A backup system that’s supposed to run and silently doesn’t — because of a storage limit, a plugin conflict, an expired connection to an offsite destination — is often worse than having no backup system at all, since it gives you false confidence that protection exists right up until the day you discover it hasn’t been running for weeks or months.
Check when your last successful backup actually completed
Most backup plugins or services show a log or history of past backup attempts. Look specifically for the date of the last one marked successful, not just the last attempt — a string of recent failures behind an old success date is the clearest sign something has been quietly broken for a while.
Backup failure diagnosis
A backup that quietly stopped succeeding, found and fixed, with alerting so it's caught faster next time.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
This or something else?
| Your backup system is failing to run successfully, or hasn’t in some time | This fix covers it |
| Backups are running fine but you want to verify they can actually be restored | Backup restore test & verification report, a different kind of check |
| You don’t have a backup system in place at all yet | Backup system setup & schedule configuration |
| You want backups moved to a different, more reliable destination | Offsite backup destination configuration |
What you are seeing
- Backup logs showing failures, or a gap since the last successful run
- An error message from the backup plugin or service, with unclear meaning
- Storage limits reached at the backup destination
- No obvious notification that anything was wrong, until manually checked
Common causes
- Storage quota exceeded at the backup destination, silently blocking new backups
- An expired or revoked authentication token to an offsite storage service
- A plugin conflict interrupting the backup process partway through
- The site growing large enough that the backup process now times out before completing
- A hosting change or migration disrupting a previously working configuration
What we do
- Review backup logs to pinpoint exactly when and why failures began
- Identify the specific cause, whether storage, authentication, conflict, or size-related
- Resolve the underlying issue directly
- Run a fresh backup and confirm it completes successfully
- Set up or confirm alerting so a future failure doesn’t go unnoticed as long
- Document the cause and fix for future reference
What is included
- The specific cause of backup failure identified and resolved
- A confirmed, successful fresh backup
- Alerting configured so future failures are noticed promptly
- A written note on what was wrong and how it was fixed
Not included
- Recovering data that was never backed up during the failure period, since nothing existed to restore from that gap
- Restoring the site from an existing backup, a separate fix if actually needed
- Verifying older, pre-failure backups can still be restored, a related but separate check
- Ongoing monitoring beyond the alerting configured as part of this fix
Questions about this fix
How long could my backups have been failing without me knowing?
That depends entirely on whether you had any alerting in place — without it, a failure can persist indefinitely until someone happens to check, which is exactly why we set up alerting as part of resolving this.
Is there any way to recover data from the period when backups were failing?
Not from the backup system itself, since nothing was successfully captured during that gap — if the data still exists live on your site, it's not lost, but there's no backup covering that specific window.
Will this happen again for the same reason?
Not for the same specific cause, since we resolve that directly, though a different cause (a new plugin conflict, a different storage limit) could still interrupt backups in future, which is part of why alerting matters.
Should I switch to a different backup solution entirely?
Only if the current one is fundamentally unsuited to your site's size or needs — often the existing system just needs the specific fault corrected, rather than a full replacement.
How will I know if this happens again in future?
The alerting we configure as part of this fix should notify you promptly if a future backup fails, rather than relying on you to periodically check manually.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.