Most of us think about backing up our website the day after we needed to.
A host goes under. A platform raises its prices. A client leaves an agency and nobody can find the login. The site is still up, still public… and the only copy of it lives on somebody else’s server.
For years the answer to that was a Mac app. That rules out everyone on Windows, everyone on Linux, and anyone who needs one backup and doesn’t want to install software to get it. So I built Website Sucker, a browser-based website downloader. Paste a URL, watch it work, and download a ZIP that actually opens offline.
What does it actually download?
All of it. A real browser renders every page, then pulls down the HTML, images, stylesheets, scripts and fonts as it finds them. And yall get to watch it happen live.
A few things it handles that older downloaders tend to miss:
- JavaScript-rendered pages. Wix, Squarespace and React sites render fully before capture, so the copy looks like the live page.
- Lazy-loaded media. Pages are scrolled, so the images and fonts that only load on scroll come down too.
- Embeds. YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps and more than 25 other providers stay in place as live embeds.
- Links. Every internal link is rewritten to point at the local files.
Open index.html in any browser and the site works offline. Videos and maps still need a connection. Everything else is local. The full feature list goes deeper.
Who is it for?
Three kinds of people, mostly.
Site owners who want a backup. If your site lives on a builder, an offline copy is cheap insurance. I wrote about why an off-site copy matters in 3 reasons why cloud backup is important. Same logic applies to the website itself.
Anyone moving platforms. A static copy of the old site is the reference for the new one. Every page, every image, every word, in one folder. Website Sucker has walkthroughs for exporting a site from Squarespace and exporting a site from Wix.
Designers and developers. Hand it a client’s existing site and you’ve got the starting files… without spending an afternoon on right-click, save as.
What does it cost?
Looking is free. Downloading is $1.99.
Your first scrape is free when you create an account, and no card is required. It covers up to 50 pages, 500 files and 100 MB, and it shows you exactly what was captured before you pay for anything. If the site is bigger, the scrape pauses at that limit and shows you what it has so far.
When you’re ready to download:
- $1.99 per download. It downloads your scrape, or finishes a paused one and downloads the whole site, up to 250 MB (about 600 pages). Nothing is scraped twice.
- Credit packs. 3 for $4.99, or 10 for $12.99. Credits never expire.
- $5.99 a month. Unlimited scrapes and downloads, up to 1 GB per scrape. Cancel anytime.
A bigger site pauses at 250 MB, and each extra 250 MB is another $1.99, up to 1 GB per site. If you’re backing up several sites, or the same site on a schedule, the monthly plan is the better deal. The FAQ lays out the details.
I priced it this way on purpose. You should get to see what you’re getting before you pay for it.
What will it not do?
Now this is the honest part.
It only downloads public pages. It doesn’t sign in to anything, and it doesn’t get around logins or paywalls. If your own site sits behind a login, you’ll need to make it public for the scrape or use a different tool.
It doesn’t make copying somebody else’s work okay. Backing up your own site, archiving it, or moving it to a new platform… that’s the job it was built for. Republishing somebody else’s content is not. Read the plain-English guide, is it legal to download a website?, before you point it at a site you don’t own.
It doesn’t keep your files. Scraped files are deleted automatically when your saved result expires. So download the ZIP while it’s there.
Just need the images?
That’s a different tool. Image Sucker downloads every image from a website, and it’s the sister site to this one.
Paste a URL and it finds every image the site uses, at the largest size the site offers. Not the thumbnail your screen happened to load. That includes srcset sources, CSS backgrounds, lazy-loaded images, and the social images that never show up on the page at all. Filter by size, type and page, pick what you need, and download one ZIP.
It uses the same account. Same login, same credits, and the $5.99 monthly plan covers both tools. The first scan is free and finds up to 500 images across 50 pages. Downloading it uses one credit. The Image Sucker FAQ covers the rest, including the rule that matters most: only download images you own or have permission to use.
Getting started
- Go to websitesucker.com and paste a URL.
- Create an account for the free scrape. No card.
- Watch the crawl and check what it captured.
- Download the ZIP for $1.99, or with a credit or the monthly plan.
- Unzip it and open index.html. That’s the whole site, offline.
If the ZIP looks wrong, the FAQ asks you to email the URL to hello@websitesucker.com so it can be looked at.
And if what you really want is to turn that download into a site you can edit, that’s what HTMLtoJekyll is for. I wrote about it in HTMLtoJekyll: from a folder of HTML to a site you can edit.
The short version
Your website lives on somebody else’s server. Website Sucker puts a copy of it on yours, right from the browser, with nothing to install. The scrape is free, and the download is $1.99.
The Website Sucker project write-up has the story of how it was built. And if the backup is just the first step of a bigger move, a new site or a new platform or a full rebuild, that’s the work I do. Send it through the contact form. I’d love to help.
