Switching from Squarespace
Squarespace got you here. It will not get you there.
Your business outgrew the template. Moving to a custom site does not mean losing your rankings, your domain, or your email. Here is how it works.
Signs you have outgrown it
- You spend hours fighting the editor to make small changes.
- Your site looks like every other site in your industry.
- You rank below competitors with worse businesses and better pages.
- You need features the platform does not offer: directories, gated content, real booking flows.
- Your business does $500K or more a year, and the site still says "starter."
None of this means Squarespace is bad. It means it did its job. It got you online cheap while you built the business. The business is built now.
What carries over. Everything.
- Your domain
- It stays yours and moves with you. Your web address does not change unless you want it to.
- Your email
- Email runs on your domain, not on Squarespace. It keeps working through the whole move.
- Your content
- Pages, posts, and images all export. I move them, tidy them, and improve them on the way.
- Your brand
- Logo, colors, fonts, and voice carry straight over. If you have a brand package, I build from it.
- Your rankings
- Every old URL gets a permanent redirect to its new home. Google follows the map. This is the step cheap rebuilds skip.
Questions
The five fears, answered.
- Will I lose my Google rankings?
- Not if the move is done properly. Every existing page gets a one-to-one redirect, titles and content carry over, and I watch Search Console daily for the first weeks. Rankings usually improve within a few months because the new site is faster and better structured.
- Will my site go down during the switch?
- No. The new site is built and reviewed on a private link while your current site stays live. Launch is a DNS change that takes minutes.
- What happens to my Squarespace subscription?
- You cancel it after launch, once we confirm everything moved. Until then it stays on as the safety net.
- Am I trading one lock-in for another?
- No. The domain stays in your name, and the site and the content are yours once the build is paid for. I run the DNS, the hosting, and the analytics as part of your care plan. If you ever want to move on, thirty days notice hands all of it back. It is in my terms.
- Is it worth the price difference?
- A custom site costs more than $30 a month. It also does a different job. Squarespace makes a site exist. A custom build makes the right people call. For a business past $500K a year, the site is usually the cheapest employee you can upgrade.
Builds start at $6,500. Most Squarespace upgrades land in the Growth tier, from $12,000. Full pricing is public.
The move
Four weeks of work you never see.
Squarespace exports your pages and posts, which puts you ahead of most platforms. The export is where the easy part ends. Content still has to be rebuilt, addresses still have to be mapped, and the design has to be made from scratch. Here is the order it happens in.
01
Week one: the map
Every page and every address on the current site gets listed. That list becomes the redirect map, and it is the reason a move keeps the rankings you already paid for in time and effort.
02
Weeks two to six: the build
The new site is designed and built on a private link while Squarespace keeps serving your customers. Your subscription stays on as the safety net until launch is done.
03
Launch day: the switch
Redirects go in, then DNS points at the new host. Minutes, not hours. Email runs on your domain, so it never pauses.
04
The month after
Search Console gets checked daily for the first weeks. Anything that slipped through gets fixed the same day. Then you cancel the Squarespace plan.
Keep the Squarespace plan running until you have clicked through the new site yourself and found nothing missing. A month of overlap costs about as much as lunch, and it means there is always a way back.
What you get out of it
The reasons people make the move.
- Pages built for search, not for a template
- A Squarespace template decides what your pages can look like, so most sites end up with the pages the template had. A custom build starts from the services you want to be found for, then designs around them.
- Speed you can measure
- Custom sites load less code because they only carry what your site uses. Faster pages hold more of the people who arrive on a phone with two bars of signal.
- Features the platform will not add
- Member directories, gated content, real booking that routes to the right person, a store that handles pre-orders. If you have ever been told the platform cannot do that, this is the fix.
- Editing that stays simple
- Leaving Squarespace does not mean going back to asking a developer for every change. Most builds land on WordPress, set up so a normal person can update a page in a couple of minutes.
One caution, since this page is trying to sell you something. If your site is only two years old, gets edited often, and brings in the work you want, stay where you are. A rebuild will not fix a business that is already working. Ask me on a call and I will tell you which one you have.
Ready to talk?
A 20 minute call. No pitch. What you need and what it costs.
Or text 778-692-5555 or email mj@duforddigital.com. I reply within two business days.