Blog · 24 October 2026

Website Disaster Recovery Plan: A Simple Template for Small Businesses

When your website goes down, you don't want to be working out what to do while customers can't reach you. A hack, a failed update, a deleted database or a hosting outage can all take a site offline, and the first hour is when people make the worst decisions.

A disaster recovery plan fixes that. It's a short document that says what you'll do, who you'll call and how quickly you expect to be back. It doesn't need to be long. One or two pages that people can actually find and follow is better than a thick manual nobody reads.

Below is a simple template. Work through it once, fill in the blanks, and save the result somewhere you can reach even if your website and email are down.

Step 1: List what you're protecting

Start with what would hurt to lose. For most small businesses that's:

• Your website files, pages and images
• Your database (orders, enquiries, bookings, user accounts)
• Your domain name and DNS settings
• Your SSL certificate
• Logins for your hosting, domain registrar and any plugins or third-party tools

Write down where each one lives and who has the login. If the answer is "only Sam knows", you've found your first weakness.

Step 2: Set your recovery point

Your recovery point is how much recent data you can afford to lose. Put another way, it's how old your latest backup can be when you restore it.

If your last backup ran at 2am and your site fails at 4pm, you lose fourteen hours of changes. For a brochure site that updates twice a year, that's nothing. For a shop taking orders all day, it could be a lot of money and some awkward emails.

Ask yourself:

• How often does the content change?
• How many orders, bookings or form submissions arrive in a day?
• Could we recreate a day's work by hand if we had to?

Then write it down: "We can accept losing up to [number] hours of data." That number tells you how often your backups need to run.

Step 3: Set your recovery time

Your recovery time is how long you can be offline before the damage becomes serious. Think about lost sales, missed enquiries and the impression you give customers.

A useful exercise is to put a rough price on an hour of downtime. Then decide what you're willing to tolerate: one hour, four hours, a working day?

Your recovery time should match the service you've chosen. DRSite's plans each come with their own recovery time, so check them against the number you've just written down:

You can see the full details on the DRSite pricing page. If your tolerance is shorter than your current plan's recovery time, that's the moment to consider moving up a level, not after an outage.

Step 4: Decide who to call

In an emergency, nobody wants to search for a phone number. Build a short contact list and give every person a clear job.

Every role needs a backup. People go on holiday, get ill and change jobs, and disasters rarely wait for a convenient week.

Step 5: Write the recovery steps

Keep these in order and in plain language. A starting point:

1. Confirm the problem. Is the site really down, or is it a local connection issue? Check from another device and network.
2. Tell the plan owner. One person takes charge so you don't have three people making conflicting changes.
3. Find the cause, if it's quick to do. Was there a recent update, a security alert or a hosting notice? Don't spend long on this if a restore will fix it.
4. Restore from the latest good backup. Choose a backup from before the problem started, not simply the newest one.
5. Check the site works. Test the home page, contact form, checkout, login and any key pages.
6. Change passwords if you suspect a hack. Do this for hosting, admin accounts and your domain registrar.
7. Tell your customers. A short, honest message on social media or by email goes a long way.
8. Write down what happened. Note the cause, the time lost and what you'd change.

Step 6: Prepare your customer message

Writing this in advance saves you doing it under pressure. Something like:

"Our website is currently unavailable and we're working to restore it. You can still reach us on [phone] or [email]. We'll update you at [time] or as soon as we're back."

Keep it somewhere you can reach without your website, such as a shared document or your phone's notes.

Step 7: Test the plan

An untested plan is a guess. Put a test in the diary and treat it as seriously as a fire drill.

Every quarter:

• Check that backups are running and that the most recent one is as recent as you expect.
• Make sure every name and number in your contact list is still correct.

Once or twice a year:

• Do a practice restore, ideally to a test copy of the site rather than the live one.
• Time it. Compare the result with the recovery time you wrote down in Step 3.
• Ask someone who didn't write the plan to follow it. If they get stuck, the plan needs work.

Afterwards, note what went wrong and update the document.

Your copy-and-paste template

Website disaster recovery plan for [Business name]
Last updated: [Date] | Next test due: [Date]

Plan owner: [Name, phone]
What we're protecting: [Website, database, domain, SSL, logins]
Recovery point: We can accept losing up to [X hours] of data.
Recovery time: We aim to be back within [X hours]. Our DRSite plan is [Essential / Standard / Premium].
Contacts: [Roles, names, numbers]
Recovery steps: [Numbered list from Step 5]
Customer message: [Draft text]
Testing schedule: Backup check every [quarter]. Practice restore every [six months / year].

Put it in place

The best time to write this is on a quiet afternoon, not in the middle of an outage. Fill in the template, save a copy off-site, and book your first test.

If you'd like backup and recovery handled for you, take a look at DRSite and compare the Essential, Standard and Premium plans on the pricing page.