A Brisbane restaurant owner I worked with last year lost five years of menu photos, customer reviews, and a custom catering enquiry form when their shared hosting server failed overnight. The hosting company advertised a backup feature, but the copies sat on the same physical server that failed. The site went down and both copies went with it. Rebuilding cost more than three years of hosting fees combined. The backup plugin that would have prevented it costs AU$89 per year.
This guide covers what counts as a proper website backup, what does not, how often you should run one depending on your site type, and where to store copies so a single failure cannot take everything with it.
The hosting backup problem. Most shared hosting plans advertise automated backups, but many store copies on the same server infrastructure as your live site. When the server goes down, so do the backups. A real backup is a separate copy stored somewhere outside your hosting environment entirely.
What Counts as a Real Website Backup
A website backup has two parts: your files and your database. Files include everything that makes up the visual site - HTML, images, CSS, themes, and plugins. The database holds everything created after launch: posts, pages, products, orders, customer records, and booking history. For a static HTML site with no CMS, only the files matter. For WordPress, WooCommerce, or any site with a booking or ordering system, both parts need to be backed up together or the restore is incomplete.
Three things a real backup must have:
Stored Separately From Your Hosting
The backup needs to sit on a different physical server from a different provider. If your host gets hit by ransomware, a DDoS attack, or a plain hardware failure, your backup destination should be unaffected. A backup file on the same server as your live site is not a backup - it is a copy of your data in the same place where the problem will happen.
Complete (Files and Database)
Many hosting backup tools save only the theme folder or only the database. Losing either half makes the restore fail. When you check your backup process, confirm it captures both. For WordPress, that means the wp-content folder and a .sql database dump at minimum.
Restorable by You
If restoring requires you to lodge a support ticket with your hosting company and wait, the backup is not truly in your control. A good backup solution lets you download the files and restore to a working site without depending on the provider that just failed you.
How Often to Back Up Your Site
The right frequency depends on how often your content changes and what you can afford to lose between backups.
For a static brochure site that changes every few months, weekly backups are adequate. If the site gets corrupted on a Thursday and the last backup is from Sunday, you have lost a few days of nothing because the site had not changed.
For a blog or portfolio updated weekly, daily backups make sense. Losing a week of posts is a real cost even if it is recoverable with effort.
For an eCommerce store or booking system, daily is the minimum and hourly is better. If you process 20 bookings on a Tuesday and the database gets corrupted Tuesday night, a Monday backup means 20 lost bookings with no record of who booked, what they paid, or what date they chose.
- Brochure or static site: weekly
- Blog or content site updated regularly: daily
- eCommerce or booking system: daily minimum
- High-traffic store processing regular orders: every 1 to 4 hours
Where to Store Your Backups
The backup destination needs to be somewhere your hosting provider has no access to. The most practical options for small business websites in Australia:
Google Drive or Dropbox
Free storage that most business owners already have. WordPress plugins like UpdraftPlus connect directly to both and push backups there on a schedule. If your host goes down, your Google Drive does not. This is the right starting point for most small business sites.
Amazon S3 or Backblaze B2
Cheaper per gigabyte for larger sites or high-frequency backups. Backblaze B2 costs around US$6 per terabyte per month. Both are purpose-built for storage and widely used in professional backup setups. UpdraftPlus Premium connects to both.
A Local Download to Your Own Computer
Not a replacement for cloud storage, but a useful addition. A copy on your hard drive gives you a third location to recover from if cloud storage has a problem. Keep at least one recent copy downloaded locally for your most critical sites.
The 3-2-1 rule. IT teams use a simple standard: 3 copies of your data, on 2 different storage types, with 1 stored offsite. For a small business website that means: the live site (1), a plugin backup to cloud storage (2), and a download to your hard drive (3). You do not need to follow it exactly, but the principle is sound. More copies in more places means less risk.
Test the Restore Before You Need It
Finding out a backup is corrupt or incomplete when your site is already down is the most expensive lesson in website management. A test restore costs 30 minutes. Discovering the problem during a real outage costs days.
You do not need to break your live site to test. Most backup plugins let you restore to a staging environment, or you can install a local WordPress environment using LocalWP (free) and restore there instead.
Check three things when you run a test restore:
- Does the site load and look correct?
- Is recent content present - a post from last week, a recent order, a new product?
- Can you log in as admin with your normal credentials?
If any of those fail, your backup process has a gap. Better to find that on a quiet Tuesday afternoon than at 10pm when the site is down and bookings open the next morning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my hosting company back up my website?
Most shared hosting plans include some form of backup, but the copies are often stored on the same infrastructure as your live site. A server failure can take out both. Check your hosting terms for where backups are stored and how to restore from one. If the answer is not clear, set up your own backup to a separate cloud location.
How do I back up a WordPress site?
UpdraftPlus is the most widely used free option. Install it from the WordPress plugin directory, connect it to Google Drive or Dropbox, and set a daily schedule. It backs up your files and database separately and restores with one click. For managed WordPress hosting such as WP Engine or Kinsta, daily backups to a separate location are usually included in the plan.
What happens if I lose my website with no backup?
For a simple brochure site, rebuilding might take a few hours. For a site with years of blog posts, a product catalogue, or a database of customer orders, it means significant cost and likely permanent data loss. Some hosting providers offer server-level recovery as a paid service, but cannot guarantee results. Prevention costs far less than recovery.
How much does website backup cost?
UpdraftPlus is free for daily backups to Google Drive or Dropbox. UpdraftPlus Premium costs AU$89 per year for one site and adds remote storage options and a faster restore interface. JetPack Backup starts at AU$12 per month. For a business that relies on its website for bookings or sales, AU$89 per year is not a significant cost compared to the risk of losing everything.
Can Dukes Men set up website backups for my Brisbane business?
Yes. Dukes Men helps Brisbane small businesses set up automated website backups, including plugin configuration, remote storage connection, and a restore test to confirm everything is working. Book a free chat to talk through your current setup.
Find Out If Your Site Is Properly Backed Up
A free 30-minute chat covers whether your current hosting backup is adequate, which plugin suits your site, and what to do if you ever need to restore. You will leave with a clear plan and exact next steps.
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