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Getting Started By Lewis Jones 4 min read

Install Crawl Cove on Windows

Install Crawl Cove on Windows: from the installer to a running Agency Dashboard in about five minutes, with your database and secrets kept on your machine.

Note

On a Mac? This guide covers the Windows installer. The Mac build is signed and notarised, so it installs differently and more simply: see Installing Crawl Cove on macOS.

Crawl Cove ships as a standard Windows installer. There is nothing to sync and no cloud setup step: you run the installer, start a free trial, log in or paste your licence key on the first screen, and you are in. This guide walks the whole path and explains exactly what the app writes to your machine on first run.

Note

What you'll need: the Crawl-Cove-<version>-Setup.exe installer, a Windows 10 or 11 machine, your licence key or an email address for a free trial (see step 3), and about 5 minutes. No API keys are required. Those come later, only for the optional integrations.

1. Install Crawl Cove on Windows: run the installer

  1. Download Crawl-Cove-<version>-Setup.exe from your dashboard.
  2. Double-click it. The installer is an assisted NSIS flow, so you can choose the install directory rather than having one forced on you.
  3. Follow the prompts to the end. Installation is local: nothing is fetched from a vendor backend.

2. Check the publisher

From version 1.0.0 the Windows installer is code-signed with a Microsoft-verified certificate issued to Crawl Cove, so Windows names Crawl Cove as the publisher rather than warning about an unrecognised app. There is no prompt to click past.

Note

Holding an older copy? Builds before 1.0.0 were unsigned and Windows will still warn about them. Download a fresh installer from your dashboard rather than clicking through the warning, and the prompt goes away for good.

3. First launch: the self-check and your licence key

On launch, Crawl Cove runs a backend self-check before showing you anything. If the local database fails to open, you get a Crawl Cove can't start screen that names the problem, with Re-check backend and Copy details, not a dead blank window. The app is designed to degrade visibly: a failure tells you what went wrong rather than hiding it.

A healthy launch opens Welcome to Crawl Cove with three tabs. Pick the one that matches you:

  • Start free trial (selected on a fresh install): enter your name, email and a password and press Start my free trial. We email you a six-digit code; type it in and press Confirm and start my trial. The trial starts there in the app, with no card and no visit to the website.
  • Log in: already have a crawlcove.com account? Log in with it and this machine activates itself.
  • I have a licence key: paste your key (if one is on your clipboard, the box is filled in for you) and press Start using Crawl Cove. If you signed up on crawlcove.com, the key is on your dashboard and in your welcome email; Find my key opens the sign-in page that shows it.

From 1.3.15, Use the free plan below the tabs needs none of them: no account and no key, with 1 project, crawls of up to 500 pages, every check and fix, and no expiry. Exports, reports, scheduled crawls and connections need a plan, and you can add a key later in Settings.

Open app settings instead gets you into Settings without a licence.

Once you are in, a new install opens on the Clients page with two choices: Add Client, or Explore an example audit to look around on a ready-made audit first. That's your cue to add your first one.

What the app writes to your machine

This is where local-first stops being a slogan and becomes a file path. On first run Crawl Cove creates two things in its data folder, which on Windows is a data folder inside the folder you installed Crawl Cove to (shown under Settings → Data and backup):

  • A local database at <userData>/crawlcove.db. Every client, crawl, finding, and keyword you ever record lives here, in SQLite, on your own disk.
  • An encrypted secrets folder at <userData>/secrets/. OAuth tokens and API keys are written here via the operating system's secure storage, and never into the database. A credential is only ever presented to the provider that issued it, which is what makes the integration work; none of them is ever sent to us.

Heads up

Uninstalling deletes that data folder, database and all, so take a backup first (Settings → Data and backup → Back up database…). Updates never touch it: an in-place update keeps the folder exactly as it was.

Tip

Nothing you make is uploaded to us. There is no SaaS backend behind Crawl Cove, so your clients' data and access tokens are never uploaded to us. The only calls the app makes to crawlcove.com are licence checks and update checks. For agencies handling sites under NDA, "the data is on my machine, the secrets are encrypted, and nothing goes to the vendor" is an answer you can give a client with a straight face.

The one exception is the one you choose. An integration you switch on talks to your own Google, Bing or AI provider account, on your own credentials, and that traffic goes straight there rather than through us.

That separation matters: the database holds your work, the secrets folder holds your credentials, and the two are kept apart by design. When you later back up your data, the database snapshot deliberately excludes the secrets folder. Credentials never leave secure storage.

You're installed: what next?

With the Clients page open, you have a working, private SEO audit app. The next two steps get you to your first real findings:

Next

  1. A tour of the interface: agency vs client: learn the two navigation levels before you dive in.
  2. Adding your first client: the five-minute onboarding wizard.

Put this guide into practice

Crawl Cove runs these audits on your machine. Try the SEO Crawler or compare the plans.

Download Crawl Cove

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