How backups work for your account

How backups work for your account

What you'll learn: what's being backed up, how often, and where the backups live.

What gets backed up

Your hosting provider sets up backups for the whole server, which means your account is included automatically. A backup of your account contains:

  • All your website files (everything in your folders)
  • All your databases
  • All your mailboxes (the email itself)
  • Your DNS records and account settings

You don't have to configure anything — backups run in the background.

How often

This depends on what your hosting provider has set up. The most common pattern is:

  • Daily backups, kept for the last 7–14 days
  • Sometimes weekly backups kept for a month, on top of daily ones

To see your specific schedule, ask your hosting provider — or check your panel's home page, which usually shows when the last backup ran.

Where they live

Backups are stored on a separate server or cloud service (often Amazon S3 or similar). This means:

  • A backup is safe even if your hosting server fails.
  • A backup can be used to restore individual things, not just everything.

You can't usually download backups directly — your hosting provider keeps them, and you ask them (or use the panel) to restore from them.

What you can restore

You don't have to restore everything. Most setups let you restore just:

  • A specific file or folder (great for "I deleted the wrong thing")
  • A specific database (great for "I broke my WordPress")
  • A specific mailbox (great for "I lost important email")
  • Or the whole account (if everything is broken)

See Restoring files, a database, or a mailbox from a backup for the steps.

Backups don't replace your own copies

Provider backups are great for accidental deletions and short-term recovery. But for really important data, also keep your own copies:

  • A local copy of your website files on your computer
  • An export of your WordPress database every now and then (/help/phpMyAdmin makes this easy)
  • For email you can't lose, an IMAP client that downloads a copy

Belt and braces.

Tips

  • Take a manual backup before risky changes. Many panels let you trigger an on-demand backup of your account.
  • Test a restore before you need it. Restore one small file from a recent backup just to confirm it works for you.
  • Don't rely on a single backup. The provider backup, your own export, and an offsite copy is the gold standard.

If something goes wrong

  • The home page shows backups haven't run recently — contact your hosting provider; they'll know what's up.
  • You need a restore from longer ago than your provider keeps — ask. Some providers keep monthly backups longer than the daily list shows.

Related articles