VPS Snaps

Automated backups

Set it once. Never lose a server again.

VPS Snaps takes provider snapshots, database dumps, Docker volumes, files, and Kubernetes manifests on the schedule you pick — and writes every archive into a bucket you own.

Back up your first server free, forever. No credit card required.

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Backups run daily
10k+
Data protected
50TB+
Uptime SLA
99.9%
Setup time
<5 min

VPS snapshots

Snapshots that never leave your provider account

A snapshot job calls your provider's own API — a DigitalOcean snapshot, a Hetzner image, an EC2 AMI, a GCE Machine Image. The image is created inside your account and stays restorable from your provider's console whether or not VPS Snaps is still in the picture. All we keep is the snapshot ID and the run that made it.

  • DigitalOcean, Linode and Google Cloud connect over OAuth. Hetzner and Vultr take an API token, AWS a scoped IAM key.
  • Retention prunes old images after each successful run. On EC2 we also delete the EBS snapshots behind a deregistered AMI — the usual source of storage you keep paying for and forget about.
  • Vultr keys are IP-allowlisted by default, so setup shows you the address to allow instead of letting the key fail silently at 2am.

One caveat on Linode

A Linode job captures a single disk. The boot disk is detected automatically and a picker appears if your layout is non-standard — but a second data disk needs its own job, or a file backup alongside it.

Connect a providerHow snapshots work

Database backups

pg_dump and mysqldump, on a schedule you set

Point a job at any SSH-reachable host and VPS Snaps runs the dump tool already installed there. Output is gzipped on the server and relayed straight into your bucket as it is produced — never staged on the remote disk, never written to disk on our side, and hashed on the way past so the run records a checksum of exactly what landed.

What runs on your server

pg_dump -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432 -U app acme_prod | gzip
  • PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB, using the client binaries the host already has — no extension to install, no daemon to run.
  • Schedules run hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or on a fixed interval in minutes — anchored to your timezone, so a 02:00 job stays at 02:00 across a DST change instead of drifting an hour.
  • Passwords and SSH keys are sealed with AES-256-GCM before they reach our database, and are never displayed again after you save them.

Not on the Free plan

Database backups need Standard or higher. The Free and Starter plans cover provider snapshots, file backups, and the Agent — the button below takes you to a plan that can actually run this.

Back up a databaseHow it works

File backups

tar over SSH, with the log to prove it ran

Give a job a list of paths and a list of exclude patterns. VPS Snaps runs tar on the server and pipes the archive straight into your bucket. A path that no longer exists is logged as a warning and skipped rather than failing the whole run, so one retired directory doesn't cost you a night's backup.

What runs on your server

tar czf - --exclude="node_modules" /var/www /etc/nginx
  • Exclude patterns keep node_modules, vendor and cache directories out of the archive and off your storage bill.
  • tar's "file changed as we read it" warning is treated as a warning, not a failed backup — a busy log directory won't fail the run.
  • Every step is timestamped and kept with the run, alongside the finished size and checksum, so a failure tells you which step broke.
Back up a directorySee what gets captured

Docker backups

Volumes and compose files, captured together

For each named volume, VPS Snaps starts a throwaway Alpine container that mounts the volume and tars its contents — so the data is read through Docker rather than guessed at from a path on the host. Your compose files ride along in the same archive, with the docker inspect output for the containers you name.

  • Each named volume is archived as its own tar.gz inside the run, so you can pull back one volume without unpacking the whole stack.
  • Compose files and container inspect output travel with the data — the stack is described, not just its bytes.
  • A volume that fails to archive is logged and the run continues with the rest. You get a partial backup and a warning rather than nothing at all.

Not on the Free plan

Docker backups need Standard or higher, same as database backups. The button below takes you to a plan that can run this.

Back up a stackDocker backup details

Application detection

Scan a server, get jobs for what's actually on it

VPS Snaps looks under /var/www, /home/*/public_html, the Forge and Cloudways application roots, and a few other usual suspects — for wp-config.php, .env, and Ghost's config.production.json. It identifies WordPress, Laravel, Craft CMS and Ghost, reads the database connection out of the config it finds, and offers to create the paired file and database jobs for you.

  • Each detected app becomes two jobs: the document root as a file backup, and its database as a database backup, both pointed at the storage destination you pick.
  • Credentials come straight out of the config the app already uses — wp-config.php defines, Laravel's DB_* keys, Craft's CRAFT_DB_* keys (falling back to the unprefixed Craft 3 names), so those jobs are ready to run.
  • Sensible excludes come pre-filled per framework: vendor and node_modules for Laravel and Craft, Ghost's own content/logs directory for Ghost.

