How to migrate from Squarespace to WordPress (2026)

01Why move off Squarespace at all

Squarespace is genuinely good at what it does — it's polished, it's easy, and a beginner can ship a nice-looking site in an afternoon. So the question isn't whether it works. It's whether the trade-offs that come with a closed, rented platform are still worth it for you.

The honest reasons people leave usually come down to four things: who owns the site, what it costs over time, how far you can push it, and how much control you have over SEO. WordPress wins on all four, at the price of being more hands-on.

What you actually gain

• Ownership. WordPress is your software on your hosting. You can move hosts, export everything, and never get locked out of your own site by a billing lapse or a policy change.
• Cost flexibility. Squarespace is a fixed monthly fee forever. WordPress itself is free; you pay for hosting, which can be a few dollars a month and scales with your needs rather than a vendor's pricing tier.
• Flexibility. Tens of thousands of themes and plugins mean almost anything you'd want — memberships, advanced forms, custom post types, real e-commerce — is a few clicks away instead of impossible.
• SEO control. WordPress lets you edit titles, meta descriptions, schema, redirects, and the full URL structure. Squarespace handles a lot for you but hides the dials you eventually want to turn.

This is a theme shop's bias talking, so take it as that: we like systems you own and can re-skin at will. If Squarespace covers everything you need and you never feel boxed in, there's no shame in staying.

02What Squarespace actually lets you export

This is the section most migration guides gloss over, and it's the one that will save you the most grief. Squarespace does offer an export, but you need to be clear-eyed about what it includes and — more importantly — what it leaves behind.

From Squarespace's settings you can generate an export in WordPress's XML format (the same WXR format WordPress's own importer reads). That file is designed to carry your written content into WordPress, and for blog-heavy sites it does a decent job of the words.

What the export brings across

• Most basic pages and their text content.
• Blog posts, usually with their text, and often the post images.
• Some images embedded in that content, though not always reliably.

What it leaves behind

• Your entire design. Themes, fonts, colors, and layout do not transfer at all — WordPress has no idea what your Squarespace site looked like, and you rebuild the look from scratch.
• Several page and content types. Squarespace's own documentation notes the export skips things like product pages, album pages, event pages, and certain index/gallery layouts. Those must be recreated by hand.
• Your store. Squarespace Commerce products and orders don't ride along in the XML; an online shop is a separate rebuild, often with a CSV product export plus WooCommerce on the WordPress side.
• Style blocks and custom code. Any custom CSS, code injection, or platform-specific block won't carry over.

So the realistic mental model is: the export is a content head-start, not a clone button. It moves a chunk of your words and some images; you rebuild the design and re-create whatever pages and store features it dropped. Plan for that up front and the migration stops feeling like a betrayal halfway through.

03The plan, start to finish

Because the export is partial, the migration is really part import, part rebuild. Doing it in a deliberate order keeps the rebuild part from sprawling. Here's the whole shape before we go deep on the steps that trip people up.

• Set up WordPress hosting and install WordPress. Most hosts do the install in one click, and many will set it up for you.
• Pick a theme that's close to your Squarespace look rather than an exact clone of it.
• Export the XML from Squarespace and import it into WordPress to bring your pages and posts across.
• Rebuild what didn't transfer — design, products, event/album/gallery pages, and any custom blocks.
• Match your URLs to the Squarespace ones, or map the redirects you'll need where they differ.
• Set up 301 redirects so every old Squarespace address points to its new home.
• Redo your SEO — titles, meta descriptions, sitemap — and test on staging before you point the domain over.

The two steps people are tempted to skip — matching URLs and setting redirects — are precisely the two that protect your Google rankings, so each gets its own section below.

Importing the XML, step by step

• In Squarespace, generate the WordPress-format export from your site's settings and download the XML file.
• In WordPress, go to Tools, then Import, and choose the WordPress importer (it installs on first use).
• Upload the XML, assign the imported content to an author, and let WordPress pull in attachments where it can.
• Check every page and post afterward — formatting, images, and internal links almost always need a cleanup pass.

04Picking a theme close to your Squarespace look

Since your design doesn't export, choosing a theme is where you set the new look. The trap here is the same one that catches everyone: trying to clone your Squarespace template pixel for pixel. Don't. Aim for close, lightweight, and maintainable instead.

Squarespace templates tend toward big imagery, generous spacing, and clean typography. The good news is that an entire category of modern WordPress themes chases exactly that aesthetic, so getting to within shouting distance of your old look is usually quick.

How to choose a theme that fits

• Name what actually mattered about your Squarespace look — the layout shape, the spacing, the fonts, your colors and logo — and match those, not every pixel.
• Favor lightweight, fast themes built on the block editor, so the new site loads quickly and you're not locked in if you re-skin again later.
• Look for themes that advertise a Squarespace-like style — large hero sections, full-width imagery, minimal chrome — to shorten the gap.
• Set colors, fonts, and logo in the theme settings first, which gets you most of the way to "it looks like us" in minutes.

A close-enough theme you can actually maintain beats a pixel-perfect copy you're scared to touch. You can refine the look anytime — the job right now is getting your content into a system you control.

05Preserving your URLs and SEO

This is the step that protects whatever Google traffic your Squarespace site has. Squarespace uses its own URL patterns — blog posts often sit under a path like /blog/post-name, and collection pages follow their own structure. WordPress will choose different addresses unless you tell it otherwise, and that mismatch is exactly where rankings leak.

You have two honest options. The common one: let WordPress use clean permalinks, then redirect every old Squarespace URL to its matching new one. The other: configure WordPress permalinks to mirror the Squarespace paths as closely as possible so the addresses barely change. Either works — pick one before you build redirects.

