Managing Data Loss - Self Hosted Solutions (FluentCart)
Hi everyone,
I have a question regarding how FluentCart plans to handle database and data integrity in a self-hosted environment.
As I understand, if FluentCart is going to be a true self-hosted eCommerce solution, it means that all order, customer, and product data will be stored in our own WordPress database. But what happens in real-life scenarios where we need to restore a backup after a server failure or conflict?
In such cases — if the backup is from 24 or 48 hours ago — would we lose all the orders or customer data created after that point? Are there any best practices or tools you recommend to minimize that risk?
Right now, I think one of the main points in the FluentCart vs SureCart discussion is exactly this: SaaS vs Self-Hosted.
SureCart acts like a SaaS that uses WordPress as a UI layer, meaning all data lives on their side (and you don’t deal with storage, scaling or restoring). FluentCart gives full data sovereignty — which is amazing — but with that comes full responsibility too.
Any tips, strategies, or real-world lessons from people who’ve dealt with WooCommerce or other self-hosted eCommerce solutions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much in advance!
– Jorge
That would be the same as running a regular WooCommerce setup. If its a very active store, I would run hourly DB backups from systems like WP-Umbrella f.ex.
John Mac Agreed. I'd schedule regular full backups with more frequent differential backups. The question is what schedule you need based on your site activity.
I'm using UpdraftPlus (or now TeamUpdraft) with weekly full site backups, different database backups, and then differential backups. That's for blogs, though. I wouldn't wait a week to do a full backup on a busy store site.
William Beem That's a good way of doing it. Though, I never recommend clients running backup plugins in WP. If things fail or totally crash, that crashed as well. And, some backup plugins fill up the database.
Anything related to updates and backup, I run remotely off the server. I try keeping WP light, and not run more heavy plugins that it has to.
John Mac I'm creating my backups on AWS S3 buckets. You're right, you never want your backup on the site. UpdraftPlus communicates with a lot of storage site options.
Worst case, I create a new site, add the plugin, and restore the complete backup including the differential updates. I've tested it and haven't found any issues.
William Beem so a nice move will be UpdraftPlus + S3.
Won’t it affect the server resources to be constantly backing up? Even if you save that on a bucket?
William Beem Awesome, then that sounds like a solid solution 👌🏻 😊
Jorge de los Reyes My note here is that as long as its a WP plugin, its usually running on the WP cron system. So yes, but if hosting on F.ex Cloudways, you can run their server-side cron manager. But still...
I use WP Umbrella, which run their own remote system. Which I guess is just run by WP CLI commands 🤔
Jorge de los Reyes You can't backup any server without affecting its resources. It has to read the data and deliver it. So while the plugin consumes some resources, the data retrieval is a bigger hit and that's going to happen no matter what backup you use.
William Beem I guess, auto back ups in xCloud at a server level could also work for this? I mean: site live. Not server level.
Like: backup the site with “x” frecuency depending on sales ?
Jorge de los Reyes That's at the server level. Do you want to restore the entire server? Then it's a good choice. If you have multiple sites on the server and need to restore one, then it depends on whether the backup software gives you the option to target which site you're restoring.
William Beem xCloud allows both: Full Server Backup and/or site back up. So I guess, I will go for site back ups on an "x" basis. I guess, that would be enough, without having to install any plugin.
If you have XCloud.host you can restore the latest backup easily. No plugins needed. This is the platform Shahjahan Jewel was sharing a few weeks ago. I've been with them for I think close to 2 years now, and they are fantastic. I have mine with a Hetzner server, and pay for a backup with them as well.
Elaine Montoya thank you for the confirmation!!