A WordPress site without a reliable backup strategy is a liability waiting to happen. Server failures, hacked sites, botched updates, accidental deletions, and hosting provider outages can all wipe out months or years of content, customer data, and custom development work in minutes. For agencies managing client sites, the risk is compounded. A single unrecoverable site can cost you the client relationship and damage your reputation across their network.
This guide covers the full scope of WordPress backup and disaster recovery, from choosing the right backup approach and tools to building recovery procedures that actually work under pressure. If your agency offers WordPress maintenance, this is the foundation everything else rests on.
Understanding Backup Types
Not all backups are created equal. The type of backup you use determines how fast you can recover, how much storage you need, and how much data you might lose in a disaster scenario. A professional backup strategy uses multiple types in combination.
Full Backups
A full backup captures everything: the WordPress database, all core files, themes, plugins, uploads, and configuration files like wp-config.php and .htaccess. This is your baseline. A full backup is completely self-contained, meaning you can restore an entire site from scratch using only this backup and a fresh server.
The downside is size and time. A WooCommerce site with thousands of products and images can produce full backups exceeding several gigabytes. Running full backups daily consumes significant storage and server resources. Most agencies run full backups weekly and supplement with incremental backups between them.
Incremental Backups
Incremental backups only capture changes made since the last backup. If a full backup runs on Sunday and an incremental runs on Monday, the Monday backup only contains files and database changes from that single day. This approach dramatically reduces backup size and server load.
The tradeoff is recovery complexity. Restoring from incremental backups requires the most recent full backup plus every incremental backup in sequence. If any link in this chain is corrupted or missing, the restoration fails. This makes backup verification and integrity checks even more critical when using incremental strategies.
Database-Only Backups
The WordPress database contains all dynamic content: posts, pages, comments, user accounts, plugin settings, WooCommerce orders, and form submissions. For sites where the codebase rarely changes but content updates frequently, database-only backups provide rapid, lightweight protection for the most valuable data.
Database backups are fast, often completing in seconds even for large sites, and the resulting files are small enough to store many historical copies. Running database backups every few hours provides a tight recovery point for content-heavy sites, especially ecommerce stores where every order matters.
Real-Time and Continuous Backups
For mission-critical sites, scheduled backups may not be sufficient. Real-time backup solutions like BlogVault and Jetpack VaultPress monitor database changes as they happen and back them up continuously. This reduces the recovery point objective to near zero, meaning you lose almost no data regardless of when a disaster occurs.
Real-time backups are particularly valuable for WooCommerce sites, membership platforms, and any site where transactions or user-generated content flow in throughout the day. The cost is higher than scheduled backup solutions, but for high-value sites the investment is easily justified.
Building the Backup Strategy
A complete backup strategy answers three questions. How often should backups run? Where should backups be stored? How long should backups be retained? The answers depend on the site’s profile, but there are baseline standards every agency should meet.
Backup Frequency
The right backup frequency is determined by how much data the site can afford to lose, known as the Recovery Point Objective or RPO. A blog that publishes once a week might tolerate a 24-hour RPO and daily backups. An ecommerce site processing orders around the clock needs an RPO measured in minutes, which means real-time or hourly backups.
For most agency-managed sites, a practical baseline is weekly full backups combined with daily incremental backups and hourly database backups. High-value ecommerce and SaaS sites should add real-time database backup on top of this schedule. Document the backup frequency for each client site as part of your maintenance agreement.
Offsite Storage: The Non-Negotiable Rule
Storing backups on the same server as the WordPress site defeats the purpose. If the server fails, you lose both the site and its backups. This seems obvious, but a surprising number of backup plugins default to local storage, and many agencies never change this setting.
Every backup must be stored offsite. The standard approach is cloud storage through providers like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Dropbox Business, or Wasabi. These services offer high durability, meaning the probability of losing a stored file is negligible, and they scale cost-effectively for agencies managing many sites.
For maximum resilience, follow the 3-2-1 backup rule: maintain three copies of your data, on two different types of storage media, with one copy stored offsite. In practice for WordPress, this means the live site, a backup on a different cloud provider than your hosting, and a second backup copy in a different geographic region or on a separate storage service.
Retention Policies
Keeping every backup forever is neither practical nor necessary. A well-designed retention policy balances storage costs with the ability to recover from issues that may not be discovered immediately, such as malware infections or data corruption that went unnoticed for weeks.
A solid baseline retention policy for agency-managed sites is to keep daily backups for 30 days, weekly backups for 90 days, and monthly backups for one year. This provides granular recovery options for recent issues while maintaining longer-term safety nets. For sites subject to regulatory compliance, retention periods may need to extend further based on industry requirements.
Choosing Backup Tools
The WordPress backup tool ecosystem ranges from free plugins to enterprise-grade platforms. For agencies, the right choice depends on portfolio size, budget, and operational requirements. Here is how the major options compare.
Plugin-Based Solutions
UpdraftPlus is the most widely used WordPress backup plugin, offering scheduled backups, cloud storage integration, and one-click restoration. The premium version adds incremental backups, multisite support, and migration tools. For agencies with smaller portfolios or budget constraints, UpdraftPlus provides reliable site-level backup management.
