Walkthrough · Beginner · 30 minutes of setup
How to Back Up WordPress
How to run backups that exist, restore cleanly, and hold up on the day they are needed, without the guessing — the steps in order, the snag ahead of time, and the tip our support team repeats daily.
The short answer
The job: run backups that exist, restore cleanly, and hold up on the day they are needed. Time to set aside: 30 minutes of setup. Skill needed: beginner.
Below are the precise steps, the classic stumble, and one tip from the support desk. Wherever the platform already does a step for you, the guide says so rather than handing you a machine's chores.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
Beginner
Skill rating
Quick
Time budget
5
Steps in total
24/7
Support on call
No technical background needed. This walkthrough was written for first-timers, proven on our own hardware, and honest about which parts are genuinely tricky rather than merely unfamiliar.
A promise before step one: nothing here is a one-way door. Any step with teeth is flagged, and the way back is printed beside it.
How the work divides up
Over the whole job, you will know the two halves, find out what you already have, keep a copy off the platform, match the frequency to how fast things change and test a restore every quarter.
No part of this needs code or a terminal unless the guide says so plainly — and where it does, the exact commands are printed. The step-by-step is below, with the surrounding sections supplying the context that makes it hold.
Where it comes off, and how to stay on
Keeping backups on the very hosting account they are meant to protect. That is a single point of failure in its purest form, since whatever takes the site down takes the rescue copy with it.
It earns a section of its own because it is no obscure edge case — it is the single commonest reason this task reaches a support queue. Knowing it in advance turns the whole job from risky into routine.
The support desk's own short cut
Take a manual snapshot with a name you will recognise before every significant change: updates, redesigns, plugin trials. Being able to say 'put it back to two o'clock' turns a disaster into an anecdote.
A minute spent now repays itself every time this job comes round again — and like almost every hosting job, come round it will.
The parts that look after themselves here
Some steps in this guide exist only because hosting traditionally forced them on you. Here the SSL issues itself, the copy is taken daily without being asked, and one-click installers remove the manual setup. What is left is the part that was always genuinely yours.
Should a step still misfire, support answers at any hour with an actual fix rather than a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half the guides on this site began as repeat patterns in our ticket queue.
A quick platform makes for a short guide
Every walkthrough in this library is run on the platform we actually operate — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen rather than gesturing at it from a distance.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is on us.
- Every step checked exactly as published
- The snag named before it arrives
- The dull steps taken out of your way
- People reachable at any hour you stall
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Help that keeps your hours, not ours
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-walkthrough included.
Honest about how big it is
Run backups that exist, restore cleanly, and hold up on the day they are needed is a beginner-level job — set aside 30 minutes of setup, with the platform-absorbed steps marked.
Every undo written out
Any step that could bite is marked, together with the exact way to wind it back.
Works exactly as printed
Every step is proven on the platform we run — none of the 'your host may vary' hedging.
5 steps, nothing padded
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, and the fiddly moments are labelled fiddly.
Jargon never charges you
Every term is defined on the spot or linked to the jargon buster — nothing assumes prior knowledge.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Know the two halves
What makes up a WordPress site is a set of files — themes, plugins, uploads — alongside a database carrying the content and the settings. Back up one half only and the restore produces something nobody can use.
- 2
Find out what you already have
Daily backups run automatically on our hosting and restore from the panel whenever you need them. Check your plan's schedule and retention so you know the baseline before adding anything on top.
- 3
Keep a copy off the platform
A backup plugin sending a weekly copy to Drive, Dropbox or S3 covers the case where the hosting itself is what failed. Separate failure domains are the entire reason for a second copy.
- 4
Match the frequency to how fast things change
Daily suits a site updated often; something close to hourly suits a shop where a lost hour means lost orders. Backup cadence is really a question of how much work you can bear to do twice.
- 5
Test a restore every quarter
Put the restore onto a staging copy and walk through it. A completed restore is the only proof a backup system deserves the name, and it costs twenty minutes four times a year.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Do the host's automatic backups cover me by themselves?
They are a sound base for most sites: no effort, stored away from your files, restorable from the panel. Once the site is worth more than the few minutes it takes, add a copy of your own as well. Redundancy at this layer costs almost nothing.
How far back should backups reach?
Far enough to outrun a slow-burning problem. A compromise noticed in week three needs a copy from week two. A month of daily copies plus a few monthly ones is a sensible policy for a typical business site.
How do payments and auto-renewal work?
You pay by credit or debit card through a secure checkout, and renewals bill at the same rate as the original order. Every invoice sits in your client area, and auto-renewal switches off with a toggle in the account — no telephone call needed.
Can more than one website run on a single plan?
From the Turbo tier upward, yes — several sites, each with its own name, mailboxes and certificate, inside one account. If the extra sites belong to clients rather than to you, look at reseller hosting instead: it keeps each one properly walled off.
Keep reading
How to Understand Website Firewalls
Understand what a web application firewall does, where it sits, and what you might ever change — intermediate level, about 20 minutes of reading.
How to Take Payments Online
Collect money safely without dragging card data onto your own server — beginner level, about an hour.
Best Hosting With WordPress Toolkit
The same call put as a buyer's guide: what to verify, what to ignore, and the plan we would sign.
Domain Names
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WordPress Hosting
WordPress looked after for you — LiteSpeed caching, staging copies and a daily backup.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
Put the site on ground you own.
Every plan carries the essentials other hosts bill as extras — and support that answers.
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