Automatic Backups: What Is Taken, and When

Last updated September 6, 2026

Every WordPress site we installed is backed up every night, automatically, with no action from you. Those copies live in cloud storage on separate hardware from the server your site runs on, and they use none of your disk allowance.

Three kinds of backup, and this is one of them. Automatic — taken nightly, kept in our cloud, free. Manual — taken when you press the button, downloadable. Before a change — taken for you, and what Undo restores from.

Taken: Every night
Kept in: Our cloud storage
Costs you: Nothing. No disk, no money
Downloadable: No

Where to Find Them

Open your hosting account in the client area and choose Backups. The top of that screen is the two switches that decide what gets copied without you asking; underneath is every website with copies, newest first.

The Backups screen in the HostCrafter panel: switches for automatic backups and backup-before-change, and every website with copies — The Backups screen. The switch at the top says whether nightly copies are being taken; the list underneath says what exists.

Open a website to see its copies grouped by kind, with what each group costs beside it.

One website's backups, grouped into Automatic, Manual and Backup before change, each showing where it is kept and what it costs — One website’s backups. The chip on each group says where those copies live and what they are using.

The Rules, Exactly

The panel prints the real numbers for your plan under How backups work. The shape is the same on every plan:

The How backups work dialog on the Automatic tab: kept in cloud storage, uses none of your disk, the last seven kept, removed after 28 days, not downloadable — The Automatic tab of “How backups work”, which prints the figures for your own plan.

Taken every night. You do not schedule them and you cannot trigger one.
The most recent few are kept, and how many depends on your plan. Once that many exist, each new night removes the oldest.
Each copy is removed after about four weeks, whichever way the count goes.
They use none of your disk. They are not in your account’s storage, so they cannot push you over your quota or fail because you are near it.
They cannot be downloaded. They are ours, kept for restoring from. If you want a file of your own, that is a manual backup.

The limit worth knowing before you need it. If only the last few nights are kept, then a problem you notice a fortnight later cannot be undone from a nightly backup. The copies from before it happened are already gone. That is the case a manual backup exists for: take one before anything you are unsure about, and it stays until you replace it.

Restoring One

Open the website in Backups, find the copy you want by the time it was taken, and press Restore.

The Restore dialog, which takes a copy of the site as it is now before replacing it and asks for the domain typed out — Restoring asks for the domain typed out, and takes a copy of the site as it is now before it replaces anything.

Two things happen that are worth knowing:

A copy of the site as it is right now is taken first, so if you restore the wrong one you can go back to where you were.
You are asked to type the domain rather than click a generic confirmation, because a restore replaces the live files and database.

What Happens When a Website Is Deleted

Its automatic copies stay. Its manual and before-a-change copies go, because those were using your disk and you have just asked for that disk back.

That is what the Archive at the bottom of the Backups screen is: a deleted website whose nightly copies are still inside their retention window, and which can therefore be rebuilt in full, domain and files and database, from one of them. Once the last copy ages out, the website is gone for good.

What Is Not Backed Up

A WordPress you installed by hand over SFTP. We deliberately do not manage those, and the Backups screen does not list them rather than listing them beside a switch that promises something untrue.
Anything outside your websites. Mailboxes are a separate system.

Turning Them Off

You can, from the switch at the top of the Backups screen. There is very little reason to: they cost you nothing.

The confirmation for turning automatic backups off, warning that existing copies stop being refreshed — Turning nightly backups off. Copies already taken are kept, but they stop being refreshed.

Copies already taken are kept and can still be restored, but nothing new is taken, so the newest copy you can go back to gets older every day it stays off.

Questions

Do automatic backups cost extra?

No. No money and no disk. They are on every plan that includes them, and they are stored on separate hardware from the node your site runs on.

Can I choose what time they run?

No. They run overnight, on our schedule. If you need a copy at a particular moment, before a launch or before a migration, take a manual backup, which happens when you press the button.

Can I download an automatic backup?

No. Restore it to the site, or take a manual backup, which is downloadable as a single file.

How far back can I go?

To the oldest nightly copy still inside the retention window. The panel lists them all with the time each was taken, so you can see exactly how far back you can reach before you need it.

Is a backup the same as staging?

No. A backup is a point in time you can return to; a staging site is a working copy you intend to overwrite. Do not use one as the other.