Restore your website from a backup

Jetpack VaultPress Backup automatically saves every change and helps you get back online quickly with one‑click restores. This guide will show you how to access your site’s backups and restore your website to any previous point.

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

With built-in backup functionality, you don’t have to upload a backup from your computer to restore your site to a previous point. Instead, you can restore a backup directly in your WordPress.com dashboard.

To restore your site from a backup, follow these steps:

1. Go to your site dashboard.
2. In the left menu, navigate to Jetpack → Backup.
3. Use the date options to select the backup you want to restore.

4. Click the “Restore to this point” button.

5. Click the “Restore now” button to restore your entire site, or learn how to select specific components or files to restore.

6. After you click the “Restore now” button, the restoration process can take anywhere from several minutes to a few hours, depending on your site’s size.

You can navigate away from the screen while the restore is in progress. You will receive an email notification once your site is restored.

Will my recent posts and changes be lost if I restore?

Restoring a backup replaces your current site with the contents of the chosen backup, so any posts, pages, comments, or settings created after that point will be overwritten. To keep recent work, copy it before restoring, restore only specific components with selective restore, or create a staging site as a copy of your current site before restoring.

What will happen to my WooCommerce orders if I restore a backup?

We’ve developed Jetpack VaultPress Backup with WooCommerce in mind. You can safely restore your site to any past state—all orders and products will be kept current.

I want to migrate one WordPress.com site to another WordPress.com site. Can I do that with a Jetpack Backup?

This is possible with backups but can be a challenging process. Instead of using a backup, the recommended methods are as follows:

• Move your domain from one site to another, which is generally easier than moving a website’s content and design.
• Clone your WordPress.com site to create an exact copy of it, that you can then add a domain to.
• Use the Migrate to WordPress.com tool to create an export of your source site and then import that content to the destination site.

How do I download a copy of my site?

Whether you’re moving to a new platform, creating a backup for safety, or just want peace of mind, you can save a copy of your site’s data.

On all sites, including free WordPress.com sites, you can export your website’s content and import it to another WordPress.com site, a self-hosted WordPress site, or another platform that supports XML imports. Use this export tool if you’re just trying to move your content or make a quick copy.

On plugin-enabled sites, you can download a full backup of your site using the built-in Jetpack VaultPress Backup service. As an alternative option, you can also use a plugin to export a full copy of your website to move to another host.

How do I exclude certain files from being backed up?

You have a few options for excluding certain files from being backed up:

• Create a new directory to exclude: You can move files to a new directory called donotbackup. Jetpack VaultPress Backup will know to skip this directory automatically. This is a great way to reduce the storage size of your backups.
• Exclude an existing directory: You can add a file called .donotbackup to any existing directory. Jetpack VaultPress Backup will skip the entire directory that includes the .donotbackup file.