Dead Simple Backups vs Squarespace's Duplicate Site
Squarespace can duplicate a site: from the account dashboard you make a copy of a site, which appears as a new trial site you can edit independently. People sometimes call this a backup. It is closer to a branch in the sense developers use: a place to try changes without touching the live site.
What Duplicate Site is good for
- Trying a redesign or a new template style without risking the live site.
- Building a sibling site (a second location, a sister brand) from the same starting point.
- Keeping a working copy at a moment in time, as long as you keep paying for it or it stays within its trial.
Why it is not a backup
Same account, same risks. If the account is lost, hacked, or unpaid, the duplicate goes with the original. If a designer holds the login, they hold both.
No history. A duplicate is one moment. To have last month, last quarter, and last year you would need to duplicate every month and pay for each site, or watch trials expire.
Not downloadable. The copy is another Squarespace site. You cannot open it from a folder, hand it to a developer as files, or keep it after you leave Squarespace.
No screenshots. It is a live site, not a record. When you look at it later, you see it rendered with today's Squarespace, not as it was.
What a backup adds
Dead Simple Backups keeps dated copies outside Squarespace: HTML, full-page screenshots, images, fonts, and styles, every month, for 12 months, in private storage you can download from. It needs no login, so it keeps working through account trouble, and it survives cancelling Squarespace.
Use both
Duplicate the site when you are about to change it. Back it up every month so the past is always there. The two answer different questions: "let me try something" and "what did it say in March."
Q: Is Squarespace's duplicate site a backup?
No. It is a copy inside the same account with no history and no download. A backup is a dated copy stored outside Squarespace.
Q: Can I download a duplicated Squarespace site?
No. A duplicate is another Squarespace site. To get files, you crawl the public pages.
Squarespace doesn't give you a copy of your site. We do: every public page, full-page screenshots, images and fonts, in your inbox on the 1st.
Back up my site free