Export Backup Website to HTML

Your platform says it backs up your site. Great. Now try to get those files.

You can't. Platform backups exist to restore within that platform. Wix backups are for restoring to Wix. Squarespace backups restore to Squarespace. They're not giving you files you can take elsewhere.

That's not a real backup. That's a hostage situation.

A real backup means files you control. HTML, images, CSS, the actual website, not some proprietary format that only works on one platform. Files you can open on your laptop, host on any server, keep forever.

Think about the scenarios where you'd need a backup:

Platform goes down. Happened to Geocities. Happened to Google Sites (the old one). Could happen to any service. Platform backups won't help if the platform dosen't exist.

You want to leave. Maybe pricing changed. Maybe you found something better. Try exporting your Wix site using their tools. Oh wait, there aren't any. Squarespace gives you XML that's useless without hours of rebuilding.

Something breaks. You or someone else accidentally deleted pages, broke the design, made changes you can't undo. Platform "restore" features are limited and time-boxed. A real backup lets you see exactly what the site looked like yesterday, last month, last year.

Account gets hacked. It happens. Someone gets your password, trashes your site. Platform support might help, eventually. Or they might not. A local backup means you can rebuild immediately.

Here's how to create an actual backup. Use a tool that downloads your live site as static HTML files. Enter your URL, let it crawl every page, download the ZIP. That's your backup.

Inside you get real files. Open index.html in a browser, your site works. No platform needed. No internet needed. Just files on your computer.

Store it somewhere safe. Actually, store it in multiple places. Local hard drive plus cloud storage. External drive if you're paranoid. The files are small, most website backups are under 100MB.

Do this after every significant update. New pages? Backup. Design changes? Backup. Major content additions? Backup. Takes two minutes. Saves potential disaster.

The backup your platform provides isn't for you. It's for them, to keep you on their platform. A real backup puts you in control.

Export to HTML. Store locally. Repeat regularly.