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Schedule automatic backups and choose how long they are kept

Create a backup schedule, understand when a run is full or incremental, set how many full backups to keep, combine schedules and know which e-mail alerts to expect.

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A backup schedule backs up one or more sites automatically — daily, weekly or monthly, at the hour you choose. The schedule decides by itself when a run should be a full backup and when an incremental one is enough, and it removes old backups so your storage does not keep growing. Schedules are managed on the Schedule Backups page in the dashboard menu.

Create a schedule

  1. Open Schedule Backups from the dashboard menu and click + New schedule.
  2. Enter a Schedule name, for example "Nightly production backup".
  3. Under Assigned sites, tick the sites this schedule should cover. Select all and None help with long lists. Sites marked inactive cannot be selected until they are reachable again.
  4. Choose a Frequency: Daily, Weekly (then pick the Day of Week) or Monthly (then pick the Day of Month, 1–28).
  5. Choose the Run time (UTC). Times are in UTC, not your local time zone — convert before you pick, for example 02:00 UTC is 05:00 in Istanbul.
  6. Choose Full backups to retain (1 to 10). See How long backups are kept below.
  7. Optionally open Advanced backup strategy (explained below), then save.

A new schedule appears in the list with its frequency, run time, the number of full backups it keeps, and Last run: Never until it runs for the first time. Use the switch in the Actions column to activate or pause it; a schedule needs at least one site before it can be switched on.

What happens on each run

The first run for a site is always a full backup. Later runs are incremental — they only store what changed — until one of these rotation triggers starts a new full backup:

  • Force Full Every (days) — a new full backup once the latest full backup is this many days old. Default: every 7 days. Disabled (auto only) leaves the decision to the other triggers.
  • Max Chain Age (days) — the latest full backup is never older than this; when it is, a new full backup is taken. Default: 30 days.
  • The last full backup did not complete — the chain would be unusable, so a new full backup is queued and you receive a "Backup chain broken" e-mail.
  • A restore was completed after the latest full backup — the site changed as a whole, so the next run starts a fresh chain.

The run starts at the chosen hour. If the backup could not be queued at that exact hour, Missed-Run Grace (hours) lets it start later within that many hours (default: 2 hours; No grace (strict) allows the chosen hour only). A schedule runs at most once per day, week or month, depending on its frequency.

A run is skipped for a site while a restore is running on it; the backup follows once the restore is over. If a site is inactive at run time, the run is skipped and you receive a "Backup skipped – site is not reachable" e-mail. The schedule itself stays active and backups resume when the site responds again.

How long backups are kept

Retention is counted in full backups, per site and per schedule. With Full backups to retain set to 3, each site keeps its three latest full backups and all incremental backups that belong to them. When a fourth full backup completes, the oldest full backup and its incremental backups are deleted.

How far back you can go therefore depends on your settings. Two examples:

  • Daily, Force Full Every 7 days, keep 3 → about three weeks of daily restore points.
  • Daily, Force Full Every 30 days, keep 3 → about three months of daily restore points, with larger chains.

Only backups created by the schedule are rotated. Manual backups you start yourself are never deleted automatically.

Several schedules for the same site

A site can belong to more than one schedule, for example a daily and a monthly one.

  • Saving a schedule with the same frequency and run time as another schedule that already covers one of the sites is blocked — running the same backup twice has no benefit. Change the frequency, the time, or remove the overlapping sites.
  • With a different frequency or time, the schedule is saved and you see a note about the overlap. When two schedules are due for the same site in the same hour, only one runs, in this order of priority: monthly, weekly, daily.

Edit, pause or delete a schedule

  • Edit (pencil icon) opens the same form. Changes apply from the next run.
  • The switch pauses or resumes the schedule. A paused schedule is shown on a site's Backups tab with "(paused)" next to it.
  • Delete (bin icon) removes the schedule. Backups it already created stay in the site's Backups tab until you delete them.

E-mail alerts

WP Safer e-mails the account owner when something needs attention. The same alert is sent at most once every 24 hours per site.

  • Backup failed — a backup still failed after three attempts.
  • Backup chain broken — the latest full backup is not usable; a new full backup has been queued.
  • Backup skipped – site is not reachable — the site was inactive at run time.
  • No recent backup — a site in an active schedule has had no completed backup for longer than its frequency plus two days.
  • No usable full backup — the site's latest full backup is older than the Max Chain Age plus two days, so incremental backups cannot be restored.