Do you run backups of your servers?

Shared & VPS Servers

All Virtual Private Servers and Shared Accounts under 10GB are backed up incrementally on a 24-36 hour basis for emergency purposes, however, we encourage users to regularly maintain their own local backups in the event that you need to restore a damaged site.

Shared & VPS Servers over 10GB in size

Due to the timeframe in which the backups are performed and storage constraints, websites and VPS accounts over 10GB are not included in our backups. We do offer a Backup Service which can be subscribed to so that regular, incremental backups can continue. The service is $7.50 per 10GB block, billed automatically every month. The first 10GB is free, so you only pay for 10GB blocks after the first.

For Example:
If your site is 12GB total size (including SQL databases), you'll need two 10GB blocks. The first 10GB is free (VPS and Shared only), and the second is $7.50 / month.

Dedicated Servers

While Dedicated servers are not included in the automated backups, the Backup Service can be subscribed to by Decicated Plans at the rate of $7.50 per 10GB block as well, billed automatically every month. The only difference in the the subscription for Dedicated Plans is that the first 10GB is NOT included.

If you are interested in purchasing our Backup Service, please contact our Support Team at support@inmotionhosting.com. We will send you a Data Backup Service email to which you can review and respond to.

Read about our dedicated server pricing here.

Should I rely on your backups?

You should not rely on our automated backups as your sole means of maintaining backups for your account. Our backups are intended for disaster recovery purposes only. If your site is hacked or even unintentionally altered and you do not notice the changes for several days, then our backups would have already ran and the old "good" data would already be overwritten. We cannot restore a backup to a certain date and time you specify. Our backups run every 24-36 hours and are incremental. This means that only files that have changed since the last backup are copied in the next backup.

How to backup your site

Accounts under 3GB in size

If your site is under 3GB in size, you can use the cPanel backup wizard (found on the cPanel home screen) to create a full backup of your entire account. With the wizard you will have the option to save the backup to your home directory, use FTP to transfer the backup to a remote server or use SCP (Secure Copy) to transfer the file to a remote server.

The most commonly used option is to save the backup to the home directory. Once the backup is complete you will want to download the full backup and save it to your local computer or storage device. Once you have downloaded the backup, delete it from the server as storing backups on your account is not permitted.

To use FTP to transfer the full backup, you will need the remote server name, FTP username & password as well as the remote directory where the backup is to be saved. This option will not save the backup to the server, the backup will simply be transferred to your remote server.

The last option, SCP can only be used if you have SSH access to a remote server as it requires an SSH connection to the remote server.

Please see our video on Creating a Full cPanel Backup for step-by-step instructions.

Accounts over 3GB in size

The cPanel backup feature is not appropriate for larger accounts, so you should use FTP to download your files instead. Please see our article on How to create a backup using FTP for step-by-step instructions. If you must run a cPanel/full backup of your site, please do so outside of regular business hours or contact our support department to complete the backup for you.