To recover a deleted GoDaddy website, start inside your GoDaddy account: if the hosting plan is still active, look for Daily Backups in your cPanel hosting product or for restore points in Website Security and Backups, and restore the newest copy from before the site disappeared. If the plan has expired or been cancelled, contact GoDaddy support at once and ask whether any backup of the account still exists. If GoDaddy has nothing left, the public pages of the site can usually still be rebuilt from web archives such as the Wayback Machine, but databases, emails and customer data cannot.
This guide walks through each situation in order, explains what each GoDaddy backup option covers, and shows what to do when the provider can no longer help.
First, work out what was actually deleted
“My GoDaddy website is gone” can mean several different things, and each has its own recovery path. Before you restore anything, check which one applies:
- The domain expired. The site may be perfectly intact on the hosting account, but nobody can reach it because the domain no longer points there. Renewing the domain, if you are still within the renewal window, brings it back without any restore.
- The hosting plan expired or was cancelled. The files and databases were removed or are about to be. This is the urgent case.
- Files or a database were deleted inside an active plan. Someone removed a folder, ran an uninstall or reset WordPress. Backups inside the account are your best route.
- The site was built with GoDaddy’s website builder rather than hosting. Builder sites are managed differently from cPanel or WordPress hosting, so the hosting backup tools below may not apply; ask support about that product specifically.
- The site was hacked and wiped or replaced. Restoring an old backup without fixing the cause can bring the attack straight back.
Log in to your GoDaddy account and open My Products. The status of the domain and of the hosting product tells you which of these you are dealing with.
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How to recover a deleted GoDaddy website from Daily Backups
GoDaddy’s cPanel web hosting can include Daily Backups that restore the whole account to a chosen date. According to GoDaddy’s help documentation, the steps are:
- In your GoDaddy account, select Manage next to the web hosting plan.
- Open Backups, then View Backups.
- Pick a date from before the deletion. The backup can take a few minutes to be mounted on the server before you can use it.
- Restore the account, or only the files and databases you need.
Read the warning before you press restore. GoDaddy states that this kind of restore can overwrite all existing files, databases and email with the content of the backup. If anything has been added since that date, such as new orders or new posts, download a copy of the current state first so you do not lose it a second time.
Restoring with Website Security and Backups
If you paid for GoDaddy’s Website Security and Backups product, its dashboard holds separate backup points for each site. GoDaddy’s guide to restoring a site with Website Security and Backups describes the process: open the product, choose the site, select Details under Backups, pick a date on the calendar, and choose whether to restore files, the database or both.
Two points matter here. A backup can only be restored once it has completed successfully, so very recent points may not be usable. And the restore permanently overwrites the current data, which GoDaddy says cannot be undone. After a restore, clear the hosting cache and any firewall cache so the restored version actually appears to visitors.
Older accounts may still have the retired Site Backup product, which GoDaddy stopped selling in 2018. It can restore individual files and folders, which is useful when only part of the site was deleted.
When the GoDaddy hosting plan has expired
This is the case where time matters most. Hosting companies keep the data of expired or cancelled accounts only for a limited period, and GoDaddy does not publish a single retention window that covers every product. Do not assume the files are still there next week.
- Contact GoDaddy support today. Give the domain, the account it was hosted in and the date the site went down. Ask directly whether a backup or the account’s files still exist and whether reactivating or renewing the plan would bring them back.
- Ask for a downloadable copy if they can restore anything, so you are not dependent on a single host again.
- Check the email address on the account for expiry and deletion notices; they show the exact dates, which helps support find the right backup.
- If a developer or agency managed the hosting, ask them too. They may have had a separate account or a local copy.
Our article on what happens when a website is deleted after hosting expired explains the wider options if the host confirms the data is gone.
Recovering a WordPress site hosted at GoDaddy
Many GoDaddy sites run WordPress, either on cPanel hosting or on GoDaddy’s managed WordPress plans. A WordPress site has two parts: the files, including themes, plugins and the uploads folder with your images, and the database, which holds posts, pages, settings and users. A usable recovery needs both.
- If you can restore only the files, the images and theme come back but the content does not.
- If you can restore only the database, the text and settings come back, but images will be missing until the uploads folder is recovered or rebuilt.
- Backup plugins such as UpdraftPlus or similar often saved copies to Google Drive, Dropbox or email. Check those accounts even if the GoDaddy backups are gone.
For the full WordPress picture, see our guide to restoring a deleted WordPress site.
If GoDaddy has no backup left
When the provider confirms nothing survives, you can still rebuild the public website from what other systems saw. The main source is the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which stores dated captures of public pages with their text and many of their images. Search your domain there and note the most recent capture from before the site was deleted.
Gather everything else that survives as well: old exports, files on a designer’s computer, product spreadsheets, newsletters and social posts. Together these are often enough to rebuild the site page for page, at the same URLs, on a new hosting account. Our guide to recovering a deleted website with or without a backup covers this route step by step.
Be clear about the limits. An archive never saw your database, so customer accounts, orders, form entries, private pages and email cannot be recovered this way.
GoDaddy recovery options at a glance
| Situation | Best first step | What you can get back |
|---|---|---|
| Domain expired, hosting active | Renew the domain | Everything, unchanged |
| Files deleted, plan active | Daily Backups or Website Security and Backups | Files, databases and email to the backup date |
| Hosting expired or cancelled | Call support immediately | Depends on what GoDaddy still holds |
| WordPress site, partial copies | Combine database and uploads from any source | Most of the site if both parts survive |
| No backups anywhere | Rebuild from web archives | Public pages and many images; no database data |
Protect the new site
- Keep at least one backup outside GoDaddy, for example in cloud storage you control.
- Turn on auto-renew for both the domain and the hosting, and keep the account email current.
- Download a full backup before cancelling a plan or moving providers, and check that it opens.
- Make sure you, not only a developer, have the login for the hosting account.
Need the site rebuilt?
If GoDaddy cannot restore your site and you have no complete backup, our website recovery service rebuilds the public site from archived captures and any partial copies, on WordPress or as a static site, keeping the original URLs where possible. Start with the free restoration check to see how much of your site the archive holds.
Frequently asked questions
Can GoDaddy recover a deleted website?
Sometimes. If the hosting plan is active and Daily Backups or Website Security and Backups were in place, you can restore it yourself. If the plan expired or was cancelled, only GoDaddy support can tell you whether any data is still held, so contact them as soon as possible.
How long does GoDaddy keep files after hosting expires?
GoDaddy does not publish one retention period for every product, and data from expired plans is not kept indefinitely. Treat it as urgent and ask support for the exact position on your account.
Will restoring a GoDaddy backup delete my newer content?
It can. GoDaddy warns that restores overwrite current files and databases. Download what is there now before restoring an older backup.
Can I recover a GoDaddy site from the Wayback Machine?
You can rebuild the public pages, text and many images from archived captures. Databases, user accounts, orders and email were never archived and cannot be recovered that way.
