Quick answer
Yes — Vaultkeeper is a one-time-purchase alternative to SimpleBackups. It costs $99 once, while SimpleBackups runs $29/mo — about $348 per year, every year. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite & Mongo dumps on cron — encrypted, shipped to S3/FTP/disk, with failure alerts. It is for people who want the job done on their own hardware without a renewal date — not for teams that live inside SimpleBackups's ecosystem.
The verdict
Switch to Vaultkeeper if you are an individual or small team paying SimpleBackups $29/mo for work your own machine can do. SimpleBackups is $348+ per year. Vaultkeeper pays for itself in under 4 months — then your backups run free, forever.
Stay with SimpleBackups if your workflow depends on its integrations, you need enterprise features (SSO, admin controls, SLAs), or your team is large enough that per-seat collaboration tooling is worth the bill. Vaultkeeper does not try to replicate those.
Head to head
| Vaultkeeper | SimpleBackups | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $99 once | $29–$99/mo ($348–$1,188/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $99 | $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 |
| 5-year cost | $99 | $1,740 |
Where SimpleBackups still wins
- Ecosystem and integrations. Established tools accumulate years of third-party integrations, templates and add-ons. If your workflow is wired into SimpleBackups's ecosystem, switching means rebuilding that plumbing — a real cost.
- Team and enterprise features. Shared workspaces, granular permissions, SSO, audit logs and a vendor to call when something breaks — that is what the higher subscription tiers actually buy, and a pay-once app does not come with it.
- Familiarity and hiring. SimpleBackups is the name people already know. Onboarding a team onto a tool nobody has used before takes time the subscription never charges for.
Where Vaultkeeper wins
- Price, permanently. $99 once versus $348/yr for as long as you use it. There is no renewal, no seat count and no tier gate.
- Four engines. PostgreSQL (pg_dump), MySQL/MariaDB (mysqldump), MongoDB (mongodump) — and SQLite via the online backup API, safe on live WAL databases with nothing installed.
- Real scheduling. Cron expressions with presets, per-job timezone, next-3-runs preview, and a per-job lock so runs never overlap.
- Encryption you can restore without us. age if installed, or built-in AES-256-GCM with a documented open format and a dependency-free decrypt script — your backups are never hostage.
The math
SimpleBackups is $348+ per year. Vaultkeeper pays for itself in under 4 months — then your backups run free, forever.
- After 1 year: Vaultkeeper has cost you $99 total — SimpleBackups has cost $348.
- After 3 years: Vaultkeeper is still $99 — the subscription is at $1,044.
- After 5 years: Vaultkeeper is still $99 — the subscription is at $1,740.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/vaultkeeper-mvp, always. The $99 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.
Is restore one-click?
Deliberately not. The restore helper generates the exact command chain — download, decrypt, gunzip, psql/mysql/mongorestore — so you can read every command before it touches your production database. SimpleBackups' managed one-click restores are genuinely more convenient; we chose transparency.
Try Vaultkeeper — $99, one time
Or get Vaultkeeper plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.