If you are moving your website over to us and it currently sits with Squarespace, this is the whole job end to end. None of it is difficult, and Squarespace is one of the more straightforward platforms to leave — almost everything is a switch you can flick yourself, in your own account, without asking anybody's permission.
The order still matters more than you would expect. One step taken early is the difference between a switch nobody notices and your email going quiet for a day.
Talk to us before you cancel anything. Cancelling first is what turns a calm week into an anxious one.
The reassuring part, first
Cancelling your Squarespace website does not take your domain with it. If you registered the domain through Squarespace it stays yours, stays registered, and keeps renewing on its own date, whether or not you still have a site there. That is Squarespace's own documented behaviour and it removes most of the time pressure people expect to be under.
Transferring the domain does not switch your Squarespace site off either. The two are separate. Your site carries on serving customers until the day you decide to point the domain at the new one.
So there is no cliff edge here. There are just a few things worth settling in the right order.
What moves, and what does not
Your domain name moves. It is yours, wherever it happens to be registered.
Your website itself does not really move. Squarespace can export a file, but only some of it: ordinary pages, one blog, text and image blocks. It leaves behind your styling, any custom CSS, and several whole page types — shop pages, portfolio pages, index pages, album and event pages. The file it produces is meant for importing into WordPress, which is not what we build. So we do not migrate your site, we rebuild it. That part is free, and you see the finished thing on a private link before anything at all changes.
Save your content while the site is still up. Photographs above all — the export does not bring your images with it, and a Squarespace site takes its pictures with it when it goes. Save the originals if you still have them. If you do not, send us the address and we will pull what we can off the live page first.
Your email is the thing to sort out first
Squarespace does not run mailboxes of its own. If you have email on your domain and you set it up through Squarespace, it is Google Workspace, sold and billed to you by Squarespace. That is also true if you originally bought it from Google Domains, which Squarespace took over.
Two things follow from that, and they surprise people in opposite directions.
Your mailbox does not die when the website goes. The Workspace subscription is separate from the website subscription. Cancelling the site leaves your email running — and, less welcome, leaves Squarespace still billing you for it until you deal with it separately.
But your email does depend on your domain's records, and those are exactly what a transfer moves. When your domain comes to us we recreate the mail records as they stand today, so nothing changes from your side: same address, same inbox, same password. Tell us the email is Google Workspace and it is our job from there.
You then have a choice, in your own time and nothing to do with us: keep paying Squarespace for Workspace, or move that billing across to Google directly. Either works. It is not part of this move and it does not have to happen this week.
We host websites, not mailboxes. We would rather say that plainly now than have you discover it in a fortnight. What we do is point your domain at whichever mail provider you use.
Not sure what you have? Do not guess, and do not go by where you read your mail — an Outlook or Apple Mail app on your desk tells you nothing about who runs the mailbox behind it. Send us the domain and we will check the records and tell you in five minutes. It is the first thing we look at on any move, and it is worth knowing before you give anybody notice rather than after.
Check who actually holds the domain
Do not assume Squarespace does. A lot of venues bought their domain somewhere else years earlier — IONOS, GoDaddy, 123-Reg — and simply pointed it at Squarespace afterwards. If that is you, Squarespace never held the domain at all, and this whole section belongs to somebody else.
The quick way to tell: in Squarespace, a domain you bought from them appears in the domains dashboard with billing attached. A domain you connected from elsewhere shows as connected but not registered. If you are not certain, look your domain up on who.is and read the registrar name. Whoever that is, is who you ask for the unlock and the code — asking anyone else just loses you a week.
Tell us what it says and we will tell you what to do next.
While you are there, note the expiry date too, and see the dates section further down.
Unlocking the domain and getting the code
What you do here depends on your domain's ending, and this is where people get sent round in circles.
Domains ending .com, .co, .net, .org and similar
All self-serve, and it takes about two minutes:
- Open your Squarespace domains dashboard and click the domain.
- Scroll down and switch Domain Lock off.
- Click Request transfer code and confirm with your password or your two-factor code.
Squarespace then emails the code to the domain's registrant address — usually within a few minutes, occasionally up to a day. You will see it called an EPP code, an auth code, a transfer key or an authorisation code; they are all the same thing. Forward it to us as soon as it lands.
Domains ending .co.uk, .uk or .org.uk
There is no authorisation code for UK domains. Asking for one gets you a puzzled reply and a wasted week, and it is the single most common false start on a UK move.
