Stop Paying Squarespace and Keep Your Domain

Yes, you can cancel Squarespace and keep your domain. Squarespace's help page says a domain registered through Squarespace does not expire when you cancel your website subscription, and stays yours. The site and the domain are two separate things. The site is the pages your visitors see. The domain is the address they type, like yourbusiness.com. Moving the site to free hosting means changing where the domain points, and the address stays the same. The order matters, and cancelling Squarespace comes last.

In what order do I do it?

1. Open your Squarespace account page and write down each charge, such as the website plan, the domain and Google Workspace email if you have it.
2. Export your content, if you want your text. The export is covered below.
3. Build the new site and approve it from a private preview, with the old site still live.
4. Where you bought the domain, change its nameservers. Nameservers are the settings that say which company answers when someone types your address, and Cloudflare, the company that hosts the new site, gives you the new ones. If your domain has DNSSEC (a security feature that protects a domain's records from spoofing) switched on, turn it off at that company first: Cloudflare says changing nameservers while it is active can make your domain unreachable. On a SiteFree move, we tell you the one change to make there and check your email settings before anything switches. If you do this yourself, Cloudflare's scan of your existing DNS records (the entries that say where your website and email go) is not guaranteed to find all of them, so check your email records first.
5. Visit your address and check that the new site is live there.
6. Cancel Squarespace. Squarespace's help page says you might be able to recover and export the content of an expired site by reactivating it, but the content may already be deleted, so cancelling is the one step you do last.

What are you paying Squarespace for?

Charges that can sit in one Squarespace account include the website plan, the domain and Google Workspace email if you have it. Look at your account page and write down what each charge is before you do anything.

For scale, on 9 November 2026 Squarespace's pricing page showed these CAD prices, per month:

The page also carried a 50% off badge on each plan that day, so check your own renewal price on your account page. Squarespace's help page on plans says discounts apply to your first payment and your next renewal is charged at full price. If a renewal notice is what brought you here, Got a Squarespace Price Increase Email? What to Do goes through it.

The free first-year domain on that pricing page renews at the standard rate plus taxes, and Google Workspace, free for the first year on select plans, renews at the standard rate too. Check the renewal date on each.

Will I lose my site or have to start over?

Not if you move before you cancel. Squarespace's export tool gets some of your content out, and it is not a copy of your site.

Squarespace's export tool makes one .xml file (a plain data file) in the format WordPress, a common website system, uses. As of November 2026 its help page says it includes layout pages, one blog with its posts, text blocks and image blocks. It leaves out other blogs, product, video and audio blocks, store pages, drafts, style settings and custom CSS. It cannot be imported into another Squarespace site, and it needs a published, public, non-trial site. The page also warns that if you import into a self-hosted WordPress site, images may stay linked to Squarespace, so they stop working once you cancel.

So the export gives you the text of the pages it covers. If you import it into a self-hosted WordPress site, the images may stay linked to Squarespace and stop working after you cancel. Style settings and custom CSS are left out, so the design still has to be rebuilt by someone. For the full picture, see How to Move a Squarespace Site to Cloudflare (Domain Too).

The same help page has a reason not to cancel first: you might be able to recover and export the content of an expired site by reactivating it, but depending on how long it has been expired, the content may already be deleted. Cancel only once the new site is live at your address.

Can I still edit it afterwards?

Yes, but the way you edit changes. As of November 2026:

This is how a professional developer sets up a site: try changes on a copy, approve, keep every version. You get it without learning or running any of it. The assistant handles the technical steps.

It has a cost. The assistant is a plan you subscribe to separately, such as Claude Pro at US$20 a month. You need a free GitHub account, because your site's files live in your own account there. Hosting stays free. A web developer can also edit the files directly.

What happens to my domain?

Moving the site means changing where the domain points, and your site's address is the same afterwards. Squarespace's help page on cancelling says that if you registered a domain through Squarespace, it will not automatically expire when you cancel your website subscription, all of those domains stay yours and continue to auto-renew, and the domain stays linked to your cancelled site until you move, forward or point it to another site. If you want to manage the domain through a different provider, the same page says to transfer it away before cancelling. Two terms you may meet. Nameservers are the settings that say which company answers when someone types your address. A transfer moves the domain's registration to a different company. You need the first, and the second is optional. Cloudflare's docs say the final step of pointing a domain to Cloudflare may have to be done outside of Cloudflare, where you bought the domain.

If you decide to move the registration too, Cloudflare's transfer page lists its rules: the domain must be at least 60 days past registration and past its last transfer, and a change of registrant details in the last 60 days blocks it. How to Transfer a Wix Domain to Cloudflare walks through the steps for another builder. If the domain is registered through Squarespace, you make that nameserver change in Squarespace's domain settings, and Squarespace's nameserver page says what follows: the domain disconnects from your Squarespace site, you are prompted to disable DNSSEC, and it can take up to 48 hours to start working properly. Cloudflare says to wait up to 24 hours. If you bought the domain somewhere else, make the change there.

Will Google still find me?

Nobody can promise rankings after a move. What you can control is that old addresses keep working. On a SiteFree move, every old address is redirected to its new page, so search results, bookmarks and links from other sites land in the right place.

What about my email?

When a domain's settings are copied to a new place, Cloudflare's setup guide says its scan of your existing records is not guaranteed to find every record, and it lists email records among those to review. Separately, if a domain is activated on Cloudflare without the correct records, the guide says visitors may see errors. Squarespace's nameserver page adds that once you use other nameservers, the records in your Squarespace DNS settings no longer apply, and you have to re-add custom records, like MX or DKIM records (the entries that control where your email goes), at the new provider. If your mailbox is Google Workspace bought through Squarespace, check its billing separately.

On a SiteFree move, email settings are checked before anything switches.

What does it cost to do the move?

A site with no monthly bill is possible, and A Website With No Monthly Fees: What It Takes lists the pieces. Hosting a small static site on your own Cloudflare account is free within the free plan's limits. What you pay is the one-time cost of the move, plus the domain renewal you already pay, plus the optional assistant if you want to edit by asking.

Doing it for you

SiteFree sells this move; it is our own service. We are a Canadian migration service in Montreal, with prices in CAD.

We rebuild your site to match its design closely, host it free in your own Cloudflare account, keep the files in your own GitHub account, and charge once. Prices:

You get a private preview within two business days of payment, and nothing switches over until you approve. There are up to two rounds of fixes and a full refund any time before you approve, and your old site stays live until then. Your domain stays yours. Contact forms keep working, and the site is served from your own Cloudflare account, not ours. A shop, a member area or over 100 pages gets a fixed quote.

If you want to see your page count and price first, you can check your site for free.