version of UpdraftPlus, you can schedule backups at regular intervals, such as every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, as well as daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly. However, you can’t choose a specific time of day for the backup to start.

For busier websites, having more control over timing can be useful. Running backups during periods of lower traffic can help reduce the impact on server resources while visitors are using your site.

Using UpdraftPlus Premium for exact scheduling

UpdraftPlus Premium gives you more control over when scheduled backups begin by allowing you to choose a specific time of day.

For example, you could schedule backups to start overnight or during another period when your website typically receives less traffic. If you manage multiple websites on the same server, you can also stagger backup times to help spread the load rather than running several backups at once.

Advanced retention and incremental backups

As your website grows, your backups may grow with it. Larger backups can require more storage space and server resources, so it can be useful to have more control over how backups are created and retained.

UpdraftPlus Premium includes two features that can help with this: advanced backup retention rules and incremental backups.

Advanced retention rules

While the free version lets you keep a set number of recent backups, Premium allows for advanced retention rules. You can configure the software to keep daily backups for the past week, weekly backups for the past month and monthly backups for the past year. This gives you a longer history of restore points without needing to retain every daily backup indefinitely.  This will be important if your site is hacked and it has taken you a while to notice.  You will want to restore a backup before the hack.

Incremental backups

Creating a full backup of all your website files every time can use significant storage space and server resources. With incremental backups, UpdraftPlus Premium can back up files that have changed since the previous full backup rather than creating another complete copy of your files.

This can reduce the server resources and storage space required for frequent backups, making it particularly useful for larger or frequently updated websites.

Understanding WP-Cron versus server cron

WordPress uses a scheduling system called WP-Cron to handle scheduled tasks. Unlike a traditional system cron, WP-Cron is triggered by activity on your website and checks whether any scheduled tasks are due to run.

For websites receiving regular traffic, this is often sufficient for routine scheduled tasks such as backups.

The limitations of default WP-Cron

One limitation of WP-Cron is that scheduled tasks may not run at precisely the time they’re due if your website receives little or no traffic around that time.

For example, if a backup is scheduled overnight but nobody visits the site for several hours, the task may be delayed until WP-Cron is triggered again. This is worth considering if running backups at a particular time is important for your website.

Setting up a server cron for more reliable scheduling

If reliable timing is particularly important, you can use a server-level cron job instead of relying solely on WP-Cron. Server cron jobs run independently of website visits, making them useful for sites where scheduled tasks need to run consistently even during periods of low traffic.

Setting up a server cron is more technical, so if you’re unsure how to configure one, check your hosting provider’s documentation or ask your host for support.

Keep your backups somewhere separate from your website

I strongly recommend following the basic principle behind the 3-2-1 backup strategy:

• Keep at least three copies of your important data
• Use at least two different storage locations or types
• Keep at least one copy offsite

Don’t forget to test your scheduled backups

This is one of the most overlooked parts of backup planning. Seeing a backup listed in your dashboard isn’t the same thing as proving that you can restore your website from it.

After setting up your schedule, I recommend checking:

• Did the scheduled backup actually run?
• Were both files and database included?
• Was the backup uploaded to remote storage?
• Does the backup log show errors or warnings?
• Can the backup be downloaded?
• Can you restore it successfully?

For important websites, a restoration test is especially valuable.

You don’t want your first restoration attempt to happen when your live website is already down.

If you want to learn more, our guide to restoring WordPress from a backup covers the restoration process in more detail.

Common WordPress backup scheduling mistakes

I’ve seen a few mistakes come up repeatedly when people set up automated backups.

Only backing up the database or only backing up files

Your database is important, but it isn’t your entire website. A database backup doesn’t contain your themes, plugins and uploaded files. For a full website recovery, you generally need both files and database backups.

The opposite mistake is just as problematic. Your WordPress directory doesn’t contain the database that stores your posts, pages, comments and other dynamic information.

Storing everything on the same server

This creates a single point of failure. If the server goes down or an attacker gains access to it, your backups may be affected too.

