What moves with you and what does not
You own your words, photos, logo, domain, and Google ranking authority. None belongs to Squarespace or Wix; all travel with you. Understanding that removes much of the anxiety about leaving.
Platform-generated design, layouts, blocks, templates, styling controls, stores, booking widgets, and member areas belong to the platform and work only there. No download turns a Squarespace or Wix design into a working external site. That limitation is the product itself.
Wix has no export. Squarespace exports a WordPress-format file containing standard pages, one blog, text, and basic image blocks. It omits products, albums, indexes, events, custom styling, and most specialty blocks. Of two blogs, only one exports: useful, but no full copy.
Leaving a builder means rebuilding with existing content. Replacing its problematic foundation is the point. Keep Google's trusted addresses or forward them cleanly. Squarespace vs. custom → Wix vs. custom →
The one thing to internalise
You are not exporting a website. You are extracting content and rebuilding it on addresses Google already knows. Everything else in this guide follows from that.
The audit to run before you cancel anything
Every bad builder migration story starts the same way: someone cancelled the plan, the site came down, and then they discovered what they had not copied. On Wix in particular the live site is the only copy of your content that exists, so the audit is not paperwork. It is the backup.
Run all of this while the old site is still live and still paid for. It takes an afternoon on a typical small business site and it makes every later decision easier.
Pre-move audit
- Capture every web address. Pull the list from your sitemap file, which both platforms generate automatically and which usually sits at your domain followed by "/sitemap.xml". Cross-check it against Google's free Search Console tool, which shows addresses Google knows about even when the sitemap has forgotten them. This combined list is the master reference for the whole project. Do this first. Nothing else can be planned without it.
- Pull twelve months of search data. Search Console tells you which pages appear in results and which ones get clicked. Sort by clicks and draw a line: everything above it is a page whose address you protect at all costs, everything below it is a page you are free to consolidate. Guessing at this instead of measuring it is how businesses accidentally retire the one blog post that brings in half their enquiries.
- Save your current search listings. For every page that matters, record the clickable headline and the short summary Google shows underneath it. Those carry across unchanged unless there is a specific reason to improve them. Changing your content, your addresses, and your listings all in the same week leaves you with no way to tell which change caused any wobble that follows.
- Download every image at full size. Both platforms serve resized copies of your photos, so right-clicking what you see on the page gets you a shrunken version. Go into the platform's media manager and download the originals. If you no longer have the originals anywhere else, this is the only chance you get, and photography is expensive to replace.
- Write down what every feature does. The contact form: which fields, where do submissions go, is anything filtering spam? The booking tool: what does the flow look like, does it take payment, does it sync to a calendar? The store: how many products, are there variants, is there order history worth keeping? This list is what turns a vague quote into a fixed one.
- Screenshot the pages you like. Not because the design comes with you, but because "make it feel like the old one but faster" is a much easier brief to work from when there is a reference.
If you are doing this because the site also needs to look and work better, the audit doubles as the input for a proper brief. How to write a website brief →
Building the forwarding map
Your ranking-preservation map needs three spreadsheet columns: old address, new address, and search-traffic flag. Include every audited address, unchanged ones too, to verify each exists before switching.
Builder-imposed addresses complicate migration more than WordPress. Squarespace blogs use a blog folder, sometimes publication dates. Wix automatically adds post, product, and service folders for blogs, store items, and bookings. Older Wix addresses may retain exclamation marks and hashes from its single-page era.
Preserving folders eliminates forwarding risk; cleaner structures require forwards for every changed address. Retain top traffic pages' original addresses even when ugly: the safest forward is unnecessary. Forward the rest.
Forward retired services to the closest remaining service or services list; never-clicked posts to relevant categories/services. Never send everything home: Google treats unrelated destinations as soft dead ends and passes no ranking authority.
Squarespace URL mappings and Wix redirect-manager rules stop when your domain moves: they live on the platform. Copy existing forwards into your map before cancellation to preserve long-working addresses.
Critical path
The forwarding map has to be finished and signed off before the domain moves. Every row gets tested against a private preview copy of the new site, not against the live one after launch. A forward you discover is broken on Tuesday has already cost you Monday.
The mechanics of this are the same regardless of which platform you are leaving, so the redirect chapter of the WordPress migration guide applies here too. How to migrate off WordPress →
Getting your content out of Squarespace
In Squarespace's settings, open import/export, choose export, select a blog if needed, and wait. The resulting WordPress-format file is plain text; any developer can extract content without WordPress.
Work through what the export gives you first: your standard pages, your text, your basic image blocks, and one blog with its post dates and addresses intact. Those addresses are the useful part. They tell you exactly what to put in the old-address column of your forwarding map without having to transcribe them by hand.
