How to Back Up Your Websites, Databases and Mailboxes in ISPConfig

This guide shows you how backups work in the ISPConfig control panel on your Noiz hosting account, and how to set them up so that a bad deployment, a broken plugin update or a deleted mailbox is an inconvenience rather than a disaster. The important thing to understand up front is that ISPConfig does not produce one big account archive. It produces three kinds of archive, each held and restored on its own: your website files, each of your MySQL databases, and each individual mailbox. Website files and the site's databases are driven together from the website's own Backup tab. Mailboxes are scheduled somewhere else entirely, in the Email module, and nothing you set on a website reaches them. That division is the single most useful fact in this article, because it is the one that decides which screens you actually have to visit.

This article covers the setting up and the checking. Getting data back out of an archive is covered separately in How to Restore a Backup in ISPConfig.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against ISPConfig 3.3.1p1 (the release running on Noiz hosting, and the newest release tag published in the ISPConfig source repository when this article was written). This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against ISPConfig. It complements, and does not replace, the official ISPConfig documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• ISPConfig Documentation overview: the vendor's index of all official ISPConfig documentation.
• ISPConfig User Manual: the vendor's paid PDF manual, which carries the full field-by-field reference for the Backup tab and the Backup Stats screens.
• Website form definition (ISPConfig source, tag 3.3.1p1): the authoritative list of the fields and choices on a website's Backup tab.
• Mailbox form definition (ISPConfig source, tag 3.3.1p1): the same, for a mailbox's Backup tab.
• Backup class (ISPConfig source, tag 3.3.1p1): the code that decides when each backup runs and which older copies are deleted.

Prerequisites

• You can log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
• At least one of the things you want backed up already exists: a website, a database or a mailbox.
• A hosting plan that includes the backup function. It is a per-account permission in ISPConfig, and it is set separately for web backups and for mailbox backups. If the Backup tab described below is simply not there, that is what is missing, not a fault.
• Somewhere off the server to keep the copies you download. A backup that only exists on the machine it came from is a convenience feature, not a safety net.

What ISPConfig Backs Up, and Why the Split Matters

ISPConfig produces three kinds of archive:

• Website files, scheduled on the website itself. This is the site's own directory tree, including the web folder your pages live in, but leaving out the site's log folder.
• MySQL databases, one archive per database. Saving a schedule on the website's Backup tab also applies that same interval and copy count to every database attached to the site. Each database additionally carries its own Backup interval field.
• Mailboxes, scheduled on each mailbox in the Email module, one archive per address.

Mailboxes are genuinely independent. A mailbox that receives contracts can be backed up daily while the rest are left off entirely, and no website setting changes that either way. Websites and their databases are not independent in the same way. Changing the interval, the copy count or a format on a website's Backup tab and saving writes that interval and copy count onto every database currently attached to the site, replacing whatever those databases were set to. You can still give one database a different interval on its own form afterwards, but treat that as temporary, because the next change you save on the website's Backup tab will overwrite it again.

The trade-off is honest and worth stating. Panels that produce a single account-wide archive give you one button and one thing to remember, and restoring the whole account is straightforward. ISPConfig gives you smaller archives and the ability to put back only the database without touching the files, at the cost of setting backups up in two modules rather than on one page. Neither approach is wrong, but if you have come from a single-archive panel, the mistake to avoid is switching on the website backup and assuming everything came with it. The site's databases usually did. The mailboxes never do.

Where each setting lives

• Website files: Sites module, open the website, Backup tab.
• A database: the website's Backup tab covers every database attached to the site, and for a single database on its own, the Sites module, open the database, the Backup interval field on the main form.
• A mailbox: Email module, open the mailbox, Backup tab.

All three write their archives to the same place on the server, and the finished website and database archives are listed together on the website's Backup tab, which is the part that catches people out. Scheduling a database backup and looking for it on the database screen will not find it.

Back Up a Website's Files

1. Open the Sites module and click Website in the left menu.
2. Click the domain you want to protect.
3. Open the Backup tab.

Backup interval

Choose Daily, Weekly or Monthly. No backup is the setting that leaves the site unprotected, and on a new site it is what you start with, so this is a deliberate choice you have to make rather than something that happens by default.