Setting the schedule and never checking it

Automation is useful because you don’t have to remember to run the backup. But that doesn’t mean you should never check it. I recommend occasionally looking at your backup history and confirming that recent backups exist and completed successfully.

Keeping too few backups

If you keep only one backup and that backup is damaged or contains a problem that you didn’t notice immediately, you may have no clean recovery point. Retention should give you enough history to recover from the kinds of problems your website is likely to encounter.

Keeping far too many backups

The opposite can also happen. Keeping hundreds of large backups can consume storage and make managing your backup collection unnecessarily expensive. Choose retention limits carefully

Never testing a restoration

A backup that cannot be restored isn’t much use when you are facing an outage. Make restoration testing part of your maintenance routine, particularly for business-critical websites.

Ignoring error notifications

Don’t ignore backup warnings or errors. If you have email reporting enabled, review any notifications you receive and periodically check your UpdraftPlus backup logs.

A failed backup or remote storage connection could mean that your latest recovery copy hasn’t been created or stored where expected, so it’s worth investigating any errors promptly.

A simple checklist for your scheduled WordPress backups

Before considering your backup system finished, I’d check the following:

☐ Both website files and database are included

☐ Your backup frequency matches how often your website changes

☐ Database backups are frequent enough for your site’s activity

☐ A sensible number of backup copies are retained

☐ Backups are stored somewhere separate from the live website

☐ Your first scheduled backup has completed successfully

☐ Backup logs show no unresolved errors

☐ You know where your backups are stored

☐ You know how to restore a backup

☐ You have tested a restoration or recovery process

☐ You create an additional backup before major changes

Conclusion

Scheduling your WordPress backups removes the need to remember to create them manually and helps make sure you always have a recent recovery point available if something goes wrong.

The right schedule depends on how often your website changes. For many sites, that could mean backing up files weekly and the database daily, while busy ecommerce or membership sites may need more frequent backups.

With UpdraftPlus, you can schedule your files and database separately, choose how many backups to retain and send them to remote storage automatically. UpdraftPlus Premium adds more control with features such as backups at specific times, incremental backups, advanced retention rules and multiple storage destinations.

Whichever schedule you choose, check that your backups are completing successfully and test your restoration process periodically. A backup strategy is only useful if you can rely on it when you need to recover your site.

FAQs

Running an affiliate site involves more than adding referral links to your content. You need to manage those links, understand what visitors are clicking, keep your site running quickly and securely, and make it easy for readers to find the products or services you’re recommending.

The right WordPress plugins can make those jobs much easier, but you don’t need a plugin for everything. A smaller, well-chosen stack is usually more useful than installing lots of tools with overlapping features.

In this guide, we’ll look at the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers, covering link management, analytics, Amazon product displays, performance, security and conversions. We’ll also cover tools for businesses that want to take the other side of affiliate marketing and run their own affiliate programme.

Key takeaways

• Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates help you organise, manage and track affiliate links from your WordPress dashboard.
• AAWP is built specifically for Amazon Associates sites, with tools for creating product displays and comparison tables.
• Burst Statistics can show you which outbound links visitors are clicking, while OptinMonster and AdSanity can support conversion and promotional campaigns.
• WP-Optimize and AIOS don’t manage affiliate links directly, but can help keep an affiliate site fast and secure as it grows.
• AffiliateWP and Easy Affiliate are designed for businesses that want to run their own affiliate programmes rather than promote other companies’ products.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way to earn commission by recommending another company’s products or services to your audience. The basic process is straightforward:

• You join a company’s affiliate programme and receive a unique tracking link.
• You add that link to relevant content on your website.
• When someone follows your link and completes a qualifying purchase or action, you may earn a commission.

The process itself is simple, but managing an affiliate site can become more complicated as it grows. You may have links spread across hundreds of posts, different affiliate programmes to keep track of and a growing need to understand which content and recommendations are actually getting clicks.

WordPress plugins can help with many of these tasks, from managing affiliate links and creating product displays to tracking visitor behaviour and keeping your site performing well.

