SimpleBackups costs $29/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $1,044 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$29–$99/mo ($348–$1,188/yr) is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Vaultkeeper: the pay-once alternative
Vaultkeeper does the same core job for $39, once. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite & Mongo dumps on cron — encrypted, shipped to S3/FTP/disk, with failure alerts.
| Vaultkeeper | SimpleBackups | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $29–$99/mo ($348–$1,188/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $39 | $1,044+ |
| Postgres / MySQL / Mongo / SQLite | All four | Yes |
| Your DB credentials | Stay on your box, encrypted at rest | Stored on their cloud |
| Encryption format you can decrypt yourself | Documented VK1 + age, decrypt script included | Partial |
| Works fully offline | Yes | No |
| Failure alerts (webhook + email) | Yes | Yes |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
SimpleBackups is $348+ per year. Vaultkeeper pays for itself in 6 weeks — then your backups run free, forever.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need SimpleBackups's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Vaultkeeper is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Vaultkeeper — $39, once
Postgres, MySQL, SQLite & Mongo dumps on cron — encrypted, shipped to S3/FTP/disk, with failure alerts.