To migrate from squarespace to wordpress you are not unpacking a WordPress site that happens to wear another logo. Squarespace will not hand you a database, a theme, or a wp-content folder. You are rebuilding the pages that matter, on a deadline set by the day the subscription ends.
This page is the traps in that rebuild. The URL-map method for a hosted builder is already written for Wix, and it applies here as a method, on the Wix-to-WordPress move.
There is no archive to import
A wordpress plugin for a host-to-host copy has nothing to chew on until the content lives in WordPress. Squarespace’s export, where a blog is concerned, is not a SQL dump and it is not your media library. Pages built from blocks, product options, and member-only areas do not arrive as editable WordPress objects. If the plan was “install a plugin and upload the file”, the plan was for a different source.
Treat the export as a reference, not as the new site. Open it. See which titles came across, and which page types came across as an empty title and a pile of HTML you would not want to maintain.
Then decide what a person will rebuild by hand. That decision is the schedule. The plugin work starts only after a WordPress install has real pages in it.
The plugin pitfalls are for that later hour, not for this one.
Images that still live on the old host
Look at the src of a dozen images on the new pages before you feel finished. If the host name in that URL is still Squarespace, you have not migrated the picture. You have hotlinked it. The day the subscription lapses, those pictures 404, and the pages that ranked because of them thin out in a single night.
Download the files, put them in the WordPress media library, and point the pages at those files. Then cancel. The order is the whole trick. Cancelling first, because the card was due, is how a finished-looking launch loses its catalogue over a weekend.
Weight comes with the file. A product template we took over carried a 15 MB image in the first screen. Hundreds of product URLs then failed Core Web Vitals.
The server was not the cause. Google’s published targets are an LCP within 2.5 seconds, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less, and a CLS of 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of real loads. The write-up is web.dev’s Web Vitals.
A design export will not shrink that file for you. Check the heaviest image on the new homepage before you call the theme done. What a template is allowed to weigh, once you are choosing a WordPress design, is on the templates and builders page.
Forms, members, and the entries that stay behind
Squarespace form entries live in Squarespace. They do not become Contact Form 7 records, and they do not become WooCommerce orders, just because the new site has those plugins. Download the entries as a file you can open, while you can still log in. If you skip that, the history is gone when the plan ends, and no WordPress backup will invent it.
Member areas, scheduling blocks, and newsletter tools are the same shape of problem. Each one is a product you were renting. List them on paper.
For each, name the WordPress replacement, or name the decision to drop it. A website migration checklist that says “content, design, DNS” and never mentions these rentals is a checklist for a brochure, not for the site you have.
Code injection and custom CSS do not survive as a stylesheet you can trust. Copy the rules you still need into the new theme on purpose. Do not paste the entire injection box into a WordPress header and hope. Half of it will reference Squarespace classes that no longer exist, and the half that breaks layout will be the half you notice on a phone.
The checklist, narrowed to this source
A generic plan to migrate a website is four lines long and it hides the failure. For this source the lines are different. Make the URL map while Squarespace still answers, one old path to one new path.
Rebuild the pages that sell, and stop reproducing pages that only existed because the template offered a block. Bring the images onto your disk. Export the form history.
Stand up the new form and send one message to a mailbox a person reads. Point DNS only after those five are true. Then, and only then, set a date to cancel.
Redirects still have to be one hop, from the old path to the same document. Sending every old URL to the new homepage tells Google the old catalogue was a doorway. The Wix page covers how to build that map without losing the only asset the hosted builder really gives you, which is the list of URLs.
Use that method. Don’t rebuild it from memory on the night the DNS changes.
Mail and the name, on the cutover day
Changing the public name is a further split. The registration, the DNS, and the strings inside WordPress do not share a clock. That checklist is moving a WordPress site to a new domain. Don’t fold it into the Squarespace export.
Squarespace may also be where the domain’s mail is hosted, or where the DNS is edited. Moving the website and moving the MX records are separate edits. Do the site first, on records that do not touch mail, unless you have already built the new mailbox and tested it.
The new WordPress form is a new sender. It can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with Squarespace: a From address the server is not allowed to use, or a captcha key registered to the old host name. The layer test for mail is finding which layer dropped the message.
Run it on the new form before you announce the launch. A launch email that asks customers to use a form which cannot write back is a quiet week.