How WordPress plugins can help affiliate marketers

You don’t need a collection of specialist plugins to start affiliate marketing. If you’re managing a small number of links, adding and updating them manually may be perfectly manageable.

As your site grows, the right plugins can take some of the repetitive work off your hands. A link management plugin, for example, can give you one place to organise and update affiliate URLs. Analytics tools can show you which outbound links visitors are clicking, while product display plugins can make comparisons and recommendations easier for readers to navigate.

There are also parts of running an affiliate site that aren’t unique to affiliate marketing but still matter. Performance plugins can help keep content-heavy pages loading quickly, security plugins can protect the site your affiliate income depends on, and conversion tools can help you make better use of the traffic you’re already attracting.

You won’t need every type of plugin in this guide. The aim is to identify where your current setup is creating extra work or holding your site back, then choose the tools that solve those specific problems.

Best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers at a glance

Some of these plugins manage affiliate marketing directly, while others support the website behind it. You probably won’t need all of them. For example, a content-led affiliate site might combine a link management tool with analytics and performance plugins, while a business running its own affiliate programme will have a very different setup.

If you’re building out your wider WordPress toolkit, our guide to must-have WordPress plugins covers other useful options beyond affiliate marketing.

How we chose these plugins

Affiliate marketers use WordPress plugins for very different jobs, so comparing every tool against the same set of features wouldn’t be particularly useful. Instead, we looked at how well each plugin solves the specific problem it’s designed for and how useful that problem is to someone running an affiliate site.

Our recommendations consider:

• Usefulness for affiliate marketers: Does the plugin solve a genuine problem, such as managing links, tracking clicks, improving performance or protecting the site?
• Ease of use: Is it straightforward to set up and manage within WordPress?
• Features: Does it provide the functionality you’d expect for its particular use case without adding unnecessary complexity?
• Free vs premium options: Is there a useful free version, and what additional functionality do paid plans provide?
• Fit within a WordPress stack: Does the plugin have a clear role alongside the other tools an affiliate marketer might already be using?

Because these plugins serve different purposes, we haven’t ranked them from best to worst. Instead, we’ve highlighted what each one is best suited to so you can choose the tools that fit your own affiliate setup.

The best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers

There’s no single plugin that covers everything an affiliate marketer might need. The tools below solve different parts of the job, from managing affiliate links and tracking clicks to improving site performance, protecting your WordPress installation and running your own affiliate programme.

You won’t need them all. Start with the areas that matter most to your site and build your plugin stack from there.

1. Pretty links

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10

Best for: Bloggers, publishers and content creators who want to manage, organise and track affiliate links from one place.

Pretty Links gives you a central place to create, organise and manage affiliate links within WordPress. Instead of adding long affiliate URLs directly to your content, you can create shorter links using your own domain and manage their destinations from your WordPress dashboard.

This becomes particularly useful as your affiliate content grows. If a destination URL changes, you can update the link in Pretty Links rather than finding and replacing it everywhere you’ve used it. You can also track clicks to get a better idea of which links are attracting attention.

Key features

• Create shorter, branded URLs using your own domain
• Manage affiliate links from one WordPress dashboard
• Track link clicks and view reports
• Choose from different redirect types
• Automatically link keywords to selected URLs with premium plans

Pros

• Makes larger collections of affiliate links easier to organise and update
• Free version available for getting started
• Click tracking helps you see which links visitors are using
• Branded links can also be useful when sharing URLs outside your website

Cons

• Features such as automatic keyword linking require a paid plan
• Some of the more advanced features may be unnecessary if you only manage a small number of affiliate links

Verdict

Pretty Links is a good choice if you want a straightforward way to manage affiliate links without editing them individually across your content. The free version covers the basics, while the paid plans add more automation and reporting features for sites with a larger affiliate operation. If your main challenge is keeping a growing collection of affiliate links organised and easy to update, Pretty Links is a strong place to start.

2. ThirstyAffiliates

Freemium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10

Best for: Publishers and affiliate marketers managing a large number of affiliate links who want more tools for organising and maintaining them.

