How to Backup WordPress for Free (2026 Guide)
Last updated: April 2026 | Estimated read time: 10 minutes
Imagine waking up tomorrow and your entire website is gone. Every blog post you spent hours writing, every product page, every customer review, every photo — wiped out overnight. It sounds dramatic, but WordPress site owners search for how to backup their WordPress website for free every day, usually after something already went wrong.
The good news? It takes less than 10 minutes, costs nothing, and you do not need any technical experience. The most beginner-friendly method uses a free plugin (a small add-on for WordPress) called UpdraftPlus, which does most of the work for you automatically.
This guide walks you through two free methods — the easy plugin way and the manual way — so you can choose what works best for you.
TL;DR — Quick Summary
- ✅ Easiest free method: Install the UpdraftPlus plugin and back up to Google Drive in under 10 minutes
- ✅ Manual free method: Download your files via cPanel and export your database via phpMyAdmin
- ✅ Golden rule: Never store your backup on the same server as your website
- ✅ Best free storage: Google Drive (15GB free), Dropbox, or your own computer
- ✅ When to backup: Before every plugin or theme update — and on a weekly or daily schedule
What Is a WordPress Backup and Why Does Your Website Need One?
A WordPress backup is simply a complete copy of your website saved somewhere safe. Think of it like a photograph of your entire site at a specific moment in time. If anything goes wrong, you use that photograph to rebuild everything exactly as it was.
Every WordPress backup has two parts. First, your files — this includes your theme (the design of your site), your plugins (the add-ons that give your site extra features), and your uploaded images and documents.
These all live in a folder on your server called wp-content (the main folder WordPress uses to store everything unique to your site).
Second, your database (a digital filing cabinet where WordPress stores all your posts, pages, comments, and settings).
You need both parts for a complete backup — one without the other is like backing up your phone contacts but losing all your photos.
Why You Can’t Afford to Skip This
The risks are more common than most beginners realise. 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, and WordPress sites are among the most frequently targeted platforms on the web.
Beyond hacking, a single failed plugin update can corrupt your database and take your site offline in seconds.
Hosting companies — even reliable ones — experience occasional server failures that result in permanent data loss.
Here is the most important warning in this entire guide: never store your only backup on the same server as your website. If that server crashes, your backup crashes with it. It is exactly like keeping your spare house key inside the locked house.
How Often Should You Back Up?
| Site Type | Recommended Frequency |
|---|---|
| WooCommerce / online store | Daily |
| Active blog (posting weekly) | Weekly |
| Business or portfolio site | Monthly |
| Before any plugin, theme, or WordPress update | Every single time, without exception |
Method 1 — How to Backup Your WordPress Website for Free Using UpdraftPlus
The easiest and most reliable way to backup your WordPress website for free is with UpdraftPlus. It has over 3 million active installs, making it the most trusted free backup plugin in the WordPress ecosystem. The free version covers everything a beginner needs — no paid upgrade required.
A plugin, in case this is your first time hearing the term, is a small piece of software you install inside WordPress to give your site a new feature — exactly like downloading an app onto your phone.
Step-by-Step: Create Your First Free Backup with UpdraftPlus
Step 1 — Install the Plugin Log into your WordPress dashboard (yoursite.com/wp-admin). Go to Plugins → Add New Plugin. Type “UpdraftPlus” into the search bar. When it appears, click Install Now, then click Activate.
Step 2 — Open UpdraftPlus Settings In your WordPress dashboard menu, go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups. This is your backup control centre.
Step 3 — Run Your First Backup Click the big blue Backup Now button. A small window will appear. Make sure both boxes are ticked:
- ✅ Include your database in the backup
- ✅ Include your files in the backup
Click Backup Now again to confirm. UpdraftPlus will run through the backup — this usually takes 1–5 minutes depending on your site size.
Step 4 — Connect Google Drive for Free Remote Storage Click the Settings tab inside UpdraftPlus. Scroll down to the Choose your remote storage section.
