Weebly is winding down in 67 countries, with published sites in those markets set to be unpublished on January 2, 2027. Before that deadline arrives, you need a full local copy of your site. This guide is a deep dive on exporting and backing up your Weebly content the right way - using the built-in archive, crawling your live site, and manually saving the pieces that never export - so nothing is lost when you move to hosting you own at Ultra Web Hosting.
01. Why Export Your Weebly Site Now
Weebly has notified its resellers that it is ending service in 67 countries. If your business is based in one of the affected countries, two dates matter:
- October 4, 2026 - You can no longer onboard new sellers or publish new websites from these countries.
- January 2, 2027 - Your currently published Weebly sites will be unpublished, meaning visitors can no longer reach them.
Once a site is unpublished, you lose the easiest way to reach your own content - the live pages themselves. If you have not already downloaded a copy, the clock is a real constraint, not a suggestion. Export now, even if you have not decided where you are moving to yet.
There is also a longer-running reason to own a backup that has nothing to do with the deadline. Weebly has been in maintenance mode since Square acquired it in 2018 - no meaningful feature updates, no new themes, and a support presence that has shrunk over time. When you keep your site on a platform you do not control, the platform can change the rules, raise prices, or exit your market at any time. A complete local backup is the one thing that puts you back in control: it is your content, your images, and your page structure, sitting on your own drive where no vendor can unpublish it.
The 67 exit countries include Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, and many more. Even if your country is not on the list, exporting a backup means you never have to react to a notice like this again. Do not wait for a final reminder email that may land in spam.
02. Method 1: The Built-In Weebly Archive
Weebly's own archive tool is the fastest way to get a copy of your site's static files. It packages your published pages, images, and assets into a ZIP file and emails you a download link. Start here - it is the baseline every backup should include.
If you edit your site directly in the Weebly editor
- Log in to your Weebly account and open the site you want to back up in the editor
- Go to Settings > General in the top navigation of the editor
- Scroll down to the "Archive" section near the bottom of the General settings page
- Click "Archive Site" - Weebly generates a ZIP file of your published site and emails you a download link when it is ready
- Open the email and download the ZIP, then save it somewhere permanent (not just your Downloads folder)
If you are a reseller or Weebly Cloud user
Reseller and Weebly Cloud sites are managed from a different starting point, but the archive lives in the same place once you are in the editor:
- Log in to Weebly Cloud Home
- Select the site you want to back up from your list of sites
- Click "Edit Site" to open it in the editor
- Go to Settings > General > Archive and click "Archive Site"
- Download the ZIP from the email link Weebly sends you
If the download link expires or you lose the ZIP, check the "Recent Exports" list in the same Archive section. Weebly keeps the last three archives you generated, so you can re-download without starting a fresh export. If you make content changes after your last archive, run a new one so your backup reflects the current site.
03. What the Archive Contains and What It Misses
The Weebly archive is a good start, but it is not a complete copy of everything your site does. Knowing exactly what it captures - and what it leaves behind - is the difference between a backup you can rely on and one that quietly loses half your blog.
What IS included
- Static HTML files for each main page (index.html, about.html, contact.html, and so on)
- All uploaded images and media - photos, logos, PDFs, and other files you added
- CSS stylesheets so the exported pages keep their layout and styling
- JavaScript files that Weebly generated for the site's front end
- The blog index page - the listing page that shows your posts
What is NOT included
- Individual blog posts - The archive frequently includes only the blog index, not each post as its own HTML page. This is the single most common thing people lose.
- Working contact forms - The form markup may appear, but the submission handling lives on Weebly's backend and will not function in exported HTML
- E-commerce and Square data - Product catalogs, prices, SKUs, inventory, order history, and customer records are stored in Square's backend and are not in the archive
- Dynamic widgets - Slideshows, galleries, RSVP blocks, search boxes, and other interactive Weebly elements stop working outside the platform
- Third-party app data - Anything added through the Weebly App Center relies on that integration and will not carry over
The archive is a one-way export. The ZIP cannot be imported back into Weebly, and it is not a "restore point." It is a snapshot of static files for reference and manual migration. Because it usually misses individual blog posts and all dynamic content, treat the archive as your foundation - not your whole backup. The next two methods fill the gaps.
04. Method 2: Crawl Your Live Site
The most reliable way to capture everything a visitor can actually see - including every individual blog post the archive skips - is to crawl your live, published site while it is still online. A crawler follows the links on your site and downloads each page it finds, exactly as it appears in a browser.
Desktop crawlers (easiest)
- HTTrack (Windows and Linux) - A free, well-known website copier. Point it at your Weebly URL, let it crawl, and it saves a browsable local mirror of every reachable page.
- SiteSucker (macOS) - A simple Mac app that does the same thing. Enter your site URL and it downloads the pages, images, and assets into a local folder.
Command line with wget
If you are comfortable in a terminal, wget gives you a complete recursive mirror in one command. On most Linux systems it is already installed; on macOS you can install it with Homebrew, and on Windows you can use it through WSL or Git Bash:
wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent https://www.yourdomain.com/Here is what each flag does:
--mirror- turns on recursion and timestamping so it grabs the whole site--convert-links- rewrites links so the pages work when opened locally--adjust-extension- saves pages with a.htmlextension so they open in a browser--page-requisites- also downloads the images, CSS, and scripts each page needs to render--no-parent- keeps the crawl inside your site and stops it wandering off to other domains
Because a crawler follows links, it catches the individual blog post pages that the Weebly archive leaves out. If your site has a blog, run a crawl in addition to the archive - this is the step that saves your posts. Do it while the site is still published, since a crawler can only reach pages that are live. After January 2, 2027, an unpublished site cannot be crawled at all.
