Handling Kadence Backups — Legacy vs NextGen

Why This Matters

Two distinct plugins are available as separate Kadence backup products:

• Kadence Backups Legacy (formerly BackupBuddy) — the long-running plugin-based product. Now in maintenance mode.
• Kadence Backups — the current, cloud-first product, managed entirely from Kadence Central.

Note: You may still see the older Solid Backups names in WordPress or in documentation. When identifying your backup product, use the plugin slug and behavior rather than the displayed label. Older installations may still show Solid Backups – Legacy.

These are separate backup products with different storage and management systems. There is no in-place migration between them, but you can run both side by side.

Before following the troubleshooting steps in this guide, identify which backup product you are using. The troubleshooting steps are different for each product.

Quick Identification: Legacy or Kadence Backups?

Before troubleshooting, identify which backup product you are using. The troubleshooting steps are different for each product.

backupbuddy/

solid-backups/

Quick Reference: What You May See

The backup product you use may include different terminology and features. Use the examples below to determine which product you have installed.

Kadence Backups Legacy (formerly BackupBuddy)

What It Is

Kadence Backups Legacy is a self-contained WordPress plugin that creates backups directly from WordPress Admin and sends them to a destination you configure, such as Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Amazon S3, FTP/SFTP, your local server, or Stash.

Restores are performed using a standalone importbuddy.php file placed on the server alongside the backup file.

Kadence Backups Legacy also includes advanced settings for options such as ZIP methods, build strategies, time per chunk, file and directory exclusions, and scheduling profiles. These settings can be useful when working with hosting environments that have specific resource or execution limits.

Where to Find Kadence Backups Legacy in WordPress Admin

If you are using Kadence Backups Legacy, you will see a top-level Backups menu in WordPress Admin with options such as:

• Backups
• Stash
• Live
• Destinations
• Schedules
• Diagnostics
• Settings

The Quick Setup Wizard runs when you first activate the plugin.

Advanced backup options are available under Backups → Settings → Advanced Settings.

Status: Maintenance Mode

Kadence Backups Legacy is in maintenance mode. It remains functional, but new features are not being added. Bug fixes are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Kadence Backups is our current backup product with active development.

You can continue using Kadence Backups Legacy if it meets your needs. If you are looking for the current product and ongoing development, Kadence Backups is the recommended option.

Common Kadence Backups Legacy Issues

1. Test Destination Works, but Scheduled Backups Fail

This can occur with Dropbox or OneDrive destinations when the plugin’s connection token expires.

What you can do:

• Recreate the affected destination to refresh the connection.
• If the problem keeps recurring, consider using Kadence Backups, which uses a different storage and connection system.

2. Backup ZIP Times Out or Hangs

You may see messages such as:

• “Backup hangs at the zip step”
• Error #4001
• Error #32893
• “Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded”
• The backup remains in progress and has not been completed.

This can happen when your hosting environment has a short PHP execution limit.

Try the following steps:

1. Increase max_execution_time on your hosting account, such as up to 300 seconds.
2. Disable ZIP compression under Backups → Settings → Advanced Settings → ZIP by unchecking Enable zip compression.
3. Enable the Alternative Zip System (BETA) on the same screen and set Zip build strategy to Multi-Burst/Multi-Step.
4. Exclude large or non-essential directories under Backups → Settings → General Settings → File & Directory Defaults.
5. Run the available cleanup options under Backups → Diagnostics → Troubleshooting:
   • Force Cancel All
   • Delete Orphan .dat
   • Delete All Temp Data
   • Regular Housekeeping
6. Check that your hosting account has enough available disk space. Failed or incomplete backup files can use available storage and prevent subsequent backups from completing.

If the backup still hangs after trying these steps, provide the most recent status log from Backups → Logs when contacting support. The ZIP exit code at the end of the log can help identify the cause.

3. Error Emails Continue After Removing Schedules

You may continue receiving backup failure emails after removing an affected schedule.

Legacy may continue processing previously queued backup attempts for a period of time.

What you can do:

• If you have completely moved to Kadence Backups and no longer need Kadence Backups Legacy, deactivate the Legacy plugin.
• If you continue to use Legacy, the queued attempts should age out in approximately a week.

