Five free ways to back up your WordPress site today
No developer needed. No budget required. Just thirty minutes and a bit of clicking.
I heard a good line about backups recently: one backup is no backups, two backups is one backup, and no backups is a disaster that's already happening — you just haven't met it yet.
So this is the one job worth doing today. And the good news is you almost certainly have a way to do it for free: you just might not know which one is yours.
A quick note before the how: this is written for WordPress, because that's what most of you are running. But the principle holds for Drupal, or Joomla, or anything else built on a database. Only the buttons move.
What actually counts as a backup
Two things, and both matter.
A backup has to be complete: your files and your database. This is where people quietly come unstuck. Your database holds your posts, pages, settings and users — but not your images, your theme, or anything you've uploaded. Those live in the files. Grab one without the other and you've got half a backup that feels like a whole one, right up until the moment you need it.
And a backup has to be off the server. A copy sitting on the same machine as the live site is a comfort blanket, not a backup: whatever takes down the site has a great chance of taking the copy with it. Off the box (off the server), and stored someplace else. Cloud storage — Dropbox, Google Drive, whatever you already use — is a great home for it, and a copy on your own machine is a nice-to-have on top.
Those two, database and files, are the bits that count. So, let's find how to get them, right now.
1. Check whether your host is already doing it
If you're on managed hosting, SiteGround, Kinsta and the like, there's a fair chance a daily backup is already running, and you can restore from a button in the control panel. So the honest first step isn't "make a backup," it's "go and check whether one exists." One caveat: this copy lives with your host. That's genuinely useful, but it's off your site, not off your provider, so it's a good backup but ideally not your only one.
2. Download a full-site archive from cPanel
If your host gives you cPanel, look for the Backup Wizard. cPanel installations vary, so the name may be different, but this is a bit they usually don't hide from you. It'll build a single archive containing your files and your database together — and let you download the lot onto your own machine. This is about as clean as it gets: complete and off-server in one action.
3. Take a provider snapshot
If you're on a VPS or something like Amazon Lightsail, you can take a snapshot — an image of the entire machine, frozen at a moment in time. Excellent for getting a whole site back on its feet. Same honest caveat as the host route: the snapshot sits with the provider, so it's one layer of safety rather than the last word.
4. Do it by hand with an FTP client
None of the above available? Don't despair. You can still do this yourself, and it's genuinely not hard. Using an FTP tool (FileZilla is free and does the job), connect to your site and download two things: the whole wp-content folder — that's your themes, plugins and uploads — and wp-config.php, which holds the settings WordPress needs to find its database. WordPress "core" itself you can always re-download for free, so you don't need to hoard it: the only folder you need is that wp-content one. Once files are done, jump to the database step (6) below.
5. Do it by hand from your host's file manager
Exactly the same as above, but through the browser instead of an FTP client. Most hosts have a File Manager in the control panel. Find wp-content and wp-config.php, and download them. No software to install, just grab those files. Now the database.
6. The database (for routes 4 and 5)
Both manual routes need one more piece: the database. In your control panel, open phpMyAdmin, choose your site's database on the left, and hit Export. The default settings are fine. You'll get a single ".sql" file. Save it alongside your files, and that's your backup complete.
A word on plugins
You'll have noticed I haven't sent you to a backup plugin. There are plugins that can help, and some are popular, but there isn't one I'd recommend wholeheartedly. Often they're "freemium" — they have numerous limits baked in, and a backup is the last place to introduce vendor lock-in. If the manual route feels too much, you're better off asking a developer to walk you through it once. No subscription, no lock-in, and it'll probably cost about the same as the plugin pro version — with the difference that you come away actually understanding where your backup lives.
And now you've got your backup? What next?
Remember my starting line above about one backup being no backup? Keep doing it. Once a week, once a month, put it in your diary to get it or check it regularly. Keep four or five of them, and bin the older ones as time goes on or depending on space available. And without spending a penny, you've quietly stopped the disaster in progress.
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