05. Method 3: Manually Save What Does Not Export
Some content simply cannot be captured by an archive or a crawler because it lives in Weebly's backend or depends on features that only run inside the platform. For these, a few minutes of manual saving now prevents a lot of guesswork later when you rebuild.
- Blog post text - Open each post and copy the full text (title, body, publish date, and author) into a document. Even if your crawl captured the pages, having the raw text in one file makes re-creating posts in WordPress or another platform much faster.
- Product listings - For every product, record the name, full description, price, SKU, options/variants, and inventory count. Screenshot or screen-record the store so you have a visual reference, and download each product image at full resolution.
- Form field lists - For every contact or signup form, write down each field's label, type (text, email, dropdown, checkbox), whether it is required, and where submissions were sent. You will need this to rebuild the forms with a new form tool.
- Embedded and third-party widgets - Note every embedded element: booking/scheduling widgets, chat boxes, maps, social feeds, video embeds, and anything from the App Center. Record the provider name and account so you can re-embed it on the new site.
- Custom code - If you added any custom HTML, embed codes, or header/footer scripts, copy them out. These are easy to forget and painful to reconstruct.
E-commerce data is the most time-consuming piece to save by hand, and it is entirely tied to Square's backend. Start with your store first. If you have more than a handful of products, build a spreadsheet with a column for each attribute (name, price, SKU, description, image filename) as you go - it doubles as your import file if you later move to WooCommerce, which supports CSV product import.
06. Organize and Store Your Backup
A pile of ZIP files and screenshots is not a backup you can actually use. Spend a few minutes organizing everything into a clear structure so that when you rebuild - or hand the job to someone else - the content is easy to find.
A folder structure that works
my-weebly-backup/
archive-zip/ Weebly archive ZIP (and extracted files)
site-crawl/ HTTrack / wget mirror of the live site
blog-posts/ Copied post text, one file per post
products/ Product images + product spreadsheet
forms/ Notes on each form's fields and destinations
widgets-and-code/ Embed codes, custom HTML, third-party notes
inventory.xlsx Master list of pages, posts, forms, productsKeep two copies
- A local copy on your computer or an external drive
- A cloud copy in Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or similar, so a hardware failure cannot wipe out your only backup
Build an inventory spreadsheet
Create a simple spreadsheet that lists every piece of content on your site, with a row for each page, blog post, form, and product. Track columns like the item name, its old Weebly URL, whether you have backed it up, and whether it has been rebuilt on the new site. This inventory becomes your migration checklist and your verification tool in the next section.
You can build this backup right on your Ultra hosting account if you prefer to keep it off your laptop. Upload the files through cPanel File Manager or an FTP client like FileZilla into a private folder outside public_html. For a broader look at backup strategy, see our guide on how to back up your website.
07. Verify Your Backup Is Complete
A backup you have not checked is only a guess. Before you consider the export done - and especially before the January 2, 2027 deadline removes your ability to go back - confirm that everything is actually there and actually works.
- Open the HTML locally - Double-click the exported or crawled HTML files and view them in your browser with no internet connection to some pages. The core layout and text should display correctly offline.
- Check that images resolve - Look for broken image icons. If images are missing, they may still be pointing at Weebly's servers rather than your local copy. Re-crawl with
--page-requisitesor download the missing images manually. - Confirm every page is present - Walk your inventory spreadsheet row by row and match each page to a file in your backup. Do not rely on memory - it is easy to forget a page that is not in the main navigation.
- Confirm every blog post is present - This is where archives fail most often. Open each post from your crawl or your copied-text files and check it against your inventory. If any are missing, crawl again while the site is still live.
- Spot-check products and forms - Verify that your product spreadsheet has every item and that you recorded the fields for each form. These do not appear in the HTML, so they are only "backed up" if you saved them manually.
Run this verification while your Weebly site is still published. If you find a gap after the site is unpublished, there is no way to go back and grab the missing content. A thorough check now is the last safety net you have.
08. Next Steps
With a complete, verified backup in hand, you own your content and you are no longer at the mercy of the deadline. Now you can move it somewhere you control, at your own pace.
- Pick a destination and migration path - For the full walkthrough of your options (static HTML, WordPress, or Square Online), including domain/DNS moves and preserving your SEO, see our complete guide to migrating from Weebly.
- Simple brochure site? - Clean up the exported HTML and upload it through cPanel File Manager or FTP into
public_html. - Blog or business site? - Install WordPress on your Ultra hosting account and rebuild using the content from your backup.
You do not have to figure this out alone. If you would like help exporting, verifying your backup, or setting up your new site, our support team can walk you through it well before the deadline.
Need Help Backing Up Your Weebly Site?
Our support team can help you export your content, confirm your backup is complete, and get you set up on hosting you fully own at Ultra Web Hosting. Open a ticket and let us know what you need.
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