Squarespace to WordPress Migration: What Transfers

Squarespace can hand WordPress an .xml file with your pages and one blog inside it. Everything that makes the site look and work the way it does stays behind, because it belongs to Squarespace’s templates and code rather than to your content.

That is not a reason to stay. It is a reason to plan the move as a rebuild with a content head start, which is exactly how our WordPress migration service treats it. This guide covers what the export really carries, the image problem that shows up weeks later, how to keep your search traffic, the order that avoids downtime, and what the work costs.

What the Squarespace export file actually contains

Squarespace exports one .xml file in WordPress format. Its help centre publishes the full list of what makes it in and what does not, and the second column is longer than most people expect.

Comes across in the export	Stays behind
Layout pages	Store pages and product blocks
One blog page, with its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post	Every blog page after the first one you choose
Text blocks	Album, cover, index, info, calendar and portfolio pages
Image blocks	Video blocks and audio blocks
Gallery pages, including York project pages on version 7.0	Page-specific headers, footers and sidebars
Text from embed and Instagram blocks, with minimal structure	Dropdowns, drafts, style settings and custom CSS

Source: Squarespace Help Center, Export your site content, last updated October 10, 2026, read on November 14, 2026. The export also requires a published, public site; a trial site cannot export.

Read that list against your own site before you plan anything else. A consultancy with eight text pages and a blog will see most of its content arrive. A photographer whose work sits on portfolio and album pages, or a shop whose catalog sits on store pages, is looking at a manual rebuild of the part that matters most.

The image problem that appears weeks later

Images are where this migration quietly goes wrong. Squarespace warns that when the file is imported into a self-hosted WordPress site with the WordPress Importer plugin, the images may not copy at all. WordPress can store reference links to the pictures instead, and those links point at your Squarespace site. Cancel the subscription and the pictures disappear from a site that looked complete.

The two official guides do not even agree on this. WordPress.com’s import guide says the file contains images, audio files and embedded video, while Squarespace’s own list excludes audio and video blocks and warns about the image links. When documentation disagrees, trust the check rather than either page: open Media in WordPress after the import and confirm the files are physically there, with URLs on your own domain.

Source: WordPress.com support, Import from Squarespace, last reviewed October 22, 2026, read on November 14, 2026.

Three ways to deal with it, in order of how much control you keep: download the full-size images from your Squarespace pages and upload them to WordPress yourself; use an image-import plugin that pulls remote images into the media library and rewrites the links; or have the images moved as part of the migration, which is how we do it so that nothing on the new site depends on the old one.

Decide first: import and tidy, or rebuild clean

The export is worth using when the site is mostly words. Dozens or hundreds of blog posts justify the import on their own, because retyping them is the only alternative. Under about fifteen pages with no blog, copying and pasting into a properly designed WordPress site is faster than importing and then cleaning up block structure that arrived with minimal formatting.

Your Squarespace site	Best route	Why
Blog with 20+ posts	Import, then rebuild the design	The posts, dates and comments are the hard part, and they transfer
Brochure site, under 15 pages	Rebuild and paste the text	Cleaner markup, no imported leftovers, and it is quicker
Portfolio or album-heavy site	Rebuild, export images separately	Those page types never export
Squarespace store	Products by CSV, pages rebuilt	Store pages stay behind; the catalog moves on its own
Two or more blogs	Import the main one, move the rest by hand	Only one blog page is allowed in the export

If the reason for leaving is that the shop has outgrown the site, read our Shopify and Squarespace comparison before you choose the destination, because WordPress is not the only sensible answer. Either way the design is new work. That is worth saying plainly, because it is also the opportunity: a Squarespace template was chosen for its looks, and a WordPress build can be shaped around the pages that actually bring enquiries. If you are still deciding between the two platforms rather than planning the move, our Squarespace and WordPress comparison is the better starting point.

Products move on a separate track

If you sell, the catalog does not travel in the .xml file. Squarespace exports products as a CSV from Commerce, then Inventory, then Export all. WooCommerce reads that CSV through its built-in product importer, which maps each column to a WooCommerce field and skips anything it does not recognise.

What the CSV does not bring is customers, past orders, subscriptions or digital download links. Check what you need from the old store’s records before the subscription ends, and export those separately while you still can. Our WooCommerce builds start at $549, and the Large Migration plan covers moving products, customers and orders where the source platform allows it.

