Restores & Liability
Backup: Whose Restore Is It — Yours or the Client's?
A client has deleted something important and is waiting for you to say it can be undone.
Straight answer first
A backup is a copy of files and database that can genuinely be put back, and on a reseller platform the interesting question is not whether copies exist but who is expected to press the button when a client deletes something.
Copies are taken daily on every account and the restore runs from your own panel, per account, in minutes. That means you can answer at nine in the morning without a ticket queue between you and the client.
Which is precisely why the expectation needs writing down. If restores are your job, price them. If they are the client's, give them the access and say so in the welcome email.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 4 August 2026
100+
Terms defined for resellers
2 min
Time to read one entry
Plain
English, from WHM to invoice
24/7
Cover for you and for them
The adjectives carry the weight. Automatic, so remembering never enters into it. Deep enough that the retention window outlasts a problem you find late, such as a compromise that sat quietly for a fortnight. Tested, because a copy nobody has ever restored is a belief rather than a backup.
For a reseller there is a fourth: separable. Restoring one client's account should not involve the other thirty-nine, and it does not — which is the difference between a bad morning for one customer and a bad morning for your whole list.
The nine o'clock call, and who is expected to fix it
Most data loss is self-inflicted and all of it is urgent when it lands. A bad update, a wrong click, a deleted folder. The client's first message is rarely 'please restore'; it is 'the site is gone', and the gap between those two sentences is where your reputation is made.
Have the answer ready as a routine rather than as a decision: which copy, how far back, how long it takes, and what it costs them if anything. A calm process is most of what a client is buying from a reseller in the first place.
Retention, and the problem you find late
Yesterday's copy covers yesterday's mistake. It does not cover a compromise that has been quietly present for three weeks, because by then every recent copy contains it. Depth of history is what separates an inconvenience from a rebuild.
The habit worth keeping is a periodic copy of your own, held somewhere other than the platform. It costs almost nothing and it covers the small set of scenarios that justify a bit of pessimism.
What your own terms should say about it
Three sentences will do. That copies are taken daily. That a restore is available and on what terms — included, or billed at your hourly rate beyond the first one a year. And that the client is responsible for keeping their own application updated, which is the clause that matters when the reason for the restore was a plugin nobody patched.
Vagueness here always resolves in the client's favour at exactly the moment you are least in a position to argue.
Where restores run, and what to read next
The restore runs from your own panel, per account, choosing files or databases or both, at three in the morning if that is when it is needed. No ticket, no queue, no waiting for somebody else's shift to start.
Worth reading next: Database, Staging Environment, Cron Job and Uptime.
Every client account is copied daily on every reseller tier, with the restore in your hands rather than ours.
The reseller desk's own reference, written down
We treat unexplained jargon as a margin problem rather than a style one. Each entry is written so you can forward it to a client instead of writing the answer yourself.
Overselling is switched on from the start, so you sell against the pool rather than against a spreadsheet of leftovers.
- Definitions from the reseller's side of the panel
- The failure mode named, not implied
- Handover and hand-back covered in each entry
- Cross-linked, so one lookup builds a picture
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
What the client actually sees
Each definition names the screen, the email or the error a customer meets, so you can answer before they open a ticket.
Handover, covered honestly
What you give a client on the way out, what stays with you, and which of the two arguments is worth having in advance.
Costed per account
Every entry says what the term does to your resource pool and your ticket queue, not merely what the word means.
Safe to forward
Written so you can send the link to a customer instead of composing the explanation yourself for the ninth time.
Entries that point onwards
Related terms cross-link, so one lookup turns into a working grasp of the whole account stack rather than a single answer.
Backup, in one read
Backup defined, split between your responsibility and the client's, and placed in your own panel.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Write down who restores, and what it costs
Included, or billed beyond the first one a year. Either is fine; leaving it unsaid is what turns an emergency into a dispute.
- 2
Restore one on purpose, once a quarter
Twenty minutes into a spare folder is the entire distance between having a backup system and believing in one.
- 3
Read the neighbours
Database, Staging Environment and Cron Job finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read from here.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- Client accounts moved in by our staff, at no charge
- The renewal figure matches the figure you ordered at
- A free SSL certificate on every client site, reissued before it lapses
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox you create
- A domain free for year one when the order is annual
- cPanel — the panel your clients' developers already know
- NVMe SSD under the whole platform, LiteSpeed cache in front
- Every client account copied daily, with restores you run yourself
- Webmail plus IMAP, POP and SMTP on every mailbox in every account
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
A client deleted a page. Do I restore it, or do they?
Whichever your terms say, and they should say something. The mechanism is the same either way: the restore runs from your panel, per account, choosing files or databases or both. What differs is whether the client expects it free and immediately. Decide that once, put it in the welcome email, and the nine o'clock call becomes a routine instead of a negotiation.
How far back can a restore reach?
Copies are taken daily, so recent mistakes are covered comfortably. The scenario to think about is the one you discover late — a compromise sitting quietly for a fortnight is present in every recent copy by the time anybody notices. That is the argument for keeping a periodic copy of your own somewhere off the platform as well.
Should restores be included in my plans or billed?
Both models work. Including them is a strong selling point and costs you a little time occasionally. Billing beyond, say, the first restore a year discourages the client who treats your panel as an undo button for their own experiments. What matters is that the client knows which model they are on before they need it.
If a client leaves, what copy do they take with them?
A full copy of their own account — files, databases, mailbox contents — pulled from the panel before or during the cancellation. Their site and their content are theirs. Agreeing the handover contents in your terms in advance turns the request into a task you can complete in an afternoon rather than a source of ill feeling.
Read next
Web Hosting
cPanel hosting on NVMe drives, with SSL, the migration and year-one domain included.
Domain Names
Register and transfer names for clients — year one free with annual hosting.
Moving your site to another host? Start with this checklist.
A step-by-step order of work for a move your visitors never spot: which files to copy first, how to carry email across without losing one message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every hour of downtime people ring us about.
Own the relationship, not the hardware.
Daily copies on every client account, restores from your own panel, and support that answers at any hour.
See Web Hosting plans