Downloading a full backup of your website

Your own copy, on your own computer, in about five minutes. The single best insurance policy for a website.

Category: Backups & Restores Difficulty: Easy Time: ~5 minutes + download time Updated: Aug 2026

We run routine server backups for disaster recovery, but those exist to save the server — not to be your personal undo button. Keeping your own copy means a broken update or a bad edit is a quick restore instead of a rebuild.

How often? Before any big change (updates, redesigns, plugin installs), and otherwise monthly for a site that changes rarely, weekly if you publish often or take orders.

Full backup (recommended)

Open Backup in cPanel

cPanel › Files

📁File Manager

💾Backup

🔄Backup Wizard

🔑FTP Accounts

Backup, not Backup Wizard — it gives you more control

Generate a full backup

Click Download a Full Account Backup, leave the destination as Home Directory, enter your email address so you are notified when it finishes, and click Generate.

This packages your files, databases, email accounts and settings into one archive. Large sites can take several minutes.

Download the file

When the notification arrives, return to the Backup page (or File Manager) and download the .tar.gz file to your computer. Do not leave it sitting on the server — a backup stored on the same server it is backing up protects you from very little.

Store it somewhere sensible

Cloud storage or an external drive, with the date in the filename. Keep the last three or so, and delete the copy from your hosting account afterwards to free up disk space.

Partial backups

Sometimes you only need one piece. The same Backup page offers separate downloads for:

Home Directory — all your website files
MySQL Databases — content for WordPress and similar systems (a WordPress site needs both files and database)
Email Forwarders & Filters — your mail routing rules

WordPress users: a files-only backup will not restore your posts, pages or settings — those live in the database. Always take both, or take the full account backup.

Restoring

Restoring a full account backup is something we handle for you — email support with the file or tell us the date you want restored. Partial restores of a database or a folder can be done from the same Backup page by uploading the relevant file.

If you are on a Website Maintenance plan, dedicated daily backups and restores are included and we simply roll you back on request.

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