Backups and restore
Every account on a PlusPanel server is backed up automatically: its files, its databases, its WordPress sites and the settings that bring them back (domains, PHP version, certificates, database users and bindings).
How it works
Section titled “How it works”- Incremental and deduplicated. The first backup copies everything; later ones upload only what changed. A file that appears twice is stored once.
- Encrypted before it leaves the server. Data is compressed and encrypted (XChaCha20-Poly1305) on your server. The storage provider only ever sees encrypted objects, and the keys are held by the PlusPanel control plane, never on the server and never at the provider.
- Nothing opens on your server. The server uploads to short-lived signed links; it holds no storage password and listens on no port.
- Consistent databases. MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Valkey are dumped with their own tools at backup time.
When and how long
Section titled “When and how long”Backups run once a day by default, inside a nightly window, spread across servers so they do not all start at once. Administrators can change the window, the frequency and pause a server.
| Free | Pro | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage included | 5 GB | 50 GB | 50 GB |
| Kept by default | 7 daily | 14 daily, 8 weekly, 6 monthly | 14 daily, 8 weekly, 6 monthly |
| Retention per account | no | yes | yes |
| Your own S3 bucket | no | no | yes |
| Automatic restore test | every 3 months | monthly | monthly |
Storage is measured on what the backups actually occupy after deduplication, not on the size of your sites. More storage comes in add-on packs. If an organization goes over its storage, backups keep running: the oldest snapshots are removed automatically until it fits (the newest of every account always stays), and the panel shows a warning.
Where it is stored
Section titled “Where it is stored”- Standard: European object storage (Hetzner, Germany).
- Premium: Standard plus a second copy at another provider in another country (OVH, France).
- Your own bucket (Enterprise): any S3-compatible storage you choose, reached over HTTPS. Its credentials are kept encrypted on the control plane.
Restoring
Section titled “Restoring”From the account’s Backups tab you can restore:
- the whole account, a single site, a database service or one database, or selected files and folders (browse the snapshot to pick them);
- in place (PlusPanel first takes a safety snapshot of what will be replaced, so a restore can be undone) or
to a separate location (files appear under
/restores/in the file manager, databases in a new service); - as a download (a
.tar.gzarchive, available for 24 hours).
An account that was deleted can be restored for 30 days after the deletion (the period is configurable). An administrator can also restore it onto another server of the organization.
WordPress updates and one-click rollback
Section titled “WordPress updates and one-click rollback”Before a WordPress core, plugin or theme update, PlusPanel takes a snapshot of the site and runs the update only once that snapshot is safe. If the update breaks something, Roll back last update restores the site as it was.
Restore tests
Section titled “Restore tests”Backups are only useful if they restore. Once a month (every three months on Free) PlusPanel restores a random account of your organization into a private sandbox on its server, checks that every site answers, that every database can be queried and that the files match, then deletes the sandbox. The result appears in the panel.