How to Hire Someone to Restore a Lost or Deleted WordPress Site

You open your site and get “This site can’t be reached”, a hosting “account suspended” page, or an empty WordPress install where your pages used to be. Nobody remembers when the last backup was made.

Years of posts, pages and images seem gone in one afternoon. But a domain renewal, a host backup or a forgotten plugin backup could bring them back.

Here’s how to check what survived in ten minutes, and how to hire someone to restore a deleted WordPress site without making the loss worse.

What a lost or deleted WordPress site usually means

A site that won’t load is not always a deleted site. What you can recover depends on which copies still exist. Most cases fall into one of four groups:

• Domain expired The site disappears, but its files and database often remain on the hosting. Renewing the domain can bring it back.
• Hosting suspended or cancelled An unpaid bill or a closed account takes the site offline. How long the host keeps your data depends on its policy.
• Files or database deleted Someone deleted them by mistake, a one-click installer put a fresh WordPress over the old one, or a migration went wrong.
• A few posts or pages deleted The site works, but some content is missing.

A WordPress site has two parts. The files hold your images, theme and plugins. The database holds your posts, pages, settings, users and any store orders. A full restore needs both, from around the same date.

If neither part survives anywhere, the last option is the Wayback Machine, a public archive of web pages. It saves public pages as visitors saw them, not your admin or database, so a developer can rebuild the site from it, not restore it.

Try this first (10 minutes)

Only the first check may need a change, a domain renewal. Do them today: hosts keep backups and closed accounts only for a limited time.

1. Check the domain. Log in to the company where you registered it. If it expired, renew it. After deletion, most domains like .com go into a 30-day redemption period, when the registrar can still restore them for a fee.
2. Check the hosting account. Look for a backups section in your hosting account. If it’s suspended or cancelled, contact support. Ask whether a backup exists, its date, and how long they’ll keep it.
3. Look for your own backups. Check the cloud storage a backup plugin may have used (Google Drive, Dropbox), your downloads folder and old emails. Ask the developer who built the site. A plugin like UpdraftPlus keeps backups on the same server unless someone set up remote storage, so you can’t reach them while the hosting is gone.
4. Check Trash and the Wayback Machine. If only some content is missing, open Posts or Pages in your dashboard and look at the Trash view: WordPress keeps deleted items there for 30 days by default. If nothing else exists, search for your address on web.archive.org and note how many pages it saved and how recent they are.

Write down each backup’s date and whether it contains files, the database or both.

Hire straight away if you run a store with orders and customer accounts, if the site was hacked, or if you have a backup file but don’t know how to restore it.

If you found nothing you can restore yourself, stop here. Don’t install a fresh WordPress or run a one-click installer on the old account. It can overwrite what your host could still recover.

Where to hire a developer

I recommend Fiverr Pro for restoring a lost site. I work on Fiverr myself, so I know how orders, payments and reviews work. Fiverr vets Pro freelancers by hand for their experience, portfolio and service record before they get the Pro badge.

For a rebuild of many pages, ask the seller for a custom offer split into milestones. You then check the site in parts, and each milestone gets 8 days for review instead of the usual 3.

What it costs

At the time of writing, these are typical Fiverr Pro prices for restore work:

Package prices don’t include Fiverr’s service fee. Cheaper non-Pro gigs exist, especially for archive rebuilds, but they often cover a single page.

Larger backups, missing uploads, extra page layouts, store features, new plugin licenses and rush deadlines raise the price. Hosting, the domain renewal and paid plugins are separate from the developer’s work.

If you’re moving to a new host anyway, see what a WordPress migration usually costs.

Start with a paid assessment

Nobody can promise a full recovery from a backup they haven’t opened. Start with a paid assessment: the developer checks what survived, lists what can and can’t come back, and quotes for the restore. You pay for the assessment even if little survives. Order the restore once you know what’s included.

