Backup frequency is usually chosen by whatever the hosting plan happens to include. That is backwards. The right interval comes from your own tolerance, not the provider's default.
The Only Question That Matters
If your site were restored to how it looked yesterday morning, what would you lose?
For a brochure site that changes twice a year, the answer is nothing, and weekly backups are generous. For a shop taking orders, yesterday morning means losing a day of orders, which is a different conversation entirely. For a blog published to weekly, daily is comfortable.
Work out what you would have to redo, then pick an interval where the answer is tolerable. Most small businesses land on daily and are right to.
Backups Have Two Halves
Files and database. On any modern site the database holds the parts people actually care about. Pages, posts, orders, form submissions, users. Files hold the theme, the plugins and the images.
A backup of one without the other is not a backup, it is half a restore. If you are checking what your provider takes, check both are covered and both are kept for the same length of time.
Retention Is The Part People Forget
Daily backups kept for seven days protect you from a mistake you notice this week. They do nothing about a problem introduced two months ago that you only spotted now. A corrupted product image, a page someone deleted, a plugin that has been quietly mangling data since a bad update.
Longer retention costs disk space, which is why plans keep it short. It is worth knowing exactly how far back you can actually go, rather than assuming.
And The Bit Everyone Skips
Restore one. Once. On purpose, when nothing is wrong.
An untested backup is a belief, not a safety net. We would rather you found out that it works on a quiet Tuesday than at the moment you desperately need it to.