ThirstyAffiliates is built specifically for managing affiliate links within WordPress. You can organise links into categories, insert them into content from the WordPress editor and manage their destinations from one place, which becomes increasingly useful as the number of affiliate links on your site grows.

The premium version adds features for more complex affiliate setups, including geolocation, automatic keyword linking and link uncloaking. The latter can be useful when working with affiliate programmes that don’t allow cloaked links, although you should always check the terms of each programme you join.

Key features

• Organise affiliate links into categories
• Manage and insert links from within WordPress
• Link uncloaking for affiliate programmes that require direct destination URLs
• Geolocation to direct visitors to different URLs based on location
• Automatic keyword linking with premium plans

Pros

• Good organisation tools for sites managing lots of affiliate links
• Free version available for getting started
• Links can be added while working in the WordPress editor
• Premium features support more complex affiliate setups

Cons

• Features such as geolocation and automatic keyword linking require a paid plan
• May offer more functionality than smaller affiliate sites need

Verdict

ThirstyAffiliates is a good fit for publishers who expect their affiliate link library to grow over time. Its organisation and link management features make it easier to keep track of URLs across a larger content library, while the premium features add more control for international audiences and more complex affiliate programmes. If keeping a large number of affiliate links organised is your main priority, it’s worth considering alongside Pretty Links.

3. WP-Optimize

Freemium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10

Best for: Affiliate marketers who want to improve site performance and keep content-heavy pages loading quickly as their website grows.

WP-Optimize isn’t an affiliate marketing plugin, but site performance matters when your content depends on visitors reading reviews, browsing comparisons and clicking through to recommended products. As an affiliate site grows, larger image libraries, database content and additional plugins can all add to the amount of work WordPress has to handle.

WP-Optimize brings several performance tools together in one plugin, including caching, database optimisation, image compression and minification. This makes it a useful supporting tool for affiliate marketers who want to keep their WordPress site running efficiently without installing separate plugins for each area.

Key features

• Page caching to help pages load more efficiently
• Database optimisation to clean up unnecessary data such as old post revisions and spam comments
• Image compression to reduce the file size of product images and other media
• Minification for CSS and JavaScript files

Pros

• Combines several WordPress performance tools in one plugin
• Free version includes useful optimisation features
• Particularly useful for content and image-heavy affiliate sites
• Lets you manage several areas of site optimisation from one dashboard

Cons

• Some features and more advanced controls require WP-Optimize Premium
• Caching and minification settings may need testing to make sure they work correctly with your site’s theme and plugins

Verdict

WP-Optimize is worth considering if performance is becoming a concern as your affiliate site grows. It won’t manage your affiliate links or track commissions, but it can help with the site those activities depend on by giving you tools to optimise your database, images, caching and front-end files from one place. For affiliate sites publishing lots of reviews, comparisons and product imagery, that makes it a useful part of the wider WordPress toolkit.

4. AffiliateWP

Premium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 7/10

Best for: Businesses, ecommerce stores and course creators that want to run their own affiliate programme and manage affiliates from WordPress.

AffiliateWP is different from link management tools such as Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates. Rather than helping you promote other companies’ products, it lets you create and manage your own affiliate programme from WordPress.

It’s designed for businesses that sell products or services online and want to recruit affiliates to promote them. AffiliateWP integrates with popular WordPress ecommerce and membership tools, including WooCommerce, and gives you a central place to manage affiliates, track referrals and oversee commissions.

Key features

• Manage affiliates and referrals from your WordPress dashboard
• Track affiliate visits, referrals and earnings
• Tools for managing affiliate payouts
• Customisable affiliate registration and onboarding
• Integrations with WooCommerce and other popular WordPress plugins

Pros

• Keeps affiliate programme management within WordPress
• Integrates with popular ecommerce, membership and form plugins
• Provides reporting for monitoring referrals and affiliate performance
• Suitable for businesses that want more control over their own affiliate programme

Cons

• No free version available
• More functionality than you need if you only want to promote other companies as an affiliate

Verdict

AffiliateWP is a strong option for WordPress businesses that want to create and manage their own affiliate programme. It brings affiliate registration, referral tracking, commissions and programme management into WordPress, making it particularly relevant for ecommerce stores, membership sites and businesses selling digital products. If you’re looking for a plugin to manage the affiliate links you use to promote other brands, however, Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates would be a better fit.

