Backup, backup, backup

Having a backup is like buying insurance.

Backup is something that you pay for, that you hope you never had to use. Although you can breeze through life (or business for that matter) without it, it is essential to have especially in a digital age where backup is easily done and relatively cheap.

For websites, a good backup policy is to have monthly backup of the entire site for up to 6 months, and weekly backup for the recent 4 weeks. Ideally your backups should be situated on a different server to avoid location or server risk. If possible, have another backup on another server for redundancy purpose.

For a website, some factor can happen that will bring your website down and that’s where your backup will come in handy. Your hosting company may experience hardware failure, burned down or flooded, or the website getting hacked, plagued by virus, or mistakenly deleted or rendered inactive.

Here are some backup solution you can consider:

Dropbox

Great for files that you access frequently, however if you have large files, you will have to pay for more storage. The cheapest plan is the PLUS at USD99/year. You get 2TB of storage which is sufficient for most small business.

Google Drive

A great alternative storage for large files with their FREE plan that you can use for 15GB of space. Syncing is less seamless compared to Dropbox and it is mainly for storing documents, spreadsheets and other types of files.

AWS Glacier

Best for long term, and very large files that you don’t access frequently. It is cheaper than other backup storage solution. Storing your files cost very little, but if you need to retrieve your files very quickly, it may cost you as there is a fee for quick retrieval compared to delayed retrieval which is free/cost lesser subject to certain limitation.

If you don’t have a backup setup for your website or work files, now is the time to do it!