Backups & Restore

Regular backups protect your website from data loss. cPanel provides tools to create full and partial backups, and restore them when needed.

Types of Backups

cPanel offers two main backup approaches:

Full Backup — A complete archive of your entire hosting account, including files, databases, email accounts, and settings. Full backups can only be restored by our support team.
Partial Backups — Individual downloads of your home directory, databases, email forwarders, or email filters. These can be restored by you directly through cPanel.

Creating a Full Backup

Log into cPanel.
In the Files section, click Backup (or Backup Wizard for a guided process).
Under Full Backup, click Download a Full Account Backup.
Choose Home Directory as the backup destination to store the archive on your server.
Optionally enter an email address to receive a notification when the backup is complete.
Click Generate Backup.

Note Full backups can take several minutes to generate depending on your account size. You will receive an email notification once it is ready. The backup file will appear in your home directory as a .tar.gz file.

Downloading Partial Backups

Partial backups let you download specific parts of your account. On the Backup page, scroll to the Download a Backup section:

Home Directory Backup — Click the button to download all files in your home directory as a compressed archive.
Database Backups — Click on any listed database name to download a SQL dump of that database.
Email Forwarder Backups — Click a domain to download its email forwarder configuration.
Email Filter Backups — Click a domain to download its email filter rules.

Tip Download a copy of your database backup before making major changes to your website, such as updating plugins, themes, or running migration scripts. A database backup is usually small and quick to download.

Restoring from a Partial Backup

You can restore partial backups directly through cPanel. On the Backup page, scroll to the Restore section:

Restoring Files

Under Restore a Home Directory Backup, click Choose File.
Select the home directory backup file from your computer.
Click Upload. The files will be extracted and restored to your home directory.

Restoring a Database

Under Restore a MySQL Database Backup, click Choose File.
Select the .sql or .sql.gz database backup file.
Click Upload. The database will be restored, replacing the existing data in that database.

Warning Restoring a database backup will overwrite all existing data in that database. Make sure you are restoring the correct file to the correct database. If you are unsure, download a fresh backup of the current database first.

Restoring a Full Backup

Full account backups cannot be restored through cPanel. To restore a full backup:

Upload the full backup .tar.gz file to your home directory via File Manager or FTP.
Open a support ticket and let us know you need a full backup restored.
Our support team will restore the backup for you, typically within a few hours.

Automatic Server Backups

Ultra Web Hosting performs automatic daily backups of all hosting accounts. These backups are retained for up to 7 days. If you need a file or database restored from a server-side backup, contact our support team with the following details:

Your domain name or cPanel username.
What you need restored (specific files, a database, or the full account).
The approximate date you want to restore from.

Tip While we maintain server-side backups, we strongly recommend keeping your own off-site copies as well. Download a backup periodically and store it on your local computer or a cloud storage service.