Why Your Website Needs AutoBackup

As a small business owner with an online presence, you might decide to occasionally skip out on that routine website backup. Seems harmless, right? Think again. 

Whether a malicious cyber attack occurs or your computer is out for the count, website threats lurk around every corner and pose real damage to your business bottom line. 

The antidote? Regular backups that safeguard your website data (files, accounts, and settings, for example) and give you added peace of mind. Thankfully, Namecheap has the answer with AutoBackup, a recovery tool that keeps your website data safe and sound. 

Prepare for the worst

According to Inc.com, 60% of small businesses who are cyber attacked end up going out of business within six months. 

When your website gets attacked with malware, it can steal your sensitive data, alter your website’s appearance, damage your business’ reputation, and cost you a very pretty penny. Recent reports suggest that the average cost of a hacked website will set you back about $3k. 

It’s not just about malware, though. Power supply interruptions, damaged hard disks or a memory chip malfunctions can all lead to computer crashes. This often results in unreadable hard drives and lost backups if you choose to create a backup file on your actual computer, that is. 

While storing a copy of all your files on your computer is a good idea in theory, you’re out of luck if it completely crashes. That’s why we recommend backing up your files remotely, in the (likely) event that something eventually happens to your trusted computer. 

You can turn back time (with AutoBackup) 

Backing up your website is a pretty straightforward process, with essentially two ways to do it: 1) manually or 2) automatically.

Although manual backups are relatively easy and consist of logging in to your website’s respective control panel and following a series of steps to perform your desired backup, all it takes is one human error, i.e. forgetfulness. Suddenly you’re looking at a whole lot of data loss. 

A better choice? Automated backups, which offer plenty of advantages over manual backups. Super convenient, ultra-secure, and time-saving, automated backups are often provided (sometimes for an additional fee) with many web hosting providers. Here you’re able to quickly retrieve essential business data if your website goes down. Time is money, after all. 

That’s why Namecheap’s AutoBackup, the exclusive tool for premium Shared Hosting customers*, is designed to protect your website by automatically backing up all your websites, account files, databases, email accounts, and settings. How’s that for convenience?

And, unlike other web hosting providers that often charge an extra fee for backups, AutoBackup is free* and ready for immediate use via cPanel – no setup or configuration necessary. 

Featuring access to 6 daily, 3 weekly and 5 monthly backups, this handy tool acts as that extra shield of protection when hackers attack or accidents happen – putting control right at your fingertips.

I’ve got AutoBackup – now what?

Once you’ve set up your premium Shared Hosting account, your AutoBackup tool starts generating backups within the first 24 hours. Here several copies of your cPanel accounts are stored and you’re given the opportunity to either download, cancel or restore a backup.

You might ask: What sort of situations does AutoBackup help me with? 

The answer is everything! For all intents and purposes of this article, we’ll cover four hypothetical scenarios where AutoBackup comes in handy, e.g. preventing a disaster or doing damage control if the worst happens. 

Scenario #1

Let’s say you’re planning on making some changes to your website in the near future and you want to store your backups locally. In other words? You want to keep a copy of your website’s previous configuration. 

Sure, you could save these files manually or start to generate backup archives in order to download them to your computer. With AutoBackup, you don’t have to. All you have to do is locate the backup(s) you want and perform the download. Here you can choose your backup format choice either between .zip or .tar.gz.

Now simply follow the 4 steps listed below: 

Step 1

Log in to your cPanel, click on the AutoBackup tool, and locate the backup in the “Exclusive for Namecheap Customers” section. 

Step 2

Now visit your backup list and select your desired backup by date and time. 

Step 3

Now select the format of your backup and click on the “Get” button.

Step 4

Once your selected backup is ready, the “Download” button will appear. To download your backup, simply click on it. 

If you prefer, you can also download your selected backup with your Actions Log, as seen below: 

Please note that the process of making backups is not fully automated so it’s not possible to generate any new backups. 

Scenario #2

Let’s say you’ve hired a web developer and you need to provide them with access to your backup files in order to perform necessary modifications. The problem is, you’re traveling at the moment so you can’t download or upload files for your developer. 

With AutoBackup, you can give your web developer a URL that allows them to download your files from their side without you having to disclose your cPanel information. 

All you have to do is repeat the previous scenario’s 1-3 steps and re-visit the Actions Log. Now you can click on the “Copy link” button. 

Once you see that the button name has changed to “Link copied,” simply paste this link to share it with your developer. 

You might ask: What if my web developer and I part ways sooner than my backup access expires (15 days)? To cancel URL access to your backup files, simply click “Cancel Access” and voila, your link is no longer available.

Scenario #3

Let’s say you wake up in the morning only to realize your website is broken. With AutoBackup, you don’t have to panic. Thanks to the “auto restore” feature that’s included, you can restore all your website content in just a matter of minutes. 

How do you do this? Simply follow these steps:

Step 1 

Log in to your cPanel, click on the AutoBackup tool as noted in the previous scenarios, and locate the backup in “Exclusive for Namecheap Customers” section. (This is where several backup copies of your website data are made throughout the year.)

Step 2 

Now select your desired backup by date and time. 

Step 3

Now click on the “Restore full backup” button. P.S. Don’t forget to read and confirm the warning. 

Give it several minutes to complete the restore. Now you can rest easy knowing that your website is working again!

Scenario #4

Did you accidentally delete a single file or a database and you need to recover it? If restoring your full backup or searching through your full backup archive doesn’t seem to work, you can also interact with separate backup components within your cPanel.

Here’s how:

Step 1 

Similar to the previous scenarios, locate the AutoBackup icon from your cPanel. 

Step 2

Now select your desired backup by date and time.

To view the content, navigate through the tabs. Under “Files,” you can see the location of your backup files, choose how many backup files you’d like to export, as well as restore the available options. 

Similar to full backups, you can choose different formats in order to retrieve your backup and download it. This can be done either within the file menu or from the Actions Log.  

Instead of working with full backups, you can choose to interact with certain components of your files, databases, email accounts, FTP, SSL certificates, and DNS records to either download or restore. 

Remember that your website’s security shouldn’t be an afterthought, it should be a given. So what are you waiting for? Now’s your chance to turn back time and keep your website running like clockwork. Give our AutoBackup tool a try today! 

*Free for Stellar Plus and Stellar Business Plans only (previously Ultimate and Business SSD Plans)