5. Easy affiliate

Premium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10

Best for: WordPress businesses that want a straightforward way to set up and manage their own affiliate programme.

Easy Affiliate is designed to make setting up and managing an affiliate programme within WordPress straightforward. Like AffiliateWP, it’s aimed at businesses that want other people to promote their products or services rather than publishers looking to manage outbound affiliate links.

The setup process guides you through creating your programme, while affiliates get their own dashboard where they can access links and monitor their performance. It also integrates with popular WordPress ecommerce and membership tools, making it a practical option if you already use those platforms.

Key features

• Guided setup for creating an affiliate programme
• Dedicated dashboard for affiliates
• Referral and commission tracking
• Integrations with WooCommerce and MemberPress
• Fraud detection tools for identifying potentially suspicious referral activity

Pros

• Straightforward setup and programme management
• Affiliate dashboard gives partners access to their own performance information
• Integrates with popular WordPress ecommerce and membership tools
• Includes tools for monitoring potentially suspicious affiliate activity

Cons

• No free version available
• Businesses with more complex affiliate programme requirements may want to compare its advanced features with alternatives such as AffiliateWP

Verdict

Easy Affiliate is a good option for WordPress businesses that want to launch their own affiliate programme without making the setup unnecessarily complicated. Its guided setup, affiliate dashboard and integrations make it particularly suitable for businesses that value ease of use. If you’re choosing between Easy Affiliate and AffiliateWP, it’s worth comparing the specific integrations and programme management features you need before deciding which is the better fit.

6. AAWP

Premium | Speed: 7/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 7/10

Best for: Publishers and affiliate marketers who use Amazon Associates and want to create product displays and comparison tables within WordPress.

AAWP is built specifically for WordPress publishers using the Amazon Associates programme. It connects with Amazon’s Product Advertising API to display product information on your site, making it easier to create product boxes, comparison tables and other affiliate content without adding everything manually.

This is particularly useful for product-focused affiliate sites where details such as pricing and availability may change over time. AAWP can pull product data from Amazon automatically, reducing the amount of manual updating required across your content.

Key features

• Product information pulled through the Amazon Product Advertising API
• Customisable product boxes for displaying individual recommendations
• Comparison tables for presenting several products alongside each other
• Bestseller and new-release lists
• Geotargeting options for international visitors

Pros

• Designed specifically for Amazon Associates websites
• Reduces the need to manually maintain product information
• Makes it easier to create product boxes and comparison tables
• Offers several ways to display Amazon products within WordPress

Cons

• No free version available
• Requires access to Amazon’s
• Product Advertising API
• Only useful if Amazon Associates forms part of your affiliate strategy

Verdict

AAWP is worth considering if Amazon Associates is an important part of how you monetise your WordPress site. Its main advantage is making Amazon product information easier to display and maintain, particularly if you regularly publish reviews, buying guides and product comparisons. If you only occasionally link to Amazon, however, you may not need a dedicated plugin just for those links.

7. Burst statistics

Freemium | Speed: 10/10 | SEO: 9/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10

Best for: Affiliate marketers who want privacy-friendly WordPress analytics and an easy way to track outbound link clicks from their site.

Burst Statistics is a privacy-friendly analytics plugin that runs within WordPress. For affiliate marketers, one of its most useful features is outbound link tracking, which can help you see which external links visitors click when they leave your site.

This gives you another way to understand how your affiliate content is performing. For example, you can compare clicks across product reviews, buying guides and individual recommendations to see which links are attracting the most attention.

