Frequently Asked Questions

Back up Your Website

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Last Updated: June 19, 2015 9:58 AM

Keeping a backup of your website is a wonderful idea. It provides insurance against all types of setbacks, such as security compromises and inadvertently deleting your entire site (it happens).

We suggest backing up your site before you make changes each and every time. That way, if something goes awry, you have a fresh copy that you know is working. It might seem like a hassle, but the first time you use a backup, you're going to pat yourself on the back for having so much foresight.

Plesk lets you create backups for your hosting account and your databases separately. You can use these backups as restores, returning your account's files to previous versions of themselves.

NOTE: Plesk's backups are not portable to other hosting platforms.

To Back Up Your Plesk Shared Hosting Account

  1. Log in to your Account Manager.
  2. Click Web Hosting.
  3. Next to the account you want to use, click Manage.
  4. Click Backup Manager.
  5. Click the option you want to use:
    • Back Up creates a backup of your hosting account's files right now.1, 2
    • Scheduled Back Up Settings automates backups at a specific time for you.1, 2
    • Database Backup Repository lets you create database backups and use them as restores for your account's databases.3

To use your hosting account backups as restores, click the backup's link in the Name column.

Notes

1 The backups our accounts generate do not include either Mail or Databases. Selecting these options during a restore has no effect.

2 Do not use your own hosting account as an FTP backup repository. If you do not have a separate FTP space to store backups, just use the Server Repository

3 You can only use database backups that were created by your account. You cannot use a backup created by another account, whether it was hosted with us or another company.

After creating a backup, you can also download it.

Restores

After backing up your hosting account, you can use the backup to restore it (more info).