How to Back Up a WordPress Site (5 Methods)

There are five reliable ways to back up a WordPress site: your host’s built-in backups, a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus, a manual backup through cPanel, a manual backup over FTP/SFTP, or the command line with WP-CLI.

For most people, a backup plugin or host-provided backups are the right answer because they run on a schedule and store copies off-site automatically.

The reason to care is simple: a backup is the difference between a five-minute fix and a lost website. A bad plugin update, a failed core upgrade, a hacked site, or a fat-fingered database query can take your site down, and a recent backup is the fastest way back.

This guide covers what a WordPress backup actually contains, how often to run one, all five methods step by step, where to store your backups, and how to restore when you need to.

What a WordPress Backup Actually Includes

A complete WordPress backup has two halves, and you need both for a working restore:

• The files. Everything in your WordPress directory: core files, your theme, your plugins, and the wp-content/uploads folder that holds every image and media file you’ve ever added.
• The database. A MySQL database that stores your posts, pages, comments, users, settings, and most plugin data. This is the part people forget, and a file-only backup will not restore your content without it.

If you only back up files, you keep your theme and uploads but lose every post and setting. If you only back up the database, you keep your content but lose your media and customizations. A real backup is both, captured at the same time.

The good news: every method below captures both halves, except the two manual methods where you grab the files and the database as separate steps. Just don’t stop after one.

How Often Should You Back Up?

The honest answer: as often as you’d hate to redo your work. Match the schedule to how often your site changes.

• Active blog or business site: daily automated backups, plus a manual one right before any plugin update, theme change, or core upgrade.
• WooCommerce or membership site: real-time or hourly backups, because every lost hour is lost orders or sign-ups.
• Static brochure site you rarely touch: weekly is fine, plus a manual backup before any change.

The one rule everyone should follow: always take a fresh backup immediately before you update anything. Updates are the single most common cause of a site breaking, and a pre-update backup turns a disaster into an undo button.

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Method 1: Use Your Host’s Built-In Backups

If you’re on a managed WordPress host (Kinsta, WP Engine, SiteGround, Cloudways, Pressable, Flywheel) you almost certainly already have automatic daily backups running. This is the easiest method because someone else set it up for you.

Log into your hosting dashboard and look for a “Backups” section. You’ll usually see a list of daily restore points going back 14 to 30 days, with a one-click restore button and often a “download backup” option to pull a copy to your own machine.

Most managed hosts also let you create a manual on-demand backup before a risky change, which is exactly what you want before updating. Check the retention period (how many days of backups are kept) and whether downloads are included, because budget shared hosts sometimes keep backups only on the same server, which is risky.

Best for: anyone on managed WordPress hosting who wants set-and-forget protection. If you’re shopping for a host, backup quality is worth weighing. See our guide to the best WordPress hosting plans.

The catch: host backups usually live on the host’s infrastructure. If your account is suspended or the host has an outage, you may lose access to both your site and its backups at the same time. That’s why the methods below (which let you keep an off-site copy) are worth layering on top.

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Method 2: Use a Backup Plugin (UpdraftPlus)

A backup plugin is the best all-around option for most WordPress sites. It runs scheduled backups automatically, captures files and database together, and (this is the important part) sends the backup to off-site storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Amazon S3.

UpdraftPlus is the most popular pick, with a capable free version. The setup looks like this:

1. Install and activate UpdraftPlus from Plugins > Add New.
2. Go to Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups and open the Settings tab.
3. Set a files schedule and a database schedule (daily is a good default), and choose how many backups to keep.
4. Pick a remote storage destination (Google Drive, Dropbox, S3) and authorize it. This is the step that gets your backup off the server. The free version connects one destination at a time; sending to several at once is a Premium feature.
5. Click Save Changes, then run a manual Backup Now to confirm it works end to end.

Restoring is just as easy: the same plugin has a Restore button next to each backup, and it puts the files and database back for you. No FTP, no phpMyAdmin.

UpdraftPlus isn’t the only option. Solid Backups (formerly BackupBuddy), BlogVault, and Duplicator are all strong, and Jetpack VaultPress Backup is the go-to for real-time backups on WooCommerce stores where every order matters.

In fact, several plugins that started as migration tools double as backup tools, since a migration is really just a backup that gets restored somewhere else. See our roundup of the best WordPress migration plugins for the overlap.

Best for: most WordPress sites, especially if your host doesn’t include backups or you want an independent off-site copy you control.

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Method 3: Manual Backup Through cPanel

If your host uses cPanel, you can back up both halves without any plugin. There are two parts: the files and the database.

Back up the files with File Manager

1. Open File Manager in cPanel and navigate to your site’s root folder (usually public_html).
2. Select all the files and folders, then click Compress and choose a Zip archive.
3. Download the resulting .zip to your computer, then delete it from the server so it doesn’t sit there taking up space.

