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NeverWiped and restic on your own
NeverWiped runs restic for you. What it adds to restic on your own, what you would build yourself, and when doing it yourself is the better choice.
NeverWiped is built on restic (version 0.18.1), open-source backup software under the BSD 2-Clause licence (restic). You can run restic yourself, to storage you rent. This page says what NeverWiped adds to that, what it does not, and when doing it yourself is the better choice.
What restic on your own means
- restic encrypts everything on the machine, before it is sent (AES-256 with Poly1305 authentication). That part is the same with NeverWiped.
- You choose the storage (SFTP, an S3-compatible bucket, restic’s own rest-server, and others), pay for it, and keep the repository password somewhere safe.
- restic has no scheduler of its own: you write the cron job or systemd timer, the database dumps before each backup, the retention rules (
restic forgetwith--prune), the checks (restic check), and a way to hear about it when something fails or stops running. - If the server’s storage login can delete (the usual case with an SFTP account or an S3 key that can write), whoever controls the server can delete the backups. restic’s rest-server has an append-only mode for this; you then prune from another machine.
Side by side
| NeverWiped | restic on your own | |
|---|---|---|
| Backup format | A restic repository | A restic repository |
| Encryption | restic, with a repository key generated on your server and a recovery key shown to you once (encryption) | restic, with the password you choose and store |
| Storage | Ours, in France: one repository and one login per server (append-only) | Yours, set up as you choose |
| Protection against deletion | Append-only day to day; pruning uses a separate login valid for one hour, at most once a week, and you can pause it (pruning) | What you set up (for example rest-server in append-only mode) |
| Schedule | The agent schedules itself: every night or every week, depending on the plan | You write it |
| What to back up | The agent finds your sites, databases and Docker volumes and shows you the plan before the first backup (install) | You list the paths |
| Databases | Full consistent dumps, made by the agent | You script them |
| Checks | Automatic checks of the stored backups; an email if errors are found twice in a row (alert emails) | restic check, when you schedule it |
| Alerts | Emails when a backup fails, when none has run for too long, and before the storage is full | You build them |
| Several servers | One repository and key per server, one dashboard (several servers) | As you set it up |
| Losing the server | neverwiped recover on a new server, with an account API key and your recovery key (a whole server) | restic restore from a new machine, with the password and the storage login |
| Price | Your plan (pricing) | Your storage, and your time |
What you build yourself
If you run restic on your own, this is the list NeverWiped does for you, to tick off:
- Storage, with a login that cannot delete, or a separate machine that prunes.
- The repository password, stored outside the server.
- A schedule, with a lock so two runs never overlap.
- Database dumps before each backup, and a check that they are complete.
- Retention rules and their pruning.
- Regular
restic checkruns. - An alert when a backup fails, and another one when backups silently stop.
- A restore test, written down, that you repeat.
When restic on your own is the better choice
- You want your own storage, several destinations, or a provider you pick.
- The machine is not a Linux server. restic runs on more systems; NeverWiped only on Linux (amd64 and arm64).
- You need more storage than our plans (pricing).
- You like running it, and have the time to keep the checks and alerts working.
Moving between them
- The format is the same. Your NeverWiped backups can be read with restic alone (restic alone), and copied to a repository you own with
restic copy(your own copy). Leaving needs no conversion. - Keeping your own restic copy next to NeverWiped is exactly what that guide describes: NeverWiped for the daily work, your copy as a second place.
Last reviewed: 6 November 2026. See also: all comparisons.