How to prevent failed screenshots

Screenshots that failed to capture display our 404 - Page Not Found placeholder image or are not shown on your page. These screenshots are excluded from your monthly usage count and thus not charged for.

The reason for the unsuccessful snapshot is probably one of the following:

Incorrect webpage or expired domain

The URL may point to a page or domain that no longer exists.
Please verify and change, pause or delete this URL from your account.

File type that cannot be captured

We only capture regular webpages. If the URL points to a different file type (like PDF, TXT, XLS, DOC, etc.) it will fail to capture.
You should change, pause or delete this URL from your account.

Blocked by firewall or network restrictions

If the website does not allow crawlers and bots, it may be getting blocked by the WAF (web application firewall).

Example
Some websites do not allow sneaker botting. A sneaker bot is a software designed to automatically purchase products online at an incredible speed, leaving regular users of the platform frustrated. Websites can easily block and blacklist these kinds of traffic. When we try accessing such sites to capture screenshots using our pool of IP addresses, the site may flag the IP address as a sneaker bot, hence resulting in a failed screenshot.
In addition to standard firewall blocks, the request to capture the screenshot may be blocked because it comes from a country not supported by the target website or from a network type that the site restricts. Our service captures screenshots using datacenter IP addresses, not residential IPs. Some websites specifically allow only certain countries or block datacenter IPs to prevent automated access.
This means that even if the website is generally accessible in your region, our system's IP addresses may be identified as restricted or untrusted by the website's security settings. Unfortunately, in these cases, the screenshot capture will fail.
We recommend checking if the website has such geographic or network restrictions. If so, there may be limited options to work around this since we rely on datacenter IPs for capturing screenshots.
For possible solutions, please check the article:  Why am I getting "Access Denied"?

Temporary cause

There may be an incidental cause, like maintenance on the website you capture, a disturbance in the network or a glitch. This should happen only once in a while; if it happens more often, it's likely one of the causes mentioned above.

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