Manually copy product, album, index, and event text from live pages. Download full-size gallery images through the media manager. Custom styling doesn't export usefully or need to: you're rebuilding, not reskinning.
Export platform-stored Squarespace form enquiries to a spreadsheet before cancellation; they're business records lost with the account. Likewise, download marketing-tool email subscribers to a file on your own computer.
The move is also the cheapest moment you will ever get to improve weak pages. Content you carry across unchanged keeps ranking exactly as it did. Content you tighten while you are already touching it can start climbing within weeks, because Google re-reads everything anyway during a rebuild. What pages does a website need →
Getting your content out of Wix
There is no export. This is the single most important sentence in the guide for Wix owners, and it is worth reading twice because almost everyone assumes otherwise. Wix does not provide a way to download your site, your pages, your design, or your content as a file. The site exists on Wix and only on Wix.
Copy live-page text into a document, following your address list to avoid omissions. Five to fifteen pages take a couple of careful hours. One person in one sitting works faster than three piecemeal contributors.
Download original images from Wix's media manager while you retain access. Browser-served copies are resized and recompressed, leaving photos soft at reasonable sizes on the new site.
Blog posts need the same treatment as pages, with one extra step: record each post's publication date alongside its text. Dates matter for how the new site presents the archive and for keeping the addresses consistent, and they are not obvious once the content is sitting in a document with everything else.
Free Wix subdomains cannot forward after account closure because you don't control them; their search authority won't transfer. Buy your own domain today, before launch, so intervening months build authority you own. Choosing and buying a domain →
Building and testing the replacement site
The new site gets built and finished on a private preview address while your Squarespace or Wix site stays live and paid for. There is never a window where visitors land on something half-built. The switch is a single moment at the end, and by the time it happens the new site has already been through everything below.
Here is what a typical six-week move looks like when the content audit is done up front. The parts that depend on you are marked separately, because those are the ones that move the launch date when they slip. How long a website build takes →
- My work
- Your work
- Critical path
Pre-launch test pass
- Every page from the audit exists. Walk the address list row by row against the preview site. A page that quietly did not get rebuilt is far harder to spot than a page that is visibly broken, and the audit list is the only thing that catches it.
- Forms deliver. Submit the contact form and confirm the message arrives in the inbox it is supposed to arrive in, including from a phone on mobile data rather than only from the desk it was built on.
- Search listings carried across. Each page has its own clickable headline and short summary, matching what you recorded in the audit unless you deliberately improved it. Nothing is telling Google to skip pages that should appear in search, which is the most common leftover from a preview build.
- Speed measured against the old site, not in isolation. Run a free speed test on both the current builder site and the preview, on a phone profile, and write both numbers down. The whole point of this move is that the platform runtime is gone, and you want proof of that on paper rather than a vague sense that it feels quicker. See the Core Web Vitals guide for what the numbers mean.
- Every forward tested. Last gate before the switch. Go through the forwarding map line by line against the preview and confirm each old address lands where the map says it should. A forward that loops or lands on the wrong page has to be caught here.
The full pre-launch sequence, including the checks that apply to any new site rather than only to a platform move, is worth running as well. The website launch checklist → Core Web Vitals explained →
The domain, the switch, and the cancellation order
This is the part where sequence matters more than skill. Every step below is easy on its own. Doing them in the wrong order is how sites go dark for a day.
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Three weeks out
Start the domain move
Unlock your Squarespace/Wix domain, request its transfer authorisation code, and initiate transfer at the new registrar. Allow five to seven days; registrations/transfers within 60 days remain locked. Start this unshortenable waiting period first.
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Two days out
Shorten the lookup window
The internet caches where your domain points, often for a full day. Two days before the switch, change that setting so it refreshes every few minutes instead. It means the changeover reaches everyone in minutes rather than trickling through over a day, and it means an undo would take minutes too.
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Launch morning
Certificate first, then the switch
Install the new server's free security certificate before repointing the domain to prevent full-page warnings. Issuance takes minutes. Then point the domain; forwards built into the server activate simultaneously.
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Launch afternoon
Walk the live site
Every page, every form, every forward, on the real domain rather than the preview. Small differences between a preview environment and a live one occasionally surface something the preview never showed. Then submit the updated page map to Search Console so Google starts re-reading immediately instead of finding out on its own schedule.
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Two weeks after
Then, and only then, cancel
Pay one extra Squarespace/Wix billing cycle: a month protects against finding an uncopied page in week three. After a fortnight live with clean search reports, cancel and transfer any remaining platform-registered domain.
