I think for many users who have a UBB the best question would be what is the best way to restore?

Lol if my site backup was emailed every day, i'd have several hundred gb of data in my email...

best way to restore is the best way to backup... via the commandline through SSH ... (again, covered in my "how to migrate" posting in the how to forum)

Using the built-in backup scripts has a negligible server load. You can use the ubb backups to do a restore, I've done this several times with SSH.

I use the UBB backups as well to do a restore, it's quick and no server load however the only way I can do this is via command line. It does not matter how large the file is either. The major problem is that some users on a hosted environment do not have command line access or wouldn't know how to restore this way.

All of my hosting accounts have Cpanel but I do not know how to backup UBBthreads from there.

Not trying to invent. Just want to use something that is already invented and works

phpmyadmin works, for larger boards you'll have to do partial restores - can take a long time but I've done it with success several times.

Me too. I have a couple of sites with more than 1 million posts
I keep backups, two copies on different hard disks, at the server. Never though my host could go bust and not give me the backup

Maybe I need to somehow mirror the server at a different host

I ftp both my file and sql backup to a different host after creating them daily.

You will see many of those large corporate cut through pricing host's going bust in the next year or two.