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Should I use Archive-It?

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Depends. Buy if you are a library, archive, university, or government body with a funded web-preservation mandate. Individuals and small teams should use the free Wayback Machine or self-hosted ArchiveBox instead.

Confidence

Medium. Based on 40+ public sources; review snippets truncated and mostly dated 2014-2016.

Ratings

  • Value for moneyNo public pricing to evaluate
  • Ease of useReviews too truncated to judge
  • Feature depth
  • Support qualityOnly support docs visible, no user sentiment
  • Security posture

Pricing

Not disclosed

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierNo

Best for

  • Academic libraries
  • Government archives
  • University web-preservation programs
  • Library consortia

Not for

  • Individuals saving a few pages
  • Small businesses backing up their own website
  • Teams without digital-preservation staff
  • Anyone needing transparent upfront pricing

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

Quote-only pricing means budget unknowns until you talk to sales

high

Your archives ride on Internet Archive infrastructure and its outage and breach risk

medium

Annual service agreements govern the relationship; read cancellation terms before signing

medium

Review the preservation policy to learn what you can export if you leave

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Purpose-built web archiving, 20 years in operation
  • Used by Smithsonian, universities, and library consortia
  • Published storage and preservation policy
  • Described as the leading web archiving service
  • Dedicated support portal and new-user guides

Cons

  • Pricing not public; requires contacting sales
  • Parent Internet Archive breached October 2024; 31 million users exposed
  • October 2024 cyberattacks disrupted Internet Archive services
  • Requires signed subscription service agreement
  • Archivist community debates parent-org reliability after outages

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/29/2026 - 13 sources - No product-specific CVEs found; parent Internet Archive suffered a major October 2024 breach and DDoS-driven outages.

official x6review x4security x2news x1
  • Internet Archive data breach (October 2024), Breach exposed 31 million users. Archive-It is an Internet Archive service, so its trust boundary is tied to the parent org.
  • Cyberattack-related service disruption (October 2024), Internet Archive posted a services update during recovery from attacks that took its services offline.

Key stats

  • Feature depth: 4/5

    Rating

  • Not disclosed

    Starting price

  • 13

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money. No public pricing to evaluate
  • Ease of use. Reviews too truncated to judge
  • Feature depth: 4/5. Purpose-built crawling, 20 years mature, institutional features
  • Support quality. Only support docs visible, no user sentiment
  • Security posture: 2/5. Parent Internet Archive breached; 31M users exposed
  • 20+ Years in operation Per 'A look back at 20 years of Archive-It' (2026)
  • None Public pricing Quote-based; sales contact required
  • No Free tier Subscription requires signed service agreement
  • 31M users Parent-org breach Internet Archive hack, October 2024

Pricing

Free tier: No

Security

No product-specific CVEs found; parent Internet Archive suffered a major October 2024 breach and DDoS-driven outages.

  • Internet Archive data breach (October 2024)Breach exposed 31 million users. Archive-It is an Internet Archive service, so its trust boundary is tied to the parent org.⁹
  • Cyberattack-related service disruption (October 2024)Internet Archive posted a services update during recovery from attacks that took its services offline.10

What users say

user reviews are sparse and dated; academic reviewers treat it as the leading subscription web-archiving service for institutions.

Alternatives

Compare Archive-It with each alternative.

  • Wayback Machine

    Free public archive for ad-hoc page saving; no curation control

    Archive-It vs Wayback Machine

  • ArchiveBox

    Open-source, self-hosted archiving for technical teams

  • PageCrawl.io

    Lightweight site-change monitoring for non-librarians

Companies that use it

  • Smithsonian Institution⁴
  • University of Alberta Libraries12
  • Columbia University Libraries
  • COPPUL (library consortium)11
Full analysis

Based on 40+ public sources; review snippets truncated and mostly dated 2014-2016.

Serious institutional web archiving; quote-only pricing and a 2024 parent-org breach. Individuals: use free Wayback Machine.

Methodology

Based on 40+ public sources; review snippets truncated and mostly dated 2014-2016.

Sources

  1. Archive-It - The American Archivist Reviews Portalreviews.americanarchivist.org
    review
  2. Sowing the Seeds for More Usable Web Archives: A Usability Studyamerican-archivist.kglmeridian.com
    review
  3. Archive-It Reviews - Slashdotslashdot.org
    review
  4. Smithsonian Now Using Archive-It to Crawl Websitessiarchives.si.edu
    news
  5. A look back at 20 years of Archive-Itarchive-it.org
    official
  6. Archive-It product page (pricing contact)archive-it.org
    official
  7. Archive-It Storage and Preservation Policysupport.archive-it.org
    official
  8. ConCan Archive-It service agreementconcan.ca
    official
  9. Internet Archive hacked, data breach impacts 31 million usersbleepingcomputer.com
    security
  10. Internet Archive Services Update: 2024-10-21blog.archive.org
    security
  11. COPPUL on Archive-Itcoppul.ca
    official
  12. University of Alberta Archive-It guideguides.library.ualberta.ca
    official
  13. Archivists Think Tank discussion on archive.org reliabilityfacebook.com
    review

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