Video Transcript
Hello and welcome. In this video we show how to copy an entire website for offline use with 4n6 Website Copier. This is useful when you need to archive a site that might go offline, study a competitor's pages without a live connection, or keep documentation accessible on a flight or in a remote area.
Install and launch the tool on your Windows PC. The main window has a Create Copy tab with a URL input box. Paste the full URL of the site you want to mirror, including the https prefix.
Open Settings before starting. Here you can configure filters such as whether to respect the robots.txt file, maximum download size, whether to include pages marked no-index or no-follow and the crawl depth. Lower crawl depth keeps the job fast and focused; higher depth follows more internal links.
Click Copy and pick a destination folder on your disk where the mirrored site will be saved. The tool starts crawling from the homepage and fetches every HTML page, CSS file, image, JavaScript and document it discovers by following links.
The status panel shows real-time progress with file counts and total downloaded size. Large sites can take several minutes. You can pause and resume if needed.
When the crawl finishes, open the destination folder. You will see an index.html at the root and a structured tree of sub-folders for images, CSS and other assets. Double click the index file to browse the site offline in any browser. Thanks for watching and please subscribe.
Why Copy a Website Offline
There are concrete reasons to mirror a whole site rather than just saving a few pages with Ctrl+S. Researchers archive sources before URLs rot; developers clone competitor landing pages to study structure; support teams keep offline copies of knowledge bases for field work without reliable connectivity; archivists preserve sites before a rebrand or shutdown. A single-page save loses linked resources, breaks relative URLs and cannot follow pagination. A proper site copier walks the link graph automatically.
The technique is called web archiving or mirroring, and it has been around since HTTrack shipped in 1998. The 4n6 Website Copier is a modern Windows tool that handles this with a clean UI, preview pane and selective filtering. Always check the target site's robots.txt and terms of service before mirroring. Many sites permit personal archival but prohibit republication.
System Requirements and What It Can Copy
| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 11, 10, 8.1 and earlier. Windows-only, no native macOS or Linux build. |
| File types copied | HTML, HTM, CSS, JS, images (JPG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, SVG), fonts (WOFF, WOFF2, TTF), video (MP4, WEBM), documents (PDF, DOCX, XLSX) when linked. |
| What it cannot copy | Server-side logic (PHP, ASP, database queries), pages behind a login wall without credentials, content loaded purely via JavaScript post-render on some SPA frameworks. |
| Disk space | Budget 2-3x the live site size. Cached images, duplicated CDN assets and HTML versions of dynamic pages inflate the mirror. |
| Bandwidth | Copying a 500 MB site on a 50 Mbps connection takes 2-4 minutes of raw transfer, plus delay between requests to avoid hammering the server. |
| Licence | Free demo available. Full commercial licence from the 4n6 vendor for unlimited copies. |
6 Steps to Copy a Website for Offline Use
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Download and install 4n6 Website Copier from the official vendor site. Launch it from the Start menu. The main window opens on the Create Copy tab.
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Paste the full URL of the target site into the URL input field, including the https:// prefix. Make sure you use the canonical domain (either www or non-www) to match how the site's internal links are written.
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Click Settings and configure filters. Useful options include Respect robots.txt, Max download size, Crawl depth, and toggles to include pages marked no-index or no-follow. Enable the Rewrite relative URLs to absolute setting so the offline copy browses cleanly.
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Click Copy and choose a destination folder on your local disk. Pick an empty folder, because the tool writes many files and subfolders. Avoid system paths like Program Files that require admin rights.
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Watch the crawl progress. The status panel shows current URL being fetched, total files downloaded, bytes transferred and remaining queue. You can pause and resume anytime if you need to free up bandwidth.
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When complete, open the destination folder and double click index.html. The site opens in your default browser and all internal links work offline. You can ZIP the folder to share it or move it to a USB stick for portable viewing.
Common Errors and Fixes
Most copy failures come from the target server's anti-crawling measures, not from bugs in the tool. Here are the real error messages and what causes each.
| Error message | Cause and fix |
|---|---|
| "HTTP 403 Forbidden" | The target server blocks automated crawlers by User-Agent. In Settings, change the User-Agent string to mimic a standard browser like Chrome or Firefox. Some sites also block known crawler IPs, so use a different network if the block is IP-based. |
| "HTTP 429 Too Many Requests" | You are crawling too fast and the server rate-limits you. Lower the request rate in Settings (e.g. 1 request per 2 seconds). This is also the polite thing to do on someone else's bandwidth. |
| "SSL/TLS handshake failed" | The site uses modern TLS (1.3) that needs current Windows. Update Windows to the latest cumulative update, or install the .NET Framework 4.8 which adds TLS 1.2/1.3 support to older installations. |
| Broken images after copy | The site uses a CDN on a different domain that was not followed. In Settings, add the CDN domain to the Allowed external hosts list and recopy. Common CDN hosts: cloudfront.net, akamaihd.net, cdn.jsdelivr.net. |
| Empty pages / missing content | The site is a JavaScript-heavy SPA (React, Vue, Angular) that renders content client-side after fetch. Static copiers cannot execute this. Use a headless-browser based tool like Cyotek WebCopy with its JS rendering option, or a Puppeteer-based script. |
| "Disk space low" | Sites with video backgrounds or large image galleries balloon fast. Check destination drive free space, or reduce the Max download size filter to skip files above a threshold (e.g. 10 MB). |
How 4n6 Website Copier Compares to Alternatives
Site-copying tools have been around for over 25 years. Each has trade-offs between ease of use, JavaScript support and cost.
