Quick verdict: Sucuri only sells backup bundled inside its Security Platform, starting at $229/year, whether or not you need the firewall or malware scanning that comes with it. BackupYourSite is a dedicated, agentless backup-only service priced for what backup alone costs to run.
If you searched for "website backup service" and landed on Sucuri, there's a good chance you're about to pay for a lot more than backup. Sucuri is a legitimate, well-regarded website security company — but its backup feature isn't sold on its own. It's one line item inside a bundled security platform that also includes a web application firewall (WAF), malware scanning and removal, blocklist monitoring, and SSL/DNS monitoring, priced from $229/year on the entry Basic Platform tier.
If what you actually want is reliable, restorable backups — not a firewall, not malware cleanup, not blocklist monitoring — you're paying platform-wide pricing for a single feature you could get from a dedicated backup tool for a fraction of the cost. This article breaks down exactly what's in Sucuri's plans, verified against its current pricing page, and compares it against BackupYourSite's backup-only, agentless approach for buyers who don't need (or already have) the rest of the security stack.
Quick Answer
Sucuri's website backup feature is only available if you buy into its Security Platform (from $229/year) or Firewall plans — it is not sold as a standalone product. The Platform plans bundle backup together with malware removal, a WAF, blocklist monitoring, and SSL/DNS monitoring, with response SLAs and scan frequency scaling by tier. BackupYourSite is a dedicated, agentless SSH-based backup service with no firewall, no malware scanning, and no bundled add-ons — just backup and one-click restore, priced for what backup alone actually costs to run. If you already have a firewall (from your host, Cloudflare, or a WordPress security plugin) or don't need one, paying platform-wide pricing for backup is the more expensive way to solve a narrower problem.
What Sucuri Actually Sells: Verified Current Pricing
Sucuri's pricing, confirmed directly from its signup page, breaks into two separate product lines that buyers often conflate:
Security Platform plans (annual, malware removal + WAF + backup)
| Plan | Price | Malware Removal | WAF | Scan Frequency | Response SLA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Platform | $229/yr | Unlimited | No | Every 12 hours | 30 hours |
| Pro Platform | $339/yr | Unlimited | No | Every 6 hours | 12 hours |
| Business Platform | $549/yr | Unlimited | Yes | Every 30 minutes | 6 hours |
| Junior Dev (5 sites) | $999.98/yr | Unlimited | Varies | — | 12 hours |
Firewall-only plans (monthly, WAF + CDN, no malware removal or backup bundled by default)
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Firewall | $9.99/mo (~$120/yr) | WAF, DDoS mitigation, CDN |
| Pro Firewall | $19.98/mo (~$240/yr) | WAF, DDoS mitigation, CDN, advanced SSL |
Sucuri's own documentation confirms that its remote backup and disaster-recovery feature is "available to website owners using the Sucuri Platform or Sucuri Firewall" — in other words, it is never sold as a standalone line item. Backup frequency is selectable (daily, weekly, or monthly) with up to 90 days of recovery history on higher tiers, managed through Sucuri's dashboard with one-click restore.
The number to hold onto: the cheapest way to get Sucuri's backup feature at all is $229/year, and that purchase also buys you unlimited malware removal, blocklist monitoring, and SSL/DNS monitoring whether you need them or not. Notably, the entry Basic and Pro Platform tiers don't even include the WAF — you'd need Business Platform at $549/year for that, which means a buyer chasing "security + backup" on the base tiers is still not getting a firewall.
Do You Need a Firewall, or Just Backup? A Decision Framework
This is the question that actually determines whether Sucuri's bundle is a good deal or an expensive detour. Work through it in order:
1. Do you already have a WAF from somewhere else? If your site sits behind Cloudflare (even the free tier), your host's built-in firewall, or a WordPress security plugin like Wordfence or Sucuri's own free WordPress plugin, you already have firewall coverage. Paying again for Sucuri's bundled WAF is redundant.
2. Has your site ever actually been hacked or flagged on a blocklist? If the honest answer is no, and your site runs standard, updated software (current WordPress core, vetted plugins, no known vulnerable code), malware-removal-as-a-service is insurance you may not need yet. It becomes worth paying for the moment you've had an incident, run outdated software you can't easily update, or manage sites for clients where a hack is a liability event, not just an inconvenience.
