Archive your website for regulators

Step 2

Decide which pages to keep on record

Before you add anything, make a list. Each page address becomes one automated capture, and the plan watches up to 30 at a time. Financial advisers, broker-dealers and insurers usually start with the pages a client relies on when choosing a firm:

1. 1Home page. What the firm says about itself first.
2. 2Fees and pricing. Often the page where a later change matters most.
3. 3Team pages. Who is named, with which titles.
4. 4Disclosures. Notices and terms your firm publishes for clients.
5. 5Articles about your firm. A press piece or a profile page, on your site or elsewhere.
6. 6Public pages only. The dashboard captures public pages from ProofSnap's servers. A client portal behind a login needs the ProofSnap browser extension.

Step 4

Check the list of watched pages

Repeat step 3 for every page on your list. Each one then appears as a row in the Automated captures list, so you can see at a glance that every page is covered.

1. 1Source, Cadence, Next run, Status. The page address, On change (monitor) with the chosen alert, when the next check runs, and whether it is active.
2. 2Paused, with a reason. If a page is paused, the reason shows here, for example failed 5 times in a row or monthly maximum reached. Resume it once the cause is fixed.
3. 3Edit, Pause, Delete. Change the settings of a page, stop it for a while, or remove it. Paused pages do not count toward your 30.
4. 4Captures already made stay. Pausing or deleting an automated capture stops the checks; the sealed copies it made stay in Capture history.

Step 6

Capture a page right after you publish

The daily check catches text changes, but only at its next run. When you publish something important, such as a new fee schedule or a new disclosure, you can seal a copy right away.

1. 1New capture. Paste the page address, add the same reference you use for the automated capture, and click Capture.
2. 2One capture. It counts as one capture, like a copy saved by the daily check, and appears in Capture history with the others. A capture usually takes 30 to 90 seconds.

Step 8

Compare two versions

When someone asks what the fees page said before a change, compare two sealed copies. Open Tools, then Compare captures.

1. 1Before and After. Choose the earlier capture as Before and the later one as After. Copies from one automated capture are taken with the same settings, so unless you edited the settings in between, they compare like for like.
2. 2Compare. The comparison report shows What changed on the page, with the removed and the added text side by side, plus changed images and page metadata.
3. 3Sealed on its own. The comparison is a new evidence package with its own hashes and timestamps. It counts as one capture.
4. 4Originals untouched. Both copies stay exactly as they were sealed, so either side can still be checked on its own.

Step 10

Export the archive for an examination

When a regulator asks what your website showed, you hand over the sealed packages for that period. Each one can be checked without ProofSnap; see How to verify an evidence package.

1. 1One version. Download ZIP on its row in Capture history.
2. 2The whole archive. Open Plan details on the plan card and click Download all captures in the Retention row. The export is prepared in the background, so you can keep working.
3. 3What is inside. Each export ZIP contains captures.csv, README.txt and the original sealed packages, unchanged. A large archive comes in several parts.
4. 4Verify before you send. You can check a package with Verify a package in Tools: drop the ZIP there. Anyone can run the same checks in the free Trust Verifier or with the scripts in each package's verification/ folder.

A package you share with someone outside the firm may contain client names or other personal data. How to redact a web capture shows how to seal a redacted copy while the original stays unchanged. Developers can also list and download the archive through the read-only API; see the API documentation.