Choose a backup region, and whether you can change it later
What a backup region is, how to pick one when you add a site, how to change it while the site has no successful backup, why it locks after the first one, and what the region does and does not change.
Every site you connect has one backup region: the place where that site's archives are written and read from. You pick it when you add the site, you can still change it while the site has no successful backup, and it locks as soon as the first backup is written.
What a backup region is
A region is a physical location of the private object storage WP Safer writes archives to. It belongs to the site, not to your account: two sites in the same account can sit in two different regions.
The regions you can pick are listed in the panel, in the Backup region field. We open regions one by one, so the list you see is the current one — this page does not repeat it. New sites start on the default region, which is Amsterdam (AMS3), in the EU.
Picking the region when you add a site
On Sites → Add site, the Backup region field sits just above the site address. The default region is pre-selected, so you can ignore the field if the default is what you want.
Two things worth knowing:
- The Add multiple sites form has the same field, and the region you pick there applies to every address in the list.
- Sites imported by the WP Safer extension for Plesk or cPanel do not carry a region choice; they are opened on the default storage. You can set their region afterwards from the site page, as long as they have no successful backup yet.
Changing the region afterwards
Open the site, and look at the Backup region row on the site details card. While the site can still move, the row is a dropdown and the change is saved as soon as you pick another region.
The dropdown only lists regions that are currently open. If the site sits in a region we have since closed, that value is still shown — you are never moved out of a region silently.
When the region locks
The region locks on the first successful backup. A backup that fails or is cancelled does not lock anything, because no archive was written. From that point the row shows the region as plain text, with the date it was locked.
The lock exists so that an archive is never looked for in the wrong place. Changing the region of a site that already has archives would leave those archives where they are, while every restore and download went looking somewhere else.
Deleting the backups afterwards does not unlock it. The lock is a stamp on the site record, and nothing in the panel removes it — not deleting a single archive, and not emptying the Trash.
Why the row is read-only
The row stops being a dropdown for one of four reasons, and it tells you which:
- Backups were written to this region, so it cannot be changed. The site is locked — see above.
- A backup is queued or running for this site; the region can be changed once it finishes. Wait for the run to end and reload the page.
- This region is not in the storage catalogue, so backups cannot run for this site. Rare, and it means backups are not running at all — write to us.
- There is no other backup region to choose right now. Only one region is open to your account. New regions show up in this list as we open them; if you need a particular country, write to us.
What the region does and does not change
- Your storage allowance does not change. Archives count toward the same plan limit wherever they are, and the Storage used figure covers every region together.
- Backups and restores work the same way. A restore reads the archive from the region it was written to, so it keeps working even if you later open other regions.
- Transfer distance changes. A region near your site and near you usually means a faster backup and a faster download.
- The country the data sits in changes. If you are bound by a data-residency requirement, this is the field that decides it. See GDPR, data residency and retention.
I need a different region, but the site is already locked
There is no “move this site's archives” button, and taking one away is deliberate: moving archives is a copy that can fail halfway. From the panel, the only route is to remove the site and add it again — the new record starts with a fresh region choice. Before you do that, be aware of what it costs:
- the existing archives are not moved; they go to the Trash in your panel and stay in the old region until you delete them permanently;
- the site starts a new backup chain, so the first run in the new region is a full backup;
- schedules, groups and the site key are set up again, as for any new site.
If you need the existing archives in the new region, write to us at info@wpsafer.com before you remove the site. Moving them is a manual operation rather than a feature of the panel, so we will tell you whether it is possible in your case before you change anything.