What the cheap price usually skips

• restoring to a staging copy first
• checking every page, form and image
• fixing old URLs after a move to new hosting or a new domain
• a written list of what couldn’t be recovered
• automatic off-site backups set up, with one test restore
• a malware check if the site was lost after a hack

The difference between a $100 and a $400 restore is mostly the checking and the list of what’s missing.

How to choose the right developer

A restore goes wrong quietly: the homepage loads, and you find missing images and orders a month later. Look for careful checks before delivery.

Check reviews for restore work

Look for reviews that mention restoring backups, recovering a site, or rebuilding from the Wayback Machine. Migration reviews help too. Read the one- to three-star reviews and how the seller replied.

Watch how they answer your message

A good seller asks what backups you have, their dates, and whether the database is included before quoting. A promise of “100% recovery” without seeing the backup is a guess.

The questions I’d ask before ordering

• Will you restore to a staging copy or a temporary address first?
• Do you work on a copy of my backup, not the original file?
• What happens if the backup is incomplete or won’t open?
• Will my old page addresses stay the same?
• For a rebuild: will I get editable WordPress pages, and which pages are included?
• Which plugins will you install, and are they licensed?
• Will you set up automatic off-site backups when you’re done?

Red flags

• asks for your hosting account or domain registrar password
• asks to chat or pay outside Fiverr
• promises a full recovery before seeing your backup
• plans to restore over the live site without a copy
• offers a “free” premium plugin or theme with no license key behind it, which is a pirated copy and can carry malware
• wants to open new hosting or register the domain in their own name
• delivers a rebuild as static files or screenshots when you asked for WordPress pages

How to give access safely

A lost site often has no WordPress login to share yet. Give access in steps and keep every account in your name.

1. Keep your own copy of every backup. Download it before you share anything, and store it off the server.
2. Share backup files through an expiring link. Use cloud storage with a link that expires, not an email attachment. Backups can hold customer data, so delete the link after the job.
3. Open new hosting yourself. If the old account is gone, buy the new plan in your name. Give the developer a separate SFTP user from the hosting panel for the files, not your hosting password. The database needs its own step: create an empty one in the panel and share its login, or ask your host’s support to import the backup. Some hosts also let you add the developer as a collaborator with limited rights.
4. Create a WordPress user once the restored copy runs. Give the developer their own account and delete it after handover.
5. Point the domain yourself. The developer tells you which DNS records to change; you make the change in your registrar or DNS account.

Share passwords through a password manager after placing the order. Never share your domain registrar login, your payment provider login or the email address your site’s admin account uses.

What to send before the work starts

• your site address, and when it last worked
• what happened, as far as you know: expired, cancelled, deleted, failed migration, hack
• every backup you found: where it is, its date, its size, files or database or both
• the status of your domain and hosting accounts
• a Wayback Machine link, if there’s no backup
• the pages, features and data you must get back, and what you can live without
• your theme, page builder and key plugins, if you remember them
• for a store: the date of the last order you know of
• your deadline and what access you’re ready to give

Your order requirements are the reference if the delivery doesn’t match what you agreed.

After the restore: check, accept, prevent

Fiverr gives you 3 days after delivery to accept the work or ask for changes, then the order completes itself. Check the same day, on a computer and a phone:

• every page you listed opens, with its images
• forms send email, and logins work
• links between pages work, and old addresses still load
• on a store: products, customer accounts and orders up to the backup date are there, and a test order goes through
• you have the developer’s list of what couldn’t be recovered

Ask for any changes through Fiverr before you accept the delivery. If orders came in after the backup date, agree with the developer how they’ll be added back before anyone replaces a store’s database. Then remove the developer’s WordPress and SFTP users, delete the shared backup links, and change any password you shared.

Reduce the risk of losing the site again. Set up automatic backups that go off the server, keep the domain and hosting on auto-renew with a working card, and test one restore. Regular maintenance includes all three.

Summary

A domain renewal or a surviving backup can bring a lost site back. A rushed restore risks overwriting what survived. To restore a deleted WordPress site, start with a paid assessment and ask the developer to work on a copy. Keep every account in your name.