"Daily backups included" appears on almost every managed WordPress pricing page. The details behind that line decide whether you can recover from a bad plugin update, a hacked site, or an account problem. This guide compares what three managed hosts publish in their own documentation about backup frequency, retention, storage location, restore paths and add-on costs. Every figure below comes from the vendor's documentation as we read it on 8 November 2026. We have not restored a site on any of these hosts for this article.
Side-by-side from the documentation
| Kinsta | WP Engine | Cloudways (Flexible) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic frequency | Daily. Paid add-ons for every 6 hours or every hour | Daily checkpoints | Configurable from every 1 hour to every 7 days. Default daily |
| Retention | 14 days on entry plans, 20 or 30 days on larger plans | 30 days | 1 to 4 weeks. Default 1 week |
| Manual backups | Up to 5, kept at least 14 days | Yes, "Create backup" checkpoint | On-demand server or application backup |
| Where stored | Same host machine as the site | Off-site on Amazon S3, same region as the site, encrypted | Exported to off-site storage; optional local copy of latest backup |
| Download | Downloadable ZIP once per week, link valid 48 hours | Full or partial ZIP, downloadable for up to 7 days | Downloadable via local backup option |
| Extra cost | 6-hour add-on $20/site/month; hourly $100/site/month; external backups $2/site/month + $1/GB | Not described as an add-on on the backup page | $0.033 per GB of backup storage, rounded up in $0.50 steps. Included in Cloudways Autonomous |
| After deleting a site or server | Backups retained 14 days | Not stated on the backup page | Applications backed up for 14 days after a server is deleted |
Sources: Kinsta backups documentation (last updated 21 January 2026), WP Engine backup and restore guide (updated 8 June 2026), Cloudways server-level backup guide and Cloudways off-site backup charges. Plans and prices change. Treat the table as a starting point and check the live pages before you buy.
Kinsta: many restore points, stored next to the site
Kinsta's documentation describes six kinds of backup in MyKinsta: daily, hourly (add-on), manual, system-generated, external (add-on), and a weekly downloadable ZIP. System backups are created automatically before events such as restoring a backup, pushing staging to live, a search-and-replace, or a plugin or theme update. That is useful for the most common failure, a bad update, because a restore point exists from just before it.
Two details matter for planning. Kinsta says each snapshot "is stored on the same host machine as your site". That makes restores quick, but a snapshot on the same machine is not an off-site copy. Kinsta sells an external backups add-on that writes weekly or monthly copies to your own Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage bucket, at $2 per site per month plus $1 per GB of bandwidth, with the storage billed separately by the cloud provider. Second, a snapshot restore rolls back MyKinsta settings too, including redirects and the domain list. Kinsta warns that restoring to a point before you added a domain removes that domain from the site.
WP Engine: 30 days of off-site checkpoints
WP Engine's guide says backups exist by default for production, staging and development environments, are "stored offsite on Amazon S3 in the same region that the website is hosted in", and are encrypted in transit and at rest. It keeps 30 days of backups and suggests contacting support for anything older. Restores can include or exclude the database. The page is explicit that a restore is destructive: files not present in the chosen checkpoint are removed.
Check the exclusions list before relying on it. WP Engine does not back up cache folders, log files, or archives created by backup plugins, among other paths listed on its support page. If your site stores something important in an unusual folder, confirm it is not on that list. WP Engine also notes there is no built-in way to export its backups automatically to another service such as S3, so an independent copy needs your own tool or plugin, kept off the WP Engine server.
Cloudways: you set the schedule, and pay for storage
Cloudways backs up at the server level, which means all applications on the server are included. New servers default to a daily backup taken between 1 am and 5 am UTC, kept for one week. You can change the frequency from every hour to every seven days and retention from one to four weeks. The first backup is full and later ones are incremental, although the database is fully backed up each time. Cloudways warns that very frequent backups can strain a server, and recommends 12 hours or longer for servers with more than 100 GB of storage.
On Cloudways Flexible, off-site backup storage is billed at $0.033 per GB, rounded up in $0.50 increments. On Cloudways Autonomous, Cloudways says backup costs are included in the plan. Retention longer than four weeks needs SnapShooter, a backup service Cloudways points to in its FAQ, which can also write to your own storage.
If you run WordPress on an unmanaged server instead, DigitalOcean's Droplet backups are disk images at intervals from every 4 hours to weekly. They are a server-level safety net, not a WordPress-aware restore, and you manage the application yourself. Our DigitalOcean vs Cloudways comparison covers that trade-off.
What a host backup does not cover
- Account-level problems. If you lose access to the hosting account, a billing dispute suspends it, or the account itself is compromised, every backup inside it is out of reach at the same moment.
- Slow-burn damage. If malware or a data error sits unnoticed for longer than your retention window, every remaining restore point already contains it. A 7-day retention gives you 7 days to notice.
- Things outside WordPress. DNS records, email hosted elsewhere, CDN rules and third-party form or payment data are not in a site backup. Kinsta notes that its downloadable ZIP leaves out redirects, Nginx rules and PHP settings.
- Excluded paths. Hosts skip caches, logs and backup-plugin archives. That is sensible, but check that nothing you need lives there.
The WordPress project's own backup guidance says to back up regularly and always before an upgrade. CISA's #StopRansomware guide recommends maintaining "offline, encrypted backups of critical data" and regularly testing their availability and integrity. For a small business site, a workable version of that advice is: the host's automatic backups for fast rollbacks, plus one independent copy you control, kept outside the hosting account.
