Soft2Hosting

cPanel Backup and Restore Guide: Full Backups, Partial Restores & What to Check

27 Oct 2026 · 3 min read

In cPanel, use the Backup Wizard to take a full backup before any big change, and use partial backups of your home directory, databases and email filters for quick, targeted restores. The one limit to know in advance is that a full backup cannot be restored automatically from cPanel, so keep partial copies as well.

Why backups matter on shared hosting

A bad plugin update, an overwritten file or an accidentally deleted database can take a small business site offline in a minute. A recent backup turns that from a crisis into a twenty-minute job. The rule that works for most people is simple: back up before every update, keep at least one copy off the hosting account, and test a restore once.

Checklist: what to back up

Home directory: your website files in public_html, plus email for your domains.
MySQL databases: WordPress posts, pages, orders and settings live here, not in the files.
Email forwarders and filters: small but tedious to recreate.

The cPanel Backup Wizard documentation says a home directory backup includes the files you own, including public_html and email for your account's domains, plus files you do not own but can access. It does not include files you cannot access. It also says an account that is near or over its quota may fail to back up because the system cannot write necessary files, such as lock files, so free some space first.

Taking a full backup

Open Backup Wizard in cPanel and click Back Up.
Click Full Backup.
Choose a Backup Destination. Home Directory saves to your account; the documentation lists FTP, passive-mode FTP and SCP as remote options, which it says only advanced users should use.
Enter an email address for a completion notice, or tick the box to disable notifications.
Click Generate Backup, then go back to the download section.

For a home directory backup, click the file name to download it. The file is named backup-MM-DD-YYYY.tar.gz, so keep the date in the name when you store it. Store the download somewhere other than the hosting account, for example an external drive or cloud storage you control.

Taking a partial backup

From Back Up, choose the part you want and download it. The documentation lists the formats: the home directory is a tar.gz file, MySQL databases are .sql files, and email forwarders and filters are saved in files with a .net or .com extension. A database backup as a plain .sql file is useful because you can open it in a text editor to check it is not empty.

Restoring from a partial backup

Open Backup Wizard and click Restore, then pick the type to restore.
Select the portion: home directory, a MySQL database, or email forwarders and filters.
Click Choose File, select the matching backup file, and click Upload.

Restoring overwrites the current version of that part, so download a fresh backup of the current state first if there is any chance you will want it.

Restoring only public_html by hand

The documentation describes a manual route: uncompress the full backup on your computer, take the files from the public_html folder inside the homedir directory, and upload them to your account's public_html folder with File Manager. cPanel's File Manager can extract zip, Gz and Bz2 archives on the server too, and deleted items go to a Trash folder you can restore. Upload a folder's contents by creating the folder first, because whole folders cannot be uploaded directly.

The limit that catches people out

The Backup Wizard documentation states plainly that you cannot automatically restore a full backup file in cPanel; only WHM can, so you need to contact your hosting provider. The interface can also be turned on or off by the provider. In practice this means:

Take partial backups of the home directory and of each database as well as a full backup.
For a full restore, open a support ticket with the backup file and say exactly what you want restored.
Do not wait until an emergency to find out how long a support request takes.

Mistakes to avoid

Keeping the only backup on the same hosting account.
Backing up files but not the database, so the restore has pages with no content.
Never opening a backup to see if it contains what you expect.
Restoring over a working site without taking a fresh copy first.
Skipping backups before plugin and theme updates.

Soft2Hosting's cPanel shared hosting gives you the Backup Wizard and File Manager to work with, and the support team to contact when you need a full restore. Set a reminder to download a fresh backup weekly, or before every change, whichever is sooner.