WordPress Backups 101: How Often, Where, and How to Know They’ll Actually Work
Approximate length: 1,340 words
Estimated reading time: about 6–7 minutes (don’t forget your fav bevvy)
- A WordPress backup copies your files (theme, plugins, images) and your database (posts, pages, settings, comments) — you need both, not just one.
- There are 4 main ways to back up your site: your hosting provider, a backup plugin, manually through cPanel, and a local copy on your own computer. Most small businesses are best served by a mix of the first two.
- How often you back up depends on how often your site changes: a brochure site needs weekly backups, a blog or store needs daily (or more).
- Never store your only backup on the same server as your live site. If the server goes down, your backup goes down with it.
- Keep backups longer than you think you need to. 30 to 90 days is a safer bet than “just last week’s.”
- A backup is only useful if it actually works. Test yours at least twice a year.
If any of that made your stomach drop a little 😉 don’t worry, that’s completely normal. Most small business owners have never actually thought about this until something goes wrong. Let’s walk through it together, no tech degree required.
Why This Matters (The Short Version)
Here’s the thing about WordPress sites: they’re wonderfully flexible, easy to update yourself, and… occasionally a little fragile.
A plugin update goes sideways. Someone fat-fingers a setting at 11pm (been there… done that). A hosting server has a bad day. Or (the scenario nobody wants to think about) your site gets hacked.
None of that has to be a disaster. It only becomes one if you don’t have a backup to fall back on. Think of a backup the same way you’d think of a spare key: you don’t need it most days, but the one day you do need it, nothing else will do.
The 4 Ways to Back Up Your WordPress Site
There’s more than one way to back up your site, and honestly, the best setups usually combine a couple of these.
1. Your Hosting Provider’s Built-In Backups
Most decent hosting companies automatically back up the entire server your site lives on, usually once a day.
It’s the “set it and forget it” option, which sounds great. The catch? You don’t control when these run, you can’t always restore just one page or one file (sometimes it’s all-or-nothing), and if anything ever happens to your hosting account itself, that backup can disappear right along with it.
Good for: a baseline layer of protection you don’t have to think about.
Not enough on its own: because it lives in the same house as your site.
2. A WordPress Backup Plugin
This is the workhorse most small business owners should be using. Plugins like UpdraftPlus, BlogVault, or VaultPress live right inside your WordPress dashboard, run on a schedule you set, and (this is the important part) can send a copy somewhere off your hosting server, like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3.
You get to pick how often it runs, what it includes, and where it goes. It’s the closest thing to “set it up once and trust it” for a DIY website owner.
Good for: automated, off-site backups you control.
Watch for: plugins can fail silently if you never check in on them – more on that below.
3. Manual Backup Through Your Hosting Control Panel (cPanel)
If your host uses cPanel, there’s usually a “Backup” tool tucked in there that lets you download a full archive of your site, and related email and hosting files. It’s more hands-on (you have to manually run it), but it’s a handy way to grab everything from your hosting account. Note – this is usually very large so it is not something you would do regularly.
Good for: a complete archive of your website, DNS records, emails etc. (depending on what is included in your hosting)
Not great for: being your only or regular backup method, since it relies on you remembering to do it, and it is usually very large.
4. A Manual, Local Copy on Your Own Computer
This is the old-school approach: downloading your files (through FTP) and exporting your database, then saving both somewhere on your own hard drive or an external drive. It takes more effort and a bit more technical skill, but it gives you a copy that lives completely outside your hosting environment — which matters more than you’d think.
Good for: an extra, fully independent copy, especially before something high-stakes -or- when other backup methods are not viable.
Realistically: most small business owners do not use this.
The takeaway: lean on a good backup plugin for your regular, automated backups, and treat your host’s backup as a helpful extra layer underneath it – not your whole strategy.
How Often Should You Actually Back Up Your Site?
This is the question everyone asks, and the honest answer is: it depends on how often your site changes.
Here’s a simple way to think about it.
| Your site is mostly… | How often it changes | Back up… |
|---|---|---|
| A brochure-style website (services, contact info, occasional blog post) | Rarely | Weekly, plus before any update |
| An active blog (new posts a few times a week) | Often | Daily |
| An online store or membership site (orders, sign-ups, payments coming in) | Constantly | Daily, or even multiple times a day |
One habit that applies no matter what kind of site you run: always take a fresh backup right before you update a plugin, theme, or WordPress itself. Updates are usually fine… until the one time they’re not. That 30-second backup is the difference between “oops, fixed it” and “I need to restore a backup that is not current.”
Where Should You Store Your Backups?
Here’s the single most common mistake we see: storing your only backup copy in the same place as your live site.