Two details the drop-down does not tell you: Weekly means Sundays, and Monthly means the first day of the month. They are not rolling seven-day or thirty-day timers. If you pick Monthly on the second of the month, nothing will happen for another four weeks. The job itself runs once a day at a time chosen by the server administrator, normally in the quiet early hours, so a backup you switch on this afternoon appears tomorrow morning rather than immediately.

One more condition applies: a website whose Active checkbox is unticked is skipped entirely. Taking a site offline for maintenance also stops its backups, which is exactly when you would want them.

Number of backup copies

This is the retention control, offering 1 to 10, then 15, 20 and 30. Read it together with the interval, because the two multiply into a time window: daily with 10 copies keeps roughly the last ten days, weekly with 4 keeps roughly the last month, monthly with 12 keeps roughly the last year. When a new archive pushes the count past the limit, the oldest is deleted automatically.

The useful and non-obvious part is that the count is applied per item, not per account. Ten copies on a website means ten website archives. Ten copies on each of three databases means ten archives each, thirty in total. That is what makes the granularity practical, but it is also how disk usage gets away from people, so see the sizing note further down.

Excluded Directories

Paths listed here are left out of the website archive. They are relative to the site's root directory and separated by commas, and the field's own example is web/cache/*,web/backup. Only letters, numbers and the characters used in ordinary paths are accepted, and .. is rejected outright, so a validation error here almost always means a stray character rather than a missing folder.

This field earns its keep on content management systems. Caches, generated thumbnails, compiled template folders and locally stored copies of other backups are all rebuildable or duplicated, and excluding them can cut an archive dramatically without losing anything you would actually want back. Do not exclude anything you cannot regenerate, and remember that user uploads are usually not regenerable.

Compression options and Encryption options

Below the main fields are two collapsed panels. Most accounts never need to open them.

Compression options holds Backup format for web files and Backup format for database. The default entry is labelled to show what it falls back to, and the alternatives run from ordinary zip and gzip through to bzip2, xz and 7z variants. Stronger compression produces a smaller file and takes longer and more processor time to produce, which matters on a shared server. If a format you pick is not available on the server, ISPConfig says so in a warning listing exactly which tools are missing rather than failing silently, so trust the message and choose something else. The practical advice is to leave the default alone unless you have measured a reason to change it.

Encryption options holds an Enable encryption checkbox and a Password field, and ISPConfig states in the panel itself that encryption is available only for the 7z, RAR and zip formats, and that zip's own encryption is not secure. Two cautions if you turn this on. First, an encrypted archive is worth exactly nothing without the password, so record it somewhere that will survive the event you are backing up against. Second, ISPConfig records the password against each archive at the moment that archive is made, so changing the password later does not stop the panel restoring the older ones. It does mean an archive you have already downloaded needs the password that was in force on the day it was taken, not the one on the tab today. Set it once, write it down, and leave it.

Click Save when you are done. As everywhere else in ISPConfig, the small red change indicator near the top of the panel means the setting is still being written out; it clears within about a minute.

Back Up a Database

If you have just set a schedule on the website's Backup tab, the databases attached to that site at the time already picked it up and there is nothing more to do. Two cases still need the database form: a database created after you last saved the website's Backup tab, which starts at No backup and is not brought in line retrospectively, and a database you want on a different schedule from the rest of the site.

1. In the Sites module, click Database in the left menu.
2. Click the database you want to protect.
3. Set the Backup interval field on the form to Daily, Weekly or Monthly, and click Save.

The same Sunday and first-of-the-month rules apply. What decides whether a dump runs at all is any active database on the site being due that night; once one is, ISPConfig dumps every database belonging to that website in the same pass, so a database left on No backup or marked inactive can still end up with an archive if a sibling database triggered the run. The retention count for database archives is applied per database, so each one keeps its own set of copies.

Once the job has run, the resulting archives appear in the Existing backups list on the parent website's Backup tab, marked with the type MySQL Database. That is where you download or restore them from. If you have several databases attached to one site, they are all listed there together, and the database name is part of each file name, so tell them apart by the file name rather than by the row order.

A word on what a database dump is for. Your website archive contains the files that make the site work; the database contains everything the site has recorded since, including orders, comments, form submissions and content. For anything running WordPress, Joomla or a shop, the database is usually the part you would grieve over, so if you only schedule one thing, schedule this.

