A backup holds one of your websites as it is at that moment: all its files and, for WordPress, its database. Make one before larger changes (updates, a new theme, moving changes over from your staging site), or let backups be made for you every night or every week.
Making a backup
- In the Control Panel, open Backups (in the Files and databases group).
- Next to the site, choose Back up now, and what goes in besides the files:
- Automatic (the default): for a WordPress site, the database named in its
wp-config.php, when it is one of your databases; for other sites, none. - No database, files only.
- One of your databases by name, for a site that is not WordPress but uses a database.
- Automatic (the default): for a WordPress site, the database named in its
- The backup is made in the background, usually within a few minutes. Refresh shows it once it is ready.
Scheduled backups
Schedule backups has them made for you:
- Every night or every week, at a quiet time between 1 and 5 a.m. (New York time). The panel shows when the next one is due.
- Backups to keep: after each scheduled backup only the newest backups of the site stay: 7 for nightly and 4 for weekly backups, unless you choose another number (at most 14). Backups you made yourself count too, so download one you want to keep longer.
- A scheduled backup that went well does not appear under Requests; one that could not be made does, and Backups shows what happened to the last one.
To stop them, choose Change schedule and Off. The backups you have stay.
Where backups are kept
Backups are files in your account, in the folder backups, with a folder per site:
backups/example.com/example.com-20261012-071530.tar.gz. The name holds the date and time the backup was made (UTC).
Each backup is a .tar.gz archive with:
- the site's folder, without its log files and caches;
backup.txt, which says what is in the backup and how to restore it;database.sql, the database, when one was included.
Backups count towards your disk space. A backup that would take your account past the disk space of your plan is not made: delete older backups or other files first, or ask us about a larger plan. Backups shows how much space your account uses and how much of it is backups. Delete removes a backup you no longer need.
A backup in your account protects you from mistakes and failed updates. To be safe from everything else too, download a copy now and then and keep it somewhere else.
Downloading a backup
Connect with SFTP (see Upload your website with SFTP) and download the file from the backups folder. Windows 11,
macOS and Linux open .tar.gz archives themselves; on older Windows use 7-Zip.
Restoring a backup
Files. Unpack the archive on your computer and upload the site's folder, or only the files you need, over SFTP. With SSH (see Use the command line (SSH)) you can unpack it in place, from your home folder:
cd ~
tar -xzf backups/example.com/example.com-20261012-071530.tar.gz example.com
This puts every file of the backup back where it was. Files added to the site since the backup stay; delete them yourself if they should go.
Database. Import database.sql with phpMyAdmin (see Manage your data with phpMyAdmin), or with SSH:
tar -xzf ~/backups/example.com/example.com-20261012-071530.tar.gz -C /tmp database.sql
wp --path=$HOME/example.com db import /tmp/database.sql
rm /tmp/database.sql
Importing replaces the site's whole database with the one from the backup.
If you would rather have us restore a backup, open a support ticket with the site and the backup's name.