BackWPup and Duplicator Pro are alternative plugin-based options. BackWPup excels at database-level control and supports more cloud storage destinations. Duplicator Pro focuses on migration and cloning in addition to backups, making it useful for agencies that frequently move sites between environments.
Platform-Based Solutions
BlogVault, ManageWP, and MainWP offer centralized backup management across multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. These platforms are designed for agencies and provide incremental backups, offsite storage, one-click restoration, staging environments, and reporting features.
BlogVault stands out for its real-time backup capability and independent restoration process that does not depend on the live site being accessible. ManageWP, now owned by GoDaddy, offers a generous free tier with monthly backups and affordable premium backup options. MainWP is a self-hosted alternative that gives agencies complete control over their management infrastructure.
Server-Level Backups
Many managed WordPress hosts like WP Engine, Kinsta, and Flywheel include automatic daily backups as part of their hosting plans. These server-level backups are reliable and require no plugin installation, but they should complement rather than replace your agency’s backup strategy.
The limitation of host-provided backups is that they are tied to the hosting account. If you migrate away from the host or if the hosting company experiences a catastrophic failure, those backups may become inaccessible. Always maintain at least one independent backup stream that you fully control.
Building the Disaster Recovery Plan
A backup without a tested recovery plan is just a file sitting in cloud storage. The disaster recovery plan defines exactly what happens when things go wrong, who does what, and how quickly normal service is restored. Document this plan for every client site and review it quarterly.
Defining Recovery Objectives
Two metrics define your recovery targets. The Recovery Point Objective, or RPO, is the maximum acceptable data loss measured in time. An RPO of four hours means you can tolerate losing up to four hours of data. The Recovery Time Objective, or RTO, is the maximum acceptable downtime. An RTO of one hour means the site must be back online within 60 minutes of the incident being identified.
These objectives should be documented in your maintenance agreement with each client. They drive your backup frequency, tool selection, and staffing decisions. A site with a 15-minute RPO and a 30-minute RTO requires real-time backups and 24/7 on-call support. A brochure site with a 24-hour RPO and a 4-hour RTO can use daily backups and business-hours support.
Recovery Procedures by Scenario
Different disasters require different recovery approaches. Document step-by-step procedures for each common scenario so that any team member can execute them under pressure.
For a hacked site, the procedure starts with isolating the site by putting it in maintenance mode or taking it offline. Next, restore from the most recent clean backup, which requires knowing when the compromise occurred. Then harden the site by changing all passwords, updating all components, and scanning for residual malware before bringing the site back online.
For a failed update, the procedure is more targeted. If a plugin or theme update caused the issue, roll back that specific component using WP Rollback or a file-level restore. If a WordPress core update caused the issue, restore the full site from the pre-update snapshot. In both cases, document the failure and report it to the relevant developer.
For complete server failure, the procedure depends on your hosting setup. If using managed hosting with automatic failover, the host handles the infrastructure recovery and your job is to verify data integrity once the site is back online. If using unmanaged hosting, you need to provision a new server, restore files and database from offsite backup, update DNS records, and verify functionality. This scenario has the longest recovery time, which is why hosting selection matters.
Testing Your Recovery Process
An untested recovery plan is an assumption, not a plan. Schedule quarterly recovery drills where you actually restore a site from backup to a staging environment. Time the process. Verify that the restored site is fully functional. Identify bottlenecks and fix them before a real disaster forces you to find them under pressure.
Document the results of each drill, including how long the restoration took, any issues encountered, and what improvements were made. This documentation demonstrates professionalism to clients and provides evidence that their investment in maintenance is delivering real protection.
Communication During an Incident
Technical recovery is only half the job. How you communicate during a disaster defines the client’s experience and perception of your agency. Poor communication during a crisis erodes trust faster than the incident itself.
Prepare templates for three types of communication: the initial notification confirming you are aware of the issue and are working on it, periodic status updates with estimated resolution times, and the final resolution notice explaining what happened, what was done, and what preventive measures are being implemented. These templates should be ready before you need them.
The initial notification should go out within 15 minutes of identifying the issue. Clients can tolerate downtime. What they cannot tolerate is silence. Even if you do not yet know the cause or estimated recovery time, acknowledging the issue immediately demonstrates that you are on top of it.
Where a White-Label Partner Fits
Building and maintaining a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery operation requires specialized knowledge, dedicated tools, and round-the-clock availability. For agencies focused on design, strategy, or marketing, this operational overhead is a distraction from core business activities.
A white-label maintenance partner brings established backup infrastructure, tested recovery procedures, and experienced engineers who handle incidents as part of their daily workflow. Your agency sets the service level expectations and maintains the client relationship. The partner ensures that backups run reliably, storage is managed efficiently, and recovery procedures execute flawlessly when needed.
The value extends beyond cost savings. A specialized partner has likely managed hundreds of recovery events across a wide range of scenarios. That breadth of experience translates directly into faster resolution times and fewer surprises during an incident. When your client’s ecommerce site goes down at midnight, you want a team that has restored dozens of similar sites, not one figuring out the process for the first time.