Squarespace to WordPress

Squarespace is one of the few hosted builders that offers an export to WordPress at all, which makes it one of the easier platforms to leave. Easier is not the same as easy. The export moves part of the site, and the rest has to be rebuilt by hand. This guide covers what moves, what does not, and the steps that keep your search traffic intact. It is part of our guide to WordPress vs website builders.

Why people move

The reasons are usually some mix of three. The site has grown into something Squarespace makes awkward, often a blog that needs better structure. The owner wants control over hosting, performance or plugins. Or the price has changed: in July 2026, PetaPixel reported that Squarespace was raising annual prices by up to 26%, with the Core plan going from $23 to $29 a month and Plus from $39 to $49.

Whatever the reason, the method is the same.

What Squarespace’s export includes

According to Squarespace’s own help article on exporting a site, the WordPress export includes:

• layout pages and their text and image blocks;
• one blog page, with all of its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post;
• text from embed and Instagram blocks;
• gallery pages, on version 7.0 sites.

What it leaves out

The same article lists what is not exported:

• album, cover, index, info, calendar (event), portfolio and store pages;
• any blog pages beyond the first;
• headers, footers and sidebars;
• dropdown menus;
• audio, product and video blocks;
• drafts;
• style settings and custom CSS.

Squarespace also warns that the WordPress importer may only link to your images rather than copy them. That matters: if the images stay on Squarespace’s servers and you later cancel, they can disappear from your new site.

Before you start

Make an inventory of every address. List every page and post on the current site. Your sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml is a good starting point, and Search Console shows which pages get traffic. This list is the most important document in the whole move.

Decide which pages need rebuilding. Compare the inventory with the list of what the export leaves out. Store pages, events, portfolios and any extra blogs will have to be recreated by hand.

Set up WordPress on new hosting. Install WordPress on a host of your choice and choose a theme. Work on the host’s temporary address or a staging copy, not on your live domain.

Step 1: Export from Squarespace

Open your site settings, find Import and export, choose Export and select WordPress. Squarespace produces a single XML file. The panel moves around between versions of Squarespace’s interface; if you cannot find it, search the Squarespace help center for “Exporting your site”.

If your site has more than one blog, the export only includes one. Move the others by hand or with a migration tool.

Step 2: Import into WordPress

In WordPress, go to Tools, Import, install the WordPress importer if prompted, and upload the XML file. Assign the content to your user account.

When the import finishes, open a few posts and check the images. If they still point to Squarespace’s servers, download them into your media library. There are plugins that do this in bulk; whichever you use, confirm afterwards that no image on the site still loads from Squarespace.

Step 3: Rebuild what did not come across

Recreate the pages the export skipped: store, events, portfolio, any additional blogs, and the header and footer, which in WordPress belong to the theme. This is also when you rebuild your navigation as a WordPress menu.

Resist the temptation to redesign while you do it. Google’s guidance on site moves is explicit: change only one thing at a time. If you move platform and redesign in the same week, and traffic drops, you will not know which change caused it. Our guide on how to redesign a website covers the redesign as a separate step.

Step 4: Keep your addresses, or redirect them

Search engines know your pages by their addresses. Keeping them the same is the single most effective thing you can do to protect traffic.

Squarespace usually places blog posts under the blog page’s address, for example /blog/your-post. WordPress lets you choose your permalink structure, so you can either match the old pattern or move to a cleaner one and redirect. Either is fine, as long as every old address ends up at the right new page.

For every address that changes, set up a permanent redirect from the old address to the new one. Google recommends server-side permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308, and advises keeping them for as long as possible, generally at least a year, so that all signals transfer to the new addresses.

Step 5: Check before you switch

Before you point your domain at the new site, go through the inventory one row at a time:

• every page exists and looks right;
• every image loads from your own site;
• every old address either works or redirects to the right page;
• titles and meta descriptions came across;
• forms work and send email;
• the site is fast on a phone.

Step 6: Switch the domain

Point your domain’s DNS records at the new host. If your domain is registered through Squarespace, you can keep it there and only change the records, or transfer it to a registrar of your choice. Either way, keep the Squarespace site running for a few weeks after the switch, in case you discover something you missed.

Step 7: Tell Google, then watch

Add the new site to Google Search Console if it is not there already, submit your sitemap and watch the indexing and performance reports. Google notes that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more before the new addresses replace the old ones in its results, and longer for large sites. Some movement in rankings during that period is normal. A steady decline after it is a sign that some redirects are missing.

Doing it with a tool

We make a tool for this kind of move, FreeYourWeb. It reads every page of the published Squarespace site, including pages the export skips such as additional blogs, portfolios and events (it does not move online stores), imports them into WordPress with their images, keeps addresses where it can and sets up redirects where it cannot. Nothing changes publicly until you confirm the switch. It is our product, so weigh this paragraph accordingly; every step above can be done by hand.