How to migrate from Squarespace to WordPress

You can move a Squarespace site to WordPress yourself. Squarespace exports part of a site as an .xml file in WordPress's own format: layout pages, one blog with its posts and comments, and text and image blocks. It does not export products, a second blog, most other kinds of page, video, audio, drafts or the design. Those are rebuilt on the new site, and each old address that changes is redirected.

The export and the import are the short part. The rebuild and the redirects are where the time goes.

What moves and what does not

This table follows the lists in Squarespace's help center of what its export holds and what it leaves out.

Before you start

Keep the Squarespace subscription active. Squarespace exports only from a site that is active and published, and not from a trial site. If a site has expired, Squarespace says its content may already have been deleted. Do not cancel until the new site is live.

List every address the old site answers at. Open /sitemap.xml on your domain. Squarespace says it lists the URLs of all pages on the site. It leaves out disabled pages, pages hidden from search, password-protected pages and the addresses of uploaded files, so add any of those that people link to. Check that your blog posts and products are on the list too. Keep the list in a spreadsheet.

Copy your URL mappings. Redirects you made in Squarespace are kept in its Developer tools panel, under "URL mappings". Squarespace applies them only to domains connected to a Squarespace site, so they stop the day the domain moves. Add each one to the spreadsheet.

Write down what the site does. Note each form and where it sends its mail, each embed, the store's payment and shipping settings, and anything visitors sign in to. None of this is in the export.

Export the store's data. If you sell on Squarespace, download three files: the products, the orders and the customers. Each is a .csv export in its own panel.

Decide where WordPress will live. This guide is for WordPress on hosting you buy yourself. You need a hosting plan, a WordPress install on a temporary address from your host, and a theme. Build there while the Squarespace site stays live on your domain.

Move the content

Redirect your old addresses

Links on other sites, bookmarks and search results all point at your old addresses. Squarespace's own documentation says what happens when an address changes with no redirect: a visitor who follows the old link gets a 404 error. The same is true after a move.

You can keep some addresses by matching the structure. If your posts sit at /blog/post-title, the custom structure /blog/%postname%/ puts them at the same path. A structure with dates is harder to match exactly. WordPress writes the month and day with two digits, so check how your old addresses write them.

The WordPress addresses here end in a slash and the Squarespace ones do not. Do not assume the two are treated as one: request an old address without the slash on the new site and see that it reaches the page.

For each address that still changes, make a redirect. Redirection is a free plugin in the WordPress.org directory. It manages 301 redirects from a screen under Tools, imports a list from a .csv file, and accepts a pattern where many addresses change in the same way. Work from the spreadsheet: old address in one column, new address in the next.

Check the redirects twice. Before the domain moves, add an old path to the temporary address and see where it lands. After the domain moves, run the old addresses through the redirect checker, which follows a redirect and shows each hop. Each old address should reach the right page in one hop.

Check before you switch the domain

• Each address in the spreadsheet either exists on the new site or has a redirect.
• Every image on the new site loads, and none is loaded from Squarespace.
• Each form sends, and its mail arrives.
• On a store, a test order goes through with the payment method in its test mode.
• Under Settings, then Reading, "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is not ticked.
• You know where your email is hosted, and which records in the domain's settings belong to it.

Then change the domain. If the new site was built on a temporary address, give it the real one first: how to change your WordPress URL covers that. If the domain is registered with Squarespace, it can stay there. In its DNS settings, delete the records under "Squarespace Defaults" and add your host's records under "Custom Records". Leave the records for your email alone. Squarespace says a change can take 24 to 48 hours to work properly.

Where it goes wrong

• Images left behind. The site looks finished, the Squarespace subscription is canceled, and the images vanish. Check that the images were copied before you cancel.
• The second blog. Only one blog page is exported. A site with a news section and a journal loses one of them unless it is copied by hand.
• Pages that arrive flat. Text from embed blocks and similar comes across with very little structure, and a page built mostly from galleries or video arrives almost empty.
• Linked files. Squarespace says linked .pdf files are in the export but cannot be imported into WordPress. Upload each file to the Media Library and fix the link.
• Redirects that were never made. Blog posts and products are the addresses most likely to change. URL mappings made in Squarespace are gone the day the domain moves.
• Passwords. No export holds them. Tell store customers before the move that they will set a new password.
• Forms and email. A rebuilt form sends its mail from the new site, and nothing tells you when that mail does not arrive. Send a test through each form and look for it in the inbox. Changing the domain's records can also cut off mailboxes if the mail records are removed with the rest.

If you would rather hand the move over, our Squarespace to WordPress migration service starts with a free assessment and a fixed quote in writing.