How we recover your website, step by step
Every restore follows the same four stages, whether you’re using the free plan or a full paid recovery.
Tell us your site
Paste your Archive.org URL, or just give us your domain and we’ll find the best available snapshot on the Wayback Machine ourselves. You don’t need to know how to search Archive.org manually.
- ✓ Works with any Wayback Machine snapshot URL
- ✓ We locate the most complete snapshot if you’re unsure which to use
We crawl and restore
Our crawler walks every page of your archived site the way a visitor would, following internal links to discover the full structure. For each page, it downloads the HTML along with every CSS file, JavaScript file, image, and web font the page actually depends on.
- ✓ Breadth-first crawl discovers linked pages automatically
- ✓ Assets are matched to their original archived snapshot date
- ✓ Internal links are rewritten so the restored site works offline or on any host
You download or deploy
Once the crawl finishes, everything is packaged into a single ZIP file and emailed to you as a download link. Free restores return a preview of up to 5 pages. Paid restores return the complete site.
- ✓ ZIP includes HTML, CSS, JS, images, and fonts
- ✓ Download link stays active for 24 to 48 hours depending on your plan
Back online
Upload the ZIP contents to any web host, or hand it to a developer to deploy. Because internal links are already fixed, the site opens and navigates correctly in any browser without further editing.
- ✓ No proprietary format, it’s standard HTML, CSS and JS
- ✓ Works with any hosting provider
What actually happens during a restore
A closer look at the mechanics behind the crawl, for anyone who wants the specifics.
CDX snapshot lookup
We query Archive.org’s CDX index to find the closest available snapshot for every asset, even when a CSS or JS file wasn’t captured on the exact same date as the page.
Link rewriting
Every internal link in the HTML and CSS is rewritten from an Archive.org URL to a relative local path, so the downloaded site behaves like the original.
Asset verification
Downloaded files are checked to confirm they’re real assets and not broken or redirected pages, so your ZIP doesn’t end up with corrupted files.
What changes between plans
The process is identical either way. What changes is how much of your site gets restored.
How long a restore takes
Speed depends mainly on site size and how much was archived.
Small sites
Under 5 pages, typical for the free plan
Medium sites
Up to 500 pages, typical Basic plan restore
Large sites
Up to 5,000 pages, typical Pro plan restore