Where the domain ends up matters as much as the fact that it moved. It should sit at a registrar you control, in your name, with your email address on it, not in a developer's account and not bundled with whatever hosting you happen to use this year. What to retain when you own a website →
The first 30 days after launch
Launch day is the middle of the project, not the end. The month that follows is when Google re-reads everything, follows the forwards, and decides what your new addresses are worth. Watching it properly costs a few minutes a day and catches the problems while they are still cheap.
Check Search Console daily for two weeks for unloadable pages, dead ends, and forwarding errors. Dead ends reveal unmapped addresses Google remembers. Add missing forwards immediately: a day's fix preserves ranking; a week's delay usually doesn't.
First-week search appearances and positions wobble while Google processes changes. Persistent sharp page-specific drops aren't normal. Check forwarding, then compare headline, main heading, and body text against the original. Nine times out of ten, rebuild trimming caused it.
Watch your analytics for the same period, but read them carefully. Traffic numbers after a platform move look strange for a week simply because tracking has been reinstalled and the old platform's own reporting has stopped. Compare like for like against the same week last month rather than against yesterday. Website analytics 101 →
If your business depends on local search, re-check your Google Business Profile in week one. The website address on it needs updating if any of your addresses changed, and the profile is often the last place anyone remembers to look. Local SEO for small businesses →
After 30 days, restore normal domain lookup timing and compare speed against pre-launch results: clear, often-forgotten evidence of value. Speed optimization → Build pricing →
Key takeaways
- Audit before you cancel. On Wix the live site is your only copy of your content. Capture every address, download every image at full size, and export your form submissions while the account is still open.
- The Squarespace export is partial. It carries standard pages, one blog, and simple images. Products, albums, index pages, events, and custom styling do not come out and have to be collected by hand.
- Wix has no export at all. Plan for a few hours of manual copying rather than looking for a download button that does not exist.
- The forwarding map is the whole game. Builder platforms invent address shapes a hand-built site would not use, so more addresses change than in a typical move. Every one of them needs a forward to a relevant page, never to the home page.
- Redirects set up inside the platform die with it. Anything in Squarespace's URL mappings or Wix's redirect manager stops working the moment your domain points elsewhere. Copy them into the map first.
- Start the domain transfer three weeks out. Five to seven days of holding, plus a 60-day lock if the domain was registered or moved recently. It is the only step with a waiting period you cannot shorten.
- Cancel last, not first. Pay for one more billing cycle after the new site is live. It is the cheapest insurance in the entire project.
Common questions
Will I lose my Google rankings if I move off Squarespace or Wix?
Proper planning preserves rankings: forward every old address to its equivalent and retain page content. Google carries authority across. Squarespace/Wix address structures differ from ordinary sites, so ignoring them creates dead ends. Write the map before rebuilding and test every row on a private preview; the move becomes nearly invisible to search.
Can I export my Squarespace site?
Partly. Squarespace's WordPress-format export includes standard pages, one blog, text, and basic image blocks. It omits products, albums, indexes, events, custom styling, and most specialty blocks. With two blogs, the second stays behind. Treat it as a writing head start; retrieve omissions manually from live pages.
Can I export my Wix site?
No. Wix cannot export pages, layouts, or designs as a working site. Manually copy text page by page and download full-size images from the live site. Five to fifteen pages take a few careful hours. Plan for this work; there's no hidden export setting to discover.
What happens to my domain if it is registered through Squarespace or Wix?
You retain ownership. Unlock the domain, request its transfer code, and initiate transfer at your new registrar. The required five-to-seven-day hold cannot be shortened; domains registered/transferred within 60 days must first finish that lock. Start early: this wait alone can delay migration a week.
When should I cancel my Squarespace or Wix subscription?
Cancel after the replacement answers on your domain. Earlier cancellation removes your content reference, Wix's only copy. Keep one extra billing cycle as insurance against discovering missing content three weeks later. After a couple of live weeks with clean search reports, cancel and transfer the domain if still needed.
What happens to my blog posts and their web addresses?
Posts migrate, often to new addresses. Squarespace uses blog folders and sometimes dates; Wix automatically adds a post folder. Forward each old address to its new location. Posts with no search visits can instead forward to relevant categories/services. Sending everything home reliably loses rankings.
How long does it take and what does it cost?
Five-to-fifteen-page service sites without stores/large blogs take three to six weeks at $2,800–$5,000. Existing copy saves time; extraction, address mapping, and forward testing add it back. Single pages are faster at $1,200–$2,200; larger sites approach $5,500–$10,500. Scope stores, bookings, and member areas separately.
What about my online store, bookings, or member area?
Scope each feature in writing before building. Small catalogues rebuild with payment processors, usually below platform-tier running costs. Bookings integrate scheduling tools or native features. Member areas demand most work; discuss before scheduling.