GoDaddy Website Backup 2026: Files Over 4 GB Are Not Backed Up

A backup is bought for one reason: so that the bad day is survivable. That makes the exclusions the most important part of a backup contract, and they are usually the least read part. We read GoDaddy's Backup Services Agreement on its Indian site on 15 October 2026.

The document is short and, to its credit, specific. Under the heading "Limitations" it gives the ceiling in one line: "The Services do not provide backups for files larger than 4 gigabytes (GB) and for temporary cache files and folders."

Four gigabytes is not an unusual size for the thing a site owner would most want back — a full database export, a video, a year of uploads in one archive. Those files are outside the service by contract, and nothing in the clause requires GoDaddy to tell you which files it skipped. The backup still runs; it simply runs around them.

Retention is stated once and it governs everything else: "GoDaddy will store the last 30 days of Content backups on a rolling basis and continue to store your Content backups for 30 days after the product has been cancelled."

Read that against how site damage is actually discovered. A defacement or a bad deployment is usually found within hours. A corrupted record, a quietly broken plugin or a slow data problem is often found weeks later — and past day thirty, the agreement does not keep a copy from before it started. That is the gap a rolling 30-day window leaves, and it is the reason the "keep your own copies" line later in the same document is worth taking literally.

Credit where it is due. Thirty days rolling is a normal commercial retention period and GoDaddy publishes it as a number rather than as "a reasonable period". The thirty days after cancellation is a genuine courtesy: a customer who leaves has a month to pull their own copies down rather than losing access on the day the plan ends.

This is the clause most worth reading twice, because it is GoDaddy describing the limits of its own product. "Though the Services are meant to offer backup of your Content, to ensure the loss or damage to your Content, we would recommend you also consider deploying other measures such as maintaining independent archival and backup copies of your Content."

It is followed immediately by the liability position: "We are not responsible for the security, integrity and confidentiality of the Content transmitted through your use of the Service except as expressly provided by this Agreement."

Nothing about this is improper or unusual. Recommending an independent second copy is standard, responsible advice across the whole backup industry, and a provider that says so in its own contract is being straight with the customer rather than the reverse. The point of quoting it here is narrower: a reader who buys a backup product on the assumption that it removes the need to think about backups is assuming something the contract does not say.

Access. The agreement names the protocols and takes the authorisation: "GoDaddy requires access to your Sites via sFTP, sFTP (SSH-key), or FTP to set up scheduled backups for your Content. You authorize GoDaddy to access your Sites in the above manner to facilitate and manage the Services." Note this covers third-party hosted sites too, not only sites hosted at GoDaddy.

Where the copies live is GoDaddy's choice, not yours. "GoDaddy will securely store the backups of your Content either off-site with a third-party cloud vendor or in GoDaddy datacenters. GoDaddy reserves the right to determine where to store your Content." No region, country or named vendor is specified, which is worth knowing if your own obligations include knowing where data sits.

One site in breach can affect all of them. "You acknowledge and agree that all Sites associated with your use of the Service may be removed if any one Site is in violation of this Agreement." The prohibited-activity list it attaches to is the ordinary one — packet flooding, denial of service, server hacking, anonymous gateways, and scripts that "cause the server to load beyond a reasonable level, as determined by us".

And GoDaddy may scan and delete. It "reserves the right to scan your Content for malware and other malicious active content, and remove such content for security purposes in the event it is discovered" — a security measure most hosts apply, stated here as a right over the content inside your backups.

It is accepted by clicking, not signing. The agreement "is made effective as of the date of electronic acceptance", and "Your electronic acceptance of this Agreement signifies that you have read, understand, acknowledge and agree to be bound by this Agreement, our Universal Terms of Service Agreement, which is incorporated by this reference".

It does not stand alone. The Universal Terms of Service Agreement is incorporated by reference — a separate document, read for blog 1960, which carries its own clauses on discretion, amendment and liability.

It carries no "Last Revised" stamp. Several GoDaddy legal documents do: the hosting agreement read for blog 1969 is stamped 30-09-2026, and the domain transfer agreement read for blog 1977 is stamped 21-10-2020. This one has none. Its own copyright line reads "Copyright © 2017-2018 GoDaddy.com, LLC", which we record as read rather than treat as a revision date — a copyright year is not a statement about when a contract was last changed, and we have not established when this one was.

All four come from the agreement's own wording. First, find out whether any file on your site is over 4 GB, because that file is excluded by contract and the contract does not promise to tell you.

Second, check your storage quota rather than assuming it. Backups stop when it fills, and the clause states no warning.

Third, decide whether a rolling thirty days is long enough for the kind of failure you are actually guarding against — it covers a bad day well and a slow problem poorly. Fourth, take GoDaddy's own advice and keep an independent copy, which is what the agreement itself recommends.

This page describes a published contract. It is not legal advice, it is not technical advice, and it does not tell you what your rights or your risks are in any particular case. Read the version on GoDaddy's site that applies to your own account, and take your own advice, before relying on it.