If your iPhone gets lost, how do you get back all the information on it? By accessing your iCloud account on a new device. If your website crashed today and you lose all your files, how do you recover them? By accessing your website backups.
Even though you have taken all the necessary precautions to secure your website, you can still lose vital information through no fault of yours. So, the wise thing to do is regularly create website backups so you don’t have to rebuild your website from scratch.
Website backups create copies of all website files, including your customer emails, content and articles, web pages, and codebase file, and store the information in a secure database. Without backups, you can permanently lose them, meaning you lose your business, and you don’t want that to happen.
Fortunately, when you sign up on a reputable web hosting platform, the plans usually include free automated backups. Moreover, you can also sign up for an off-site website backup service for additional protection.
In this article, we will explain why website backups are essential and the best website backup solution you can use to guarantee website file security.
Why are Website Backups Important?
As mentioned, website backups guarantee that your website files are safe. For instance, if you run a $20k/month blog, you sure don’t want anything to mess with it. Here’s where automated and off-site backups come into play.
Discover all the reasons why website backups are important.
Prevents Permanent Loss of Website Files
Website files are a combination of all the individual pieces of your website. They include your hosting files, articles/content, forums, comments, codebase, images, records, emails, and everything else stored on your website.
If your website crashes for any reason, you lose all this data. And unfortunately, losing your website files can be the definitive end of your website.
However, if you back them up regularly, you can prevent permanent website loss. With a proper backup system in place, you can swiftly recover from a crash and restore your website to its prior state, minimizing downtime and potential revenue loss.
Guarantees Safety from Malware and Hackers
If your website contains valuable information like credit card details, chances are cybercriminals are constantly looking for ways to hack your website. They want access to this information, and they may succeed sometimes.
Fortunately, a trusted web host can help you lower and even eliminate these risks.
An even smarter move is to store information like that on an off-site website backup server and only use them when needed. This way, your most vital data will remain safe from malware even if your website is compromised.
Acts as a Safety Net for Human Errors
Humans are prone to mistakes. For example, you may mistakenly delete an important part of your website.
Fortunately, if this happens, you can easily retrieve the lost piece from your backup files and reinstall it. This can be anything from a plugin to the password of your control panel.
Ensures Quick and Seamless Data Recovery
If you are making $1k a day from your website, you don’t want it to go off for any reason. Unfortunately, your security protocols depend on the web host and various security plugins, which means your website can still crash.
In this case, you can quickly restore your website within hours, thanks to website backups.
Makes Migration Easier
Quick and seamless data recovery might involve migrating from one hosting provider to another. Backing up all your website details will make it easier for you to onboard it on another platform.
At AltusHost, we offer a free migration service in all web hosting plans. So, if you are hosted elsewhere, feel free to contact us. We’ll migrate your website free of charge to our servers.
Types of Website Backup Solutions
There are different types of website backup solutions. The major ones include manual, automated, incremental, and off-site backups. And, of course, all of them have their pros and cons.
- Manual Website Backups – This involves creating copies of website files manually. There are no tools or automation involved in the process, which makes it easy to customize your backup requirements. However, manual website backup is usually time-consuming, technical, and not worth the stress. Moreover, you can lose significant amounts of data and updates if you forget to perform the backup.
- Automated Website Backups – This backup process is scheduled in advance and is carried out automatically. It does not require any human input because it uses plugins to process convenient and consistent backups. Most hosting providers offer automated backups as part of their hosting packages. However, they are still linked to an active server which means the backup files can be compromised.
- Incremental Website Backups – This kind of backup only modifies data that has changed since the last upload. It means that it doesn’t upload new data from scratch. Instead, it uploads only the data recently changed. Cloud storage backups like Google and Amazon use this system to help customers save more data.
- Off-site Website Backups – Off-site website backup is the safest solution. You get to save your data in an off-site location, meaning all your files are safe in a vault, and you can access them anytime. Off-site backups could be on cloud storage or a separate remote server. The disadvantage is they may include costs associated with data transfer and storage and potential latency issues when restoring data.
The Best Website Backup Solution
We offer fully encrypted, cloud-hosted, off-site backups on our powerful Storage Servers in Amsterdam, Netherlands. For as low as $14.95, you can get 100GB of storage space to secure your website files and access them anytime.
Moreover, if you run multiple websites or need to store more information, you can upgrade and secure up to 7TB of data at just under $200 per month. If you are already making thousands of dollars from your website every month, this is a small price to pay for long-term stability and peace of mind.
Source: https://www.altushost.com/remote-backups/
Tips for Effective Website Backups
Website backups will only be as effective as you set them up to be. You need to follow specific steps to ensure all your website files are fully secure.
Use Multiple Backup Solutions
Most hosting providers already provide automatic daily backups. However, you can still store your website on cloud and remote storage servers for double protection. This means you will never lose access to your core files regardless of whatever happens to your website or your web host’s servers. You’ll always have a plan B!
Schedule Your Backups
Make sure to routinely schedule your backups so you don’t pile up too much-unsaved data. Ideally, you should set your automatic backups at one to three days. After that, you can upload to the cloud and remote storage servers once every two weeks.
Ensure the Backup is Comprehensive
Ensuring the backup is comprehensive is what makes website backups so important. You need to save every detail of your files. If your website crashes for any reason, you can get back to exactly where you left off.
Ensure Every Backup Is Successful
Double-check to ensure every website is successful. If you are saving your files on the cloud, try refreshing to ensure the file saves. If it’s a remote server, try accessing recently saved files and see if your latest update is there.
Also, check on your automatic update periodically.
Validate Your Backup Files Regularly
While regularly backing up your website is critical, it’s equally important to routinely verify that your backups are functioning as intended.
Remember: Just because a backup process completes without error messages does not necessarily mean the backup files are valid and can be restored.
Periodically test your backup files by restoring them in a separate, controlled environment to ensure they’re working as expected. This practice helps you identify any potential issues before you need to rely on these backups in a critical situation. It’s a simple step that can save you from potential headaches down the line.
The Bottom Line
Website backup plans are the last piece of the website project puzzle. After you successfully set up your website and host it, you need to safeguard every piece of data. The best plan is to subscribe to an off-site website backup solution to help secure your website.
Feel free to contact us for dedicated storage servers if you want the best security.
