This feature is only available in Akeeba Backup Professional.
Displayed on the Plugin Manager as System - Backup on update.
This documentation page ONLY takes into account the particular needs and uses cases of our clients who have chosen to subscribe to Akeeba Backup Professional, not all Joomla users in general. Our clients are predominantly power users and web professionals who want to exercise maximum control over when and how they will take backups of and install updates to their sites. The contents of this page should only be read with within this very specific context.
This feature only applies when you update your site using the Joomla Update component from your site's backend. It does not apply when you update your site from the command line, a third party service, your host, or using Joomla's automatic updates introduced in October 2025 with Joomla 5.4.0 and 6.0.0.
Updating the Joomla! version on your site is generally safe, but it may break your site if a third party extension is not already compatible with the new version of Joomla you are installing. Moreover, random issues outside your or Joomla's control may cause the update to fail halfway through, leaving your site in a broken state.
It is always a good practice to take a backup before updating your site, and Joomla explicitly states that in its interface and documentation. If something breaks, you can roll your site back to its last known good state and take further steps to isolate and address the issue.
This plugin intercepts the action of installing an update when you are initiating an update from your site's backend, i.e. using a browser to tell the Joomla! Update component to start an update. It will then redirect you to Akeeba Backup, automatically starting a backup with the backup profile you have selected in the plugin's configuration. Once the backup is complete, you will be taken back to the Joomla! Update component which will download and install the core Joomla! update. This process is automatic; you do not have to interact with your site beyond clicking the Install Update button.
Editing the plugin you will find the sole option, Backup Profile, which lets you define which Akeeba Backup profile to use for these automated backups. If you don't specify anything the default backup profile (the one with ID=1) will be used.
We recommend using a backup profile which stores a copy of the backup archive in external storage (e.g. Amazon S3, Dropbox, etc) on top of leaving a copy of the backup archive on your server. This way you have maximum protection against any kind of accidents caused by a failed or problematic Joomla! update.
When the plugin is enabled you will see a message reminding you of the status of Backup on Update when you visit the Joomla! Update component. You can temporarily disable (and re-enable) the backup on update feature by clicking the button in that message.
This plugin will only take backups before initiating an update of your site using Joomla Update (com_joomlaupdate) in the backend of your site.
We will add support for updates installed through the Joomla CLI application (php /path/to/site/cli/joomla.php core:update) in a future version. This use case is currently NOT supported.
This plugin cannot work with Joomla's automatic updates feature. This is a hard technical limitation which cannot be addressed. Automatic Joomla updates use an external service hosted by the Joomla project at https://autoupdate.joomla.org. This service does not have a provision for taking backups before the update is installed. This is a perfectly reasonable limitation, and it would be unreasonable to expect it to change merely on ethical grounds.
This plugin cannot work with updates installed through your host. We generally advise against using your host's CMS update feature for reliability purposes.
This plugin does not work with third party site monitoring services and self-hosted site monitoring solutions such as but not limited to mySites, Watchful, YourSites, or Akeeba Panopticon. These site monitoring services and solutions do take backups before installing the update using their own code, regardless of the publish status of this plugin.
Automated updates cannot take a backup before installing the update.
If an automated update runs at the same time as a backup the results can be unpredictable. The worst case scenario is that you end up with a broken, half updated site without a usable recent backup to roll it back to.
Joomla! as of version 5.4 and 6.0 has started offering opt-in automated updates. As noted in the backend interface and Joomla's documentation, this feature uses a service hosted by the Joomla project at https://autoupdate.joomla.org. Joomla has made available the source code for the service. This service is what instructs your site to look for, download, extract, and install updates. The update information and update packages are retrieved by your site, and the update package extraction and installation is performed by your site.
This is a good feature, which is primarily made for simple sites which only use core Joomla i.e. the majority of Joomla sites out there. Our clients, however, tend to have more involved sites and more advanced needs. This is why we have to note the following technical limitations of this core Joomla feature which can adversely impact your site.
Due to the nature of Joomla's automated update service, it is technically impossible to take a backup before the update is installed. Just like any other service managing core updates, it would need to provide an explicit integration with Akeeba Backup for this to be possible. It is unreasonable to expect Joomla to provide an explicit integration of its update service with a third party extension; it would be unethical for Joomla to do so.
The automated updates feature does not make any guarantees about when exactly the update will be installed. If an automated update runs at the same time as a backup, the results are unpredictable. The update, the backup, or both may fail. In the worst case scenario, you will end up with a broken, half-updated site with no backup to roll back to. This stems from the fact that the update process tries to write into or delete the same files the backup process tries to read from. The only way to avoid this problem is to NOT run an update and a backup at the same time, but there is no guaranteed way to achieve that when using automated updates.
Kindly note that we cannot offer any meaningful support for these problems. They are outside our control. All we can do is bring them to your attention and ask you to exercise common sense and make informed decisions.
Update manually. Log into your site's backend and run the update. The Backup On Update plugin will make sure a backup is taken before the update. This is a good solution if you have a small handful of fairly small to medium sized sites. If you are unsure and only manage 1–5 sites, that's what you most likely need.
Use a site monitoring service. If you have more than a small handful of sites you should invest in a site monitoring service. You can use a managed service such as mySites and Watchful, or you can use a self-hosted service such as Akeeba Panopticon (free of charge) or YourSites. You can choose when to update, which versions to update to, and even manage the updates of installed third party extensions. This is a great solution for small to medium sized web agencies managing tens to a few hundreds of sites. It is also a good solution for corporate and enterprise settings with a few, high value sites managed by a team with varying skill levels across its members.
Use the CLI, typically as part of a remote management strategy using a solution like Ansible or Puppet. Both Akeeba Backup and Joomla Update offer integration with the Joomla CLI Application. You can take a backup and then update your site. Combining that with a remote management solution like Ansible or Puppet allows you to automate backups and update across hundreds of sites and servers. This is a very advanced solution for large web agencies and enterprises.