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How to Back Up Your Entire Website Before You Lose It

Hosts go down, plugins break, invoices go unpaid. Here is how to keep a full, browsable copy of your site on your own computer.

Backup · July 8, 2026 · 6 min read

One rule before you start: only back up sites you own or are explicitly authorized to archive — your own server, a client site you manage, or content you have written permission to copy. Downloading a site you don't control can violate copyright, terms of service, or computer-misuse law. EZ Website Backup asks you to confirm this before every new domain, and ties each job to your account.

Most people only think about backups the day after they need one. A lapsed hosting invoice, a botched plugin update, or a host that quietly shuts down can wipe out years of work. A front-end backup — a crawled copy of everything your visitors can see — takes a minute and lives on your own drive.

What a crawl-based backup does and doesn't cover

Be clear-eyed about this. A crawl captures everything that is publicly served: pages, images, styles, scripts, documents and media. It does not capture your database, server-side PHP source, or admin-only pages you aren't logged into. For a brochure site, blog or portfolio that's the whole thing. For a dynamic app, treat it as a front-end snapshot to complement your database backup, not a replacement.

The 60-second walkthrough

  1. Sign in and open the app. Go to the app. Every backup is tied to your account — that's how we keep the tool honest and abuse-free.
  2. Paste the URL. Drop the address of the site (or the exact section) you want into the big URL bar and hit Analyze & back up.
  3. Confirm you own it. A one-time modal asks you to confirm you own — or are authorized to archive — that domain. Tick it and continue.
  4. Watch the crawl. The live counters fill in: pages crawled, files found, and total size. You can pause, resume or stop at any point.
  5. Browse the file tree. When it finishes, every page, image, stylesheet, script and document appears in a searchable, collapsible tree.
  6. Download what you need. Filter by type, tick the files you want (or hit Download all), and get a ready-to-browse .zip.

Capture logged-in pages too

If parts of your site sit behind a login, open Advanced options and paste your own session cookies into the authenticated-crawl field. The crawler will then fetch those pages exactly as your logged-in browser sees them. Because it's your session, this is backup, not bypass.

Tip: raise Max size before a full-site backup so large media doesn't get skipped, and set scope to "Host + subdomains" if your images live on a cdn. or static. subdomain.

Store it somewhere that isn't your host

The whole point is independence from your hosting. Once you download the ZIP, drop a copy somewhere else — an external drive, or a cloud folder. Now if the host disappears, your site doesn't.

How often should you do this?

Any time you make meaningful changes, and on a calendar reminder otherwise — monthly is plenty for most sites. Each backup is timestamped, so keeping a few generations lets you roll back to "the version before that redesign."

Back up your site in the next minute

Point EZ Website Backup at a URL you own, watch the file tree fill in, and download exactly what you need.

Open the app →

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