Key facts
- "Daily backups" can mean anything from a month of off-site copies to one file overwritten each night on the same disk.
- A backup on the same server is lost with the server: disk failure, ransomware, suspension or a host closing down.
- Retention matters: one overnight copy only lets you go back to yesterday.
- A WordPress site is two parts, files and database, and a backup must hold both.
- Email is often backed up separately from the website, or not at all.
- Backups fail silently, so restore one to a test address now and then.
- dijihost keeps daily off-site backups for 14 days on Complete Hosting, £1 a day + VAT.
A copy on the same server is a convenience
Nearly every hosting plan sold in Britain says "daily backups" somewhere. The phrase can mean a proper copy taken away each night and kept for weeks. It can also mean one file on the same disk as your website, written over every morning at four. Both descriptions are honest. Only one of them saves you.
Snapshots stored beside your website are genuinely handy. Botch a plugin update at half four on a Friday and you can put it back in seconds. They stop helping the moment the machine itself is the problem. A failed disk takes the website and its backup together. A server compromised badly enough to encrypt or delete files does the same, and ransomware goes looking for backup folders on purpose. So does an account suspended in a billing dispute, or a host that shuts down at short notice. It is why the first thing we ask about a hacked WordPress site is which clean copies exist and how old they are.
Off-site means a copy held on separate hardware away from your server, one you could retrieve even if that server never came back on. That is the copy that matters.
How far back can you actually go?
Retention is the part that gets skipped, and it changes everything. "Daily" with one stored copy gives you a single day of history.
The disasters you spot immediately are seldom the costly ones. Somebody injects spam pages into a corner of the site and they sit there for a fortnight before your rankings sag. A form quietly stops emailing you and you find out when a customer asks why nobody rang back. A staff member deletes a batch of products and it surfaces at stocktake. In each case yesterday's copy already contains the damage.
So ask how many daily copies are kept, and whether anything older is retained on top. A run of recent days covers far more real situations than a single overnight file. Our guide on how often to back up a website goes into frequency.
Files and database, not one or the other
Your pages, posts, product descriptions, orders, users and settings live in a database. Your images, theme and plugins are ordinary files on disk. A backup has to grab both. Restore the files without the database and you get a working installation with nothing in it. Restore the database without the files and you get your words with every picture missing and the design gone.
Two other gaps are worth checking:
- Skipped media folders. Some cheap backup tools leave out large uploads folders to save storage, which is fine until that folder held eight years of photographs.
- Email. Mailboxes are often backed up on a different schedule from the website, or not at all. Ask about them specifically. Our sister site covers email hosting.
How long a restore really takes, and what it costs
The copying is usually the quick part. A small brochure site comes back in minutes. A shop with years of orders and thousands of images takes longer, because the archive travels back from off-site storage and a large database import is not instant. An hour or two is a fair expectation for something substantial.
What dominates the total is how quickly a person starts. If restoring means opening a ticket with a company that answers in two working days, your fifteen-minute restore has become a two-day outage. Some hosts also charge a fee to pull a backup for you, which is a nasty thing to learn mid-emergency. Ask two questions this week: who performs the restore, and how soon do they begin?
Every restore also costs whatever arrived after the copy was taken. On a site that gets the odd contact form, that is nothing. Where enquiries, bookings or payments arrive all day, putting yesterday's copy back takes them away with the problem. A restore on a busy site is rarely one button: put the broken part back, keep the data that arrived meanwhile, and reconcile the gap. That needs someone who understands the software as well as the server, which is a large part of what WooCommerce hosting involves.
Test one before you need one
Backups fail silently. A job stops running after a server change and keeps reporting success. A database export truncates because it hit a memory limit. Storage fills up and new copies stop being written. Each one is found on the day you need the file.
The cure is dull and effective. Restore a copy somewhere harmless, log in, click through the important pages, check the images load, and place a test order if you sell things. Once a quarter is enough to know where you stand. If you host elsewhere, one question does most of the work: when did you last restore a customer site from backup? A host who does it regularly will answer straight away.
How dijihost handles backups
Daily off-site backups are part of dijihost Complete Hosting at £1 a day + VAT. They are taken away from the machine they came from and kept for 14 days, and nobody has to opt in or remember to switch them on. When you need a restore, you ring or email and one of the people who look after the server starts on it. See our website backups page for more, or ring 01623 650333 and ask us the same questions you would ask your current host.
Frequently asked questions
What does off-site backup actually mean?
It means the copy is held on different hardware, away from the server your website runs on. If the server fails, is compromised or is switched off, the copy survives because it was never on that machine. A backup stored on the same disk as the site disappears with it, which is exactly what off-site storage prevents.
How many days of backups should a host keep?
More than one. A single overnight copy only lets you return to yesterday, and plenty of problems go unnoticed for a week or more. Several days of copies covers far more real situations. Ask any host for its retention period rather than assuming. dijihost keeps daily off-site backups for 14 days.
How long does it take to restore a website from backup?
A small site can be back in minutes. A large shop with years of orders and images may take an hour or two, because the archive comes back from off-site storage and the database import takes time. The bigger variable is how quickly a person starts work, which depends entirely on your host.
Do website backups include email?
Not automatically. Mailboxes are often backed up separately from the website, on a different schedule, and sometimes not at all on cheaper plans. If your business runs on email, ask directly what is copied, how often, and how quickly a single mailbox can be put back if it is lost.
Are a WordPress backup plugin's copies enough?
Only if they are stored off the server and you have tested a restore. Many plugins save copies to the same hosting account by default, which is lost along with the site. Plugins can also slow the site while they run. Server-level backups sent off-site, plus a periodic test restore, are the safer arrangement.
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