If you plan to launch a website for your business, you would have an ideal website in mind. A review of such a website’s complete history and evolution will guide you throughout your website development process. However, it is possible if you have access to its step-by-step evolution. The Wayback Machine is the platform that plays a vital role in offering you such historical information about any website. With the Wayback Machine, you can explore how the leader websites looked once upon a time when they started their journey. You can explore website designs, old design screenshots, development plans, etc. So, the Wayback Machine can be of great importance when you need to formulate successful web development strategies. However, the Wayback Machine has its own limitations. These include slow processing as well as unresponsiveness to certain crawlable websites. As a result, people nowadays are more inclined toward finding the best Wayback machine alternative. If you too are one of them, this article will help you. But before we move to Wayback machine alternatives, let’s first comprehensively understand the Wayback machine and its purpose.
What is the Wayback Machine?
The Wayback Machine is one of the most renowned parts of the Internet Archive website. It is a digital archive of WWW (World Wide Web). The San Francisco-based non-profit organization Internet Archive founded the Wayback Machine. Wayback Machine utilizes web-crawling software to archive web pages that people can see even after years. At the time of writing, it features around 563 billion web pages, with a large number added each year.
What is the Purpose of A Wayback Machine?
There are a large number of uses of the Wayback Machine. Some of the purposes that it serves include the following:
Analyzing Your Competitors
As a business, you would surely want to learn how your rivals progressed with time and attained a good digital presence. This may include reviewing how they improved the website from where they were initially and what changes they implemented over time. The Wayback Engine can help you review all these things.
Finding Lost Website Data
There may be instances when you accidentally lose your website data and later want to retrieve it. The Wayback Machine gives you access to even deleted content. Even if you want to retrieve a deleted YouTube video, it can also help you with that.
View Content of a Down Website
You may want to see the content of a web page that is currently down. The Wayback Machine does not have any effect on whether a web page is currently down. It can show you multiple versions of the down website without any inconvenience. Let’s now look at some good alternatives to the Wayback Machine.
Visualping
Visualping is a well-known website change detection software used to track changes on any website and receive an email notification when a website changes. It is used by over two million users, including 85% of Fortune 500 companies. Visualping is very simple to use, and it is free for up to 5 pages a day. To start tracking a website for changes, you just need to introduce the URL of the page you want to monitor, select the area of the page you are interested in and choose how often you want the page to be checked. It offers some advanced settings to block certain elements or introduce login credentials, among others. Visualping can help overcome some of the Wayback Machine limitations, as it can crawl all sorts of websites, such as social media updates or password-protected pages. And it also archives the copies so you can access all the different versions.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is one of the most widely used internet libraries of web results ranging from ebooks, software, movies, music, and more. It keeps the history of over 690 billion web pages that anyone can access anytime. All the results are available free of cost for its users. The platform operates via donations. Internet Archive started its journey in 1996 by archiving the web. Now they have over 25+ years of history of web pages and files that can be accessed via its Wayback Machine. Anyone can create a free account with Internet Archive and save copies of work to its special collection.
Pagefreezer
Pagefreezer is one of the best Wayback Machine alternatives based on cloud storage. It is a social media and web archiving platform used by many businesses to guard their content. What differentiates it from the Wayback Machine is that you can handle all its services with a single account. Working with Pagefreezer is quite easy as it stores all the archives in one place. There is no need to install the Pagefreezer, as its archiving process is automatic. Such an automatic process ensures the security of the content. Different industries such as retail, government, finance, telecom, education, etc., utilize this platform. It comes with a monthly subscription plan of $99.
Perma.cc
Perma.cc is an application dedicated to web archiving. It is built and maintained by the Harvard Law School Library. With this app, you can create permanent records of your website. Once you create the links, you can delete them within 24 hours of creation. In case of failed preservation, you can upload PDF files or images. It is one of the easiest and simplest archiving platforms that initially enables new users to create ten links. New users can create these links on a trial basis. Once the trial period is over and you want to continue adding links, you can use a paid subscription.
Archive.today
Archive.today is an excellent archiving platform that supports even heavy websites. This enables users to retrieve information even from the previous versions of the web pages. Archive.today usually keeps records of two copies of a single website. One copy is about the live features with links and URLs listed, and the second one is a static image. You can easily take snapshots that you can use later whenever required. Archive.today makes use of Google and Yandex search engines. It implies whenever one search engine stops working, the second one automatically works for it. This platform is completely free to use.
Stillio
Stillio records the web pages by taking screenshots at specific intervals. It can be on a daily basis, hourly basis, or per the user’s need and saves the screenshots in PNG file formats, ensuring the content is completely clear. It is also possible to edit the screenshot in the dimensions of one’s own choice. Stillio keeps recording the information of any website from time to time. Therefore as soon as you log into it, you can access all the recordings and associated information on your dashboard. It offers a trial period of 14 days, and after that, it has subscription packages starting from $29 per month.
MirrorWeb
MirrorWeb is a good choice for your digital archiving needs. This platform offers on-demand records for websites, social media platforms, customer communication, etc. It claims to offer a reliable, robust, and safe storage of data that is easier to retrieve whenever required. Using MirrorWeb, you can schedule the capture of your website, communication platform, or social media platform. It can capture the content of heavy JavaScript-based apps or apps built using Angular, React, etc. Its 24/7 support offers peace of mind that its team will help you whenever you get stuck.
CachedView
CachedView is a three-dimensional archiving website considered a great Wayback Machine alternative. It uses multiple sources to archive websites. The program enables you to access the Google Cache. The Google Web Cache folder displays all the files that it archives. CachedView combines the power of three technologies which are internet archive, coral content, and Google Cache, into a single platform. It is entirely free to use.
ChangeTower
ChangeTower is basically an archiving and website change detection platform. It monitors the changes on a website and sends alerts and notifications about it. You can choose a URL that you want to monitor. That URL is set for archival. The ChageTower crawlers take screenshots of the website at regular intervals and capture page and source-code screenshots. You can also set the alert criteria as per your requirements. It also alerts you regarding any security threats.
Memento Time Travel
Time Travel is a kind of upgraded internet archive product that uses archive.today API in building this platform. It offers the memento of multiple internet archives, which are revised on a regular basis. You can use the web archive of your choice and showcase it on the archive.today. Memento Time Travel carries out a search on the entire server set to explore web pages. The components it reveals about a web page are according to the time of the request. Its archiving services are available for free.
Conclusion
All the above-listed Wayback Machine alternatives have their own benefits and limitations. You can choose the best-suited platform for you based on your requirements.
