Zain Hassan

ZHBackup – Restore & Migration is a full-site WordPress backup and restore plugin built for real migration workflows. It packages your database, media, plugins, themes, selected <code>wp-content</code> folders, root files, and optional custom root folders, then restores them through a chunked process designed to avoid request timeouts.
The database is stored as a structured package instead of one large SQL replay file, so large page-builder data, post meta, options, and other oversized values can be restored in smaller, traceable steps. Live activity logs show the progress of exports, imports, database rows, large values, file restore, validation, and cleanup.
After a restore, ZHBackup lets you review the site first and run stale-file cleanup separately from the restore process. This keeps restore completion predictable while still giving you a controlled way to remove old plugins, uploads, themes, and selected root-folder files that are not present in the backup.
Key Features:
<ul>
<li>Full-Site Backups — Back up the database, uploads, plugins, themes, mu-plugins, selected <code>wp-content</code> folders, root files, and optional custom root folders.</li>
<li>Structured Database Package — Export database schemas, row chunks, and large values separately for reliable restores of Elementor/page-builder data and other large rows.</li>
<li>Chunked Export and Restore — Process database and file operations in small AJAX steps to reduce timeout and memory-limit issues.</li>
<li>Browser Upload or Server Restore — Upload backups through the browser in resumable chunks, or place backups on the server via FTP/SFTP and restore from a table of available files.</li>
<li>Flexible Archive Formats — Create standard <code>.zip</code> backups or optimized <code>.zhbackup</code> archives.</li>
<li>Live Activity Logs — Follow professional export/import logs with database checkpoints, row counts, large-value restore events, file progress, validation, and cleanup status.</li>
<li>Post-Restore Cleanup — Save a cleanup plan after restore and run stale-file cleanup manually after reviewing the restored site.</li>
<li>Serialized-Safe Find & Replace — Update URLs safely across serialized PHP data, JSON-escaped URLs, and Elementor widget data.</li>
<li>Secure Backup Storage — Store backups outside the webroot when available, with <code>.htaccess</code>, <code>web.config</code>, and <code>index.php</code> protections when stored inside the site.</li>
<li>Retention Policies — Automatically clean up older backups by count or age using WP-Cron.</li>
<li>No Required Account — Use all backup, restore, migration, and cleanup features without a license key or forced signup.</li>
</ul>
WordPress.org Compliant:
<ul>
<li>No obfuscated or encoded PHP</li>
<li>Proper sanitization for all inputs</li>
<li>Escaped outputs throughout</li>
<li>Nonces for all form submissions</li>
<li>Capability checks on every action</li>
<li>No hidden external API calls</li>
<li>No telemetry without explicit consent</li>
</ul>
<h3>External services</h3>
ZHBackup includes an optional newsletter signup form on the plugin Settings page.
This feature connects to an external service hosted by Hassan Zain at <code>hassanzain.com</code>. It is used only to add the submitted email address to the ZHBackup newsletter or product updates list.
Data is sent only when an administrator manually submits the optional signup form. The plugin does not contact this service during normal backup, restore, migration, import, export, or find-and-replace usage.
When the form is submitted, the plugin sends:
<ul>
<li>Email address entered in the signup form</li>
<li>Site URL (<code>home_url()</code>)</li>
<li>Plugin slug (<code>zhbackup</code>)</li>
<li>Plugin version</li>
</ul>
Terms of service: https://hassanzain.com/terms-and-conditions 
Privacy policy: https://hassanzain.com/privacy-policy
<h3>Privacy</h3>
ZHBackup does not send telemetry or usage analytics during normal backup, restore, migration, import, export, or find-and-replace operations.
The only optional external data transfer is the administrator-initiated newsletter signup described above.

ZHBackup – Restore & Migration

Full-site WordPress backup, restore, and migration with structured database packages and chunked server-side imports.

InstaWP

InstaMigrate provides authenticated REST API endpoints that enable full WordPress site migrations between servers. It handles database export/import with binary-safe hex encoding, file archiving and transfer, and serialization-aware search-replace for domain changes.
Features:
<ul>
<li>Database export with binary-safe hex encoding (preserves serialized PHP data)</li>
<li>Database import with streaming line-by-line parsing (handles large dumps)</li>
<li>File upload, download, archiving (tar.gz/zip), and extraction</li>
<li>Serialization-aware search-replace for domain migrations</li>
<li>Dual authentication: API key header or WordPress Application Passwords</li>
<li>WP-CLI detection (informational, reported in status endpoint)</li>
<li>Admin UI showing API key and endpoint documentation</li>
</ul>
Important: This plugin grants full database and filesystem access via its REST API. Deactivate and delete it immediately after your migration is complete.

InstaMigrate

Secure REST API endpoints for WordPress site migration — database export/import, file transfer, and search-replace.

ZHBackup – Restore & Migration vs InstaMigrate