SimpleBackups vs SnapShooter: prices, limits and who owns what

SnapShooter today: still running, owned by DigitalOcean

SimpleBackups vs SnapShooter is a choice between an independent backup service and one owned by a cloud provider. DigitalOcean announced its acquisition of SnapShooter on 11 January 2023. As read on 3 October 2026, snapshooter.com still takes sign-ups and shows a pricing page, its header says SnapShooter has joined DigitalOcean, and its footer carries a DigitalOcean copyright. Product documentation now lives on docs.digitalocean.com. It still backs up servers at other providers, and its own docs list AWS, Amazon Lightsail and Hetzner for native snapshots. SimpleBackups describes itself as based in Belgium.

Entry prices for SimpleBackups and SnapShooter

Both have a free plan with one backup job. Paid entry points, each read on the vendor's own pricing page on 3 October 2026:

One caution on the SnapShooter figures. They are the amounts its pricing page displays with yearly billing selected, which the page labels as 34% off. The monthly-billing figure was unclear on the vendor's page when read, so it is not quoted here. On yearly billing, SnapShooter Business at $66 per month allows 50 jobs and five-minute backups, against 20 jobs and hourly backups on SimpleBackups Plus at $79 per month. SimpleBackups pricing lists every limit and add-on.

SimpleBackups and SnapShooter compared on nine criteria

What each one does that the other does not

SnapShooter only: a restore wizard. DigitalOcean's documentation says backups made by a backup job can be restored through SnapShooter directly, with a guided setup and a list of restoration jobs. SimpleBackups hands you the file and the commands for databases and files. SnapShooter also has application recipes for WordPress and Laravel.

SimpleBackups only: SaaS backups for GitHub, GitLab, Notion and Linear, a documented anomaly detection feature that flags empty or shrunken backups, and storage destinations beyond S3-style buckets. It also lists Redis as a supported engine.

Neither one's public pages describe PostgreSQL point-in-time recovery from archived WAL. Both take scheduled dumps. If you need recovery between dumps, read dumps versus point-in-time recovery.

Who should pick SimpleBackups and who should pick SnapShooter

• Pick SnapShooter if you host on DigitalOcean, want the lower cost per job on yearly billing, need backups more often than hourly without paying for SimpleBackups Max, or want restores driven from a dashboard.
• Pick SimpleBackups if you want a vendor that is not your cloud provider, store backups in Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage or SFTP, need encryption on a low plan, or want Git and Notion backups in the same account.
• Pick neither if all you need is PostgreSQL on a single server with minute-level recovery. pgBackRest does that for free.

What switching between them involves

Backup files do not move with you automatically, and you do not need them to. Both write standard dump files, so old files stay restorable with native tools as long as you keep them and any encryption keys. Switching means recreating each job in the new service: server or database connection, schedule, retention and storage. If both point at the same bucket, use separate paths. Run both in parallel until the new service has a full retention cycle, then prove one file with the restore runbook before canceling. Changing or leaving a backup provider has the checklist.