Click the Google Drive icon. Follow the on-screen steps to connect your Google account. This is free and takes about 2 minutes.
💡 Important Tip: Google Drive gives you 15GB of free storage — more than enough to store multiple backups for most WordPress sites.
Step 5 — Set an Automatic Backup Schedule. Still inside the Settings tab, find the Files backup schedule and Database backup schedule dropdowns. Set both to Weekly if you run a blog, or Daily if you run a WooCommerce store.
Click Save Changes. UpdraftPlus will now back up your site automatically — you do not need to remember to do anything.
Step 6 — Confirm Your Backup Worked. Click the Existing Backups tab. You should see your backup listed with today’s date. If it appears there, your backup was successful.
You can also check your Google Drive folder — UpdraftPlus creates a folder called “UpdraftPlus” and stores your backup files there automatically.
How to Restore Your WordPress Site with UpdraftPlus
Creating a backup is only half the job. Knowing how to restore it is just as important — and with UpdraftPlus, it is reassuringly simple.
Step 1: Go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups in your WordPress dashboard.
Step 2: Click the Existing Backups tab. Find the backup you want to restore and click the Restore button next to it.
Step 3: A checklist appears. Tick the components you want to restore: Plugins, Themes, Uploads, and Database. For a full site restore, tick all of them.
Step 4: Click Restore. UpdraftPlus handles the entire process automatically. Your site will be back to its previous state within a few minutes.
💡 Pro Tip: If possible, test your restore on a staging site (a private copy of your website used for testing) before restoring your live site. Your hosting provider may offer a free staging environment.
Method 2 — Backup Your WordPress Website for Free Manually (Using cPanel)
If you prefer not to use a plugin — or simply want to understand what is happening under the hood — you can back up your WordPress site manually using tools already built into your hosting account. This method is also useful when migrating your site to a new host.
cPanel is a control panel provided by most web hosts. Think of it as the “backstage area” of your website — a dashboard where you can manage files, databases, email accounts, and more.
Most popular hosting providers including Bluehost, SiteGround, Hostinger, and DreamHost include cPanel for free with every account.
This manual method has two parts: backing up your files, and backing up your database.
Part A — Back Up Your WordPress Files via cPanel File Manager
Step 1: Log into your hosting account and open cPanel. If you are unsure how to find it, look for a “cPanel” button in your hosting account dashboard, or ask your host’s support team.
Step 2: Inside cPanel, click File Manager.
Step 3: Navigate to the public_html folder (this is the main folder where your WordPress site lives).
Step 4: Click the top-most folder level to select all files and folders. Right-click and choose Compress. Select ZIP Archive and confirm. This creates a single ZIP file containing your entire website’s files.
Step 5: Right-click the new ZIP file and click Download. Save it to your computer in a clearly labelled folder — for example: mysite-backup-april-2026.
Part B — Back Up Your WordPress Database via phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is a free tool built into most hosting accounts that lets you manage your website’s database without writing any code. Your database is where WordPress stores everything that is not a file — all your posts, pages, comments, users, and settings.
Step 1: Inside cPanel, find and click phpMyAdmin.
Step 2: On the left-hand sidebar, click the name of your WordPress database. If you are unsure of the name, you can find it by opening your WordPress wp-config.php file in File Manager and looking for the line that reads DB_NAME.
Step 3: Click the Export tab at the top of the screen.
Step 4: Select Quick export method and make sure the format is set to SQL. Click Go.
Step 5: Your browser will download a .sql file. Save this into the same labelled backup folder as your ZIP file from Part A.
⚠️ Important Reminder: Manual backups only protect you if you actually remember to do them. Unlike UpdraftPlus, there is no automatic scheduling here — it is entirely up to you. Set a recurring calendar reminder if you go this route.
Where Should You Store Your Free WordPress Website Backup?
This is the question most backup guides skip — and it is one of the most important decisions you will make. A backup stored in the wrong place is almost as bad as no backup at all.
The golden rule: never store your only backup on the same server as your website. If your server goes down, gets hacked, or suffers a hardware failure, everything on it disappears — including your backup. You need your backup to live somewhere completely separate.
