Reducing Disk Space and Bandwidth — Managing Backups
Backups are essential for website security and peace of mind — but how and where you store them makes all the difference. We actively encourage all website owners to maintain backups, and in fact, we believe it’s so important that every Hipposerve plan includes automatic 3-day rolling backups. These can be easily restored from your control panel with just a few clicks.
Hipposerve Backups
Our automated backups are stored securely offsite — away from your main hosting environment — ensuring that your data is safe even if your website experiences an issue. These can be easily upgraded to include 10-day or 30-day retention periods, giving you more restore points and greater flexibility in case something goes wrong.
Keeping Your Own Backups
If you decide to keep your own backups, that’s perfectly fine — but they should never be stored in your webspace.
Why? Because doing so is essentially creating what’s known as an “incestuous backup” — a copy of your website stored inside the same environment it’s supposed to protect. If something happens to your hosting account, both the live site and its backup could be lost together. It also uses up valuable disk space and will almost certainly push you over your fair use limits.
Instead, always store backups away from your website — for example, in cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive), a local hard drive, or a remote backup service. This ensures you have a secure copy that’s independent of your hosting environment.
Automated Backups
If you’re using an automated backup plugin or tool (such as those available in WordPress or cPanel), make sure backups are scheduled overnight or during low-traffic hours. Backup processes are resource-intensive and can significantly slow down your website while they’re running.
Good Backup Practices
- Use multiple backup methods — combine automated hosting backups with an occasional manual offsite backup.
- Test your backups — make sure they can be restored successfully. A backup that can’t be restored is useless.
- Keep backups offsite — never store them in your main webspace.
- Rotate old backups — delete outdated copies to save storage and avoid confusion.
- Encrypt sensitive data — if your backup includes customer or payment data, ensure it’s protected.
- Label backups clearly — include the date and purpose (e.g., “Pre-update backup – 21 Oct”).
The Result
By managing backups correctly, you’ll enjoy:
- Peace of mind — knowing your data can be restored quickly if needed.
- Better performance — no wasted disk space or unnecessary load on your hosting.
- Efficient bandwidth usage — no hidden data transfers from oversized backup files.
In short, backups are vital — but smart backup management keeps your website fast, secure, and within fair use limits.
