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Version control and backup restoration provide critical safety nets for enterprise websites where mistakes, accidental deletions, or problematic deployments require rapid recovery without extended downtime or data loss. Understanding Webflow's backup system enables confident operation knowing recovery paths exist.
Automatic backup creation occurs systematically without manual intervention. Webflow generates backups every 20 changes made in Designer, editing text, modifying styles, creating components, adjusting layouts each count toward the 20-change threshold triggering automatic backup. Publishing events also trigger backup creation, preserving site state at each deployment. These automatic backups accumulate providing extensive version history spanning weeks or months depending on change frequency.
Manual backup creation supplements automatic backups with named, intentional restore points. Before major design overhauls, significant CMS restructuring, or complex feature implementations, teams manually create backups with descriptive names like "Pre-homepage-redesign" or "Before-CMS-migration." These named backups provide clear restoration targets when issues emerge, eliminating guesswork identifying appropriate backup versions among many automatic backups.
Backup access occurs through Project Settings interface under Backups tab. This section displays chronological list of all backups, automatic and manual, showing creation timestamp and backup name if manually created. Preview functionality enables viewing backup state before restoration, verifying selected backup contains desired site state. This preview prevents restoring incorrect versions, confirming restoration target before committing.
Restoration process completely replaces current site state with selected backup. All pages revert to backup versions, CMS Collections and items restore to backup state, design elements and components return to backup configuration, custom code reverts to backup implementation, and interactions and animations reset to backup specifications. Restoration operates holistically, partial restoration of individual pages or Collections isn't supported; restoration applies comprehensively across entire project.
Importantly, Webflow automatically creates backup of current site state immediately before restoration. This safety mechanism prevents irreversible restoration mistakes, if restored backup proves incorrect or unexpected, organizations restore the "pre-restoration" backup returning to state just before restoration occurred. This recursive backup approach provides multiple safety nets preventing catastrophic data loss from restoration errors.
Backup limitations require understanding for comprehensive disaster recovery planning. Form submissions do NOT backup, submissions stored separately and remain unaffected by restoration. Site settings including custom domains, SSL configurations, and publishing settings do NOT backup, these persist independently of design/content backups. Custom code in Project Settings (site-wide header/footer code) typically backs up but verifying critical custom code separately provides additional assurance. Hosted files and assets outside Designer-managed resources may require separate backup strategies.
Backup retention periods vary by plan tier. Free and starter plans retain limited backup history (typically 30 days). Paid plans including Business and Enterprise maintain extended backup history (often 1-2 years) enabling long-term version recovery if needed. Organizations requiring indefinite backup retention implement external backup strategies exporting site content periodically.
Disaster recovery scenarios where backups prove essential include accidental mass deletions where team member mistakenly deletes Collection items or pages requiring restoration to pre-deletion state, problematic design changes where major redesign introduces unforeseen issues necessitating rollback to previous stable design, CMS restructuring mistakes where Collection reorganization creates data integrity problems requiring reversion, integration failures where new third-party integrations break site functionality needing restoration while troubleshooting, and security incidents in rare cases where unauthorized access modifies site content requiring restoration to known-good state.
Backup best practices include creating manual named backups before all major changes providing clear restoration targets, documenting backup timing and purpose in project management systems enabling coordination if multiple team members work simultaneously, testing restoration process in development environments familiarizing team with recovery procedures before emergencies, exporting critical content separately (CMS Collections as CSV) providing redundant backup outside Webflow platform, and establishing backup cadence for mission-critical sites (weekly manual backups) supplementing automatic backups with scheduled preservation points.
A B2B SaaS company deployed major homepage redesign to production Friday afternoon. Monday morning, leadership determined new design underperformed drastically with 40% conversion rate drop. Marketing team immediately accessed Backups section, previewed backup created Thursday evening (pre-redesign), confirmed backup contained original homepage design, and restored backup within 10 minutes. Site reverted to previous high-performing design while design team analyzed issues causing conversion drop. The rapid restoration prevented extended conversion loss that would have cost significant revenue across days or weeks. This incident established policy requiring manual named backups before all major deployments and staged-staging testing before production deployments.
Flowout implements enterprise backup policies including scheduled manual backups before major deployments, external CMS Collection exports providing redundant data protection, documentation of backup procedures for team reference, and disaster recovery testing validating restoration processes, schedule a backup strategy consultation to establish appropriate policies for your mission-critical implementation.
Depends on plan tier. Paid plans including Enterprise typically retain 1-2 years of backup history. Check your specific plan documentation or contact Webflow support for exact retention periods on your account.
No, form submissions store separately and remain unaffected by backup restoration. Restoration only affects design, content, and CMS structure, not form submission data.
No, Webflow restoration operates at entire project level. Partial restoration isn't supported natively. Workarounds include manually copying content from backup preview or using CMS export/import for specific Collections.
Webflow automatically creates backup immediately before restoration. Access Backups section again and restore the most recent backup (the "pre-restoration" backup) returning to state just before incorrect restoration.
For mission-critical sites, yes. Export CMS Collections as CSV monthly, document critical custom code externally, and maintain external design documentation. This redundancy provides protection against unlikely but possible platform issues or account problems.
