Does LaunchCDN Offer Backups? What Can Be Restored?

Overview

Yes — LaunchCDN maintains automated backups of all hosting accounts via JetBackup, and you have direct self-service access to browse and restore them yourself. This article explains what's backed up, how long backups are retained, what can be restored, and how to perform a restore.

Backup Coverage

Retention

LaunchCDN retains 21 days of backups for every hosting account. This means if something goes wrong today, we have snapshots going back up to three weeks. After 21 days, older backups are automatically rotated out and permanently deleted.

What's Backed Up

Our backup system captures your entire hosting account, including:

• Website files — Everything in your home directory (public_html/ and related folders).
• Databases — All MySQL/MariaDB databases associated with your account.
• Email accounts — Mailbox contents for each email account on the server.
• Email forwarders and filters — Your email routing configuration.
• DNS zones — If DNS is hosted on the LaunchCDN server.
• Configuration files — .htaccess, custom php.ini, wp-config.php, cron jobs, etc.
• SSL certificates — Installed certificates (though these are usually reissued automatically on restore).

What's NOT Backed Up

• Files stored outside your hosting account — External services like S3, Dropbox, etc.
• Accounts that have been terminated or deleted — Once an account is fully removed, backups are not retained beyond the 21-day window.

How to Access JetBackup (Self-Service)

JetBackup is available inside DirectAdmin, which is your hosting control panel behind the LaunchCDN dashboard.

Step-by-Step Access

1. Log in to your LaunchCDN dashboard.
2. Find the hosting account you want to manage.
3. Click the cog icon next to the account.
4. Click Login to Server Panel.
5. You'll be logged directly into DirectAdmin for that account.
6. In DirectAdmin, find and click the JetBackup icon (usually under the Advanced Features or Extra Features section, depending on your skin).

You'll now see the JetBackup dashboard with all available backup types and dates.

What Can Be Restored

JetBackup supports granular restoration — you don't have to restore the entire account. You can restore just the pieces you need.

Full Account Backup

Restores everything: files, databases, email, configuration. Used when you want to roll the entire account back to a previous state (for example, after a major site compromise or a migration gone wrong).

How to restore:

1. In JetBackup, click Full Account Backups.
2. Choose a backup date.
3. Click Restore and confirm.

File Backups (Home Directory and Individual Files)

Restores all files, a specific folder, or individual files.

How to restore:

1. Click File Backups.
2. Choose a backup date.
3. Browse the file tree to find the files or folders you want.
4. Tick the items you want to restore.
5. Click Restore Selected.

You can restore the entire home directory, a specific folder (like public_html/wp-content/uploads/), or even a single file.

Database Backups

Restores one or more MySQL databases.

How to restore:

1. Click Database Backups.
2. Choose a backup date.
3. Select the database(s) you want to restore.
4. Click Restore Selected.

You can choose to overwrite the existing database or restore to a new database with a different name — useful when you want to inspect the backup before committing to a full replacement.

Email Backups

Restores mailbox contents for one or more email accounts.

How to restore:

1. Click Email Backups.
2. Choose a backup date.
3. Select the email account(s) you want to restore.
4. Click Restore Selected.

DNS Zones and Cron Jobs

JetBackup also lets you restore DNS zone records and cron job configuration from the corresponding backup types in the dashboard. The process is the same: pick a date, select the items, and click Restore.

Common Restore Scenarios

"I accidentally deleted a page/post/product in WordPress"

1. Access JetBackup via the cog icon → Login to Server Panel → JetBackup.
2. Click Database Backups.
3. Choose a date from before the deletion.
4. When restoring, choose to restore to a new database name (not overwrite) — this gives you a copy alongside your live database.
5. Use phpMyAdmin to copy the specific rows back to your live database, or ask your developer to help.

"I accidentally deleted files or a folder"

1. Access JetBackup.
2. Click File Backups.
3. Choose a date before the deletion.
4. Browse to the folder that contained the files.
5. Tick the items and click Restore Selected.