If your hosting account has a problem, gets compromised, or simply goes down, you lose your site and your safety net in the very same moment. Not great.
The fix is simple: keep at least one (recent) copy somewhere completely separate from your hosting server.
A good setup looks like this (remember that this backup structure depends on the complexity of your website):
On your host: whatever automatic backup your hosting provider already runs.
Off-site, in the cloud: one or more copies sent automatically by your backup tool to somewhere like Google Drive, Dropbox, or a dedicated backup service.
On your own device: every so often, download a copy to your own computer or an external drive. Consider it the backup of your backup.
You don’t need to go overboard here. For most small business sites, “host backup + automated off-site copy” covers the vast majority of scenarios.
How Long Should You Keep Your Backups?
This one surprises people: keeping only your most recent backup isn’t actually the safest move. Here’s why… some problems (like malware or a hack) can sit quietly on a site for days or even weeks before you notice anything’s wrong. If your only backup is from yesterday, and the problem snuck in two weeks ago, that backup is just as compromised as your live site.
A reasonable retention rhythm looks like this:
- Keep your last several daily backups for quick rollbacks (a week’s worth is reasonable).
- Keep a handful of weekly backups going back a month or so.
- Keep one or two monthly backups going back a few months – this is your safety net against slower-developing problems.
- If you have rergulatory and program specific reasons to have an annual backup, do that as well.
Most backup plugins let you set this retention automatically, so it’s a “configure once” task, not something you have to manage by hand (except those backups before updates!).
How to Test Your Backup (And Why You Actually Have To)
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: a backup you’ve never tested isn’t really a backup – it’s a wish-and-a-prayer.
We’ve all heard the story of someone whose site went down, who calmly said “no worries, I have backups,” and then discovered the backup file was corrupted, incomplete, or simply… not there.
The good news is that testing doesn’t need to be complicated. Here’s the simple version:
Set up a staging site (a private test copy of your website – many hosts offer a one-click way to create one).
Restore your most recent backup into that staging site, not your live one.
Click around like a visitor would. Does the homepage load? Do your images show up? Does your contact form work? If you sell online, can you actually get through checkout?
Make a note of anything that’s missing or broken, and fix your backup setup so it doesn’t happen again.
How often should you test? Twice a year is a solid, low-stress rhythm. Time it for when you test your smoke alarms or when you change your clocks for daylight saving, so it’s easy to remember.
If your site handles a lot of transactions or sensitive data, bump that up to 3-4 times per year.
Wrapping Up
Backups aren’t the most exciting part of running a website. Nobody dreams about a backup strategy on a Tuesday afternoon. But they’re the difference between a bad day (“oh no, something broke”) and a genuinely terrible one – “I have to re-create content or orders or (gasp) rebuild my entire website from scratch”. A few minutes of setup now buys you an enormous amount of peace of mind later.
Here’s the simple version to actually act on:
- Use a backup plugin for automated, off-site backups.
- Match your backup frequency to how often your site actually changes.
- Never let your only backup live in the same place as your live site.
- Keep more history than feels necessary.
- Test it. Actually test it.
If reading this made you realize you’re not totally sure your current backups would actually save you, it is a common (and very fixable) place to be.
We’d be happy to take a look at what you’ve got set up, tell you honestly whether it would hold up in a real emergency, and help you get a proper system in place so you can stop wondering and start trusting it.
Reach out to Digital Chicks and let’s get your site properly protected.
This one is critical. Ask yourself: if your website disappeared tomorrow, could you get it back?
If the answer is “I have no idea,” that’s something to fix right now.
Many hosting providers include automatic backups – log in and check. Do not rely (only) on backups from your hosting provider.
WordPress plugins like UpdraftPlus can run backups to Google Drive or Dropbox on a schedule.
Download a fresh backup today and store it somewhere you control – your Google Drive, Dropbox, or even a USB drive kept somewhere safe.
A backup is your insurance policy. Don’t skip it.
Cyndi Fleming-Alton
Cyndi is the founder of Digital Chicks and has spent 20 years helping mission-driven entrepreneurs build sustainable revenue and create meaningful impact.
Endlessly curious (and proudly interdisciplinary), she holds degrees in Computer Science, Human Resources, Emergency Management, and Information Privacy - balanced with studies in Reiki, Sound Therapy, and Meditation. Her work spans all levels of Canadian government, healthcare, and the private sector in IT and communications, including a year in Africa as a research coordinator and photographer.
A lifelong digital nomad, Cyndi has lived and worked in several countries and now calls Ontario, Canada home, where she enjoys a slightly hippie lifestyle with her partner and an assortment of four-legged co-workers.