"Daily backups" appears on every hosting feature list, yet every month a business loses a site because the backups turned out to be — technical term — a bit hopeful. Here's what a real backup setup looks like, in plain English, so you can audit your own host instead of trusting the feature list.
The three questions that matter
- Where do they live? A backup stored on the same server as the site isn't a backup — it's a copy that dies with the original. Real backups live off-site, somewhere the server can't reach out and delete.
- How far back do they go? Yesterday's backup protects against a bad update. Two to four weeks of history protects against the quieter disaster: a hack that's been quietly poisoning your site for twelve days before anyone noticed.
- Has anyone ever restored one? An untested backup is a hope, not a plan. If your host can't describe the restore process in one sentence, that's your answer.
What a backup actually contains
A WordPress backup is two things, always both: the files (your theme, plugins, and the uploads folder — every image you've ever posted) and the database (every post, page, comment, user and setting). Files-only or database-only backups are half a parachute. Email, if your host provides it, needs its own strategy — another reason "where does email live?" belongs in your hosting questions.
The 3-2-1 rule, translated
The old sysadmin rule still holds: three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one off-site. For a small business site that usually means: the live site, the host's daily backups, and one independent copy — an export you keep yourself, or a separate backup service. The copy you control is the one nobody's terms of service can take away.
A five-minute self-audit
- Ask your host where backups are stored and how long they're kept.
- Ask how you'd restore one yourself — and what it costs.
- Download a full export today (Tools → Export for content, plus a files backup) and keep it somewhere safe.
- Diarise a restore test once a year. Once is enough to know.
DomainCastle plans include daily off-site backups with weeks of history and a one-click restore — and yes, we test restores. If your current host's answers to the questions above were fuzzy, the plans are here and migrations are free. While you're at it, read what else managed hosting should include — backups are just one pillar.
