What is SimpleBackups? A plain description of the backup service

SimpleBackups in one paragraph

SimpleBackups is a hosted backup automation service. You connect a database, server, storage bucket or SaaS app, pick a schedule, a retention count and a storage destination, and it runs the backup, checks the result and alerts you when something fails. It does not replace the native tools. For databases it runs mysqldump, pg_dump and mongodump for you and ships the output to storage. The company's site says it is based in Belgium. Its home page cites 3,200+ teams, and its pricing page says over 3,000 users. This page is based on the vendor's public documentation, read on 3 October 2026.

What SimpleBackups can back up

For managed databases the docs list provider guides for Amazon RDS, DigitalOcean, Supabase, Neon, Heroku, PlanetScale, Aiven and more.

How a SimpleBackups database backup runs, step by step

1. You choose where the backup command runs. A serverless worker on SimpleBackups infrastructure connects to the database over the network. Or your own Linux server runs it, connected by SSH or a locally installed agent.
2. At the scheduled time the worker runs the dump tool for that engine and compresses the output.
3. If you supplied an encryption key, the file is encrypted with AES-256 before upload.
4. The file is uploaded to the storage you chose: your own bucket at providers such as AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2 or Google Cloud Storage, or SimpleStorage.
5. Retention rotates out the oldest copy once the count you set is exceeded.
6. Anomaly detection compares the result with past runs and flags empty, shrunken or missing files. Alerts go to email, Slack, Discord, Telegram or a webhook.

With the own-server route the docs say the data never leaves your infrastructure on its way to your bucket. With serverless workers, data passes through a temporary transfer buffer on SimpleBackups servers. Choosing a backup route compares the two.

A worked example: one PostgreSQL database on Supabase

A team has a 3 GB PostgreSQL database on Supabase and wants a daily off-provider copy kept for two weeks, plus monthly copies for a year. On the Lite plan ($49 per month on monthly billing, 5 GB maximum database size) it creates one backup with a serverless worker, the daily preset at 03:00 UTC with retention 14, and a monthly schedule with retention 12. The destination is the team's own bucket. One job of five is used. On the free Basic plan the same database would be rejected, because Basic stops at 1 GB and allows a single schedule.

What SimpleBackups does not do

• It does not restore databases for you. The docs class all database and file restores as manual: you download the file and run the native restore tool.
• Its PostgreSQL backups are scheduled dumps. The documentation does not describe WAL archiving, so recovery lands on the time of a dump. See dumps versus point-in-time recovery.
• It does not test restores on a schedule. Anomaly detection checks size and presence, not that the file loads into a database.
• Team members and projects start on the Plus plan.

Who SimpleBackups suits and who should look elsewhere

It suits small engineering teams and agencies with databases at several providers who want one dashboard and are content with dump-based recovery. Plans run from free to $299 per month, listed in full on the SimpleBackups pricing page. A team that needs PostgreSQL recovery to a specific minute should run pgBackRest. A team with everything on AWS RDS can use AWS Backup and pay per GB. Before you pay for any of them, check whether your provider's built-in backups already cover the need.