Hostgator Adds cPanel Backup Service: Site Auto Backup

Hostgator has announced a new backup service aimed at cPanel and WHM users.

Site Auto Backup gives cPanel users low-cost, automated daily offsite backups. Customers do not have to have their hosting with Hostgator to use it.

Site Auto Backup is priced at $1.95 per month for the first GB and $1 for every GB beyond that. The system is completely automated beyond the initial setup, making it a ‘set and forget’ solution, and anyone with cPanel or WHM can use it.

Is it a service hosting customers will find useful? 

Site Auto Backup: How it Works

Site Auto Backup augments the backup tools built into cPanel and WHM.

Users can choose a 5GB account ($5 per month) or a 1 GB account ($2 per month). They are then asked to add additional space, priced at $1 per GB per month.

Note: Storage space isn’t necessarily determined by the size of the site. cPanel backups are compressed. According to Hostgator, the backups can be as small as 20% of the actual size of the original files.

New clients get two months free if they pay for 10 months upfront.

After connecting the Site Auto Backup account with the hosting account, the user then decides how often backups should run and how many files should be stored. If they use Site Auto Backup with a WHM account, it will not only import all existing cPanel accounts and import new ones as and when they are created. Individual accounts can be disabled.

There’s no need to use FTP or set up any cron jobs.

Is It Worth Signing Up?

Web hosts often take backups, but often, customers aren’t able to access them without paying a hefty fee. If your server hard drive crashes, you’re normally covered. If your account gets hacked or you make a mistake, you probably won’t be (unless you have the option to pay for the privilege).

With Site Auto Backup, most bloggers will get by with the $2 per month account. But consider how much that blogger is paying for their shared hosting account. Probably not much more. VPS customers would almost certainly need a larger account, and costs inevitably start to rise.

A remote, automated backup system is appealing. It could make a hosting switch easier, and it provides great peace of mind without manual intervention. But if you have a lot of data that can’t be compressed efficiently, Site Auto Backup will probably be too expensive to be worthwhile.

For insurance against disaster, Site Auto Backup is the easy option. For media-heavy sites, there are almost certainly more cost-effective backup solutions you can use.