Key features

• Outbound link tracking to monitor clicks on affiliate and other external links
• Privacy-friendly analytics with cookieless tracking options
• Analytics data available directly within your WordPress dashboard
• Goals for tracking important visitor actions
• UTM campaign tracking for measuring promotional traffic

Pros

• Useful for understanding which affiliate links visitors are clicking
• Keeps analytics within the WordPress dashboard
• Privacy-focused approach to website analytics
• Free version available for getting started

Cons

• Doesn’t manage, shorten or cloak affiliate links, so you’ll need a separate tool if you want those features
• Some additional analytics and reporting features require Burst Pro

Verdict

Burst Statistics is a useful addition if you want to understand what visitors do before they leave your site through an affiliate link. It won’t tell you whether a click ultimately resulted in a sale you’ll normally need your affiliate programme’s reporting for that but it can show which links and recommendations are attracting clicks. Used alongside a link management plugin, that gives you a clearer picture of how visitors interact with your affiliate content.

8. AdSanity

Premium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10

Best for: Affiliate marketers who use banner ads or other visual promotions and want to manage, schedule and track them from WordPress.

Text links aren’t the only way to promote affiliate offers. If your affiliate partners provide banners or other promotional graphics, AdSanity gives you a central place to manage and display them across your WordPress site.

You can place ads in different areas of your site and schedule them to appear for specific periods. This can be particularly useful for time-sensitive promotions, such as Black Friday offers, where you don’t want to manually add and remove banners when a campaign starts or ends.

Key features

• Manage self-hosted and external ads from WordPress
• Track impressions and clicks on individual ads
• Place banners using blocks, widgets and shortcodes
• Schedule start and end dates for time-sensitive promotions

Pros

• Keeps visual affiliate promotions organised in one place
• Scheduling is useful for limited-time offers and seasonal campaigns
• Provides reporting on ad impressions and clicks
• Flexible placement options across your WordPress site

Cons

• No free version available
• Probably unnecessary if you mainly use text-based affiliate links

Verdict

AdSanity is worth considering if banner ads and visual promotions are an important part of your affiliate strategy. Its biggest advantage is making those campaigns easier to manage, particularly when you’re running several promotions or working with offers that have specific start and end dates. If your affiliate content relies mainly on contextual text links, however, a dedicated ad management plugin may be more than you need.

9. OptinMonster

Premium | Speed: 8/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 9/10

Best for: Affiliate marketers who want to grow an email list and create targeted campaigns around their content and offers.

Affiliate visitors won’t always make a purchase on their first visit, and many may not return to your site. OptinMonster is a lead generation and conversion optimisation tool that can help you turn some of that traffic into email subscribers.

You can create pop-ups, floating bars and other campaigns, then control where and when they appear. For an affiliate site, this could mean showing a relevant email sign-up form alongside a buying guide or creating a targeted campaign for visitors reading about a particular product category.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop campaign builder for pop-ups, floating bars and other forms
• Exit-intent technology for displaying campaigns as visitors prepare to leave
• Page-level targeting for showing different campaigns on specific content
• A/B testing for comparing different campaign designs and messaging
• Integrations with popular email marketing platforms

Pros

• Useful for building an email audience around your affiliate content
• Targeting options let you tailor campaigns to different pages and audiences
• A/B testing can help you understand which campaigns perform better
• Integrates with a wide range of email marketing services

Cons

• No free version available
• Pop-ups and other campaigns need to be used carefully so they don’t disrupt the visitor experience

Verdict

OptinMonster is most useful for affiliate marketers who want to build an audience beyond one-off visits from search or social media. Its targeting tools let you create campaigns that are relevant to the content someone is already viewing, while its email integrations can help turn interested readers into subscribers. If email marketing isn’t part of your affiliate strategy, however, you may not need a dedicated lead generation tool.

10. AIOS (All in one security)

Freemium | Speed: 9/10 | SEO: 8/10 | Ease of Use: 8/10

Best for: Affiliate marketers who want to strengthen their WordPress security and protect the site their content and affiliate activity depend on.

AIOS isn’t an affiliate-specific plugin, but security becomes increasingly important when your website generates traffic, contains valuable content and contributes to your income. A compromised WordPress site can disrupt your content, affect access to your site and potentially interfere with the links and pages your affiliate activity relies on.