Protecting the search traffic you already have

Rankings do not follow content automatically. They follow redirects, so the redirect map is the part of this job that pays for itself.

1. Take the address list from your Squarespace sitemap at /sitemap.xml and from Search Console’s page report, so you have the pages Google knows about, not just the ones in your menu.
2. Decide the WordPress permalink structure before importing. Squarespace blog posts usually live under /blog/post-title, and WordPress can match that with a custom permalink structure, which turns hundreds of redirects into none.
3. Map every address that will change to its closest new page. Not the homepage: a redirect to a page that does not answer the same question loses the traffic anyway.
4. Set the redirects as 301s on the new site, test them in bulk after launch, then keep them. Google advises holding redirects for at least a year so links and signals transfer.
5. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and watch the page report for a fortnight.

Source: Google Search Central, Site moves with URL changes, read on November 14, 2026, for the redirect mapping and the one-year guidance.

Keeping a domain is separate from keeping rankings, and simpler: you point the domain at the new host, or transfer the registration if Squarespace is also your registrar. The URLs underneath are what needs the care. There is more on holding onto traffic through a rebuild in our guide to redesigning a website without losing SEO.

From our projects: we build the new site on a private staging address and keep the old one live and public until the owner approves the replacement. That order matters more on builder migrations than anywhere else, because the imported images can still be pointing at the old site, and taking it down early is what turns a finished migration into a page of broken pictures. Our Wix to WordPress rebuild followed the same sequence.

The order that avoids downtime

1. Export from Squarespace while the site is published and public, and keep the .xml file and a copy of your images somewhere safe.
2. Set up hosting and WordPress on a staging address, import the file, and fix the permalink structure before anything else.
3. Confirm every image sits in your own media library, not on squarespace.com.
4. Rebuild the design, the forms and any page type that did not export, then check the content page by page against the live Squarespace site.
5. Load the redirect map, point the domain at the new host, and watch for errors for the first hour.
6. Cancel Squarespace last, once the new site has run on the domain for a week with no missing pictures and no 404s in Search Console.

What a Squarespace to WordPress move costs

Doing it yourself costs the hosting and your weekend. The export and import are the quick parts; the design rebuild, the image check and the redirect map are where the hours go, and they are also the parts that decide whether the move is invisible to your customers or obvious to them.

Route	Price	What it covers
Platform Migration	From $349	Up to 30 pages rebuilt on WordPress, content, images and SEO settings moved, 301 redirects from every old address, forms rebuilt, Search Console and sitemap set up, 1–2 weeks
Large Migration	From $990	Larger sites with blog posts and media, products and customers where the platform allows, a light design refresh, staged launch, 2–5 weeks
Fresh WordPress build instead	From $349	A new site designed around your business, with the old content carried over by hand
Keeping it running afterwards	From $49 a month	Updates, daily off-site backups, security and small content changes, per website, no contract

Hosting is paid by you directly, so the site stays in your name. Every price we publish is on our pricing page, and a migration quote is fixed in writing before any work starts. Set that against what you pay Squarespace now: at $29 a month for the Core plan, three years of subscription is $1,044, and the WordPress site is yours at the end of it.

Five mistakes we see on builder migrations

• Cancelling Squarespace on launch day. If any image still links back, the new site breaks the moment the old one goes dark.
• Exporting from a trial. The export needs a published, public site on a paid plan. Reactivate before you export if the site has lapsed.
• Forgetting the second blog. Only one blog page exports. Anything in the others has to be copied manually, and it is easy to notice too late.
• Letting the URLs change by accident. WordPress’s default permalink format rarely matches Squarespace’s, so either match it or redirect every post.
• Treating custom CSS as content. It does not export. If a developer styled parts of your Squarespace site, take a copy of that code before you cancel, for reference.

Thinking about making the move?

Send us your Squarespace address and we will tell you which pages the export will carry, which ones need rebuilding and what the whole move costs, in writing, before you commit to anything. Attors Technologies moves websites between platforms for businesses in the US, UK and Europe, and the old site stays live until you approve the new one.

Get a fixed quote for your migration, or read what each migration plan includes first.