This was even more annoying when they started including whatsapp backups in your quota and sent a load of people over quota. And as far as I know there's no alternative for whatsapp backups apart from plugging in a USB cable and hoping Whatsapp don't change the method between now and when you need to restore it
The Whatsapp's restore process if you're not on Google Drive is unreliable too. I keep a separate backup but also have to keep the Google Drive backup on because it's too risky now I've seen it fail to restore and was only able to rescue it using the Google Drive backup I had also. If it just had my backup I'd have lost the lot.