UK domains move a different way. The domain carries a marker called an IPS tag naming whoever holds it, and moving the domain means changing that tag to the new holder's. Ours is
GANDI
in capitals, exactly like that. (Gandi is the registrar our host works through for UK domains. You will have no other dealings with them.)
In Squarespace you unlock the domain as above, start the transfer-out, and enter GANDI when it asks you for the new provider's tag. If you cannot find that step, Squarespace support will do it for you — and Nominet, who run every UK domain, can change the tag directly at your request as the owner. Any of the three routes ends in the same place.
Tell us the same day it is done. If the tag is changed and nobody requests the transfer within about five days, it can revert to where it was and the whole thing has to be repeated.
If the domain is somewhere other than Squarespace
Same two requests, sent to whoever does hold it. Every registrar deals with this daily. Something to copy and paste:
Hello, I am moving my website to a new provider and would like to transfer my domain, YOURDOMAIN. Please could you: 1. Unlock the domain for transfer. 2. UK domains: change the IPS tag to GANDI (capitals). Everything else: send me the authorisation / EPP code. 3. Confirm the registrant email address you hold for the domain, and update it to YOUR EMAIL if it is not that already. Thanks, YOUR NAME
Point 3 matters more than it looks. The authorisation link goes to whichever address is held as the registrant contact, and somebody has to click it. If that address is an old mailbox nobody reads any more, the link arrives nowhere and the transfer quietly cancels itself. Worth thirty seconds now.
What happens then, and how long it takes
1. We copy your current settings first. Before any transfer request goes anywhere, we set your domain's records up on our side as an exact copy of what is working today, email included. This is the step that keeps the lights on.
2. We request the transfer. You will get one or two emails at the registrant address, from noreply@registrar.amazon, noreply@domainnameverification.net or noreply@emailverification.info. Click the link in them. They look exactly like the sort of message you would normally delete, so watch for them, and check the junk folder. For UK domains this step is compulsory, and five days of silence cancels the transfer.
Squarespace will also email you to say a transfer has been requested, with a few days in which to stop it if it was not you. That one is a safety net, not a task — you do not need to do anything with it.
3. We wait. Squarespace allows up to fifteen days for a transfer to complete, and in practice it is usually far quicker. This is the registry's timetable rather than ours and there is no way to hurry it, which is the honest reason we ask you not to cancel anything early.
4. We switch the website over. A separate step, done on a day you choose, and a few minutes' work. Your Squarespace site is live and serving customers right up until this moment.
5. You cancel Squarespace. Last. Not first. And remember Google Workspace is a second subscription if you are keeping the mailboxes but not the billing.
You do not have to move the domain at all
Worth knowing: we can put your new website live by changing two records where your domain already sits, with no transfer of any kind. It takes minutes, it is undone just as fast, and it never touches your email.
The catch is that you keep paying Squarespace for the domain, and you keep needing that login. Most venues would rather have everything in one place, so we usually transfer — but if you want the new site up quickly, or you want to see it working on your real address before committing, this is a perfectly good way to do it.
Two dates to check before you start
Was the domain registered, transferred, or had its registered owner changed in the last 60 days? If so it cannot be transferred yet. That is an industry-wide rule and nobody can waive it. UK domains are the exception and can move at any time. It is uncommon, but it stops the process dead, so it is far better found now than in week two.
When does the domain expire? If it falls due in the next couple of months, renew it before the transfer rather than during. A domain that expires halfway through comes off the internet, and in the worst case becomes available for somebody else to register.
One related thing to look at: if your domain came free with your Squarespace plan, that was for the first year only, and the free arrangement does not come with it when the domain moves. Check what it is actually renewing at before you assume the price you are used to.
What it costs
Building the site is free, and it is built before you commit to anything. Keeping it is £15 a month per site, which covers the hosting and any changes you ever want — no hourly rate, and no "that would count as a redesign". Two venues means two sites.
Your domain's own yearly renewal is separate from that, and we will tell you what it comes to for your particular ending before we take it on. A .co.uk and a .com are not priced the same.
If you change your mind
Everything up to step 4 is reversible and none of it touches your live site. Until that point your Squarespace website is still there, still serving customers, exactly as it was. You are welcome to look at what we have built and decide it is not for you — and if you do, nothing changes with your booking account either.
Anything you are not sure about, ask before you do it rather than after. Get in touch and we will tell you straight.