"A plugin update broke my site"

Usually resolved by deactivating the plugin via File Manager (see our WordPress Critical Error article). If files are corrupted, use File Backups to restore the wp-content/plugins/ folder (or the specific plugin's folder) from a backup taken before the update.

"My site was hacked"

1. Access JetBackup.
2. Click Full Account Backups.
3. Choose a date from before the compromise.
4. Restore the full account.
5. Important: After restoring, review your site's security to close the entry point — otherwise, the site can be reinfected. Update all passwords, remove unused plugins/themes, and update everything to the latest version.

"I need a specific file from last week"

1. Access JetBackup → File Backups.
2. Choose the appropriate date.
3. Browse to the file's path and restore just that file.

"I lost emails from an IMAP sync issue"

1. Access JetBackup → Email Backups.
2. Choose a date from before the issue.
3. Restore the specific email account.

Important Considerations Before Restoring

Restores Are Destructive by Default

When you restore over existing data, the current version is replaced. If your site has received new orders, comments, user registrations, or content since the backup date, those changes will be lost unless you restore to a separate location.

If you're unsure, use the option to restore to a new database name or a separate folder first, so you can compare before committing to a full overwrite.

Restores Cannot Recover Post-21-Day Data

If an issue happened more than 21 days ago and wasn't noticed until now, no backup will be old enough. This is why we strongly recommend maintaining your own long-term backups in addition to our 21-day window — see below.

Restores May Cause Brief Disruption

During a full account restore, your site may be briefly unavailable while files are written. Smaller restores (individual files, specific databases) typically don't cause downtime.

Previewing Before Restoring

JetBackup lets you browse into a backup before restoring. Use this to confirm the backup actually contains what you expect — for example, you can click into a File Backup from a specific date and navigate the file tree without starting a restore.

We Strongly Recommend Your Own Backups Too

Our 21-day backup window is a safety net, not a complete backup strategy. You should also maintain your own backups, especially for business-critical sites.

Why

• Longer retention — Keep backups for months or years, not just 21 days.
• Off-server storage — If something catastrophic happens to the server or account, your backups are still safe.
• Version history — Some changes take weeks to surface as problems. Your own backups let you go back further.
• Independence — You're not dependent on the hosting account being accessible.

Recommended Tools

For WordPress:

• UpdraftPlus (free and paid) — Schedules automatic backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, or other cloud storage.
• BackWPup — Similar to UpdraftPlus with slightly different features.
• Duplicator — More focused on migrations but handles backups too.

For non-WordPress sites:

• DirectAdmin's built-in backup tool — Generate full account backups and download them locally.
• File Manager + phpMyAdmin — Manual downloads of files and database exports.

Best Practices

• Store backups somewhere other than your hosting account.
• Test restoring a backup occasionally to make sure it actually works.
• Keep at least the last 3 monthly backups for important sites.
• If your site changes frequently, increase backup frequency to weekly or daily.

When Backups Cannot Help

To set expectations, backups cannot recover:

• Content that was never on the server (e.g., drafts in your browser that weren't saved).
• Data from more than 21 days ago (unless you have your own backup).
• Changes made by external services (email service provider, CDN cache, etc.) — only what was on the hosting account.
• Accounts that were terminated or deleted beyond the retention window.

When to Contact Support

JetBackup is self-service and handles the vast majority of restore needs. Open a ticket only if:

• You can't access JetBackup or DirectAdmin through the LaunchCDN dashboard.
• A restore fails partway through with an error you don't understand.
• You need a backup from a date that's showing as unavailable or corrupted in JetBackup.
• You're unsure which type of restore applies to your situation and the scenarios above don't match.

When opening a ticket, please include:

• The domain or account name.
• Which type of restore you were trying to perform (file, database, email, full account).
• The backup date you selected.
• Any error message displayed.