Most people find out what their host’s backup policy says on the worst day to learn it: the day after a bad plugin update, a hacked site or a deleted folder. The policy is usually public. It sits in the terms of service and on the plan page, and it takes ten minutes to read. These are the questions worth answering before you need a restore, with our own answers alongside so you can see what a specific answer looks like. Our backups and restores are provided under our Terms of Service, and Section 8 is the part that covers backups.
1. How far back can you go?
Retention is the number that matters most, because problems are often found late. A site can be hacked days before anyone notices, and an update can break a page nobody visits until the end of the month. If backups are kept for five days and the problem is a week old, every backup you have contains it.
Look for a number of days or recovery points, written down, per product. “Regular backups” is not an answer. Check whether the number changes when you move up a plan, because a larger plan is often a different product with its own policy. Ours does change, and this is what each product includes:
| Product | Backups included | Kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Web Hosting | Daily: website files and databases, to separate infrastructure | 30 days |
| Managed WordPress Hosting | Daily | 30 days |
| VPS Hosting | Daily | 5 recovery points; 15 or 30 days is a paid option when you order |
| Virtual Dedicated Servers | Not included; backup storage is a paid option when you order | Not applicable |
The VPS number is smaller than shared hosting’s on purpose, and the VPS page says so up front. A Virtual Dedicated Server includes no backups at all unless you add backup storage, so on that product your own backup plan isn’t a nice-to-have.
2. Where are the copies kept?
A backup on the same disk, or the same server, as the site it protects doesn’t survive the failure you most need it for. Ask whether copies go to separate infrastructure.
On Shared Web Hosting, files and databases are backed up daily to separate infrastructure. Website Care’s Premium Care plan adds off-site encrypted backups with integrity verification.
Don’t count RAID as a backup. RAID keeps a server running when a drive fails by writing every change to more than one drive at once, which is also why it can’t help you go back: delete a folder or let malware rewrite a file, and the mirror copies that change instantly. Our shared hosting, VPS and Virtual Dedicated Server plans use RAID for drive failures; backups are the separate copies you restore from.
3. What exactly is backed up?
“Your website” can mean files only, files and databases, or everything in the account. Email is the one people most often assume is included when it isn’t.
On our Shared Web Hosting, the daily backups cover website files and databases. They are not a mail archive, so keep your own copies of mail you can’t lose.
4. Who does the restore, and how?
A backup you can’t restore when you need it is only a file. Find out whether you can restore it yourself, whether the host does it for you, and whether a restore costs extra.
- Managed WordPress Hosting: you can restore a backup yourself from the WordPress hosting control panel, or open a support ticket and we restore it for you.
- Shared Web Hosting: restores are handled through the helpdesk, which is open 24/7. Our support page lists backup restores among the things support covers.
- VPS Hosting: open a helpdesk ticket saying what you need back, and we confirm the recovery point with you before anything is overwritten.
- Virtual Dedicated Servers: there is nothing to restore from unless you added backup storage or keep your own copies.
5. What does the host promise, and what doesn’t it?
Read the liability wording, not only the feature list. Many hosting terms say plainly that backups are a convenience and that you are responsible for your own. That isn’t a trick; it’s the honest position, because no backup system is perfect. Ours says the same: automated backups “do not substitute for the Client’s own backup strategy,” and we don’t guarantee that every automated backup can be recovered. Retention is the number of days or recovery points stated for your product, not an open-ended archive, and older copies are replaced as new ones are made.
So the practical rule is the same with any host: keep an independent copy of anything you can’t afford to lose, somewhere the host doesn’t control. For a small site that rarely changes, a monthly download of the site files and database, kept on your own storage, is a sensible minimum.
6. Have you ever tested a restore?
The only way to know a backup works is to restore it. Ask your host whether you can restore to a separate location, such as a staging copy or another folder, instead of over the live site, and try it with a single file or folder. Either way, do it once while nothing is wrong, so the first restore isn’t also an emergency.
A one-page checklist
| Question | What a good answer looks like |
|---|---|
| How long are backups kept? | A number of days or recovery points, per product, in writing |
| Are backups included at all? | Stated for each product, including the larger ones |
| Where are they stored? | On separate infrastructure, not the server the site runs on (RAID doesn’t count) |
| What is covered? | Files and databases at least; email stated either way |
| How do I restore? | A self-service restore, a ticket, or both, and whether it costs anything |
| What is promised? | The terms say what is included and what stays your responsibility |
| Has it been tested? | You have restored something at least once |
If your site is already broken and the backups don’t reach back far enough, that’s a different job. Our emergency malware removal is a flat-fee cleanup for a hacked site on any host, and Website Care includes backups along with a person reviewing every update before it goes live.
