Getting Started with ShieldBACKUPS: A Quick Start Guide

ShieldBACKUPS is a built-in feature of Shield Security PRO (Plus plan) that provides fully automated backups for your WordPress site. This quick guide will help you understand how to get started with ShieldBACKUPS.

Important: Please note that this is a beta release. While we're confident in its reliability, the wide variety of WordPress sites, hosting environments, and custom configurations means that unexpected issues may still occur. If you see anything that's not quite right, please let us know.

ShieldBACKUPS Requirements

ShieldBACKUPS is automatically available under the following conditions:

  • Your site is running Shield Security PRO v21+
  • Your PRO license is valid and on the Plus plan

  • Your site has a valid SSL/TLS certificate.

    Sites with missing, expired, or self-signed certificates will not be able to back up.

ShieldBACKUPS Activation

ShieldBACKUPS requires a one-time activation—once enabled, backups run automatically. Here are the steps to activate it.

  1. Ensure that you have PRO plus license activated on your site. If not activated yet, please perform a manual license check within the plugin admin.
  2. Log into your account with us and go to your Sites Manager page and use the same control panel for activating site licenses for activating backups. Simply click the button to activate backups for any site for which you want to activate ShieldBACKUPS.
  3. Once activated through your control panel, there is no further plugin installation, configuration, or scheduling needed. Backups run automatically to ensure your site’s data is protected.

How Backups Are Handled

ShieldBACKUPS performs backups off-site and independently of your WordPress cron system or hosting environment. This ensures that backups remain reliable and consistent, even if your site encounters technical issues that might interrupt other WordPress backup plugins.

ShieldBACKUPS Coverage

When backing up your WordPress site, it's good to know which files and data are included — and which aren’t any why.

For a complete breakdown, please see this article here.

Backup Limits and Retention

We use intelligent retention rules to keep your backups optimised. If a backup exceeds allowed size under our Fair Use Policy, you’ll receive a notification and backups may pause.

For more information on limits and storage handling, see this article here.

Backup Data Security

ShieldBACKUPS implements strong security practices throughout the entire backup process.

For complete details on these protections, check this article here.

To learn more about how the system works, refer to What is ShieldBACKUPS?.

Need Help?

If you need any further clarification or support with backups, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.