A backup plan in five decisions
- How much data can you lose? A brochure site that changes monthly is fine with daily backups. A WooCommerce store that takes orders all day may need the 6-hour or hourly option, or more frequent database-only copies.
- How far back might you need to go? Pick retention longer than the time it would take you to notice a problem. If nobody checks the site weekly, a one-week window is thin.
- Where is the independent copy? Your own cloud storage bucket, a backup plugin writing off-site, or a scheduled download. Not the same server, and ideally not the same account.
- Who can restore it? Write down who has access, where the instructions are, and how long a restore takes. WP Engine notes a restore can take from a few minutes to several hours depending on site size.
- When did you last test? Restore a recent backup to staging. All three hosts document restoring to a staging or another environment, so a test does not have to touch the live site.
Questions to ask before you sign up
- Where are automatic backups physically stored, and is it a different machine or region from the site?
- How many days are kept on the plan I am buying, not the top plan?
- Are system backups taken automatically before plugin updates and staging pushes?
- Can I restore files and database separately?
- What paths are excluded from backups?
- What happens to backups if I cancel, downgrade or delete the site?
Before a migration, read what to measure before you move a site and use the migration checklist. For full host comparisons, see Cloudways vs Kinsta, Kinsta vs WP Engine and the best managed WordPress hosting roundup.
See Cloudways plans →May earn a commission.
The Cloudways button is an affiliate link. Links to Kinsta, WP Engine and DigitalOcean documentation are not affiliate links. We have not used a commission to choose what this page says.
Exclusions, re-read 8 November 2026
This matrix is only what those help pages listed when we read them on 8 November 2026. It is not a restore we performed. Prices are not restated here. Use the figures already dated earlier on this page, or the host's current pricing page.
| Kinsta WordPress backups doc | WP Engine backup and restore, page updated 8 June 2026 | Cloudways server-level backup article, written 6 March 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What a normal backup contains | The doc calls each backup a snapshot of files, database, redirects, Nginx configuration and MyKinsta settings, including domains. Stored on the same host machine. | Automated and manual checkpoints for production, staging and development. Stored offsite on Amazon S3 in the site's region. Tel Aviv is the stated exception: that region's backups are in Frankfurt. Encrypted in transit and at rest. | Server-level backup covers every application on the server. An application-level backup is public_html, private_html and the database. Other folders in the application home are not included. |
| What is left out | The downloadable ZIP is files plus the database, once a week, available for 48 hours. That ZIP does not include MyKinsta settings or server-side configuration: redirects, custom Nginx rules, IP deny entries, PHP or MySQL configuration changes, and add-ons. The on-platform snapshot is described more broadly than the ZIP. | The page lists caches, logs, sample files, and archives from other backup plugins. Core, themes, plugins and the database are included. Partial table restore is not offered. Custom views, procedures, functions and definers can break a restore. | Anything outside public_html, private_html and the database on an application-level backup. Local backup, if enabled, keeps only the latest copy. |
| Retention we could read | Daily automatic backups. Manual: up to 5, kept a minimum of 14 days, and the page says that can vary by plan. The 6-hour and hourly add-ons keep those extra points for 24 hours. Turning the add-on off deletes the hourly points that are still available. | 30 days in the User Portal. Older points: contact support. A prepared ZIP can be downloaded for up to 7 days. There is no automatic export of these backups to the customer's own S3. | Default is daily between 01:00 and 05:00 UTC, kept one week. The controls described run from one hour to seven days, and retention from one week to four weeks. Backups of a deleted server are kept 14 days, then dropped. |
| Restore, as written | Restoring rolls files, database, redirects, Nginx and MyKinsta settings back, including domains. A pre-restore snapshot is created. External add-on copies are not restored inside MyKinsta. | Restore overwrites the environment. Files that were not in that checkpoint are removed. The database description includes posts, pages, users and custom post types, with store orders given as an example. One backup, copy or restore at a time. | The article says you can restore from the backup list or download a copy. It does not describe a partial order-level restore. |
Sources, read 8 November 2026: Kinsta backups, WP Engine restore, Cloudways server-level backup. None of these is an affiliate link except where a button elsewhere on the page is already marked as one. The Cloudways pricing button, not these help links, is the affiliate link.
Orders placed after the backup, as a worksheet
The shop in this worksheet is fictional. Its name is North Creek Goods. We did not create it, did not take an order, and did not restore a site. The point is the gap WP Engine's own page names: a database restore includes store orders and replaces the database with the checkpoint.
| Step | Fictional note | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Backup used | Daily checkpoint from yesterday morning. Invented. | The host's backup screen. Confirm the timestamp in the host's timezone. |
| Orders after that timestamp | Three invented orders, paid at the card processor, not visible after a full database restore. | The payment processor's report, not the restored WordPress database. |
| What the restore will not put back | Those three orders, plus any stock change they caused. | Someone has to re-enter or import them. This page does not do that. |
| Mail and DNS | Unchanged in this sketch, because they are not in the WordPress backup. | Whoever holds the DNS account. See what to measure before a migration. |
Use WooCommerce hosting for the hosting comparison. Use the migration checklist before a move. Neither page is a restore log.
How this page was made: from each provider's official product and pricing pages and its public documentation, read on the date named in the page. We have not run a hands-on test, lab benchmark, or paid user study for this page. A step-by-step section describes the vendor's published flow. It is not a test we performed.