Backups are the safety net every Magento store needs and the one thing merchants tend to think about only after something goes wrong. A good backup strategy means that whatever happens — a failed update, a mistake, or a technical fault — you can restore the store to a known-good state.
These best practices apply whether you manage backups yourself or rely on a hosting provider to handle them.
Back Up Everything, Not Just the Database
A complete Magento backup covers three things, and leaving out any one of them means an incomplete restore:
- The database — products, customers, orders, configuration and content.
- Media files — product images and other uploads.
- Code — Magento, themes and extensions, so the environment can be rebuilt exactly.
A database-only backup can restore your data but not a store that actually runs. Aim for backups that capture the full picture together.
Back Up Regularly — and Automatically
Manual backups get forgotten. Automated, scheduled backups run without anyone having to remember, so you always have a recent restore point. How often you back up should reflect how frequently your store changes; a busy store taking orders all day needs more frequent backups than a rarely updated one.
Keep Backups Off-Site and Retained
A backup stored on the same server as the store offers little protection if that server fails. Backups should be kept separately from the live environment. It is also worth retaining more than one, so you can go back to a point before a problem was introduced rather than only to the most recent — possibly already affected — copy.
Back Up Before You Change Anything
Always take a fresh backup before an update, an extension installation, or any significant change. If the change goes wrong, you have an immediate, clean restore point from moments before.
Test Your Restores
A backup you have never restored is only a hope, not a guarantee. Periodically verifying that a backup can actually be restored is the only way to know your safety net works when you need it.
Who Looks After Your Backups?
MyShopCarts includes automatic backups as part of the platform, capturing each store's data so it can be restored when needed — without you having to build and maintain your own backup routine. Because reliable backups are also the foundation of a safe move between hosts, they pair naturally with our guide to how to migrate a Magento store.
Protecting the store also means keeping it secure day to day — see our Magento security checklist.
Learn more about managed Magento hosting and choose a plan that fits your store.