How to Back Up Your Website
Most website owners don't think about backups until something goes wrong. A hosting provider goes under, a plugin update breaks the site, a database gets corrupted, or worse — an account gets hacked. By the time you need a backup, it's too late to make one. Here's how to get ahead of it.
What Does a Website Backup Actually Include?
A complete website backup should contain everything needed to restore or recreate the site. That means:
- All HTML pages — the actual content of every page
- CSS stylesheets — everything that controls the appearance
- JavaScript files — functionality, animations, interactivity
- Images and media — photos, videos, icons, logos
- Fonts — custom typography files
- Database content — if your site uses one (WordPress, custom CMS, etc.)
Different Sites Need Different Backup Approaches
The right backup method depends on how your site is built.
WordPress sites: Your host likely offers automated backups through cPanel or a managed WordPress plan. Plugins like UpdraftPlus or All-in-One WP Migration can also create and schedule full backups including the database.
Hosted platforms (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify): These providers handle server infrastructure for you, but they offer little or no export functionality. Your backup options are limited to what you can extract from the live site.
Custom or static sites: If you have server access, you can use FTP/SFTP to download all files. For sites you don't have backend access to, you need to crawl the live version.
The Easiest Way to Back Up Any Website
If you need a backup of what your site actually looks like — not the database, not the raw files, but the rendered pages a visitor sees — the simplest approach is a site crawl.
A site crawl visits every page of your website, downloads the fully rendered HTML, and grabs every linked asset (images, CSS, JS, fonts). The result is an offline-ready ZIP that looks exactly like your live site. Subdomains (like support.yoursite.com) and outside services such as a help center are treated as separate sites, so run a separate scrape for each one you want.
This works for any website regardless of how it's built — WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, custom HTML, whatever. You don't need access to the server, the database, or the CMS admin panel.
How to Back Up a Website With Website Sucker
Website Sucker is purpose-built for this. It's the browser-based equivalent of SiteSucker for Mac.
- Go to websitesucker.com
- Paste the URL of the website you want to back up
- Click Start — your first scrape is free up to 50 pages
- Review the list of pages and assets found
- Click Download ZIP to get the offline backup. $1.99 (or from $1.30/credit in packs) covers sites up to 500 MB (about 1,200 pages)
- Unzip and open in a browser — no internet required
How Often Should You Back Up?
For most small business sites that change infrequently, a quarterly backup is a good minimum. If you publish new content regularly — a blog, a portfolio, product updates — consider monthly. If your site is your primary business tool, weekly or even daily backups make sense.
The general rule: how much work would you lose if your site disappeared today? Back up often enough that the answer is 'not much.'
Where to Store Your Backup
Store backups in at least two places. A local copy on your computer or an external drive, plus a cloud copy in Google Drive, Dropbox, or similar. If your site is critical to your business, consider a third copy stored offsite.
The size of a Website Sucker ZIP depends on the site. Each scrape downloads at most 1,000 MB.
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