Squarespace to WordPress
Squarespace to WordPress: Moving Without Losing Search Equity
Move a Squarespace site to WordPress and keep the search positions it already has. Squarespace URLs do not map onto WordPress permalinks by accident - blog posts sit under their own prefix and gallery paths under another - so the redirect map is built before the move. Send the address for a written transfer plan.
Roughly what will this cost?
An estimate from the three things that actually drive the price. A fixed quote follows a look at the site.
Get a fixed quote- Every /blog/ and /s/ URL mapped to its new address, one hop
- Content exported properly, not copy-pasted page by page
- Images pulled at full resolution rather than the CDN's resized copies
- Forms and commerce rebuilt on WordPress equivalents you actually own
What transfers, what gets rebuilt
| What | Comes across | Needs rebuilding |
|---|---|---|
| Pages and blog posts | Yes, via the WordPress export Squarespace produces | Layout, because blocks do not translate |
| Images | Yes, at full resolution from the originals | Alt text where it was never set |
| URL structure | No - the prefixes differ | A redirect for every old address |
| Forms | No | Rebuilt, usually simpler and without the per-form limit |
| Commerce | Products yes, order history no | Checkout, payment gateway, tax rules |
| Design | No | Rebuilt as a theme you own and can change without a subscription |
| SEO titles and descriptions | Partially | Checked and re-set per page |
Why the URLs are the whole job
Squarespace and WordPress disagree about where things live. Blog posts sit under a collection prefix, uploaded files under another, and neither matches the permalink structure a WordPress site would naturally use.
That means a Squarespace migration is not a content move with some redirects attached. It is a redirect project with a content move attached, and the sites that emerge from one having lost their traffic are the ones that treated it the other way round.
The export Squarespace produces is a WordPress-format file, which is genuinely useful and also incomplete: it holds pages and posts, not every URL the site answers on. So the map is built from a crawl of the live site rather than from the export, because the addresses that 404 after a move are exactly the ones no export knew about.
What you gain, and what you give up
You gain ownership. No plan tier deciding whether you may add a field to a form, no platform deciding what your URLs look like, and no ceiling on what the site can become. You also take on responsibility for updates, backups and security, which Squarespace was doing invisibly and which is the real cost of the move.
That is not an argument against it. It is an argument for deciding, before you move, who is going to do that work – because a WordPress site nobody maintains is worse than a Squarespace site nobody maintains. Ongoing cover is on maintenance plans and pricing, and what it involves is WordPress maintenance in full.
Related moves and what follows
Squarespace is a closed system with a partial export, which puts it in the same category of work as a Drupal to WordPress migration – where the content is all there but modelled in a way that does not survive a naive import – and Umbraco to WordPress, where the obstacle is who can still work on it.
The general method, including what changes when only the host is moving, is on WordPress migration. Once the new site is live it needs the same weekly attention every WordPress site needs, and plans and pricing sets out what that costs.
How the work runs
- Inventory the old siteEvery URL, every page, every product, every form. The export is checked against a crawl, because platform exports routinely omit what was never a page - landing URLs, redirects already in place, files linked directly.
- Build on WordPress firstContent types, templates and the theme are stood up and populated before anything points here. The old site keeps trading throughout.
- Map every URLOld address to new address, one hop, written down before the switch rather than discovered from 404s afterwards.
- Test what earns moneyForms, checkout, search, login. A migration that moves every page and breaks the enquiry route has failed at the only thing it was for.
- Switch, then watchDNS moves with the TTL already lowered. Real 404s are checked against the redirect map for a fortnight, and the old platform stays paid for until it is provably unnecessary.
The redirect plan
- Crawl the live Squarespace site for every reachable URL, including ones absent from the export
- Map /blog/post-name to the WordPress permalink structure chosen for the new site
- Map /s/ gallery and file paths to their new locations, or to the page that replaced them
- Redirect the Squarespace-generated feed and sitemap paths
- Publish the map as server-level 301s, one hop, no chains
- Re-crawl after the switch and reconcile real 404s against the map
Plans that include this
- Starter$39/monthor $390 a year — two months freeBlogs, portfolios and brochure sites
- UpdatesMonthly
- BackupsWeekly, 30-day retention
- Uptime5-minute checks
- Malware removalNot included
- Most chosenProfessional$79/monthor $790 a year — two months freeSmall businesses and lead-generation sites
- UpdatesWeekly + PHP version management
- BackupsDaily, 60-day retention
- Uptime1-minute checks
- Malware removalIncluded
- Business$149/monthor $1490 a year — two months freeStores, membership sites, anywhere downtime costs money
- UpdatesWeekly, tested on staging first
- BackupsDaily, 90-day, multi-location
- Uptime1-minute + 2-hour restore
- Malware removalIncluded
The service that covers this
wordpress migration serviceMove a WordPress site to new hosting without the outage everyone expects. The new install is built and tested while the old one keeps serving, DNS…
More in Migration
Questions people ask before calling
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Not if every old URL redirects to its match. Rankings move with the redirect; what loses them is a URL that 404s or lands on the homepage instead of the page a visitor asked for.
Can I keep my design?
It is rebuilt rather than transferred, and this is usually the moment people improve it. Squarespace blocks have no WordPress equivalent, so copying the markup across would produce something worse than either.
What happens to my Squarespace store?
Products and customers come across; order history does not, and Squarespace does not export it in a form anything can read. Export what you need for accounts before you cancel.
How long does it take?
A brochure site is days. A store or a large blog is longer, and the variable is the URL count rather than the page design.
Can I see it before it goes live?
Yes. The WordPress site is built and testable on a staging address while Squarespace keeps serving, and nothing switches until you have walked it.