Back Up a Mailbox

1. Open the Email module and click Email Mailbox in the left menu.
2. Click the address you want to protect.
3. Open the Backup tab.
4. Set Backup interval and Number of backup copies, then click Save.

The mailbox tab is deliberately simpler than the website one: an interval, a copy count, and the list of archives already taken. There is no exclusions field, no format choice and no encryption option, and the archive format follows whatever the server is configured to produce. Everything said above about Sundays, the first of the month and the overnight run applies here too, and the copy count is per mailbox, so setting five copies on eight mailboxes means up to forty archives. One difference from the website side matters a great deal: setting a mailbox's interval back to No backup does not merely stop new archives, it removes the archives that mailbox already has on the next overnight run. Restore or ask for anything you still want before you switch it off.

Now the limitation worth knowing before you rely on it: the mailbox backup list offers Restore and Delete Backup, but no download. A mailbox archive is a server-side safety net for putting mail back into the same mailbox, not a way to hand yourself a portable copy of your email. If what you actually want is a personal offline copy of your mail, the reliable route is an IMAP client, which downloads messages to your own machine as you go; see How to Add an Email Account in Mozilla Thunderbird. If you need the archive file itself, for example to move a mailbox to another provider, open a support ticket and ask the Noiz team to retrieve it.

Run a Backup Now Without Waiting

Scheduled jobs are for ordinary weeks. Before a plugin update, a theme change or a content migration, you want a copy taken in the next few minutes.

The website Backup tab carries a Manual backup control with two buttons, Make backup of databases and Make backup of web files, which is exactly the split described above showing up again. ISPConfig warns you before it starts that manual copies count towards the same allowance as scheduled ones, so if the site is already at its limit, taking a manual backup deletes the oldest scheduled one. On a site set to keep two copies, two manual backups in a row will quietly consume your entire history. Raise the copy count for the day you are doing risky work, then put it back.

The backup is queued rather than run instantly, so you get a message saying the process has started and may take several minutes. Leave the tab and come back rather than watching it.

How to Tell It Actually Worked

The morning after you switch a schedule on is the moment to check, not the morning after you need it.

Open the website's Backup tab and look at the Existing backups list. Each row shows the date, the type (Website files or MySQL Database), the file name, the file size, the backup format, whether it is encrypted, and whether it came from the scheduler or from a manual run. Three quick sanity checks: the date is recent, the size is plausible for the amount of content you have, and both a website row and a database row are present if you scheduled both. A database archive of a few kilobytes for a site with years of content deserves a second look.

For the overview across everything, ISPConfig has two summary screens. In the Sites module, under Statistics, Backup Stats lists your websites with the interval, the number of copies held and the space they occupy. The Email module has its own Backup Stats under Statistics, listing the same figures per mailbox. Both are worth a glance once a month, for two reasons: an item with an interval set but still showing a count of zero several days later is a schedule that is not working, and the size column is how you notice backups quietly eating your disk allowance. The counts are read from ISPConfig's own record of the archives it is holding, so they move as jobs finish rather than only once a day. A manual backup shows up once its job has completed, which is minutes rather than immediately, so give it a moment before concluding something is broken.

Where the Archives Live, and Getting a Copy Off the Server

Archives are written to a backup directory on the server, outside your web space, in a separate folder per website and per mail domain. You cannot browse that location from a shared hosting account, and that is intentional: it keeps the backups out of reach of anything that compromises the website itself. File names are predictable and worth recognising, since they are built from the item and a timestamp, with manual runs prefixed so you can tell them from scheduled ones at a glance.

To get a website or database archive into your own hands, use the Download button on its row in the Existing backups list. This does not stream the file to your browser. It queues a job that copies the archive into a folder named backup inside your website's directory, sitting alongside your web folder, from where you collect it over FTP or SFTP. If you have not set up access yet, see How to Create an FTP Account in ISPConfig.

Two things follow from that design, and both catch people out:

• The file is not there instantly. Give it a few minutes and refresh your FTP client. If you queue a second download while the first is still pending, ISPConfig tells you there is already a job waiting rather than starting another.
• The copy in that folder is temporary. ISPConfig clears anything older than three days out of the website's backup folder, so download it to your own machine promptly. This is a staging area, not storage. It is also inside your web space, so it counts towards your disk usage while it sits there.

