Back up your website as often as it changes, and always before an update. A brochure site that changes once a month needs at least weekly backups, and daily costs little more. A busy blog needs daily backups. An online store or booking site needs hourly or real-time backups, because every gap is orders you could lose.
Key takeaways
- The right frequency is the amount of work you can afford to lose. Work back from that.
- WordPress’s own guidance: weekly for small sites, daily for busy ones. Online stores need more.
- Take a manual backup before every update, redesign or plugin change.
- Frequency is only half of it. Backups also need to be off-site, kept long enough and tested.
How do I work out how often to back up?
Ask one question: if the site broke right now, how much new work could you afford to lose? That answer is your recovery point. NIST defines a recovery point objective as “the point in time to which data must be recovered after an outage” (NIST).
If losing a week of changes would be annoying but survivable, weekly backups work. If losing a single afternoon of orders would hurt, you need backups every hour or better. The backup schedule should follow the business, not the other way round.
How often should each type of site be backed up?
WordPress’s own documentation suggests weekly backups “for smaller websites with fewer posts” and daily backups for high-activity sites (WordPress Developer Resources). Sites that take orders or bookings need more again.
| Type of site | What changes | Back up at least |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure site | Occasional page edits, form entries | Weekly; daily is better |
| Blog or news site | New posts, comments, subscribers | Daily |
| Membership or bookings site | Accounts, bookings, payments | Several times a day |
| Online store | Orders, stock levels, customer accounts | Hourly or real time |
| Any site, before changes | Updates, new plugins, redesign work | A manual backup every time |
Real-time backup tools save changes as they happen, such as each new order. They suit busy stores, where even an hour’s gap means lost sales records.
What does backing up too rarely cost?
Picture a store backed up once a night. At 3pm, an update breaks the checkout and the database has to be restored. Every order, new customer account and stock change since midnight is gone. You’d be rebuilding orders from payment emails and apologising to customers.
A hack makes it worse. Sucuri found backdoors on 49% of compromised sites (Sucuri). Malware can sit unnoticed for weeks, so recent backups may be infected too. You need frequent backups for fresh data and older copies for a clean starting point. Our guide to backup retention explains how long to keep them. If a hack has already happened, hacked website repair starts with finding a clean copy.
Does frequency matter if the backups are on the same server?
Frequent backups don’t help if they’re lost with the site. A copy stored on the same server can disappear in the same hardware failure, hack or account suspension. Keep at least one copy off-site. WordPress’s guidance suggests keeping several recent backups in different places.
Server snapshots are useful but different. Our explainer on website backup vs snapshot covers when each one helps. And if you’re relying on your host’s schedule, check what it really covers: does my host back up my website sets out the questions to ask.
How do I check my backups run often enough?
- Find the schedule. Check your backup plugin or hosting dashboard for how often backups run.
- Check the last one. Confirm the most recent backup has today’s date and finished without errors.
- Check it has both parts. WordPress needs the database and the files to restore fully.
- Check where it’s stored. At least one copy should be off the server.
- Test a restore. Restore to a staging copy every few months. A backup you’ve never restored is a guess.
How we handle website backups
Our website backups you can restore come with every Maintain & Protect plan, with the frequency set by the plan:
- Essentials: daily backups, suited to brochure sites.
- Advantage: four backups a day, for active sites and bookings, with unlimited restores (fair use).
- Elite: hourly backups, for online stores, plus checkout and payment gateway checks.
All backups are kept for 30 days and stored off-site. Compare the full website maintenance plans to see what else each one covers.
Frequently asked questions
Is a daily website backup enough?
For most brochure sites and blogs, yes. For an online store or booking site, a daily backup can mean losing a full day of orders or bookings in a restore. Those sites need hourly or real-time backups.
What is a real-time backup?
A backup that records changes as they happen, such as each new order or post, instead of on a fixed schedule. It keeps data loss close to zero, which makes it most useful for busy online stores.
Should I back up before every update?
Yes. Updates are one of the most common reasons a site needs restoring. A fresh backup taken just before the update lets you roll back without losing anything that happened earlier that day.
How long should I keep website backups?
At least several weeks. Malware can hide for a long time before anyone notices, so the newest backups may already be infected. Keeping 30 days or more gives you a better chance of finding a clean copy.
Does my web host back up my site automatically?
Many do, but check how often, how long copies are kept, where they’re stored and whether restores cost extra. Host backups are often stored on the same infrastructure, so keep your own off-site copy as well.
Sources
- Recovery point objective (glossary), NIST Computer Security Resource Center, from NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1
- WordPress Backups, WordPress Developer Resources
- 2023 Hacked Website and Malware Threat Report, Sucuri, June 2024