Your full hosting account backup already includes your email, but a full backup is a big, slow thing to generate and an even riskier thing to restore if all you actually need is your mailboxes. If you're about to move hosts, switch domains, or make a risky change and just want your email protected on its own, you don't need to back up or restore your entire account to do it.
Why Back Up Email Separately?
A full account backup bundles your website files, databases, and email together into one archive. That's great for disaster recovery, but it's overkill if you just want to:
- Keep a personal copy of your messages before changing your email password or settings.
- Protect your mail before moving your domain's MX records to a new host.
- Recover a single mailbox without touching your website files or databases.
The Safest Method: Sync Your Mail with an Email Client
The most reliable way to back up email, regardless of which control panel you use, is to connect an email client to your account using IMAP and let it download a full copy of every folder.
- Set up the account in a desktop email client (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) using IMAP, not POP3.
- Let the client fully sync. It will download a local copy of every folder, including Sent and any custom folders.
- Once synced, that local copy on your computer is your backup. Most clients also let you export it to a single file (for example, an .mbox or .pst file) for safekeeping.
Use IMAP, not POP3, for this. IMAP keeps a copy of every message on the server while your client downloads its own copy, so you end up with a full backup without removing anything from your live mailbox.
Backing Up Email as Part of a Hosting Account Backup
If you'd rather generate a backup file on the server side instead, both control panels include email when you create an account backup, though the options differ slightly.
In cPanel
- Go to Backup or Backup Wizard.
- Choose to generate or download a Full Backup (or, under Partial Backups, a Home Directory Backup, which contains your mail folder).
- Download the resulting archive once it's ready and store it somewhere safe off your hosting account.
In DirectAdmin
- Go to Create/Restore Backups.
- Choose Create Backup, then tick E-Mail in the list of items to include (you can leave website files and databases unticked if you only want mail).
- Run the backup and download the generated file once it finishes.
Restoring Just Your Email
Restoring is where the two panels differ most.
In cPanel
cPanel's restore tools are built around full or partial account restores rather than picking out individual mailboxes, so a full restore can overwrite current website files and databases along with mail. If you only need email back, it's safer to contact ZIPROF support with your backup file so it can be restored without affecting anything else on the account.
In DirectAdmin
- Go to Create/Restore Backups and choose Restore Backup.
- Upload or select the backup file.
- Tick only E-Mail in the list of items to restore, leaving files and databases unticked, so only mail is brought back.
Restoring a full account backup (in either panel) can overwrite your current website files and databases with older versions. Always check exactly what you're restoring before confirming, and when in doubt, back up your current account first or ask ZIPROF support to review the backup with you.
For a full-account backup instead of an email-only one, see How to Take a Full Backup of Your Hosting Account.