Backing Up Your Website: Why It Matters and How Often

Nordlyte Web Studio · Security Guide · 6 min read

A website backup is a saved copy of your entire site — files, database, content — that lets you restore everything if something goes wrong. It's one of those things that feels unnecessary right up until the moment it saves you.

Here's why it's crucial, in one sentence: without a backup, a single bad update, hack, or server failure can mean losing months of content, design work, and SEO progress in an instant, with no way to get any of it back. A backup turns a potential disaster into a quick fix.

Why backups matter

• Hacks and malware — restoring a clean backup is often the fastest recovery path, as covered in our hacked website guide
• Accidental deletions — a wrong click or bad update can break things unexpectedly
• Failed updates — plugin or theme updates occasionally break a site; a backup lets you roll back instantly
• Hosting issues — server failures do happen, even with reliable providers

Without a backup, any one of these can mean rebuilding a site from scratch — losing not just time and money, but content and SEO progress that took months to build.

What should a backup include?

A useful backup has two parts: your website files (themes, plugins, uploads and media) and your database, which holds your content, orders and settings. A backup of only one of the two usually can't restore a working site, so check that yours covers both.

How often should you back up?

The more frequently your content or orders change, the more you stand to lose from an outdated backup — an online store losing a day of orders is a bigger deal than a static business page losing a day of no changes.

Where should backups be stored?

Ideally, not only on the same server as your website — if the server fails, a backup stored there fails with it. Cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox) or a dedicated backup service gives you a safe copy independent of your hosting.

Many hosts also keep backups, but check how often they run, how long they keep them and whether you can download a copy. Treat your host's backups as a bonus, not your only copy.

A simple rule to remember is 3-2-1: keep three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy off-site. For a website, that could be your live site, a backup on your host and a copy in cloud storage.

Backups can contain customer details, so protect them too: use a strong password and two-step verification on wherever you store them.

How many backups should you keep?

Keeping several recent versions (not just the latest one) is worth it — if a problem isn't noticed immediately, you may need to roll back further than just one backup to get a truly clean copy. One common approach is to keep the last week of daily backups plus a few older monthly ones.

Automated vs. manual backups

Manual backups are better than none, but easy to forget. Automated backups — run daily or weekly without you needing to remember — are far more reliable, and many hosting providers or maintenance plans include this by default.

Testing your backups

A backup you've never tested restoring is a bit of a leap of faith. Periodically confirming a backup actually restores correctly is worth the small effort, especially before you need it in an emergency. Remember that restoring a backup also brings back the content and admin passwords from that date, so reset your website admin passwords afterwards, as covered in our hacked website guide.

Keeping your backups healthy

Setting up backups is the easy part. Keeping them working is the routine that makes them useful:

• Weekly: confirm the latest backup actually ran, and check for any failure notifications
• Monthly: restore a backup to a test copy and check the site works, and make sure your storage isn't full
• Before big changes: take a fresh backup before a redesign, a major update or a new plugin
• Whenever access changes: review who can reach your backup storage, and change passwords if someone leaves

Putting it together: a simple backup strategy

A backup strategy isn't complicated — it's just three decisions made in advance, instead of scrambling to figure them out during an emergency:

1. How often — matched to how much you'd hate to lose (see the table above)
2. Where it's stored — somewhere independent of your live server, like cloud storage or a dedicated backup service
3. How many versions to keep — several recent ones, not just the latest, in case a problem isn't caught immediately

Write those three answers down once, set up automation to match, keep an eye on it with the routine above, and you're covered — this is the strategy most small businesses actually need, without overcomplicating it.

How our maintenance plans handle backups

On our maintenance plans, Essential includes weekly backups and Growth includes daily backups. If your site is hacked, Essential restores from the latest backup, and Growth includes restore and cleanup, up to 3 hours of work per incident. Our maintenance plans cover websites, not custom databases.