4. ImportBuddy Restore Failures

You may encounter errors such as #83893a while restoring a backup with ImportBuddy. You may also find that the database settings page does not respond as expected.

Try the following steps:

1. Try using a different browser and make sure the file is named importbuddy.php and has not been renamed, such as importbuddy(1).php.
2. Temporarily disable security or caching services that may interfere with the restore, such as Cloudflare, Sucuri, ModSecurity, Wordfence WAF, Varnish, PageSpeed, or another caching layer.
3. Temporarily rename .htaccess, php.ini, and user.ini in the web root.
4. Verify the database credentials and confirm that the database user has the required privileges.
5. Increase the PHP memory limit on the new server.
6. Use a fresh importbuddy.php file from the latest Kadence Backups Legacy build.

5. Kadence Backups Legacy and Kadence Backups Are Both Active

If you have moved to Kadence Backups but continue receiving backup emails from old destinations or schedules, Kadence Backups Legacy may still be active.

The two products operate independently. Legacy can continue running its own scheduled backups, housekeeping, and retry processes even after you begin using Kadence Backups.

If you have completely moved to Kadence Backups and no longer need Legacy, deactivate Kadence Backups Legacy to stop its scheduled processes and related emails.

Kadence Backups

What It Is

Kadence Backups is a cloud-first, incremental backup system. It is fundamentally different from Kadence Backups Legacy in three ways:

• Backups are stored in Kadence cloud storage — US or EU data center region, with no third-party destinations.
• Backups are managed from Kadence Central at central.kadencewp.com — schedule, timeline, restore, and settings are managed there.
• Kadence servers connect to your site over SSH/SFTP — Kadence Backups is not a backup engine running inside WordPress; it is a remote agent that reads files and exports the database from outside WordPress.

Where to Find Kadence Backups in WordPress Admin

Kadence Backups has a single page in WordPress Admin under Settings → Kadence Backups. This page shows the connection state and connection details. Backup settings, schedules, and backup history are not managed from this page.

Where to Manage Your Backups

Backup settings and management options are available in Kadence Central → site title → Kadence Backups.

From there, you can manage:

• Storage region
• Retention
• Exclusions
• Transfer speed
• Integrity verification
• Schedule
• Timeline
• Create backup now
• Restore

Common Kadence Backups Issues

1. SSH/SFTP Connection Problems

If Test Connection fails during enrollment, or a previously enrolled site becomes disconnected, check the following:

1. Verify your credentials and port. An incorrect username, port, or server address can prevent the connection.
2. Confirm with your hosting provider that SSH/SFTP is enabled for your account.
3. Ask your hosting provider to whitelist the Kadence Backups IP addresses on the host firewall, Cloudflare WAF, ModSecurity/Imunify360 rules, and any IP restrictions configured for your SSH key.
4. Use the server IP instead of the hostname if the hostname does not resolve correctly to the SSH endpoint.
5. Confirm that Application Passwords are enabled on your WordPress site.
6. Do not connect as root. Kadence Backups does not support root SSH access.

Host-specific information:

• SiteGround: SSH port is 18765, not 22. Import the public key through Site Tools → Dev → SSH Keys Manager. Use the server IP from Site Tools → Dashboard → IP and Name Servers rather than the hostname.
• Cloudways: The standard connection flow may require additional configuration. Cloudways enforces a minimum SSH key size. If key authentication fails, password authentication may work.
• Bluehost: Use port 22, your current cPanel user as the username, and the shared IP rather than the domain as the Server Address. Import and authorize the public key through cPanel → SSH Access → Manage SSH Keys.
• Plesk: The simplest setup is username/password using the subscription’s Web Hosting Access user. If you prefer SSH key authentication, you can use the SSH Keys Manager Plesk extension or add the public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
• VentraIP: Use port 2683 and the hostname provided by VentraIP. Make sure the Kadence Backups IP addresses are whitelisted and check for ModSecurity rule 225170.
• IONOS, GoDaddy, Hosting.com, Nexcess, Kinsta, and GreenGeeks: See the host-specific section in the Getting Started guide for information about locating your credentials.

2. “Failed to Perform License Check”

This message means Kadence Backups could not run the WP-CLI command used to verify the license:

wp ithemes-licensing show solid-backups

This is usually not a license problem. WP-CLI may have failed before producing any output.

