SimpleBackups does exactly what its name promises: connect a database, pick a schedule and a storage bucket, and your backups just happen — Postgres, MySQL, Mongo, whole servers, SaaS apps, with retention, alerting and a team dashboard. As managed backup services go, it is one of the most complete.
The cost of that convenience is twofold. The subscription starts around $29/month — $348 a year, $1,044 over three, forever. And to work at all, it needs your production database credentials stored on its cloud, with your dumps transiting its infrastructure. Vaultkeeper does the same core job — scheduled, encrypted dumps shipped to S3, FTP or disk, with failure alerts — as a $39 pay-once app running entirely on your own hardware.
What SimpleBackups does well
SimpleBackups is a genuinely well-built service:
- Setup measured in minutes — OAuth into your cloud provider, connect a database, done. No CLI tools to install.
- Breadth — databases, full server snapshots, storage-bucket replication and even SaaS-app backups under one roof.
- Managed reliability — they watch the watchers; scheduling, retries and alerting are their problem.
- Team dashboard — one pane of glass for every backup across every client, which agencies legitimately need.
If nobody on your team can be responsible for backup infrastructure, paying someone else to be responsible is a defensible call.
Where the subscription model hurts
The subscription math is stark: $29/month is $348 every year — and pricier tiers scale with the number of jobs. Over three years you have paid $1,044+ to schedule pg_dump. Vaultkeeper costs one month's fee, once. For freelancers and small teams whose databases fit on a $10 VPS, the backup bill exceeding the hosting bill is exactly backwards.
The credentials question deserves more weight than it usually gets. A managed backup service is a honeypot by design: it holds connection strings for hundreds of companies' production databases. SimpleBackups takes security seriously, but "our vendor got breached" is a sentence you can only avoid by not having the vendor. With Vaultkeeper, credentials are AES-256-GCM encrypted in a SQLite file on your own box, passwords never touch a process argument, and dumps stream directly from your database to your storage — no third party in the path.
Vaultkeeper: the pay-once alternative
Vaultkeeper is a $39, one-time purchase. Scheduled, encrypted database backups you actually own. Vaultkeeper runs cron-scheduled dumps of all four engines, streams them through gzip and AES-256-GCM (or age), ships to local disk, any S3-compatible bucket (AWS, B2, R2, MinIO) or FTP, prunes by GFS-lite retention, and alerts by webhook or email with the dump tool's stderr the moment a run fails. The VK1 encryption format is documented byte-for-byte with a dependency-free decrypt script in the repo — your backups are never hostage to the software. A one-click restore helper generates the exact command chain. $39 once, MIT source.
The source code is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/vaultkeeper — free to build and run yourself, forever. Buying the packaged version on Whop gets you the signed installer, 1-click setup and updates. Either way, there is no account, no telemetry and no renewal date.
Head to head
| Vaultkeeper | SimpleBackups | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $29+/mo |
| Cost over 3 years | $39 | ~$1,044+ |
| Where your data lives | Your machine / your server | Your DB credentials on their cloud |
| Usage limits | None — unlimited use | Backup jobs tiered by plan |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Who should stay with SimpleBackups
Stay with SimpleBackups if you need full-server snapshots, SaaS-app backups or a managed multi-client dashboard with someone else on the hook — Vaultkeeper covers databases (Postgres, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, SQLite), not server images. Stay if there is genuinely nobody to own a self-hosted tool.
Switch if your backups are database dumps to S3-compatible storage and you would rather own the pipeline: your credentials on your box, an encryption format you can decrypt without us, and $0/month from now on.
Making the switch
Step 1 — Buy once on Whop. One-time $39 for the packaged 1-click Windows installer with everything pre-wired, plus lifetime updates.
Step 2 — Run it anywhere. Desktop app for local databases, or docker compose up on a $5 VPS — the Docker image bundles all four engine CLIs and age.
Step 3 — Schedule, encrypt, sleep. Point it at your databases, pick a cron schedule and a destination. If a run ever fails, the webhook and email tell you immediately — with the actual error.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/vaultkeeper, always. The $39 buys the packaged installer and funds development. One month of the competition, forever.
What happens to my backups if Vaultkeeper disappears?
They still open. The VK1 encryption format is documented in the README (AES-256-GCM, scrypt key derivation) and the repo ships a zero-dependency decrypt script — plus you can use age instead. Your backups outlive the software by design.
Do I need database tools installed?
For Postgres/MySQL/Mongo, yes — Vaultkeeper shells out to the official dump tools, and a tool-check panel shows what's found on PATH with install hints. SQLite needs nothing installed. The Docker image bundles all of them.
The bottom line
Subscriptions make sense when a service does ongoing work for you — hosting, syncing, multi-region infrastructure, human labor. They make much less sense when the work happens on your own hardware and the monthly bill is just a toll booth. Vaultkeeper is our bet that for this job, most people are better served owning the tool: $39 once, simpleBackups is $348+ per year. Vaultkeeper pays for itself in 6 weeks — then your backups run free, forever.
Vaultkeeper is part of OneTimeSuite — 56 desktop and self-hosted apps built on the same principle: your hardware does the work, so you should not pay rent on it. Every app is a one-time purchase with MIT-licensed source on GitHub, no accounts and no telemetry. Want everything at once? OneTimeSuite Complete bundles the whole suite for a single flat $997.
Try Vaultkeeper — $39, one time
Signed installer on Whop, or build it free from the MIT source. Your call.
Browse the whole pay-once suite or all comparisons.