How to Exclude Specific Files or Folders from Plesk Backups

Not everything on your hosting account needs to be in every backup. Large media folders, cache directories, or temporary files can bloat your backup size and slow the process down. Plesk lets you exclude specific files and folders so your backups stay lean and fast.

How to exclude files from a domain backup

1. Log in to your Plesk control panel.
2. Go to Websites & Domains > Backup Manager.
3. Click Back Up to start a new backup.
4. Choose your backup type (full or incremental).
5. Tick the "Exclude specific files from the backup" checkbox.
6. Enter the paths of files or folders you want to exclude in the text box that appears. Enter one path per line.
7. Click OK to start the backup.

Path format and examples

All paths must be relative to your subscription root — not absolute server paths. Here are common examples:

• Exclude a single file:
  httpdocs/images/old-photo.jpg
• Exclude an entire folder and its contents:
  httpdocs/cache
• Exclude all files inside a folder (but keep the empty folder):
  httpdocs/tmp/*
• Exclude files by extension:
  httpdocs/uploads/*.log

What to consider excluding

• Cache folders — for example, httpdocs/wp-content/cache for WordPress sites. These regenerate automatically and don't need to be backed up.
• Log files — Plesk often has a built-in option to exclude logs. Tick "Exclude log files" separately if available.
• Large media archives — if you have gigabytes of video or image files that are already stored and backed up elsewhere, there's no need to include them again.
• Temporary and staging files — anything in /tmp or development folders you don't need to preserve.

Important notes

• The wildcard * matches files within a single directory level only. It won't recurse into subfolders automatically.
• Excluded files won't be available for restore from that particular backup. Make sure anything you exclude is either expendable or backed up through another method.
• If you regularly exclude the same paths, Plesk remembers your exclusion settings for future backups of that domain. You won't need to re-enter them each time.
• Excluding large folders can significantly reduce both backup time and storage usage on the server.