Perpetually archives the Web for you

Perpetually is a new Web archiving tool demoed at the TechCrunch50 conference. It saves entire instances of Web pages, then lets users dial back to older versions. You just point it to a site or entire domain name then tell it what you want it to archive and for how long. It then does the hard work of saving pages to its servers.

Included is a visual browser that shows you visual history of pages in thumbnail form. You can simply flip through these before viewing the full-sized version. There's also a way to pick specific parts of a Web page and dial back such as a breaking stories box. And for those who want to find a specific archived page, or piece of archived content, there's a search engine that lets you go back without having to browse.

The service is not free; in fact, it's not even aimed at consumers. The lowest plan costs $99 a month, all the way up to $499 month, each with a higher level of monthly archiving storage. Considering each page takes up some storage space, it can fill up quickly, which is why the pro plans offer more.

The company said it's aiming Perpetually at media networks, historians, and PR companies. It also butts heads with Iterasi and its Positive Press product whose core technology was first demoed in January 2008.

(Credit: Perpetually)

[whiskerbisket]

Uh, doesn't archive.org already do this... for free?

[Josh.Lowensohn]

For big sites certainly--but not smaller ones. Nor does it always do a good job at preserving things like page formatting and advertising that appeared on the page.

[nauj_solrac]

@whiskerbisket

Agreed.