A backup stored on the same server as your website is not a backup; it is a second copy waiting to die in the same accident. UpdraftPlus fixes this by sending automatic WordPress backups to your Google Drive, where they survive hosting failures, hacks and accidental deletions. The free version does everything in this guide.
You will connect UpdraftPlus to Google Drive, set a sensible schedule, run your first backup and, most importantly, learn how restoration works before you ever need it.
Quick Answer
Install and activate UpdraftPlus, go to Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups, choose Google Drive as the storage, and click Save Changes. Follow the authorization link to sign in with your Google account and allow access. Set files and database backups to run weekly (or daily for busy sites), then click Backup Now to create your first restore point.
Step-by-Step: Connecting UpdraftPlus to Google Drive
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Add New, search for UpdraftPlus, install and activate it.
- Open Settings → UpdraftPlus Backups and select the Settings tab.
- Choose Google Drive from the storage options list.
- Set the Files backup schedule and Database backup schedule, and how many scheduled backups to keep (two to four is sensible).
- Click Save Changes at the bottom; a prompt appears with an authentication link.
- Click the link, sign in to the Google account you want to use, and grant UpdraftPlus permission to its own Drive folder.
- Complete the setup back in WordPress; you will see the connection confirmed.
- Press Backup Now, include both files and database, and watch the progress log finish without errors.
What actually gets stored in Drive
UpdraftPlus creates its own folder (named after your site) containing dated zip archives: plugins, themes, uploads, other content and a database file. Because the archives are standard zips, you are never locked in; any developer can restore from them manually.
Choosing a Schedule That Matches Your Site
Match the schedule to how often your content changes. A brochure site that changes monthly is fine with weekly backups. A blog publishing several times a week wants daily database backups and weekly full file backups. A WooCommerce store taking orders daily should back up the database daily at minimum, because orders live there. Retention matters too: keeping several generations protects you when a problem (such as a silent hack) is discovered weeks later, since the newest backup may already contain the damage.
The UpdraftPlus page on WordPress.org lists current features and the FAQ covers Google Drive quota behavior. Pair this with the security habits in our cyber security guides, because backups are your recovery plan, not your protection plan.
How Restoring Works (Test It Once)
On the same settings screen, the Existing Backups section lists every restore point. Restoring means selecting one, choosing components (database, plugins, themes, uploads), and confirming; UpdraftPlus downloads the archives from Drive and rolls the site back. Do one practice restore on a staging copy or a quiet local install so the process is familiar. A backup you have never test-restored is a hope, not a plan.
Understanding What Lands in Your Google Drive
Open the UpdraftPlus folder in Drive once, so the files are not mysterious later. Each backup appears as a set of dated archives: one for the database, and separate zips for plugins, themes, uploads and other content. Keeping components separate is deliberate: restoring after a plugin disaster only needs the plugins archive and the database, which is faster than rolling back everything. The timestamps use your site’s timezone settings, so set those correctly in WordPress (Settings → General) if the times ever look wrong. If storage space worries you, look at which component is huge; it is almost always uploads, and the honest fixes are pruning ancient media or raising retention discipline, not disabling backups.
Troubleshooting: When a Backup Fails
- It stops partway: usually a hosting timeout on a very large file. Reduce the archive split size in UpdraftPlus’s expert settings, or exclude cache and backup folders from the job.
- Drive authorization expired: Google occasionally revokes tokens. Re-run the authentication from the settings tab; two minutes fixes months of silent failures.
- “Backup started but never finished” in the log: your site’s WP-Cron may be broken, which also breaks post scheduling. The log names this directly; your host can confirm cron health.
- The backup works but is tiny: check that both Files and Database are included in the schedule; a database-only job is the classic misconfiguration.
Glance at the Last backup status line in the settings tab once a month. Five seconds of checking is what separates “we have backups” from “we hope we have backups”, and in a crisis that difference is everything.
Bonus: Using the Same Backup to Migrate or Clone
The backup sitting in your Drive has a second career: it is a complete copy of your site that can be born again anywhere. Moving hosts becomes a calm procedure instead of a project: install WordPress on the new host, add UpdraftPlus, connect the same Google account, and restore the latest backup onto the fresh install. Your content, settings, users and media arrive together, and the old site stays untouched until you are satisfied, which makes the whole move reversible. Developers use the same trick to clone a live site into a staging environment for safe experiments. One caution keeps this honest: restores replace the destination site’s content, so never point a restore at a site you care about without its own fresh backup first. Treat every restore prompt as a one-way door and read it twice.
How This Fits Your Wider Safety Routine
Backups work best as one leg of a tripod. The second leg is updates: WordPress core, themes and plugins patched weekly, because a restored backup of an outdated site reopens the same hole that hurt you. The third leg is access hygiene: unique passwords and two-factor on both WordPress and the Google account holding your backups, since that Drive folder is now a skeleton key to your entire site. Review the tripod monthly in one ten-minute sitting (backups green, updates done, no mystery admin users) and you have quietly achieved what most small sites never do: a recovery plan that would actually survive contact with a real incident.
Common Mistakes and Tips
The top mistake is authorizing Drive with a personal account that later gets closed or filled; use a stable account with enough free space, and remember media-heavy sites can outgrow small quotas. Do not store the only copy on the same server by leaving the local copy as your plan; remote storage is the point. Check the backup log monthly, because scheduled jobs silently fail when hosting cron is broken. Finally, download one backup to your own computer occasionally as a third copy for real disasters.
Conclusion
Fifteen minutes of setup buys automatic, off-site WordPress backups. Connect UpdraftPlus to Google Drive, schedule it to match your publishing pace, run the first backup today, and test a restore once. When something eventually breaks, and it will, you will be the calm person who clicks Restore.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the free version of UpdraftPlus enough?
For most sites, yes. Premium adds scheduling flexibility, more storage destinations, incremental backups, migration tools and multisite support, but the core backup-and-restore to Google Drive is free.
How much Google Drive space do backups use?
It depends on your uploads folder. A typical small site uses a few hundred megabytes per full backup; keeping three to four generations usually fits comfortably in a free Drive account, but media-heavy sites should watch the quota.
Will backups slow down my website?
The backup runs briefly in the background and most visitors never notice. Schedule it for your quietest hours if your hosting is very limited.
Can UpdraftPlus back up automatically before updates?
Automatic backups before updates are a premium feature, but you can always click Backup Now manually before updating WordPress, themes or plugins, which is a good habit.
What if my whole hosting account is deleted?
Your backups remain safe in Google Drive. Install WordPress on the new host, add UpdraftPlus, connect the same Drive account, and restore from the existing backups list.
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