Here are the best free storage options available in 2026:
| Storage Option | Free Space | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Google Drive | 15GB | Most WordPress sites — connects directly to UpdraftPlus |
| Dropbox | 2GB | Smaller sites — also connects to UpdraftPlus |
| Mega.nz | 20GB | Generous free tier — good secondary storage option |
| Your own computer | Unlimited | Good as a second copy — not reliable as your only copy |
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule
Security professionals recommend a simple framework called the 3-2-1 rule. Keep 3 copies of your backup, stored on 2 different types of media (for example, cloud storage AND your computer), with 1 copy stored off-site (meaning: not in the same physical location as your server).
For most WordPress beginners, “cloud storage plus your computer” covers this perfectly.
How Often Should You Backup Your WordPress Website?
There is no single answer that fits every site — it depends entirely on how frequently your content changes. The right backup schedule is the one that matches the pace of your site.
For WooCommerce stores and membership sites, back up daily. New orders, new customers, and new transactions happen constantly — losing even one day of data can mean losing revenue and customer records.
For active blogs where you publish at least once a week, a weekly backup is the minimum you should run. Every new post you publish is effort you do not want to recreate from scratch.
For business sites, portfolios, and landing pages that you update infrequently, a monthly backup is perfectly adequate. The content rarely changes, so the risk is lower.
And regardless of your site type — always run a manual backup immediately before updating any plugin, theme, or WordPress core version. Updates occasionally cause conflicts that can break your site, and having a backup from five minutes before the update means you can recover in seconds.
With UpdraftPlus, you set this schedule once in the Settings tab and never think about it again. The plugin runs in the background and stores your backup automatically to Google Drive or Dropbox. Peace of mind, completely free.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. The core UpdraftPlus plugin is completely free and includes everything most WordPress site owners need — manual and scheduled backups, Google Drive and Dropbox storage, and one-click restore. A paid version called UpdraftPremium exists and adds features like incremental backups and more storage options, but the free version is more than enough to get started and protect your site reliably.
Your hosting company’s backup is a safety net — not a replacement for your own. Most hosts keep backups for only 7–30 days, and restoring from a host backup can take time, involve a support ticket, or in some cases cost extra. Your own backup gives you full control: you decide when to restore, what to restore, and you are never dependent on someone else’s timeline or policies.
Yes — that is exactly what Method 2 in this guide covers. Using cPanel’s File Manager you can download all your WordPress files as a ZIP, and using phpMyAdmin you can export your database as an SQL file. No plugin required. The downside is that this method is entirely manual — there is no automatic scheduling, so you have to remember to do it yourself every time.
With UpdraftPlus, go to Settings → UpdraftPlus → Existing Backups. If your backup appears there with today’s date and file sizes showing for both the database and files, it worked. Also check your Google Drive or Dropbox — you should see a folder called “UpdraftPlus” containing your backup files. If either location shows nothing, try running the backup again and check for error messages.
Your files are everything visual and functional about your site — your theme controls how it looks, your plugins control what it does, and your uploads folder holds every image and document you have ever added. Your database holds all your content — every post, page, comment, user account, and setting. You need both to fully restore a WordPress site. Restoring files without the database gives you a shell with no content. Restoring the database without files gives you content with no design or functionality.
You Are One Backup Away From Peace of Mind
Learning how to backup your WordPress website for free is one of the most valuable things you can do as a site owner — and as you have just seen, it takes less than 10 minutes. You do not need to be technical. You do not need to spend a single dollar. You just need to take action before something goes wrong, not after.
If you are just getting started, install UpdraftPlus right now, connect it to your Google Drive, and run your first backup today. Set a weekly schedule while you are in the settings, and you will never need to think about it again. If you ever want more control, the manual cPanel method is always available as a backup-of-last-resort.
Your website represents real time, real effort, and in many cases real income. Protect it. Go set up your first backup before you do anything else on your site today — future you will be very glad you did.