Do this deliberately rather than only in an emergency. Once a month, download the most recent website and database archives and keep them somewhere that is not the hosting server, ideally somewhere that is not the same computer as your working copy either. Panel backups protect you from your own mistakes and from software going wrong. A copy you hold yourself is the one that protects you from everything else.

Choosing Settings You Will Not Regret

A reasonable starting point for a typical business site, to adjust rather than adopt blindly:

• Databases: daily, with 7 to 14 copies. Content changes constantly and dumps are small.
• Website files: daily if you or a developer change the site often, weekly if it is stable, with enough copies to cover the time it would realistically take you to notice a problem. If you check the site once a fortnight, three daily copies will not save you.
• Mailboxes: daily on the addresses that carry business records, with a modest copy count. Mail archives are the largest of the three and grow with the mailbox.
• Exclusions: add cache and temporary directories to the website's Excluded Directories once you know where your software puts them.

Size the whole thing before you commit to it. Multiply each item's typical archive size by its copy count and add them up. If that total is a meaningful fraction of your plan's disk allowance, reduce copies on the largest items first, since retention costs space linearly while frequency mostly costs processing time. If the arithmetic does not fit, ask the Noiz team about a plan with more space rather than leaving a schedule you cannot afford in place until it fills the account.

Troubleshooting

• There is no Backup tab on the website or the mailbox: the backup function is a per-account permission and is granted separately for web and for mail, so its absence means your plan does not currently include it. Open a support ticket to ask about enabling it.
• The interval is set but no archive appeared: check the day first. Weekly runs on Sundays and monthly on the first of the month, so a backup switched on mid-week may be days away. Then confirm the website or database is ticked Active, since inactive items are skipped. Then allow for the overnight run: a schedule saved this afternoon produces its first archive tomorrow morning.
• The database was not backed up even though the website was: a database created after you last saved the website's Backup tab starts at No backup and does not inherit the site's schedule retrospectively. Set the Backup interval on the database form, or change and re-save the website's Backup tab, which applies the site's interval and copy count to every database attached to it.
• Older backups have disappeared: the copy limit was reached and ISPConfig deleted the oldest to make room. Manual backups count towards the same limit. Raise Number of backup copies if you need a longer history and the space allows.
• A warning says some formats are not installed: the compression tool for that format is not present on the server, and ISPConfig names the missing ones. Choose the default format instead, or ask support whether the tool you want can be provided.
• The Excluded Directories field will not save: it accepts only ordinary path characters, rejects .., and expects paths relative to the site root separated by commas. Retype the entry following the pattern web/cache/*,web/backup rather than pasting an absolute path.
• The downloaded archive is not in the backup folder: downloads are queued, so wait a few minutes and refresh. If ISPConfig says a download is already pending, an earlier request is still being processed. Note also that files in that folder are cleared out once they are three days old.
• There is no Download button on the mailbox backup list: that is by design. Mailbox archives can be restored or deleted from the panel but not downloaded. Use an IMAP client for a portable copy of your mail, or ask support to retrieve the archive file.
• An encrypted archive will not open: the password is the backup password from the website's Backup tab, not your panel or FTP password, and encryption applies only to 7z, RAR and zip archives. If the password has been changed since that archive was taken, the one you need is the older password, not the current one.
• Disk usage climbed sharply after switching backups on: check both Backup Stats screens for the size columns. Reduce the copy count on the largest items and add cache directories to the exclusions, then re-check the following day.

Related Guides

• How to Restore a Backup in ISPConfig
• How to Create a Website in ISPConfig
• How to Create a Database and Database User in ISPConfig
• How to Create an Email Mailbox in ISPConfig
• How to Create an FTP Account in ISPConfig
• How to Log In to the ISPConfig Control Panel

If you would rather Noiz set sensible backup schedules up for you, or you are on a managed plan and want the backup sizing reviewed against your disk allowance, open a support ticket and the Noiz team will handle it. If something has already gone wrong, raise the ticket before deleting or overwriting anything, and include the domain name, which item you need recovered, and the date you last knew it to be correct.