AIOS brings a range of WordPress security features together in one plugin, covering areas such as login protection, firewall rules, file monitoring and spam prevention. This makes it a useful supporting tool for affiliate marketers who want to strengthen their site’s security without managing several separate security plugins.

Key features

• Login security including login attempt limits and options for protecting the WordPress login page
• Firewall protection to help block suspicious and malicious requests
• File change detection to help identify unexpected changes to your site’s files
• Spam prevention for reducing unwanted comment spam

Pros

• Combines several WordPress security features in one plugin
• Free version includes a broad range of security tools
• Security dashboard helps you review and manage different areas of your site’s protection
• Useful for strengthening the security of a growing affiliate website

Cons

• Some additional security features and controls require AIOS Premium
• The number of available settings can take some time to work through if you’re new to WordPress security

Verdict

AIOS is worth considering as your affiliate site becomes a more valuable part of your business. It won’t help you manage affiliate links or track commissions, but it can help protect the WordPress site those activities depend on. With login protection, firewall rules, file monitoring and spam prevention available from one place, it provides a practical way to strengthen your WordPress site’s security.

How to choose the right plugins for your affiliate site

You don’t need to install every plugin in this guide. Start by looking at how you currently manage your affiliate site and identify the tasks that are taking the most time or causing the biggest problems.

A typical setup might include:

1. Choose a link management plugin if you’re regularly adding affiliate links to your content. Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates can help you organise and update those links from one place.
2. Add specialist tools where you need them. For example, Amazon Associates publishers may benefit from AAWP, while AdSanity can help if you regularly manage affiliate banners and visual promotions.
3. Track how visitors interact with your content. Burst Statistics can show you which outbound links visitors are clicking, while your individual affiliate platforms can tell you which referrals result in commissions.
4. Keep an eye on site performance. As your content, images and plugin stack grow, tools such as WP-Optimize can help you manage caching, image compression and database optimisation.
5. Protect your WordPress site. If your website contributes to your income, strengthening its security with a plugin such as AIOS can help protect the site your affiliate activity depends on.
6. Only add tools that solve a genuine problem. More plugins don’t automatically mean a better affiliate site. Keep your setup focused and remove tools you no longer need.

If you’re running your own affiliate programme rather than promoting other companies, your setup will look different. In that case, a tool such as AffiliateWP or Easy Affiliate can handle affiliate registration, referrals and commissions directly from WordPress.

Conclusion

There isn’t one WordPress plugin every affiliate marketer needs. The right setup depends on how you make money from your site and which parts of your workflow you want to make easier.

If you’re managing a growing number of affiliate links, Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates are sensible places to start. Amazon-focused publishers may find AAWP useful for product displays and comparisons, while businesses that want to recruit their own affiliates should look towards AffiliateWP or Easy Affiliate.

From there, think about the website supporting your affiliate activity. WP-Optimize can help you manage site performance as your content and media library grow, while Burst Statistics can show you which outbound links visitors are clicking. Security, lead generation and ad management tools can then be added if and when your site needs them.

The important thing is not to build the biggest plugin stack. Start with the tools that solve a genuine problem for your affiliate site, see how they fit into your workflow and add more only when there’s a clear reason to do so.

FAQs

Getting your WordPress backups set up correctly shouldn’t feel complicated, especially when you’re using UpdraftPlus for the first time.

UpdraftPlus 1.26.8 introduces a new onboarding wizard that guides you through the initial setup, helping you configure your backups and get protected with less guesswork.

This release also includes an important security update for sites that have been migrated using UpdraftPlus, alongside fixes that make FTP and WebDAV backups more reliable and several smaller compatibility and usability improvements.

Here’s what’s new.

Get your backups set up with confidence

When you install a backup plugin for the first time, knowing where to start isn’t always obvious. What should you back up? How often should your backups run? And where should you store them?

The new UpdraftPlus onboarding wizard makes those first steps easier by guiding you through the key settings you need to get started.

Instead of having to find your way around the plugin settings on your own, you’ll be guided through the initial configuration so you can get your backups set up quickly and understand the choices you’re making along the way.

