How to Back Up a WordPress Site for Free (and Make Sure You Can Restore It)

Beingtricky.com runs on Hostinger shared hosting, so that’s the setup this guide follows. The steps for the plugin and the manual method work on any host, and most hosts have a backup screen similar to hPanel’s.

What does a complete WordPress backup include?

WordPress stores your site in two separate places, and backing up one doesn’t back up the other. WordPress’s own documentation points this out: copying your files doesn’t include the database, which holds every post, comment and setting.

WordPress core files (the wp-admin and wp-includes folders) can always be downloaded again from WordPress.org, so they matter less. Most backup tools include them anyway.

How often should you back up WordPress?

WordPress’s documentation suggests weekly backups for a quiet site and daily backups for a busy one, and always a fresh backup before you update WordPress, a theme or a plugin. It also recommends keeping 3 to 5 recent backups in different places: one on your hosting server, one in cloud storage, and one on your own computer.

A sensible free schedule for a small blog is a daily database backup (it’s small and changes whenever you publish or get comments) and a weekly files backup, plus a manual one before every update.

Method 1: your host’s backups (Hostinger hPanel)

Hostinger backs up hosting accounts automatically. According to Hostinger’s documentation, automatic backups run weekly by default, and daily on plans that include daily backups. Backups cover the files in public_html and your MySQL databases, but not email mailboxes.

1. Log in to hPanel and go to Websites, then click Dashboard next to your site.
2. In the left sidebar, open Backups (under Files). You’ll see a list of backups with their dates.
3. To make a backup now, click Generate backup. Hostinger allows one new backup every 24 hours, and on entry-level plans this option asks you to upgrade to Business or higher.
4. To keep a copy yourself, click Download next to a backup. It comes as a .zip or .tar.gz file.
5. To restore, pick the backup, click Restore, and choose files only, database only, or the full backup.

Host backups are convenient, but they live with your host. If your hosting account is suspended, hacked, unpaid or deleted, the backups can go with it. That’s why you need at least one copy somewhere else.

Method 2: back up WordPress site to Google Drive with UpdraftPlus (free)

UpdraftPlus is one of the most widely used backup plugins, and its free version covers what a small site needs: scheduled backups of files and database, sending them to cloud storage, and restoring from inside your WordPress dashboard.

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin, search for UpdraftPlus, then click Install Now and Activate.
2. Go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups and open the Settings tab.
3. Set the Files backup schedule (for example weekly) and the Database backup schedule (for example daily), and choose how many backups to keep for each.
4. Under Choose your remote storage, click Google Drive (or Dropbox), then click Save Changes at the bottom.
5. Follow the prompt to sign in to Google and allow UpdraftPlus to save files to your Drive.
6. Back on the Backup / Restore tab, click Backup Now, leave both the database and files ticked, and start the backup.
7. When it finishes, check the backup appears under Existing backups and that the files arrived in the UpdraftPlus folder in your Google Drive.

Method 3: a manual backup without a plugin

Worth knowing even if you use a plugin, because it works when nothing else does, for example when the dashboard won’t load.

1. In hPanel, open Databases → phpMyAdmin and enter phpMyAdmin for your site’s database.
2. Select the database, click Export, keep Quick and SQL selected, and click Export to download a .sql file.
3. Open File Manager, go to public_html, compress the wp-content folder into a zip, and download it together with wp-config.php. An SFTP app works too.
4. Put the SQL file, the zip and wp-config.php in one folder named with the date.

Where should you keep your backup copies?

The simple rule is 3-2-1: 3 copies of your site, on 2 different kinds of storage, with 1 away from your server. For a small WordPress site, that can be:

• the live site plus your host’s automatic backups;
• UpdraftPlus copies in Google Drive or Dropbox;
• a monthly download on your own computer, which you can include in your normal Windows PC backup.

Protect the cloud account that holds your backups as well as you protect WordPress itself. Turn on two-step verification or set up passkeys for that Google or Dropbox account.

Test your restore before you need it

A backup you’ve never restored is a guess. A test restore tells you three things: the backup is complete, you know the steps, and roughly how long a real restore will take. Never run your first test on the live site.

Option A: a Hostinger staging site

Hostinger’s WordPress staging tool makes a private copy of your site on a subdomain. In hPanel, open your WordPress site, click Staging, then Create staging. Hostinger says it can take up to 15 minutes. Staging is plan-gated, so entry-level plans see an upgrade prompt.

Option B: a test subdomain

If staging isn’t on your plan, create a subdomain such as test.yoursite.com in hPanel and install a fresh copy of WordPress on it. Restoring your backup over that empty install is a realistic test.

Restore the backup on the test site

1. Install and activate UpdraftPlus on the staging or test site.
2. In Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups → Settings, connect the same Google Drive account, then on the Backup / Restore tab click Rescan remote storage. Or download the backup files and use Upload backup files.
3. Click Restore next to the backup, tick the database, plugins, themes, uploads and others, and click Restore again to start.
4. Because the address is different, UpdraftPlus treats this as a migration. TeamUpdraft says the free version’s search-and-replace updates the old site address to the new one.
5. Log in with your live site’s username and password, because the restored database replaces the test site’s users.
6. Check a few posts, images, menus and forms, and note how long the restore took.

When you’re done, make sure search engines can’t index the copy (Settings → Reading → Search engine visibility), and delete the staging site or subdomain so you don’t leave an old, unpatched copy of your site online.

If a backup or restore fails

• Backup stops partway on shared hosting: shared servers limit how long a task can run. Exclude cache folders, and back up the database and files on separate schedules so each job is smaller.
• Server disk is filling up: plugins build the backup on your server before uploading it. Check old backups in wp-content/updraft are being removed once they’re in the cloud, and lower the number of backups kept.
• Backups stopped reaching Google Drive: the connection can expire. Re-authorise Google Drive in UpdraftPlus settings and run Backup Now to confirm.
• Restore fails partway: restore the database and files separately, check you have enough free disk space, and try again. UpdraftPlus can resume after a timeout.
• Nothing works and the site is down: use your host’s restore in hPanel, or the manual SQL and zip files from Method 3.

More guides for running a small site are in our WordPress section.

FAQ

Sources

• Backups (WordPress Advanced Administration Handbook)
• Backups (Hostinger Documentation)
• How to restore backups at Hostinger (Hostinger Help Center)
• Staging (Hostinger Documentation)
• UpdraftPlus: Free vs Premium (TeamUpdraft)
• How to back up with UpdraftPlus (TeamUpdraft)
• Restore a WordPress site with UpdraftPlus (TeamUpdraft)
• UpdraftPlus Releases Free WordPress Migration Features (TeamUpdraft)