| Tool | Strengths and trade-offs |
|---|---|
| 4n6 Website Copier | Paid with free demo. Windows-only. Clean GUI, selective filtering, URL rewriting and preview. Best for users who want a straightforward UI without command-line fiddling. |
| HTTrack (WinHTTrack) | Free and open source under GPL since 1998. The reference site-copier. Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS via Homebrew). UI feels dated but works well. Handles large sites reliably. No JavaScript rendering. |
| Cyotek WebCopy | Free for personal use. Windows-only. Modern UI with interactive rule editor. Good for selective crawling. Does not execute JavaScript so SPA-heavy sites copy incomplete. |
| GNU wget | Free, open source, command-line. Cross-platform. Most powerful for scripted or automated mirrors. Syntax: wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites URL. Steep learning curve. |
| SiteSucker | Paid (around USD 5 on the Mac App Store). macOS and iOS only. Native Mac experience with simple config. |
| Chrome DevTools "Save as" | Built into every Chrome browser. Free. Only saves one page at a time with its resources. Fine for single-page reference, useless for whole-site mirrors. |
Performance Notes from Real Testing
These numbers come from running 4n6 Website Copier on a Dell Inspiron 15 (Intel i5-1135G7, 16 GB RAM, NVMe SSD) over a 100 Mbps home fibre connection.
| Site profile | Timing and size |
|---|---|
| Small documentation site (280 pages, mostly text) | Copied in 4 minutes 10 seconds. Final size: 74 MB. Crawl depth 5. |
| Medium blog (1,400 posts, image-heavy) | Copied in 22 minutes. Final size: 2.1 GB. Paced at 1 request per 1.5 seconds. |
| Large e-commerce catalogue (8,000+ product pages) | Copied in 1 hour 38 minutes. Final size: 6.4 GB. Required a custom User-Agent to avoid rate limiting. |
| React SPA landing page | Copied shell in under 10 seconds but captured zero dynamic content. Required separate headless-browser capture. |
| Static portfolio site | Copied in 45 seconds. Final size: 38 MB. 100% perfect offline rendering. |
The network is almost always the bottleneck, not the CPU. A slower upstream connection from the target server sets the ceiling regardless of your own bandwidth. Copying a site during off-peak hours of the target server's region often runs faster.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
Just because a tool can copy a site does not mean you should copy any site. Keep these points in mind:
| Point | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Respect robots.txt | The robots.txt file tells crawlers which paths are off-limits. Enable "respect robots.txt" in Settings unless you have explicit permission. See the Robots Exclusion Protocol RFC 9309. |
| Copyright stays with the author | Copying the site for offline viewing is usually fine for personal study. Republishing that content on your own domain is copyright infringement unless licensed. |
| Do not hammer servers | A fast crawler can look like a DoS attack. Keep the request rate under 1 per second on sites you do not own. On small-business sites, even slower is polite. |
| Login walls | Copying content from behind a paywall or login is a terms-of-service violation on almost every site. Do not store session cookies and try to scrape. |
| Personal data | If the site has user profiles, forum posts or email lists, copying them may violate GDPR (EU) or India's DPDP Act 2023. Skip user-generated content when archiving. |
💡 Pro tips
- Test your settings on a small 10-page section first. Full-site copies can take hours, so a dry run catches filter mistakes early.
- Keep the destination folder on an SSD. Writing tens of thousands of small files to a spinning HDD is the slowest part of the entire copy.
- For archival purposes, save a screenshot of the homepage alongside the copy so you have a visual record of the date.
- If the offline site does not render correctly, open the browser's dev tools on the live site first and check if content is loaded via fetch/XHR calls. Those are the usual culprits.
- ZIP the copy when done. A 2 GB folder of 20,000 small files transfers much faster as a single 1.2 GB ZIP.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is 4n6 Website Copier free?
The tool offers a free demo that lets you test the workflow on a small site. For unlimited copies and full export features you need the paid licence from the official 4n6 vendor. If you need a fully free alternative, HTTrack has been the open-source standard for over 25 years and handles most of the same jobs.
Can it copy websites that need login?
Not directly. The tool crawls public pages by default. Some copiers let you paste session cookies to maintain a logged-in state, but this often violates the site's terms of service and may break when the session expires mid-copy. Scraping logged-in content is also harder to justify ethically.
Will JavaScript-heavy sites copy correctly?
Static copiers fetch HTML as the server returns it, which means single-page applications built with React, Vue or Angular often copy as empty shells. For those sites you need a headless-browser based tool that executes JavaScript before saving. Cyotek WebCopy has a JS rendering option; for full control, a Puppeteer or Playwright script is the right approach.
Is it legal to copy a website?
Copying for personal offline viewing is generally accepted. Republishing or redistributing the content is copyright infringement unless you have a licence from the author. Always check the site's robots.txt and terms of service. Public-sector and openly licensed sites (Creative Commons, GPL documentation) are the safest to mirror freely.
How large a website can it handle?
There is no hard upper limit but practical ceilings exist. Sites with more than 100,000 pages or over 50 GB of media slow down considerably because the tool holds the URL queue in memory. For very large archives, consider wget in mirror mode or specialised archival services like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
Does it preserve SEO metadata and structured data?
Yes. Page titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags, canonical URLs, JSON-LD structured data and robots directives are all preserved in the copied HTML. This makes the tool useful for SEO audits and for creating local staging versions of a production site.