Website Backups: What Your Host Does, and What You Still Need to Do

Nobody thinks about backups until the day they need one. That's the day you find out whether the backup you assumed existed actually does, how old it is, and whether it has the thing you need in it.

So let's sort it out now, while nothing's on fire.

What we do

On plans that include automatic backups, we copy your files, databases and mailboxes once a day and keep each copy for 7 days. After that it's overwritten on a rolling basis. That's set out in clause 11 of our terms, in plain numbers.

That means if something went wrong yesterday, or last Tuesday, there's a good chance we can get you back to how things were. You can restore from those backups yourself in the control panel, or ask us to do it.

What that doesn't cover

Seven days is a safety net, not an archive. A few situations it won't help with:

• Problems you don't notice for a while. If a plugin quietly broke your contact form three weeks ago, every backup we hold already has the broken version.
• Something you deleted a month ago. It's gone from our copies by now.
• Anything that takes out the account itself, like an unpaid bill or a dispute. Your backups shouldn't live in the same place as the thing they protect.

That's not us being awkward. It's true of every host, and the honest ones say so in their terms.

The routine we'd recommend

There's an old rule called 3-2-1: three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one somewhere else entirely. For a small business website, it can be as simple as this:

1. Keep our daily backups running. That's your first copy, and it's already done.
2. Send a copy somewhere else automatically. For WordPress, a plugin like UpdraftPlus can send a weekly backup to Google Drive, Dropbox or similar. Set it once and leave it.
3. Download one yourself now and then. Once a month, or before anything big, grab a full backup from the control panel and keep it on your own computer or a USB drive.
4. Back up before you change anything. WordPress updates, new themes, a new plugin, moving hosts. Thirty seconds of backup saves hours of panic.

Don't forget your email

People are careful with their website and forget that years of customer emails are sitting on the server too. If you use IMAP, your mail lives on the server, and your phone and laptop are just windows onto it. Most email programs can export a full copy. Do it every so often, especially before you change provider.

If the worst happens

Don't start rebuilding straight away. Get in touch first and tell us roughly when things were last right. The sooner we hear, the more of our seven days of backups are still in play.