The onboarding wizard is available if your site is running WordPress 6.2 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.

Stronger protection for migrated sites

UpdraftPlus 1.26.8 also includes an important security improvement affecting a specific set of sites that have previously been migrated using UpdraftPlus.

The issue could occur when a migrated site continued to use an .htaccess file containing a reference to its old address and the site owner had not acted on the notice to update it. Under a particular combination of circumstances, a logged-in non-administrator user could potentially access some saved remote storage credentials.

This issue has been addressed in UpdraftPlus 1.26.8.

Thanks to Jakub Herman for reporting the issue via WPScan.

As always, we recommend keeping UpdraftPlus up to date so that your site benefits from the latest security improvements and fixes.

More reliable remote backups

We’ve also resolved issues that could affect backups sent to FTP and WebDAV storage.

An FTP error that could cause failures in PHP-FPM environments has been fixed, along with a WebDAV compatibility issue related to newer versions of PCRE2.

We’ve also clarified the message shown when testing a WebDAV connection on a server that doesn’t support chunked uploads, making it easier to understand what’s happening when troubleshooting your remote storage setup.

Helping you prepare for upcoming changes

UpdraftPlus 1.26.8 also includes new notices to give users more time to prepare for future platform and compatibility changes.

Users of legacy Azure Blob Storage accounts will now see an admin notice about their upcoming retirement.

Sites running PHP versions older than 5.6.1 will also see a notice explaining that features relying on phpseclib, including Dropbox, SFTP/SCP, Database Encryption, UpdraftCentral and Migrator, will require a newer PHP version in a future release.

We’ve also updated text throughout the plugin to reflect our move to teamupdraft.com and made several compatibility and code-quality improvements following Plugin Check validation.

Update to UpdraftPlus 1.26.8

UpdraftPlus 1.26.8 is now available to update from your WordPress dashboard.

Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins and select Update now next to UpdraftPlus.

With a simpler setup experience for new users, an important security fix and improvements to remote backup reliability, we recommend updating to UpdraftPlus 1.26.8 to benefit from the latest improvements.

Changelog

• SECURITY: On a site which has been migrated (i.e. moved to a new address using UpdraftPlus’s migration feature), and is using an .htaccess file, and the .htaccess file has not been updated with the new site reference, and where the site owner does not respond to the notice to do so, and where the site has non-admin users who can login to the WP dashboard, and where the site had saved storage login credentials in the UpdraftPlus settings, such a logged-in user could access some of those credentials (e.g. could access FTP, but not Dropbox). Thanks to Jakub Herman for notifying us of this issue (via WPScan).
• FEATURE: Implemented an onboarding wizard to assist first-time users with plugin configuration (requires WordPress 6.2+ and PHP 7.4+).
• FIX: Error caused by the FTP wrapper referencing the STDIN constant when configuring the cURL CURLOPT_INFILE option. Since STDIN is only defined under the PHP CLI SAPI, this caused failures in PHP-FPM environments.
• FIX: WebDAV backup failures caused by a deprecated regular expression escape since PCRE2 version 10.45.
• TWEAK: The “Tour” functionality has been removed from the UI and deactivated. Its underlying code remains temporarily and will be fully removed in a future release.
• TWEAK: Added an admin notice to inform users about the upcoming retirement of legacy Azure Blob Storage accounts.
• TWEAK: Warn sites running PHP older than 5.6.1 that phpseclib-dependent features (Dropbox, SFTP/SCP, Database Encryption, UpdraftCentral, Migrator) will require a newer PHP version in future releases; the dashboard notice is also shown again to users who dismissed the previous version of this notice.
• TWEAK: Update all text labels to use teamupdraft.com instead of updraftplus.com.
• TWEAK: Fixed the ‘Bad filename format’ error when uploading small backup files via the UpdraftPlus dashboard on older WordPress versions.
• TWEAK: Clarifying WebDAV settings test popup when server does not support chunked uploads.
• TWEAK: Addressed several issues identified during Plugin Check (PCP) validation and improved overall plugin compatibility and code quality.