If Jetpack is having trouble backing up your site, you will receive an email to let you know. Check your spam folder if you are unable to locate the email. It is very likely that the failure email has led you to this support page. Below are our recommendations for troubleshooting common backup issues. Let’s get started!
Check your Jetpack connection
A working Jetpack connection is required to properly back up your site so please don’t skip this step!
The Jetpack connection is used to facilitate backups of your site. There are times when the connection can become unstable or broken. This may be due to a misconfiguration of your site or hosting. The first thing to do is check the connection status using the Jetpack Debug page. If it reports any issues with the connection, please see the Fixing Jetpack Connection Issues guide.
- Check your site’s connection on the Jetpack Debug page.
- Troubleshoot the connection using Fixing Jetpack Connection Issues guide.
Once the Jetpack connection is working, that should be enough to allow for backups over HTTP/S. In some situations we may still run into errors though. In that case, the next step is to add some server credentials via your WordPress.com dashboard.
Add your server credentials
Jetpack Backup will start to back up your site as soon as you purchase the product, provided Jetpack’s connection is working normally. If your backups don’t start right away, you can add one of SSH, SFTP, or FTP credentials as an alternate connection method. Adding credentials ensures more consistent and faster backups. It also enables the restore features of Jetpack Backup.
Please read Adding Credentials to Jetpack for full details including links for various hosts.
Review security and proxy settings
Even with a working Jetpack connection and server credentials we can still see failed backups. An example would be a proxy service like Cloudflare blocking SSH/FTP connections or a security plugin like Wordfence blocking certain network requests. If you are comfortable reviewing and customizing these settings that’s great. If not, we recommend temporarily disabling these services/features while troubleshooting your backups. Generally this can be achieved by disabling the plugin but you might also have to disable a feature in the service providers dashboard (ie: pausing Cloudflare from their dashboard).
Speak to your host
Even when everything has been set up correctly it’s still possible to see errors. This is usually due to security settings outside your control. Examples of this would be hosts who run ModSecurity at a level above what the hosting control panel exposes. Often this type of security is automated and kicks in temporarily when the server sees repeated requests from a certain IP or too many requests in a given window of time.
The best way to get around this is to have your host whitelist Jetpack. You can direct them to our Hosting FAQ page for the necessary details. See the section titled, “Whitelist all communications between WordPress.com and Jetpack”.
If you are not sure about who you site is hosted with you can check using WhoIsHostingThis.com.
Some security and firewall plugins may also block requests from Jetpack; adding the same IP ranges to these plugins may be required. You could also try temporarily disabling other plugins to determine which may be blocking requests.
Reach out to support
If you have made it this far then chances are the issue is a little more complex. Contact us and we will investigate what might be going wrong. Please confirm you have completed all the steps above when contacting us.