How to Back Up Your Website Before You Migrate Hosts (Files, Database, Email & DNS)

Every migration guide tells you to “take a backup first.” Almost none of them tell you what actually counts as a backup, or how to check it will save you if things go wrong. A backup that lives on the server you’re about to leave, or a database export nobody has opened, is not a safety net — it’s a false sense of security.

This is step 6 and 7 of our 20-point migration checklist, expanded into a proper walkthrough, because it’s the single step that decides whether a bad migration is a minor delay or a genuine disaster.

What “a website” actually consists of

A working backup needs four separate things, and missing any one of them is how people lose data even after “backing up”:

• Files — your theme, plugins, uploaded images and any custom code
• Database — every page, post, product, order, form submission and setting; this is stored completely separately from the files
• Email — mailboxes, forwarders and stored messages, which live on the mail server, not in your website files or database
• DNS records — A records, MX records, TXT records for SPF/DKIM/DMARC; not part of the website at all, but you will need to recreate every one of them exactly

Most people who say “I took a backup” mean they backed up the first one and assumed the rest would follow. It won’t.

Backing up your files

Your control panel (cPanel, Plesk or similar) has a Backup or Files section that can generate a full compressed archive of everything in your hosting account. Download that archive to your own computer or a cloud drive — not just to another folder on the same server, which does nothing if the server itself is the problem. For a large site, this can take a while to generate; start it well before your planned migration date, not the morning of.

Backing up your database

If you run WordPress, WooCommerce or most CMS platforms, your content lives in a MySQL database that’s separate from your files entirely. Use phpMyAdmin (in your control panel) to export it: choose the correct database, select “Export,” and use the default “Quick” method with SQL format. Download the resulting .sql file. A WordPress backup plugin can bundle files and database together automatically if you’d rather not do it by hand — either way, the two need to travel together, because a set of files with the wrong database (or vice versa) is not a working website.

Backing up email

This is the step almost everyone skips, because email doesn’t feel like part of “the website.” If you’re changing servers (not just changing your website host while keeping the same mail provider), export or download existing mail from each mailbox before you touch anything — most control panels support an export, or you can connect a desktop mail client over IMAP and let it download everything locally. Separately, write down every mailbox address, its forwarders and any autoresponder text; these need to be recreated by hand on the new server, because they don’t travel with a file or database export at all.

Backing up DNS

Log into wherever your domain’s DNS is managed (sometimes your registrar, sometimes your current host) and export or screenshot the full zone file: every A record, CNAME, MX record and TXT record. This takes two minutes and saves hours — a forgotten SPF or DKIM record is the most common reason a company’s email starts landing in spam folders a week after a migration, and nobody connects the two events because the failure shows up so much later than the change that caused it.

The step almost nobody does: verify the backup actually works

A backup you haven’t tested is a guess. Before you rely on it:

• Unzip the files archive and confirm it contains what you expect — not a 0 KB file from a backup that failed partway through
• Open the SQL export in a text editor and check it contains real CREATE TABLE statements with your actual table names, not an empty file or an error message saved as a document
• If possible, import the database into a temporary/staging installation and confirm a few real pages load correctly

This takes fifteen minutes. Discovering a backup is corrupt after something has gone wrong takes considerably longer, and by then the old server may already be gone.

Where to actually keep it

Follow the 3-2-1 principle where it’s practical for a small site: at least two different storage locations, at least one of them not physically or logically connected to either the old or new server. Your own laptop plus a cloud drive (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) covers this for almost any small business site. What matters is that if both the old and new hosting accounts became inaccessible at the same moment, you would still have a copy.

When to take this backup

At least 24–48 hours before the migration, so you have time to verify it and fix anything before you’re under time pressure. Take a second, final backup immediately before you start the actual move, since content can change between the first backup and moving day. Keep both until the new site has been live and checked for at least a week.

Frequently asked questions

Can my hosting provider’s automatic backups replace doing this myself?

No. Automatic server-side backups are excellent insurance against server failure, but they live on the same server you’re about to leave, and most hosts don’t guarantee retention once an account is closed or moved. Always keep an independent copy you control.

How big will the backup files be?

Roughly the same as your current disk usage, which your control panel shows on its main page. A typical small business WordPress site runs anywhere from a few hundred megabytes to a few gigabytes, almost entirely driven by the size of the uploads folder.

Do I need to back up email if I’m keeping the same mail provider?

If your mail stays with the same provider and only your website hosting changes, existing mailboxes and messages are unaffected — you only need to make sure the MX records still point where they already do. Backups matter for email specifically when the mail itself is moving to a new server.

What’s the single biggest backup mistake people make?

Backing up the files and forgetting the database, or the reverse. Either one alone is not a working website — they have to be restored together, from the same point in time.

We handle this for you

When Salasar Hosting migrates a site, we take and verify a full backup — files, database, email and DNS — before anything is touched on the new server, and we keep it until you’ve confirmed everything is working. If you’d rather not do this part yourself, tell us about your current setup or call +91 99620 05753, and read the full migration checklist for everything that comes after the backup.