How to migrate from Squarespace: inventory, rebuild, selling and the domain
Moving off Squarespace to Anticode is a rebuild, not an import: there's no way to load a Squarespace site or its export file. For a portfolio, a service business or a small shop that sells a handful of things, the rebuild is manageable. The care goes into three places: saving everything before you cancel, deciding how selling will work, and switching the domain without a gap.
Is the move a good fit?
Go through what your Squarespace site actually does, feature by feature, and mark each one as moves easily, moves with changes, or stays elsewhere.
| On the old site | On Anticode |
|---|---|
| Pages, galleries, about and contact | Rebuilt as pages, with your photos uploaded |
| Blog | Posts as entries in a CMS collection, each with its own page; no comments, RSS or scheduled posts |
| Contact and newsletter forms | Fixed-field forms: contact asks for name, email and a message; newsletter for an email. Other fields need a custom form with a site function (plain-text fields, no uploads) |
| Appointment bookings | A booking calendar with six fixed times a day, Mondays skipped, one booking per slot; you confirm each booking yourself; no custom hours, deposits or calendar sync |
| A shop with a few products | Buy buttons that open a checkout link from your payment provider |
| A shop with stock, shipping and tax | Stays on a store platform; link to it |
| Member areas or courses | Not supported on published sites |
If the bottom two rows describe your business, keep that part on a platform built for it, or reconsider the move.
Save everything first
- Your text. Copy each page's words into a document, page by page. If Squarespace offers an export for your site's content, take it too as an archive; check Squarespace's own help pages for what it includes. Anticode can't import the file, but you'll be glad of the copy.
- Your images, at the best size you have. Original files on your computer beat ones downloaded from the live site.
- Form submissions and subscriber lists you've collected, in a format you can keep.
- Orders and customer records, if you've sold anything, for your accounts.
- A list of addresses that matter: pages with traffic, pages other sites link to, and any printed QR codes.
Rebuild in Anticode
- Start a build with one sentence about the business and the address of your Squarespace site. The Architect reads the link once and folds a summary into the brief, then asks up to three questions and shows a plan.
- Strip the plan back to what your inventory says people use. A move is the cheapest moment to drop pages.
- Bring your photos across. Designed pages show them only in CMS collections (work, products, posts) whose image field holds hosted addresses; uploaded files are checked, stored under your account and placed by the model in app builds.
- Create a CMS collection for posts if you're keeping the blog, with fields for title, date, body and image, and add the posts worth keeping. Each gets a page at
/<collection>/<slug>. - Read every page against your saved text and fix anything the rebuild summarised too freely.
Move selling to payment links
Anticode sites take payment by sending buyers to a checkout from your own provider: Stripe Payment Links, PayPal, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Shopify or Whop. Anticode holds one checkout link per account and its buy and pricing buttons open it, so a single product or a single service is simple, while several products are best served by a product-list page at your provider. Set it up and test a purchase before the switch, so there's no day when you can't sell. More detail is in payment links.
Switch the domain
- Publish to the free anticode.dev address and check every page and form on a phone.
- On a paid plan, add your domain in Anticode; it shows the CNAME or TXT record to create and issues the certificate once it's verified.
- If Squarespace manages your domain, follow its help pages to change the records or transfer the domain. If another registrar does, change the records there.
- Touch only the records the site needs. Email on the same domain depends on its own records, which should stay as they are.
- Once the site loads on your domain over HTTPS, send a real enquiry through each form, then update your listings and social profiles.
Keep the Squarespace subscription running for a week or two after the switch, until you're sure nothing's missing. The guide to connecting a custom domain covers the records in more detail.
Limits
No import from Squarespace or any other builder. No cart, stock, shipping or tax handling, no member areas, no blog comments, RSS or post scheduling, and pages in English only. For the wider choice, see Anticode vs Squarespace and Squarespace alternatives.
Questions people ask
Can Anticode import my Squarespace site?
No. You give the Architect the old site's link, it reads and summarises it into the brief, and you rebuild from that plus your saved text and photos.
What happens to my blog when I migrate from Squarespace?
Posts you keep become entries in a CMS collection, each with its own page. Comments, RSS feeds and scheduled posts aren't available.
Will my old page addresses still work?
Only where the new site uses the same address. Anticode has no per-site redirect manager, so list the addresses that matter before you switch, and update the links you control.