Permalinks are a choice you write down
Squarespace paths often carry a collection slug, or they skip a date your new permalink screen would add by default. Decide the new structure before the tenth page exists. Changing it afterwards is a second redirect map, and you will already be tired of the first one.
Write the pattern in one line. A product lives at /product/the-name/. A post lives at /blog/the-name/.
Or whatever you can still explain in a year. Then create pages to match the line. A site that grew its URLs from three different screens will not redirect cleanly, because nobody can say what the old path was supposed to become.
A catalogue is not a blog import
If the old site listed products, those records are a catalogue. An XML import that drops them into posts gives you a blog a buyer cannot filter, sort, or enquire against. The easy import is the expensive one six weeks later, when someone has to move two hundred titles a second time.
Choose the object first. A product type with real fields, or a shop plugin if you take payment on the site. Paste titles only after that choice.
The brief for a manufacturer catalogue, as opposed to a visual copy of the old template, is the one to settle here. Pasting first feels like progress. It is how the Squarespace layout gets rebuilt by accident, including the oversized first image.
A staging name is not a delay
Build on a hostname you can leave unindexed. Give the client that ugly URL. The public DNS change is the last edit, after the image host names, the form test, and a sample of redirects.
Editors who “just point the domain so we can see it” skip those checks, because the announcement instinct arrives with the real name. Keep the real name in your pocket until a search of the staging site for the Squarespace host returns nothing you still need.
Which image URLs still contain the old host? That is the search. Run it on the homepage and on two product pages. If the answer is not “none”, you are not ready to cancel.
Sample ten old URLs, then talk
Take ten old URLs from the page list or from analytics, not from memory. After DNS, request each one. You want one 301, then a 200 on the page that matches. A 302, a chain of three hosts, or a soft landing on the homepage fails the sample.
Fix the map before you tell customers. A launch note sent over a failed sample is how the old URLs in other people’s emails start 404ing in public. Ten URLs will not catch everything. They will catch a rule that sends the whole catalogue to the front page, which is the failure that actually hurts.
Name the person who pastes the words
A weekend booked for “the developer” stalls when the text is still inside Squarespace and the developer will not rewrite product descriptions. That rewrite is a content job. Put a name and a date on it, separate from the DNS date.
Put a second name on the phone check. Layouts that looked finished on a wide monitor lose the enquiry button below a hero that was never resized. The 15 MB file and the missing button are the same class of surprise. Someone has to open the page on a phone before the cancellation date, not after a customer sends a screenshot.
What you should not expect the new site to inherit
Squarespace analytics, Squarespace commerce reports, and the old password list do not come with you. Plan the measurement on the new site as a new property. Plan passwords as a reset, not as an import of hashes you do not have.
Tell the people who had accounts, in a sentence, that they will set a password again. Silence here becomes a support queue you could have skipped.
Rankings are the other non-inheritance. Nobody can guarantee the new URLs will hold the old positions. Google says no one can guarantee a number-one ranking, on Do you need an SEO?
Keeping the same document at the end of a single redirect, with the same words a buyer needs, is the part you control. The rest is observation, not a line in the proposal.
If the new site is a B2B catalogue rather than a copy of the old brochure, decide that before the rebuild, not during it. The page on what buyers look for on a manufacturer site is a different brief from “make it look like Squarespace”. Pick the brief first. The blocks will follow it, or they will follow the template, and the template is how the 15 MB image got into the first screen last time.
Write the cancellation date on the same page as the URL map. A migration that cannot name the day the old host stops serving images is not finished. It is rented.
Questions before you cancel Squarespace
Will a WordPress migration plugin import Squarespace?
Not until the content is already in WordPress. Squarespace does not hand you a database or wp-content. The plugin work starts after someone rebuilds the pages that matter.
When is it safe to cancel?
After images are on your disk, form entries are downloaded, one test message arrives, and a sample of old URLs 301 to the matching new pages. Cancelling first drops the pictures that were still hotlinked.
Do Squarespace form entries become Contact Form 7 records?
No. Download them as a file you can open while you can still log in. Member areas and scheduling tools are rentals too. Name a replacement or name the decision to drop them.
Do the old rankings move on their own?
No. Google says no one can guarantee a number-one ranking. One redirect from the old path to the same document is the part you control.