Hostinger Backup & Restore Guide (2026)

Hostinger keeps automatic backups of your hosting account and lets you create fresh ones on demand from hPanel. Restoring is a two-part job — files first, then the database — and this guide walks through both, plus VPS snapshots and the backup habits that save you when things go wrong.

Every website is two things: files (themes, plugins, uploads) and a database (posts, settings, comments). A proper restore touches both. Bookmark this page before you need it — backup guides are most useful when read calmly, not during an outage.

How Hostinger backups work

Shared / WordPress hosting: Hostinger creates automatic backups of your account on a regular schedule (frequency depends on your plan) and stores them for a limited retention window. You can also generate a new backup manually at any time before making risky changes.
VPS: you get automatic weekly backups plus on-demand snapshots — full point-in-time images of the entire server that restore in one click. Snapshots are your safety net before system-level changes.
What gets backed up: website files and databases. Server-level configuration outside your account (VPS) is covered by snapshots, not file backups.

How to create a backup now (shared hosting)

Log in to hPanel and go to Websites, then click Dashboard on the site you want to back up.
In the left sidebar, navigate to Files → Backups.
Select Generate new backup.
Confirm in the pop-up by clicking Proceed.
Wait for the backup to complete. Depending on the size of your site, this can take from a few minutes to a few hours — you will see it appear in the backup list when done.

Tip: always generate a fresh backup before updating WordPress core, themes, or plugins, and before any migration. The automatic backup might be days old; a manual one captures right now.

How to restore website files

Go to Websites → Dashboard → Files → Backups in hPanel.
Select File backups and pick a date from before the problem started.
Click Next step, select the domain folder (usually public_html or your domain’s folder), and click Restore files.
Wait for the restore to finish, then load your site and check that pages and media display correctly.

Restoring files alone fixes broken themes, bad plugin updates, and hacked files — but if your content is also wrong or missing, continue to the database restore below. A WordPress site needs both halves to work.

How to restore the database

In the same Backups section, switch to Database backups.
Identify the correct database for your site. If you are unsure which one it is, open File Manager, navigate to your site’s folder, and check wp-config.php — it lists the database name near the top.
Choose the backup date matching (or preceding) the file backup you restored, and click Restore.
Reload your site and confirm posts, pages, and settings are back. Log in to /wp-admin to verify the dashboard works.

Note: use matching dates for files and database. Restoring last week’s files with yesterday’s database (or vice versa) can produce strange mismatches — media library entries pointing at missing uploads is the classic symptom.

Restoring a site after an expired plan

If your hosting plan lapsed and the site now looks empty after renewal, your data is usually recoverable from the automatic backups:

Go to Websites → Dashboard and search for Backups in the sidebar.
Under File backups, choose a date from before the plan expired, then restore the domain folder.
Repeat under Database backups with the same date to bring the content back.
Confirm the site loads fully before changing anything else.

VPS snapshots: backup for the whole server

On a VPS, file-level backups are not enough — your Docker containers, system config, and installed software live outside any website folder. That is what snapshots are for:

Open your VPS dashboard in hPanel and find the Snapshots section.
Click to create a snapshot before any significant change: OS updates, Docker image updates, installing Coolify or Ollama, or editing firewall rules.
Name snapshots descriptively (“before-coolify-install” beats “snapshot-3”) so future-you knows what each one is.
To roll back, select the snapshot and restore — the entire server returns to that exact state in one operation.

Snapshots complement, not replace, off-site backups: they live on Hostinger’s infrastructure alongside your server. For anything irreplaceable, also keep a copy somewhere else.

Backup best practices

Back up before you change, not after you break. Updates, migrations, new plugins, DNS changes — snapshot or back up first, every time.
Keep an off-site copy. Download important backups periodically, or use a WordPress backup plugin that syncs to cloud storage. If the hosting account itself is the problem, hPanel backups alone are not enough.
Test your restores. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. After your first manual backup, practice restoring to confirm the process works for your site.
Know your retention window. Automatic backups rotate — old ones are eventually overwritten. For milestones (site launch, major redesign), generate and download a manual backup you control.
Document database names. Multi-site accounts get confusing fast. Keep a note of which database belongs to which site (it is in each site’s wp-config.php).

Troubleshooting

No backups listed. Very new accounts may not have an automatic backup yet — generate one manually. If the plan recently expired and was renewed, allow some time for the account data to reappear, then check again.

Restore completed but the site still looks broken. You probably restored only files or only the database. Do both, with matching dates. Also clear any caching (plugin cache and CDN) so you are seeing the restored version, not a cached broken one.

“Error establishing a database connection” after restore. The restored wp-config.php may reference old database credentials. Open it in File Manager and confirm the DB name, user, and password match the current database in hPanel.

Backup generation never finishes. Very large sites (tens of GB of uploads) take hours. Let it run; starting a second backup concurrently only slows things down.

FAQ

Does Hostinger back up my website automatically?

Yes. Hostinger creates automatic backups of hosting accounts on a regular schedule that depends on your plan, and VPS plans include automatic weekly backups plus manual snapshots. You can also generate a fresh backup on demand any time from hPanel.

How do I restore just one file instead of the whole site?

hPanel’s file restore works at the folder level. For a single file, restore to a convenient point and copy the file out via File Manager — or, if you keep off-site backups, extract the single file from your downloaded copy.

Will restoring a backup delete newer posts or orders?

Yes — a database restore returns the database to the backup date, so anything created after that date is lost. That is why matching dates matter, and why you should generate a fresh backup immediately before risky changes rather than relying on an old automatic one.

Are VPS snapshots the same as backups?

Not exactly. A snapshot is a point-in-time image of the entire server (OS, containers, configs) meant for quick rollback. A backup typically covers website files and databases. Use snapshots before system changes and file/database backups for website-level recovery.