Back up the database with phpMyAdmin

1. Open phpMyAdmin in cPanel and select your site’s database from the left sidebar. If you’re not sure which one it is, the database name is listed in your wp-config.php file under DB_NAME.
2. Click the Export tab at the top.
3. Leave the method on Quick and the format on SQL, then click Export to download a .sql file.

Store the .zip and the .sql file together, ideally with the date in the filename. Together they’re a complete backup you can restore by uploading the files and importing the SQL.

Best for: a one-time backup before a big change when you don’t want to install anything, or hosts that give you cPanel but no built-in backup tool.

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Method 4: Manual Backup Over FTP/SFTP

If your host doesn’t have cPanel but does give you FTP or SFTP access, the approach is the same idea: grab the files with an FTP client, and grab the database separately.

1. Connect to your server with an FTP client like FileZilla, using the SFTP credentials from your host.
2. Download your entire WordPress directory to a dated folder on your computer. This can take a while on image-heavy sites, since wp-content/uploads is usually the largest part.
3. For the database, use phpMyAdmin if your host provides it, or ask your host how to access database exports. Some provide a separate database management panel.

FTP backups are slower than every other method here because you’re transferring every file one at a time over the network. They’re most useful as a belt-and-suspenders copy, or when you specifically want a raw, uncompressed copy of your files on your own drive.

Best for: hosts without cPanel, or anyone who wants a plain file-level copy they can browse directly.

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Method 5: Back Up with WP-CLI (Command Line)

If you have SSH access and you’re comfortable on the command line, WP-CLI is the fastest way to back up a site. It exports the database directly and lets you archive the files in one command.

Export the database to a .sql file:

# Export the database to a dated SQL file
wp db export backup-$(date +%F).sql

Then archive the whole site directory (which sweeps up the SQL file you just created along with all your files):

# From one level above your WordPress folder
tar -czf site-backup-$(date +%F).tar.gz wordpress/

To restore the database later, import the SQL file back in:

# Restore the database from a SQL file
wp db import backup-2026-05-30.sql

The big advantage of WP-CLI is automation. You can drop those two export commands into a shell script and run it on a schedule with a real server cron job, which is more reliable than WordPress’s built-in WP-Cron for time-critical tasks.

Best for: developers and anyone managing multiple sites who wants scriptable, repeatable backups.

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The 5 Methods Compared

Method	Difficulty	Automated?	Off-site by default?	Best for
Host backups	Easiest	Yes	No (host servers)	Managed hosting users
Backup plugin	Easy	Yes	Yes (Drive, S3, etc.)	Most sites
cPanel	Medium	No	Yes (you download it)	One-off manual backups
FTP/SFTP	Medium	No	Yes (you download it)	Hosts without cPanel
WP-CLI	Advanced	Scriptable	Depends on script	Developers, multi-site

For most people the answer is a backup plugin, or host backups plus an occasional manual download. The manual and WP-CLI methods are excellent for one-off pre-update safety nets and for developers who want full control.

Where to Store Your Backups (the 3-2-1 Rule)

A backup that lives only on the same server as your site is barely a backup. If that server fails or your account is suspended, the backup goes down with it. The widely used standard for storage is the 3-2-1 rule:

• 3 copies of your data (the live site counts as one).
• 2 different storage types (for example, your host plus cloud storage).
• 1 copy off-site, somewhere physically separate from your web server.

In practice, that’s easier than it sounds. A backup plugin sending daily copies to Google Drive or Dropbox satisfies the off-site requirement automatically. Pair that with your host’s own backups and you’re already at three copies across two locations.

How to Restore from a Backup

A backup is only as good as your ability to restore it, so know your path back before you need it. The method depends on how you backed up:

• Host backup: use the one-click restore in your hosting dashboard and pick the restore point you want.
• Backup plugin: open the plugin, find the backup, and click Restore. UpdraftPlus and the others rebuild the files and database for you.
• Manual (cPanel or FTP): upload the files back to the server, then import the .sql file into the database through phpMyAdmin’s Import tab.

One smart habit: test a restore occasionally on a separate environment rather than your live site. A WordPress staging site is the perfect place to confirm your backups actually work, without risking production. A backup you’ve never tested is a guess, not a guarantee.

Restoring a backup is also the foundation of cloning a WordPress site: a clone is just a backup restored to a new location.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping Up

The best backup method is the one you’ll actually keep running. For most people that’s a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus on a daily schedule with off-site storage, or managed host backups paired with the occasional manual download. Both give you a recent restore point without thinking about it.

Whatever you choose, capture files and database together, store at least one copy off-site, and always take a fresh backup before you update anything. Then test a restore once so you trust it.

For the bigger picture, see our guides to WordPress staging sites and the best WordPress migration plugins, which round out the backup, test, and move workflow.