Highlights → Site backups and restore — undo without panic

Site backups and restore — undo without panic

April 29, 2026. Site backups run automatically every day and can be triggered manually before any risky change. Restore is one click. The platform handles the rest.

What changed

Before: backing up a site meant exporting database dumps + media library files separately and storing them somewhere yourself. Restoring meant a support ticket.

After: every site carries a rolling backup history. Daily automatic snapshots, manual snapshots when you want them, named restore points before big changes. Click Restore to roll back to any snapshot in the history.

What's in a backup

A SGEN backup snapshot captures:

  • Database — every page, post, form submission, custom object row, user, setting
  • Media library — every uploaded image, PDF, font file
  • Builder layouts — the visual structure of every page
  • Custom CSS + Codes — your styling and snippet customizations
  • Theme settings — typography, color tokens, layout config
  • Integrations — connected service configs (without the secret keys, which stay vaulted)
Restoring brings all of it back to the state at the snapshot moment. The site comes back exactly as it was.

How automatic backups work

  • Daily. Every site has a 2 AM (instance time) automatic snapshot.
  • Rolling window. The seven most recent daily snapshots are kept, plus any manual snapshots you've named.
  • Storage. Backups live on the same instance as your site — no external setup, no S3 keys.
If you need longer retention (30/60/90 days for compliance), the Pro tier and above let you configure retention policy per site.

How manual snapshots work

Before any risky change, take a manual snapshot:

  1. Open Admin → Migration → Backups.
  2. Click Take Snapshot.
  3. Name the snapshot ("before-redesign" or "pre-Q3-launch") and click Save.
The snapshot is created in under a minute for most sites. Manual snapshots are kept until you delete them — no rolling-window expiration.

How restore works

  1. Open Admin → Migration → Backups.
  2. Find the snapshot you want to restore from.
  3. Click Restore.
  4. Confirm — the platform shows you what will change versus the current state.
  5. Click Restore Now.
The restore takes 30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on site size. During the restore, the site shows a "Maintenance" page to visitors. When the restore completes, the public site comes back at the snapshot state and the admin loads with the snapshot data.

What restore does NOT touch

By design, a restore leaves a few things alone:

  • DNS settings. Your domain still points where it pointed before the restore.
  • Connected integrations' secret keys. Restoring a 30-day-old snapshot doesn't try to rotate API keys.
  • User session tokens. Active sessions stay active. Users don't get kicked out.
  • Billing history. The plan, billing cycle, and payment method are platform-level, not site-content.
These boundaries keep restore as a content-state rollback, not a full account reset.

Why this matters

Most platforms make backup a paid add-on or a manual export-import dance. The result: most teams don't have current backups when they need them. Backups exist for the day something goes wrong, and that day is usually surprise.

SGEN's approach: backup is part of the platform. Every site has them. Restore is one click. The risky-change workflow has built-in safety — take a snapshot, make the change, restore if you don't like the result.

Common patterns

  • Before a theme switch. Click Take Snapshot, name it "before-theme-switch," do the swap. If the new theme looks wrong, restore.
  • Before a content migration. Importing 200 blog posts from a CSV? Snapshot first. If the import goes sideways, restore. If it works, delete the snapshot to free space.
  • End-of-quarter rollup. Some teams take a quarterly named snapshot ("q1-2026-final") for archival. Useful if a legal or audit question comes up months later.
  • Mistake recovery. A teammate accidentally trashed thirty pages. Restore from yesterday's automatic snapshot. Five minutes total, no support ticket needed.

What's not in this release

  • Cross-instance backup transfer. Today's restore only restores TO the same site. Moving a snapshot from one site to another (for staging-to-prod content sync) is in NEXT.
  • Selective restore. Today's restore is all-or-nothing per snapshot. "Restore only the blog posts from last Tuesday" is on the roadmap.
  • Off-instance archival. If you want backups stored outside the SGEN instance, the Enterprise tier supports S3 sync. Lower tiers store on-instance only.

Next steps

  • Read the Reference at Reference → Migration for snapshot, restore, and retention detail.
  • Follow the Guide at Guides → Launch & Cleanup → Back Up Site for the routine snapshot workflow.
  • If you're about to do something risky, take a snapshot first. The thirty seconds of friction is cheap insurance.
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