Learn How to Easily Back Up a WordPress Site for Free

Here’s how to back up your WordPress website the easy way in just four steps:

1. Navigate to Plugins From Your Dashboard

Shortcut: Dashboard > Plugins > Add New

If you haven’t done so already, log in to your website’s dashboard. From here, navigate to the list of plugins by clicking on “Plugins” in the left column and then clicking “Add New” at the top of the page.

2. Install & Activate a Backup Plugin

Shortcut: Search “UpdraftPlus” > Install > Activate

Next you’ll install a backup plugin. We recommend using UpdraftPlus because of its ease of use and its powerful free features. In the search bar on the right-hand side of the screen, search “updraftplus” to find the UpdraftPlus WordPress backup plugin.

There are other good WordPress backup plugin options for you to choose from. If you want to see more options, check out our list of the best backup plugins for WordPress. But for this example, we’ll use UpdraftPlus.

3. Run Your First Backup

Shortcut: Settings > UpdraftPlus > Backup Now

Activate the UpdraftPlus plugin and then click on “Press Here to Start.” Next, click on the big blue “Backup Now” button and click “Backup Now” in the pop-up window. Alternatively, you can navigate to Settings, click on “UpdraftPlus Backups,” and under the “Backup / Restore” tab, click on the big blue “Backup Now” button.

Depending on the size of your website, your backup may require anywhere from just a few to several minutes to process. Once the backup process is complete, you’ll see a “The backup has finished running” message to let you know your site has been successfully backed up.

4. Configure WordPress Backup Preferences

Shortcut: Dashboard > Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups > Settings Tab

The last step is to configure your backup preferences. To do this, navigate to “Settings” from your dashboard and click on “UpdraftPlus Backups.”

Click on the “Settings” tab in the horizontal menu at the top of the screen. Here, you can schedule backups for your files and databases. We recommend that you back up both automatically at least once a week. However, if you update your website daily or even several times a day, you might want to do daily backups.

To set up your backup schedule, select “Manual” from the drop-down menus and choose the appropriate frequency. Then, select how many archived backups you want to keep; two or three is standard, giving you more than one in case you need to go further back in time or one of the backups doesn’t work.

Finally, choose where your backups will be stored, such as on your Google Drive. Select the appropriate remote storage icon at the bottom of the screen and follow the prompts to connect your storage account to UpdraftPlus.

This ensures your backups are automatically stored in a secure location you can easily access from anywhere. If you don’t set a remote storage location, the files will be stored locally on your computer or file server. Once you set up your frequency and select your storage location, you’ve successfully automated the process of backing up your website.

Be in the Know: How to Restore From UpdraftPlus

To restore your business website from backups created automatically by UpdraftPlus, go to WordPress “Settings” and then select “UpdraftPlus Backups.” Scroll down to your backups and then click “Restore” to open the Restoration Wizard.

Outside of backup plugins, third-party services like ManageWP exist to make the backup process easy and less intimidating. We recommend ManageWP because of its ease of use and its off-site, secure storage of your backups.

1. Install the ‘ManageWP Worker’ Plugin by GoDaddy

Shortcut: Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > Search: “ManageWP Worker”

Navigate to the plugins section by clicking on “Plugins” and then click on the “Add New” button. Search for “ManageWP Worker,” then install and activate the plugin. Next you’ll create a free account to allow ManageWP to back up your website.

2. Sign Up for ManageWP

Visit ManageWP and sign up for an account. It’s fast and it’s free.

3. Add Your Website

Once you’ve signed up for ManageWP, follow the directions and add your first website.

4. Activate Backups

From the ManageWP dashboard, click on “Backups.” On the next page, click on “Activate Backups” and on the pop-up, click on “Activate” in the “Free” section.

Once you’ve clicked on the button, the backup process begins immediately. ManageWP will back up your site once each month with the free version. However, for just $2 per month, you can use ManageWP to back up your WordPress site every week or even every day.

Be in the Know: How to Restore From ManageWP

To restore your business website from ManageWP, click on your website, then click on “Backups,” and “Restore Backup.”

The third free way to back up a WordPress website is to do a manual backup. This involves downloading both your WordPress files and your website’s database to your local computer or file server. For this, you’ll need some technical knowledge and access to your web hosting platform’s cPanel account.

Note: Because of the technical know-how required, we strongly recommend that you use plugins or third-party backup services vs manually backing up your site, especially if you’re more of a beginner.

Here’s how to manually backup a WordPress site for free in five steps:

1. Find Your Database Management System (phpMyAdmin)

Shortcut: cPanel Dashboard > phpMyAdmin

Within your cPanel dashboard, find and click on “phpMyAdmin.”

2. Export Your Database to Your Computer or Local Server

Select the database your WordPress installation is currently using (if you only have one WordPress installation on your account, you will only see one database). Once selected, click on the “Export” tab and then click on “Go.”

A Structured Query Language (SQL) file will be downloaded to your computer. (SQL is the language to extract and organize the data in a relational database.) You may also have the option to download your database in a ZIP file that compresses it, making it faster to download if you have a large database.

3. Find Your File Manager

Shortcut: cPanel Dashboard > File Manager

Go back to the cPanel dashboard and find and click “File Manager.”

4. Compress Your WordPress Page Files & Folders

On the left, select “public_html” to bring up all the page files and folders your WordPress installation uses. Depending on your hosting provider, “public_html” may be called “htdocs” or “WWW” instead. Select all the files you need to copy and click on “Download.” In most cases, you’ll be offered the option to compress the files into a ZIP file (or it may automatically be done for you).

5. Download the ZIP File

Shortcut: Select File > Download

Once the ZIP file is created, select the file and click on the “Download” button to download the file to your computer. Once downloaded, we recommend you delete the ZIP file within the hosting provider’s File Manager (not the one you downloaded to your computer or local server) if you need to conserve your storage space.

When both your database and WordPress files have been downloaded, you’ve successfully backed up your WordPress installation files and database to your computer.

When cPanel Is Not Available

If your provider does not give you cPanel or a similar control panel, you will need to use a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) app like FileZilla to connect to your account and download the files. Read your web hosting provider’s knowledge base help files to connect to your website files, and then download your files and database using FTP or SFTP.

Be in the Know: How to Restore From a Manual Backup

Restoring a WordPress website from a manual backup requires technical knowledge, specifically phpMyAdmin to restore the database. Because of this, we highly recommend you use an alternate method of backing up unless you have experience using phpMyAdmin and MySQL (the database service) experience.

Here are the basic steps to restoring your WordPress website from a manual backup:

Step 1: Delete All Files

Visit your File Manager and delete all the files from the “public_html” folder (or the folder your provider assigned to be used for your WordPress installation).

Step 2: Upload Your ZIP File

Upload the original ZIP file you downloaded to your File Manager. Once uploaded, select the file and click on the “Extract” button to restore all the files into the folder. Delete the original ZIP file to conserve your storage space.

Step 3: Upload Your Database File

Visit your phpMyAdmin and select your database. Find the “Import” tab and upload either the SQL or ZIP file you downloaded. Scroll down and click on the “Go” button.

Note: This is where the technical knowledge comes in. If you receive an error message, you will need to know MySQL commands in order to correct it.

Once the database file is accepted and the files are uploaded, you have successfully restored your manual backup.