Common causes include:

• WP-CLI is not installed or is not accessible to the SSH/SFTP user.
• The PHP Phar extension is missing from the server’s CLI PHP environment.
• The CLI PHP version differs from the web PHP version.
• wp-config.php uses a relative path for salts, such as require 'wp-salt.php';, instead of require __DIR__ . '/wp-salt.php';.
• wp-config.php obtains database credentials through getenv() calls that work in the web environment but not through SSH/CLI.
• The CLI PHP memory limit is too low for another plugin to load during WP-CLI startup.

3. “Failed to Parse License Data”

This message means the WP-CLI license command did return, but the output was not valid JSON that Kadence Backups could decode.

A common cause is PHP notices, warnings, or deprecation messages being printed before the JSON output.

For example, on PHP 8.4, older WP-CLI versions may output a deprecation notice before the command runs. When the command uses --format=json, this additional text can cause the JSON parsing to fail.

Try the following:

1. Ask your hosting provider to update WP-CLI to the current version.
2. Suppress E_DEPRECATED / display_errors in the CLI php.ini.
3. If neither option is possible, use a CLI PHP version below 8.4.

Your hosting provider can verify the output with:

wp ithemes-licensing show solid-backups --format=json

The output should start with [ or { with no text before it. Any additional output can prevent the license data from being parsed correctly.

4. “Solid Backups Did Not Complete Backing Up Your Files / Database”

If the connection works but the backup fails partway through, try these adjustments before further investigation:

• Lower Transfer Speed from Fast or Very Fast to Regular or Slow. Higher transfer speeds can exceed your hosting provider’s parallel process or connection limits.
• Set Integrity Verification Module to Normal. This reduces server resource usage while continuing to use size and modified-time comparisons.

For database-related failures, ask your hosting provider to confirm that the database user has LOCK TABLES permission and that max_allowed_packet, net_read_timeout, and net_write_timeout are not set unusually low.

If a specific database table is implicated, ask your hosting provider to repair and optimize it.

5. Disconnections Caused by Host-Side IP Blocks

If multiple sites on the same hosting provider disconnect at the same time, the issue may be a host-side IP block affecting the backup service rather than an individual site.

Contact your hosting provider and ask them to whitelist the Kadence Backups IP addresses listed in this guide, and to ensure they are not blocked by the host firewall, security rules, Cloudflare WAF, ModSecurity/Imunify360, or other network restrictions.

Once the block has been removed, test the connection again from Kadence Central.

IP Addresses to Whitelist

For Kadence Backups to connect to your site, your hosting environment may need to allow the following IP addresses.

Where to Whitelist the IP Addresses

Depending on your hosting environment, you may need to add these IP addresses to one or more of the following:

• Hosting firewall — such as cPanel, Plesk, or SiteGround Site Tools security
• Server-level firewall — such as iptables, firewalld, or CSF/LFD on WHM
• Cloudflare WAF — if Cloudflare is in front of your site
• ModSecurity / Imunify360 — add the IP addresses to the appropriate allowlist
• SSH key IP restrictions — particularly on SiteGround

Important: Cloudflare WAF and your server-level firewall operate independently. If both are enabled, make sure the Kadence IP addresses are allowed in both.

Common Questions

Pre-Support Checklist

Before contacting support about a backup issue, please complete the following checklist:

1. Identify the installed backup product: Determine whether you are using Kadence Backups or Kadence Backups Legacy by checking the plugin name, plugin slug, WordPress Admin menu location, or error reference format. Troubleshooting steps vary significantly between the two products.
2. Verify active plugins: If your primary tool is Kadence Backups, but you receive unexpected emails from Kadence Backups Legacy, ensure the Legacy plugin is deactivated to prevent its scheduled processes from running in the background.
3. Capture exact error details: Include the precise error message and reference number in your support ticket. Similar-looking errors often have distinct underlying causes.
4. Confirm the management location: Ensure you are configuring the correct platform. Manage Kadence Backups through Kadence Central, and manage Kadence Backups Legacy directly through WordPress Admin → Backups.

Note: Kadence Backups Legacy operates as a maintenance-mode product, while Kadence Backups serves as the primary, cloud-first solution. Both plugins function independently and can be used based on your specific backup requirements.