3. What actually keeps you up at night — an attack, or data loss? These are different risks with different solutions. A firewall reduces the odds of a successful attack. Backup is what saves you regardless of why something went wrong — a hack, a bad plugin update, a fat-fingered database change, a host-side failure, or simple human error deleting the wrong file. Backup is the risk every site owner faces; a targeted attack is a risk that scales with how attractive a target your site is.
4. Would you rather pay once for broad coverage, or pay narrowly for the thing you're sure you need? If you want one vendor handling attack prevention, cleanup, and backup together — and you're willing to pay platform pricing for that convenience — a bundled tool like Sucuri's Business Platform makes sense. If you've already solved the firewall question elsewhere (or don't believe you need one yet) and backup is the actual gap, a dedicated backup tool solves that gap without the rest of the line items.
Bottom line: if you answered "I already have a firewall" or "I don't need one right now" to question 1, and "backup" to question 3, you're a backup-only buyer — and Sucuri's cheapest path to that one feature still costs $229/year minimum.
What a Backup-Only Alternative Looks Like
BackupYourSite takes the opposite approach from a bundled platform: it does one thing — offsite backup and restore — and prices accordingly, with no firewall, no malware scanning, and no SLA-tiered support structure attached.
How it works:
- Backups connect to your server over SSH, independent of whether the backup runs through a WordPress plugin, a control panel, or any particular CMS
- Files and database are pulled and stored offsite, not staged and hoped-for through a dashboard-triggered job
- Restore is one-click, without needing a malware scan to clear first or a support ticket to release a locked account
What it deliberately does not include: a web application firewall, malware removal, blocklist monitoring, or DNS/SSL monitoring. If you need any of those, they're a separate purchase — from Sucuri, Cloudflare, Wordfence, or your host — same as they would be if you bought a backup-only tool from any vendor. The point isn't that security features are unnecessary; it's that bundling them into one SKU stops making sense the moment you already have half of them covered elsewhere.
Feature Comparison Table
| Feature | Sucuri Basic Platform ($229/yr) | Sucuri Business Platform ($549/yr) | BackupYourSite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offsite backup | Yes | Yes | Yes — core product |
| One-click restore | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Web application firewall (WAF) | No | Yes | Not included (by design) |
| Malware scanning/removal | Yes, unlimited | Yes, unlimited | Not included (by design) |
| Blocklist monitoring | Yes | Yes | Not included (by design) |
| SSL/DNS monitoring | Yes | Yes | Not included (by design) |
| Requires buying the full bundle to get backup | Yes | Yes | No — backup is the whole product |
| Best fit | Buyers who want backup + malware cleanup, no WAF yet | Buyers who want the full security stack including WAF | Buyers who have security covered elsewhere and just need backup |
The Hidden Cost of Bundling: Renewal Creep and Unused Seats
Beyond the sticker price, bundled security platforms carry a second cost that's easy to miss when you're comparing plans side by side: what happens after year one.
Annual renewal at the higher tier. Security vendors commonly move customers up a tier at renewal — either because scan frequency or SLA response times on the entry tier prove too slow once you've actually needed support, or because a promotional first-year rate reverts to list price. A buyer who started on Sucuri's $229/year Basic Platform because "it includes backup too" can find themselves nudged toward Pro or Business a year later, at $339–549/year, for features — faster scans, a firewall — that were never the reason they signed up.
Paying for a team you don't call. Unlimited malware removal is a genuinely valuable feature if you use it. If you don't — because your site never gets compromised, or because you're competent enough to clean up minor issues yourself — you're paying for standby capacity on a support team every renewal cycle, the same way you'd pay for an extended warranty you never file a claim against. That's a legitimate risk-transfer decision for some buyers and dead weight for others; the point is to know which one you are before renewing.
