There are many reasons why backing up your website is extremely important. Think of it as an insurance policy. If you own a brick and mortar business, you know you need insurance against vandalism, fire, or other catastrophes. The same is true for a website. It needs to be protected against hackers, server malfunctions, hosting company’s errors, accidental deletion by an employee, and so forth.

Sometimes even the best protection plan does not prevent issues from happening on your website. This is when you need a clean and complete backup you or your webmaster can restore quickly.

The easiest way to do backups is with your hosting company. All reputable hosting companies now offer backup plans that are usually very inexpensive. For instance at the time of this post, GoDaddy’s backup plan was only $2 per month! When you signed up with your hosting provider, that service might not have been available so contact them to find out if it can be added.

It is possible you need your webmaster to assist you in setting up the backup plan. Typically this type of work has to do with providing the hosting company the configuration and connection codes to the database. Not sure if your site has a database? If it has a content management system, it has a database. This is where your content is stored so it is important to make sure the backup plan backs it up correctly.

For many companies, a website is a crucial part of your business and should be protected as much as possible. Having full backups of your site gives you the piece of mind you deserve.