How often should a business website be backed up?

Frequency should follow what you would lose. An online store in Islamabad receiving orders every day holds new customer details, order records and stock changes every hour, so a week-old backup would lose a week of business. A clinic site whose pages change only when timings or doctors change can be backed up less often, as long as a backup is taken before and after each edit. Any site should be backed up just before software updates, so a broken update can be undone in minutes.

Where you keep backups matters as much as how often. Many hosting plans include backups, but they sit on the same company's systems, sometimes the same server, as your site. If the account is suspended, hacked or lost in a billing dispute, those backups may go with it. Keep at least one copy elsewhere, such as cloud storage in your own account, and keep several versions going back weeks, since a hack or mistake may not be noticed immediately and the latest backup could already contain the problem.

Finally, check that backups actually work. A backup that has quietly failed for months, or one that only saved the files but not the database, is discovered only at the worst moment. Restore to a test location every few months and confirm the site loads, forms work and orders are present. For sites we build under the Business bundle, backups are automatic, stored off-site in a location you can access, and tested. For sites built elsewhere, our maintenance service sets this up after an initial review.