From freelancers and small businesses to large firms and agencies, we have plans for you and your clients.
Plans Include
Daily Backup
We back up your site every day. Saving only what has been changed or modified to save you space.
MalwareGone
Websguard’s patented functionality automatically scan, discover and fix threats your site encounters.
Client Access and Reports
Use Websguard as a service to your customers. White-label offering helps give clients a personal portal to their information.
WordPress Plugin Updates
Websguard takes care of automatically updating and working with all WordPress updates.
ChangeAlert Notifications
Websguard notifies you by email anytime anything changes within the source code of your website.
How reliable is Websguard?
Websguard’s systems perform at 99.9% levels, which means that roughly 1 out of 1,000 websites encounters an issue on a daily basis. Hosting providers perform maintenance on servers, customers change FTP login credentials, and IP whitelisting settings for database connections can change, based upon hosting provider server admin activity. These are common behaviors and not cause for concern, as Websguard determines the root cause for the lack of connectivity, and emails the customer so they can remediate.
How secure is Websguard?
Websguard relies upon industry best practices to protect customers’ data. All backups and passwords are encrypted, secure connections (SFTP/SSH/SSL) are utilized if possible, and annual vulnerability testing is conducted by an independent agency. To-date, there has not been a data breach or successful hack or attack upon Websguard.
How long has Websguard been around?
Websguard was started in 2010, inspired by problems faced by small business owners. Technology angel investors and venture capitalists funded Websguard in the early stages and the company is now profitably growing – so there is no need to worry about your backups going anywhere!
Where are the backups stored?
Backups are stored on Amazon Web Services Simple Storage System, known as S3. S3 boasts object durability levels of 99.999999999%, achieved by storing redundant copies of data across multiple geographies and facilities. S3 is not the cheapest alternative for data storage, but it is one of the most reliable.
Are the backups encrypted?
Our data stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is stored utilizing Server Side Encryption (SSE). AWS handles key management and key protection for us, with one of the strongest block ciphers available, 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).
How are passwords stored?
Two different types of passwords are stored on our system – customer account passwords to log into Websguard, and passwords for customer server credentials (FTP/SFTP, MySQL). The customer account passwords are stored with a one-way salted hash. At rest, these passwords reside in Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS). Customer server credential passwords are stored in RDS with RSA 2048-bit key encryption.
I already use my hosting provider’s backup. Won’t that protect me?
Not necessarily. Hosting companies tend to keep your backups in the same place as your primary files. You don’t carry around a copy of your birth certificate along with the actual one – you keep the real one safe at home for emergencies. So why not do the same for your backups? Websguard provides safe, offsite backup that is 100% independent from your hosting provider. But don’t just take our word for it – there are plenty of folks who agree. “The back-up systems of most web-services providers leave a lot to be desired. The back-ups sound reassuring in theory – you are assured that your data is always ‘backed-up’ on a system that is completely separate from the main one … But then, when you dig, you often discover that that means the data is simply copied to another file on the same box or another box in the same data room.” – Business Insider, 4/28/11
Will Websguard work with my website or blog platform?
Yes – Websguard works the same way regardless of the type of website or platform you use! We are compatible with popular Content Management Systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento, but there are many others that Websguard can work with.
If the platform you use meets the following criteria, Websguard can be used for your website and database backup needs:
1. You must have access to your website’s FTP/SFTP credentials in order to connect to Websguard.
2. Your site must use MySQL or MS-SQL databases.
3. You must be able to whitelist the following Websguard IP addresses so that we can remotely connect to your database:
How does backup work?
All file content is retrieved for the first backup using the “get” command over FTP or SFTP. Disk I/O is utilized as each file is retrieved and transferred to our servers. CPU and memory needs are minimal. Subsequent backups are differential and do not entail transferring all content. This is achieved by utilizing the “ls – list” command and examining the metadata for each file: name, size, timestamp, file type, permissions, and last modified date. If any of these have changed, or a new file has been added, we will transfer the changed or added file to our servers. If a file has been deleted, we take note and adjust our repository accordingly. Since only changed file content is transferred, the vast majority of subsequent backups cause minimal memory, CPU, and I/O server needs.