Where the scan stops

The search goes three directories deep from each root, so an install parked somewhere unusual won't be found — you can still add it by hand.

A Ghost site on SQLite rather than MySQL has no connection block to read, so it gets a file backup and no database job. Anything the scan can't identify at all is still listed with reasonable excludes for you to finish yourself.

Scan a serverSupported apps

Kubernetes

Namespace manifests, plus volume snapshots where the cluster allows

Connect a cluster with its API server URL, CA certificate and a service account token you mint yourself — nothing is installed in-cluster. VPS Snaps exports the workload resources in each namespace you choose — Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Services, Ingresses, ConfigMaps, Secrets, PersistentVolumeClaims, Jobs and CronJobs — into one archive in your bucket. Where your storage driver has a matching VolumeSnapshotClass, it also creates a CSI VolumeSnapshot for each PVC and waits for it to become ready.

The honest limits

This is a fixed list of well-known resource kinds, not full API-resource discovery. Custom resources from your operators are not included.

A PVC on a StorageClass with no CSI snapshot support is logged and skipped — its manifest is still backed up, its volume data is not.

Velero is detected and driven only if it is already installed in the velero namespace. VPS Snaps uses Velero, it doesn't install it.

Connect a clusterRead the details

The Agent

For the servers you'd never open a port for

Run one Docker container inside your network. It opens an outbound WebSocket to VPS Snaps and waits for work — no inbound firewall rule, no port forward, no public IP, no SSH key handed to a third party. The agent does the backup locally and uploads to your bucket itself, so the data never passes through us at all.

  • Works for anything with no route in from the internet: an office NAS, a colo database, a lab box behind CGNAT.
  • Each agent has its own token and shows its last-seen time, so a machine that quietly stopped calling home is visible before you need its backups.

What the agent does and doesn't run

The agent handles Database, Docker and File jobs. Provider snapshots and Kubernetes backups go through the provider or cluster API instead, so they never needed an agent in the first place. File jobs run on every plan, including Free — Database and Docker through the agent need Standard or higher, the same as they do over SSH.

Install the agentHow the connection works

Your backups land in a bucket you own

VPS Snaps has no storage of its own to sell you. Add an S3-compatible destination with your own credentials, and every archive we create is written there — under your retention policy, your region, and your bill.

AWS S3Cloudflare R2Backblaze B2DigitalOcean SpacesWasabiUpCloud Object StorageAny S3-compatible endpoint

Add more than one and point different jobs at different destinations — a hot bucket for nightly dumps, a cheaper cold one for monthly archives. Every destination has a connection test you can run whenever you like, and the list shows when each one last passed, so a rotated key turns up as a failed test rather than as a missing backup.

Add a destination

Powerful features to give you peace of mind

Rest easy knowing your data and your reputation are safe.

Bring your own storage
Backups land in your own S3-compatible bucket — Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Cloudflare R2, or plain S3. You hold the keys and the data.
Snapshots stay with your provider
Provider snapshots are created through the provider's own API and never leave your account. We store the snapshot ID, not the image.
Seven providers, one dashboard
DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, Linode, AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure — scheduled and reviewed from the same place.
Schedules that fit your traffic
Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or a fixed interval in minutes — anchored to your timezone, so a 02:00 job stays at 02:00 across a DST change.
Retention that prunes itself
Set how many days to keep. Older snapshots and archives are cleaned up after each successful run, so storage bills stay flat.
Step-by-step run logs
Every run records what it did, in order, with warnings and errors kept in place — so a failure tells you which step broke.
Complete run history
Status, duration, byte size, and what triggered each run, kept per job. Proof the backup ran, long after the night it ran.
Checksummed on upload
Every archive is hashed as it streams to your bucket and the checksum is stored with the run, so you can verify what landed.
Run on demand
Trigger any job by hand before a migration or a risky deploy, without touching its schedule or its retention window.
Alerts on five channels
Email plus Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and Discord — on success, on failure, and on a job that missed its schedule entirely.
Encrypted credentials
SSH keys, database passwords, and storage secrets are sealed with AES-256-GCM before they touch the database.
Team access with roles
Invite your team into a shared workspace as owner, admin, or member, so backups outlive whoever set them up.
View all features
Alex Morgan
“VPS Snaps gave us one place to manage backups across DigitalOcean, AWS, and a few standalone servers. We can schedule provider snapshots, database dumps, and file backups without maintaining a bunch of separate scripts, and the run logs make it easy to confirm everything actually completed.”
Alex MorganDevOps Engineer

Back up your first server free, forever.

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