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Website backups and what to ask before you need one

What it costs 6 min read

Most people find out what their website backup is really worth on the worst possible day. Here are the questions to ask now, and the answers to listen for.

Nobody thinks about backups on a normal Tuesday. They think about them at ten past four on a Friday, after an update went wrong or a page went blank, when somebody says the word backup out loud for the first time in two years and everybody looks at each other.

That is a bad moment to find out what you actually have. The questions below take one email to ask and they are worth asking today, while nothing is wrong.

A backup nobody has restored is not a backup

A file nobody has ever opened, that nobody has ever put back onto a live site, is a hope rather than a backup. Copies fail quietly. They run for eleven months and then the schedule breaks, or the folder fills, or they have been saving an empty database since March because a password changed.

The only way to know a backup works is to have restored one. So the most useful question here is when you last put a backup back, and what happened.

The three different things people call a backup

When somebody tells you the site is backed up, they could mean any of these, and they are not equal.

The host takes snapshots. Most hosting includes some version of this. It is real, and it is aimed at their disaster rather than yours. It is often kept for a short window, and getting a copy out can mean a support ticket and a wait. If the host account itself is the problem, the backups are behind the same locked door.

An add-on on the site takes copies. Common on sites built on a content system. It works until it does not, and it is running on the same site it is meant to rescue, which is a bit like keeping the spare key inside the house.

Somebody keeps copies somewhere else. A copy taken off the server and stored on a different machine entirely. This is the one that survives a hacked site, a host account closing, and a person disappearing.

Ideally you have more than one of the three. If you only have the first, you are relying on a company whose interest is the machine, not your business.

What actually has to be in it

A website is usually two things. The files, which are the pages, the pictures and the design. And the database, which is the text you edit, the settings, and any inquiries stored on the site.

A backup of the files alone will restore a site that looks right and knows nothing. A backup of the database alone restores the words with nowhere to put them. You need both, from the same moment, or the restore is a reconstruction job.

Two things not in the backup, which people assume are: your domain name and your email. Both are separate arrangements. A perfect backup does not stop a domain lapsing and does not bring back a deleted mailbox.

The questions to ask, word for word

Send these to whoever looks after your site. If that is nobody, send them to your host.

The answers that should worry you

Vagueness is the signal. "It is all backed up" with no dates, no location and no numbers is not an answer, and the person saying it usually has not checked.

Watch for copies stored on the same server as the site, because one hosting problem takes both. Watch for a window shorter than the time it takes you to notice a problem, since a quiet fault on a small site can run two weeks before anybody spots it, and a three day window has already rolled past. And watch for a restore only one particular person can perform.

None of this means you have been badly served. Backups are boring, and decent people set them up once and forget them. You are just checking.

The restore is the part that is actually hard

Taking a copy is easy and automatic. Putting it back is neither.

Somebody has to pick which copy to use, which means knowing when the problem started. If the site was quietly broken for nine days, the most recent backup is a backup of the broken site. Somebody has to be available, and websites do not break on weekdays only. And if the site was hacked rather than broken, restoring an old copy without closing the way in gets you the same problem again on Thursday.

That is why the answer to "who restores it and how fast" matters more than how often copies are taken.

When you honestly do not need to pay anyone

If your site is a few plain pages you wrote yourself, with no database, no logins and no add-ons, the real content of it is the words and the photographs. Keep those in a folder on your own computer, backed up the way you back up everything else, and you can have that site rebuilt from scratch quickly by anybody.

Take one more step and use whatever export or download the platform gives you, twice a year, and save it in the same folder. That is a genuine backup, it costs nothing, and it is more than a lot of paid arrangements produce.

The moment that stops being enough is when the site starts holding things you cannot retype: booking records, customer accounts, years of inquiries.

What we do about it

Website Care is $149 a month and backups are part of it. Copies kept off the server, and a person who does the restoring rather than sending you a link to a support article.

If you would rather hold your own copies, ask and we will show you where to get them. The site is yours from the day it is built, and that includes walking away with it.

Questions people ask

How often should a small business website be backed up?

Often enough that losing everything since the last copy would be annoying rather than serious. For most local sites that is daily, and weekly is defensible if the site rarely changes.

Does my web host already back up my site?

Usually some version, kept for a short period, aimed at their own emergencies. Treat it as a bonus rather than your plan, and ask them exactly how far back it goes.

Where should website backups be stored?

Somewhere other than the server running the site. If one problem can reach both the site and the copies, you have one thing, not two.

How long does it take to restore a website?

A prepared restore of a small site is a short job. Without a recent copy, or with a hacked site that has to be cleaned first, it becomes a rebuild and the answer changes to days.

If I have backups, do I still need security updates?

Yes. A backup gets you back to yesterday. It does nothing about the hole that got you there, and restoring without closing it just restarts the clock.

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