Multi-site math gets worse, not better. Sucuri's Junior Dev plan covers 5 sites for $999.98/year — roughly $200/site/year, barely below the single-site Basic Platform rate. There's no meaningful economy of scale until you're negotiating a custom multi-site quote at 10+ properties. An agency or freelancer managing a handful of client sites doesn't cross that threshold, and ends up paying close to full single-site price per site, for a bundle where the WAF and malware layer may be redundant with what's already running on each client's host.
Switching cost if you eventually want to unbundle. Once backup, monitoring, and firewall rules all live inside one vendor's dashboard, disentangling just the backup piece later means re-architecting your recovery process from scratch — exporting what you can, re-testing restores, and re-training whoever manages the site on a new tool. Starting with backup as an independent, single-purpose service from day one avoids that migration entirely, regardless of what you later decide to do about firewall or malware coverage.
None of this makes Sucuri a bad product — its malware-removal team and dashboard are well regarded, and Business Platform buyers who use the full stack get real value from all three functions living in one place. It just means the true cost of "backup through Sucuri" isn't $229 once; it's $229-and-rising, indefinitely, for as long as the bundle remains the only path to that one feature.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy just Sucuri's backup feature without the rest of the platform?
No. Sucuri's own documentation states its backup and disaster-recovery feature is available only to customers on a Security Platform or Firewall plan. There is no backup-only SKU — the cheapest way to access it is the $229/year Basic Platform tier, which also includes unlimited malware removal and blocklist monitoring whether you use them or not.
Does Sucuri's cheapest plan include a firewall?
No. Both the Basic Platform ($229/yr) and Pro Platform ($339/yr) tiers exclude the WAF. Only Business Platform ($549/yr) and above bundle the firewall in with backup and malware removal, based on Sucuri's published plan comparison.
If I already use Cloudflare or Wordfence for security, do I still need Sucuri?
Not necessarily for the firewall or malware-scanning layer, since those tools cover similar ground. What Cloudflare's free tier and most WordPress security plugins don't reliably provide is offsite, restorable backup independent of the site's own health — which is the specific gap a dedicated backup tool is built to close.
Is a bundled security platform ever the better choice over a backup-only tool?
Yes — if you want one vendor and one bill covering firewall, malware cleanup, and backup together, and you're comfortable paying platform pricing for that convenience, a bundle like Sucuri's Business Platform is a reasonable, coherent choice. It's the better fit for site owners who haven't solved security elsewhere and want it consolidated under one support relationship.
What's the actual cost difference between a bundle and a backup-only tool?
Sucuri's least expensive route to its backup feature is $229/year. A dedicated backup-only service prices around the actual cost of running backup infrastructure — storage, transfer, and restore tooling — without amortizing a WAF, a malware-analyst team, and blocklist-monitoring infrastructure into the same invoice. The gap widens further if you're already paying for firewall coverage somewhere else, since that portion of Sucuri's bundle becomes pure duplication.
Does removing the firewall and malware scanning make backup less reliable?
No — backup and attack-prevention are independent functions. A backup tool's job is to reliably capture and restore your files and database regardless of cause; it doesn't need a firewall or malware scanner built in to do that well. What matters for backup reliability is how the backup itself is triggered and stored — for example, whether it depends on the site's own software stack being healthy, which is a separate design question from whether a WAF is bundled in.
Choosing the Right Tool for Your Situation
- You've had a hack or blocklist flag before, or run software you can't easily keep patched: Sucuri's malware-removal-inclusive plans are built for exactly this — the unlimited cleanup service has real value if you expect to need it.
- You want one vendor, one invoice, and full security-plus-backup coverage: Sucuri's Business Platform ($549/yr) is the coherent, all-in-one choice, and includes the WAF the lower tiers leave out.
- You already run a firewall (Cloudflare, host-level, or a security plugin) and just need backups: paying $229–549/year for a bundle where most of the value is firewall/malware coverage you don't use is the more expensive path to the one feature you need.
- Backup is the specific, isolated gap in your current setup: a dedicated, backup-only tool solves that gap directly, without requiring you to also buy — and manage — a security suite you didn't come here for.
The real question was never "which tool has more features." It's whether you're buying backup because you need backup, or because backup happened to be the only way to get it out of a $229-a-year bundle.