Backing up my website directly to a online backup service

You can do this with ftp or rsync right on the server. This is very common and very easily done. You don't have to manually download/upload them.

 

In the "Backups" section of cPanel, there's an option to back up to a remote server, either by FTP or by SCP. This should work with most backup providers - Just enter your login details

 

Try this: Automatic cPanel backup (domain & MySQL) with cron & PHP. Basically, it automatically connects to cPanel via PHP, and runs the full backup (exact same as if you had logged in and done it yourself). One thing, you will have to change the skin from "x" to "x3" if using cPanel 11 and its default theme. Let us know if this script works

IMPORTANT: If you use it, that script will contain your cPanel password! Be sure to chmod it to 0700 and put it in your home directory (not /public_html/), so only you can read it.

Sorry, I'm not too sure. I personally have a dedicated server as well as a VPS, and I back up the dedicated server to the VPS.

Some web hosts offer FTP space for backups (eg. DreamHost has 50 GB backup space included). You might want to ask them if they offer backup space for an extra price. If your data is important to you, it's definitely worth spending the extra $5 or $10 to get some backup space for it - You never know what will happen . Recently, my VPS provider was hacked and thousands of VPSes deleted, a lot of the people affected didn't have backups (although the VPS provider, FSCKVPS, clearly wrote in their Terms of Service that it's an unmanaged service and they don't do backups). If everyone took care of their data, the people affected would be in a much better position.

 

I know of a service that can do this

Eagle Remote Backup, LLC I use this service and it works for my cpanel web site servers. I had to call them to get the info on how to do it.

 

I used CrashPlan - they charge just $5/month for 50 gigabytes and send encrypted. However their software runs under Java and might take up more CPU time than you'd like, even running at 1 am. Still, I'm very impressed with their service and my server was sharing an account with my personal computer so the cost ended up being LESS than $5 per month. That's hard to beat. (It helps that they also have managed to recover successfully every file I've tried to restore, unlike "some other" services.)

Remember, if you send via FTP, and someone "snoops," that often key passwords are in scripts...

 

I bought extra PC hard drive, it's very cheap now somewhere about 200BG HD for $120 and I backup my sites to it.

 

I'm curious, how did you get this to work? Did you install something on your web host account?