The complete 2026 guide to automated website backups — what to backup, how often, and how to restore when disaster strikes.
You would not drive a car without insurance. You would not run a business without backups of your financial records. Yet 60% of small business websites have no backup strategy at all.
Things that destroy websites happen every single day:
Without a backup, you lose everything. With a proper backup strategy, you can restore your site in minutes — not days.
A complete backup is not just your website files. It is everything needed to rebuild your site exactly as it was.
⚠️ Files alone are not enough — you need BOTH files AND database to restore a working site
Every single file plus the entire database. This is a complete snapshot of your website at a specific point in time. You can restore everything from a single file.
Best for: Complete site restores, migrations, moving to new hosting
Only backs up files that changed since the last backup. Uses much less storage and is faster to run. However, you need the full backup AND all increments to restore.
Best for: Large sites with frequent updates, saving storage costs
Specifically your database tables. Does not include files, images, or plugins. Useful for quick restores of content, but you would need your files separately.
Best for: Content-heavy sites where data changes more than files
It depends on how often your site changes. Here is a practical guide:
Multiple times daily
Daily or a few times weekly
Weekly or before any change
💡 Pro tip: Always backup BEFORE any plugin update, theme change, or code deployment. If something breaks, you can restore instantly.
Store backups on a different server entirely. If your hosting server dies, your backups survive. Services like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Backblaze B2 are designed for this.
Services like CodeGuard, ManageWP, or BlogVault handle everything for you. They run backups on schedule, store them securely, and can restore with one click.
If your server dies, your backups die with it. Never store backups on the same server as your website.
Downloading backups to your local computer is not a strategy. What happens if your laptop is stolen? What if your office burns down? Cloud backup is essential.
A backup that cannot be restored is worse than no backup at all. It gives you false confidence.
🎯 The restore test: Pick a random date from 6 months ago. Can you restore your site to that exact state? If yes, your backup strategy works.
How many versions of your site should you keep? Here is what we recommend:
Keep 7 days of daily backups. This catches mistakes within the first week.
Keep 4 weeks of weekly backups. This catches issues that slip past the daily window.
Keep 12 months of monthly backups. This protects against seasonal issues or annual patterns.
Keep at least 2-3 years of yearly archives. Useful for compliance and long-term reference.
We include automatic backups with every hosting plan:
We run backups automatically every day, no action needed from you.
Keep a month of daily backups to restore from any point in the last 30 days.
Restore your entire site with a single click from your control panel.
All backups stored on separate infrastructure — if our servers fail, your backups survive.
Our support team handles restores for you at no extra charge.
For most small business websites (under 5GB), backups complete in 5-15 minutes. Large sites with lots of images may take longer. Incremental backups are much faster.
Our backups run during off-peak hours (usually 2-4 AM) so your visitors never notice. Modern incremental backup technology also minimizes performance impact.
Yes. You can download backup archives anytime from your control panel. This lets you keep local copies or move to a different host if needed.
If we detect a compromise, we can restore your site to the last known good backup within minutes. Our team will work with you to identify the vulnerability and secure your site.
Our standard backups cover your website files and databases. Email accounts can be included upon request. Contact our team for email backup options.
Every hosting plan includes automated daily backups with 30-day retention. One click, and your site is back online.
