How to Back Up Your Website in cPanel
EconomicalHost keeps courtesy backups, but your own regular backups are essential — restores from courtesy copies are chargeable and not guaranteed. cPanel makes self-backup easy.
Step-by-step
- Open Files → Backup in cPanel.
- For everything: click Download a Full Account Backup. Choose Home Directory as destination, click Generate Backup, and wait for the email saying it is ready.
- Download the backup file (backup-….tar.gz in your home directory) to your computer, then delete it from the server — it counts against your disk space.
- For just the site files: in the same screen use Download a Home Directory Backup, or zip public_html in File Manager and download the zip.
- For each database: the Backup page lists every MySQL database — click each name to download its .sql.gz dump. (See also import/export.)
- Set a schedule. Monthly full backup + weekly database downloads suits most business sites; before any major site change, take an extra one.
- Verify occasionally: open a downloaded archive and confirm your files are actually inside.
💡 Good to know
- Full account backups include email — if mailboxes are large the archive will be too; download mail via POP separately and the backup stays small.
- Keep at least two generations of backups, ideally in two places (computer + external drive/cloud).
- A full-account backup is also exactly what is needed to migrate a cPanel account — keep one before requesting any migration.