How does the restore/undo work?
When a customer seeks to restore a previous version of their website, the first thing Websguard does is to check the live website to see what content is on it. This enables us to quickly push (or pull) the differences to or from your site. For instance, you might experience a hack that changes your .htaccess file and nothing else. Rather than reload your entire site, Websguard would simply replace the infected .htaccess file with your old clean copy.
Will it bog down my server?
Short answer: No. Long answer: See “How It Works” section, or the “How It Works” question on this page.
Will I have to set up cron jobs?
No.
Will it be easy?
Yes.
What credentials will I need?
For adding your website, you will need the following information:
– Website URL
– Hostname/IP Address
– SFTP/FTP Username
– SFTP/FTP Password
– Port Number
– Root Directory
How are the features different between plans?
All plans allow for daily automatic backups, monitoring, and restores without limitation. The main difference is that with the Shogun plan you are allowed the option of a concierge restore. A concierge restore is when our developer team takes personal time to oversee the process of your restore from beginning to end to ensure its success.
What if I want to switch plans?
Switching plans is easy! At any time you have the option to upgrade to a different plan through the customer dashboard when you log in.
What about a free plan?
Websguard offers a 14 day free trial on all of our current plans. Feel free to signup and test our service to see if it’s the right fit for you or your company. If it isn’t, no hard feelings! You can cancel at anytime.
How does payment work with the plans?
The Ninja (Personal) plan is the only plan billed on an annual, two year, or three year basis. The Ronin, Samurai, and Shogun plans are billed on a monthly, annual, two year, or three year basis. For each plan, you will not be billed until your 14 day free trial is complete!
How much storage do I get with each plan? How long are backups stored?
The Ninja plan allows you to have one website for up to 5 GB of storage for that site. For an additional $5.00 per month per site though, you can add up to 10 websites total with the Ninja plan. The Ronin plan allows for 12 websites and up to 50 GB of space. The Samurai plan allows you to have up to 25 sites and a total account storage limit of 125 GB. The Shogun plan allows you to have up to 100 sites and a total account storage limit of 500 GB. When it comes to determining how large your account is, the number of backups that you have does play a part. Websguard currently has two backup retention settings to choose from. You can choose to only keep 90 days of backup history for all of your websites (good setting for saving space), or keep your entire backup history.
Can I backup multiple websites?
Yes, you can! Multiple websites can be backed up with Websguard, and if you have more than two or three, we highly recommend the Ronin, Samurai, or Shogun Plans. These plans are feature rich with tools for managing and overseeing multiple backups for different clients, and are intended for small businesses, designers, developers, and agencies.
Do you backup databases?
Yes, we do. You have several options in backing up your databases. Websguard can connect directly to your MySQL database, typically through Port 3306, or by tunneling over SSH with your FTP credentials or different credentials.
How does databases backup work?
A mysqldump command is executed each time we retrieve the database content. Most MySQL databases are not large enough to create noticeable server load.
What credentials will I need?
For adding your MySQL database, you will need the following information:
– Database Name
– Database Hostname or IP
– MySQL Username
– MySQL Password
– MySQL Port (Typically 3306)
Will I need to whitelist any IP addresses?
Yes, you will need to whitelist the following IP addresses:
Is my database locked during backup?
Websguard does not explicitly lock database rows or tables at any time during the backup process.
For databases using modern storage systems like InnoDB, backups are performed using a single transaction. This allows for backup consistency while avoiding any lock or contention issues. As a result, this process will not impact the operation of your database.
However, if you have large tables using the legacy MyISAM storage engine, that could lead to undesirable behavior. Since MyISAM does not support transactions and enforces table-level locking for read operations, write and update requests to a table may be delayed while the data export is occurring. In the case of a very large table, they could be delayed for several minutes, giving the appearance that the database or application has become unresponsive.
The Websguard database backup process uses the industry-standard mysqldump tool to export your database content.