Before you change anything, make a URL map

• List every URL on the Squarespace site. A free crawler like Screaming Frog will spider it and hand you the complete list.
• Note which pages have real traffic or backlinks in Google Search Console and your analytics — those are the ones that absolutely must redirect.
• Match each old Squarespace URL to its new WordPress URL, one row per page, so nothing falls through.
• Set your WordPress permalink structure first, under Settings then Permalinks, so the new addresses are decided before you write any redirects.

Spend the half hour building this map. It's the difference between a switch Google barely notices and one that quietly costs you months of recovery.

06Setting the 301 redirects

A 301 redirect tells browsers and Google that a page has permanently moved to a new address, and it passes the old page's ranking value along. For a Squarespace-to-WordPress move, you want a 301 from each old Squarespace URL to its matching new WordPress URL.

The non-developer way to do this is a redirect plugin — Redirection is the common free one, and most SEO plugins include a redirect manager. You paste in the old URL and the new URL for each page on your map, and the plugin handles the rest. No editing server config.

• Use 301 (permanent), not 302 (temporary) for pages that have genuinely moved.
• Point each old page to its closest match, never blanket-redirect everything to the homepage — Google treats a mass homepage redirect as a soft 404.
• Do the redirects the same day you switch the domain over, so visitors and search engines never hit a dead Squarespace URL.
• After launch, watch Google Search Console for 404s and add any redirects you missed.

Redirects feel like the dull chore at the very end, but they're the single most valuable hour in the whole migration if the old site has any search traffic worth keeping.

07Redoing your SEO and the functional bits

Squarespace quietly handled a lot of SEO and functionality for you — meta tags, a sitemap, forms, basic analytics. Once you're on WordPress, those become your job, which is more control and a little more setup. Plugins cover almost all of it without code.

• SEO: install one SEO plugin (Yoast or Rank Math) to manage titles, meta descriptions, and your sitemap, and re-enter the titles and descriptions Squarespace had set for your key pages.
• Forms: a form plugin (WPForms, Contact Form 7, and others) replaces the Squarespace form block and delivers messages reliably.
• Analytics: re-add your tracking once through a plugin or your theme settings, rather than relying on the Squarespace built-in stats you're leaving.
• Store, if you had one: rebuild products with WooCommerce, importing them from a Squarespace product CSV export where possible — the XML won't carry them.
• Speed: add a caching plugin and an image optimizer so the new dynamic site stays as fast as your old Squarespace pages felt.

Resist installing twenty plugins on day one. SEO, forms, analytics, caching, and image optimization cover almost every small site. Each extra plugin is one more thing to update and a small chance of conflict, so add them only as you actually need them.

08The non-developer shortcuts

If the steps above made you wince, here's the good news: you don't have to do most of them alone. The hosting industry competes hard on making this painless for non-developers, and you should lean on that.

Many managed WordPress hosts offer free setup or migration help with the plan. You sign up, tell them about your old site, and their team handles the WordPress install and a lot of the heavy lifting. Hostinger is the one we point readers to for that combination — free setup assistance, one-click WordPress, and built-in staging — though several hosts offer something similar.

Staging deserves a special mention here. A staging site is a private copy where you import the XML, rebuild the design, recreate the store, and set redirects with no visitor seeing the mess. You check everything there, then push it live in one move — turning a nerve-wracking switchover into a calm one.

09The going-live checklist

Going live is a deliberate step, not an accident. Before you point your domain at the new WordPress site, walk this list on your staging copy so problems get caught before visitors do.

• Every page and blog post exists, with the imported content checked and cleaned up.
• The pages the export dropped are rebuilt — products, events, albums, galleries, and any custom blocks.
• All images load from the media library, with nothing still pointing back to Squarespace.
• Your permalink structure is set and final, so URLs won't shift again after launch.
• Redirects are in place for every old Squarespace URL on your map.
• The contact form sends and you receive a test message.
• Your SEO plugin has titles, descriptions, and a working sitemap ready to submit.
• The menu and internal links point at the new WordPress URLs, not the old Squarespace ones.
• The site is tested on a phone, since that's where most visitors will see it.
• After going live, submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console and watch for 404s for a couple of weeks.

When that list is green, point your domain at WordPress and you're done. Keep the Squarespace site running until you're sure everything transferred — cheap insurance, and a live reference if you spot a page you missed.

10FAQ

Does Squarespace really export to WordPress?

Partly. Squarespace generates a WordPress-format XML file that carries most basic pages and blog posts. It does not carry your design, your store, or several page types — product, album, event, and certain gallery pages — so treat the export as a content head-start, not a full migration.

Will moving to WordPress hurt my Google rankings?

Only if you change URLs without redirecting them, or the new site ends up much slower. Map your old Squarespace URLs to the new ones, 301-redirect them, and pick a lightweight theme. Done that way, most sites see no lasting drop — Google cares about the address and the content, not the platform.

What happens to my Squarespace store?

It doesn't come across in the XML. You rebuild it with WooCommerce on the WordPress side, importing products from a Squarespace product CSV export where you can. For a store with many products and live orders, this is the part most worth getting help with.

Do I need to know any code?

No. The import runs from a menu, the theme is configured in settings, and the redirects are two boxes per page in a plugin. The whole point of WordPress is editing in a browser — and your host can handle the setup if even that feels like too much.

How long does a Squarespace-to-WordPress move take?

A simple brochure or blog site is usually a focused weekend: a few hours for hosting and a theme, the import and its cleanup, and an hour on URL mapping and redirects. A site with a store or many custom page types takes longer, mostly in the rebuild step.

This is general, experience-based guidance from running a theme shop, not financial or professional advice for your specific site. When a site carries real revenue or traffic you can't afford to lose, treat that as the signal to get a professional or your host's migration team involved.