Backups · recovery
Having a backup and having restored one are different things
Most founders we talk to have a backup setting switched on somewhere and have never tried to use it. That is not a backup, it is a hope. The difference costs an afternoon, and it is the difference between a bad Tuesday and the end of the company.
This is also the question every enterprise security questionnaire asks, and the one founders cannot answer.
- First step
- A short call, or a written description if you would rather not talk yet
- Who you speak to
- The engineer who would do the work. No account manager, no sales call.
- Turnaround
- Most single problems are resolved within 48 hours of getting access
- Cost
- Quoted after we have seen it — scope varies, and guessing helps neither of us
How to get this fixed
Already a client? Raise it as a ticket in Golux Club and it enters the queue with an SLA attached.
Why the backup you have may not be one
Managed databases keep backups on their own schedule and their own retention, which is shorter than most people assume and sometimes absent on the free tier. They also live in the same account as the thing they protect — so a billing lapse, a deleted project or a compromised login takes both. Then there is what a database backup does not contain: uploaded files, storage buckets, environment variables and the configuration that makes the app run. Restoring the rows into an empty project gives you a database, not a product. And the restore itself is a procedure with steps; nobody wants to read it for the first time during an incident.
How to tell it is this
- You are on a plan where point-in-time recovery is not included and do not know it
- The backups and the production database are in the same account
- Uploaded files are not backed up at all
- Nobody has ever restored one
- You could not say how much data a restore would lose
What we do
Set it up, then use it — while you watch.
- 01
Work out what a loss would cost
How far back is survivable, and what has to come back with the rows: files, secrets, configuration. That decides the design; it takes ten minutes.
- 02
Schedule it somewhere else
Automated backups of the database and the file storage, written to storage in a different account, with retention you chose rather than inherited.
- 03
Restore one, together
A real restore into a scratch environment, on a call, while you watch. This is the part that turns a setting into a capability.
- 04
Write the one-pager
What to do, in order, when it happens: who to call, which command, how long it takes, how to tell customers. One page, not forty.
What you get
- Scheduled backups of data and files, in an account separate from production
- One restore performed in front of you, with the time it took
- A one-page recovery runbook
- An honest answer for the questionnaire question about backup and recovery
When this is not what you need
- You have already lost data — stop and call the provider; recovery is time-critical and their support is faster than any contract we could sign
- You need high availability or a hot standby — a different and more expensive class of problem
- You need certified retention for a regulator — we can build toward it, but the audit is a bigger engagement
How it works
- 01
Tell us the symptom
One paragraph is enough — the error, the screen, what you expected. Run the free audit first if you have not; it often names the problem for you.
- 02
A call, or a written reply
Thirty minutes to look at it together, or a written answer if you prefer. Either way you find out what it is before anything is agreed.
- 03
A written offer
After the call: the scope, the approach and what we need from you. Discussed on the call, confirmed in writing.
- 04
Fixed, explained, handed back
The fix in your project, a short note on what was wrong and why, and how to check it yourself — typically inside 48 hours of getting access.
What we promise before any money changes hands
We tell you what is actually wrong, whether it is one problem or a symptom of a bigger one, and what it would take — before you commit to anything. If the honest answer is that you can fix it yourself in an afternoon, that is the answer you get, and the instructions are usually on this page already.
Questions
- Does Supabase not back up for me?
- It does, on a schedule and retention that depend on your plan, into the same account as your project. That covers the common accident and not the uncommon disaster. We keep theirs and add a copy somewhere you also control.
- Where do the backups go?
- Object storage in an account you own — your own cloud, or one we set up in your name. Never ours. The point is that you can reach them without us.
- How much does the storage cost?
- For a database under a few gigabytes, ordinarily a couple of euros a month. We size it and tell you before anything is switched on.
- Can you also restore a single deleted record?
- That is the common real emergency, and yes — the runbook covers restoring one table or one row into a scratch copy and copying it back, without rolling the whole database backwards.
Other things we fix at the same price
- Move it to my own domain“My app is still on yourapp.lovable.app and I want my own domain.”
- Login works, no data shows“I can log in, but every list is empty and there is no error.”
- It got slow“It was fast with ten rows and it is unusable with ten thousand.”
Next step
Tell us the symptom. We will tell you if it is one problem.
We answer within a few hours with what it is, what it would take, and what we need from you. If it is bigger than one problem, we say that instead — before anything is agreed.
