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Why do backups matter, and how often should you take them?

Backups protect you from data loss, whether from a mistake, a failure, a hack, or ransomware. Without them, a single bad event can wipe out your site, database, and customer data permanently. How often depends on how much data you can afford to lose: daily is a common minimum, more for busy systems.

A backup you've never tested isn't a backup. The time to discover a backup is corrupt or incomplete is not during an emergency, so periodically restore from one to confirm it actually works. Keep copies in more than one location, ideally offsite or in separate cloud storage.

For anything business-critical, automate backups so they happen without anyone remembering, and keep several recent versions so you can go back past a problem that wasn't noticed immediately. The cost is small next to the cost of losing everything.

Updated July 2026

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