MigrationsSquarespaceWebflowRoute 01 of 4
Squarespace to Webflow, with every ranking still attached when you arrive
The move itself is routine. What is not routine is what Squarespace hands you on the way out: an export that is a partial content dump rather than a backup, and a set of URLs your collections chose rather than you. Both are handled before anything points at your domain.
What a template decides for you
- Where a section can sit, and what shape it can beAny layout you can draw, at every breakpoint
- What a blog post is allowed to containFields you define, per collection, per template
- Which type sizes and spacing steps existOne scale, set once, reused everywhere
- How each collection shapes its item URLsThe URL structure, chosen deliberately
- What an interaction is allowed to doReal motion, authored and held at 60fps
- Where the design ends and code injection startsNo injection needed to change how it looks
7.1 unified the template families and loosened much of this. The section-and-block model still sets the shape of every page, and anything outside it is still code injection, which is a fine tool and a poor foundation.
The export is not a backup, and treating it as one loses content
Squarespace exports a WordPress-format XML file. It is genuinely useful and it is genuinely partial, so on this route the inventory is built from four places at once, and the live site is the authority until the day it is switched off.
In the file
- Basic pages and their text content
- One blog page, with its posts and post text
- Blog comments, where there are any
- Text, image, embed and markdown block content
Not in the file
- Product pages and any Commerce data
- Event pages and album pages
- Gallery pages and gallery block images
- Audio blocks and product blocks
- Custom CSS and every style setting
- A second, third or fourth blog page
- Form submissions already collected
- Files served from the /s/ path
So where the rest comes from
A full crawl of the live site, the sitemap Squarespace generates, the indexed pages in Search Console and the landing pages in analytics. Four lists, reconciled into one, and the disagreements between them are exactly where the orphaned pages live.
Images sit on the Squarespace CDN with sizing parameters on the end of every URL. They come down at full size and go up to Webflow as real assets. Nothing is hotlinked back, because a hotlinked image dies the day the subscription does.
The files under /s/ (brochures, price lists, menus) are the ones people forget, and the ones other websites have linked to for years. They are inventoried and redirected like any other page.
Blocks become fields. Collections become collections.
Nothing converts automatically between the two platforms, and any agency that says otherwise is about to hand you a site full of embedded screenshots. Every row below is re-authored. The third column is where the time actually goes.
Blog collection
CMS Collection plus a collection page template
The post body becomes a rich text field. Blocks sitting inside a post (galleries, buttons, code, summaries) are re-authored as rich text elements or as embeds; they do not survive as blocks.
Categories and tags
A categories collection and a reference field
Squarespace generated an archive page for every category and tag for free. In Webflow those pages exist because you built them, and if you do not build them, every one of those URLs needs a destination.
Summary blocks and index pages
Collection lists, with filters and sorts
The same dynamic behaviour, authored once rather than configured per page. This is usually where a Squarespace site gets faster.
Events collection
CMS collection with date fields
The list, the detail page and the past-events split are a build. The calendar view is a build too, not a setting.
Gallery pages and blocks
A collection, or a slider component
Images come down at full size from the Squarespace CDN and go up to Webflow. Nothing is hotlinked, because hotlinked assets die with the subscription.
Squarespace Commerce products
Webflow Ecommerce, or no move at all
If the shop is the business, read the honest part of the Shopify route first. Every warning on it applies here, and a small catalogue is the only comfortable case.
Forms and newsletter blocks
Webflow forms, with Zapier behind them
Existing submissions are exported before anything is switched off. They do not migrate, and the archive is often the only copy of a year of enquiries.
Member Areas
Memberstack, or a genuine reconsideration
Gating content is straightforward. Gating with the same accounts, the same billing and the same history is not: passwords never transfer from any platform.
Custom CSS and code injection
Real styles, and far less injected code
Most injected CSS on a Squarespace site exists to fight the template. On Webflow that fight is over, so the code comes out rather than coming across.
Acuity Scheduling
Untouched, embedded as it is today
It is a separate product and it keeps running. If it is doing most of the work your site does, say so early, it changes whether this move is worth making.
Selling through Squarespace Commerce? The commerce warnings on the Shopify route apply to you word for word. A small catalogue moves comfortably; an operation does not.
The redirect map, in Squarespace’s own URL shapes
Squarespace derives an item’s URL from the collection it lives in, so the prefixes are predictable, which is good news, because predictable patterns take wildcard rules instead of one row per page.
| Squarespace URL | Webflow URL | Rule | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
/blog/post-title | /blog/post-title | Unchanged | The cheapest protection there is. Kept wherever the slug is sane. |
/blog/2023/5/12/post-title | /blog/post-title | 301 · wildcard | The dated format changes every post URL. One rule, not four hundred rows. |
/blog/category/pricing | /blog/category/pricing | Rebuilt | Only if the archive is rebuilt as a collection page. Otherwise it points at /blog. |
/blog/tag/webflow | /blog | 301 · section | Tag archives rarely earn their keep. Retire them on purpose, not by accident. |
/events/2024/6/1/talk | /events/talk | 301 · wildcard | The events collection carries the same dated shape as the blog. |
/s/brochure.pdf | /assets/brochure.pdf | 301 · one-to-one | The /s/ path is where third parties link. It is also the one everybody forgets. |
/old-folder/page | /page | 301 · one-to-one | A page inside a Squarespace folder inherits the folder in its URL. Moving it out changes it. |
Scroll the table sideways to read every column.
Two Squarespace traps worth naming
Not Linked pages. Squarespace keeps a section of pages that no navigation points at but that are live, indexed and often linked from an email campaign three years ago. A crawl of the navigation will never find them; the sitemap and Search Console will.
Folders. A page inside a folder carries the folder in its URL. Rearranging the navigation on the way across therefore rewrites URLs that had no reason to change, so the structure is decided first, in writing, and the map is built from that decision rather than discovered afterwards.
Six phases, and the one where the export stops being enough
Most projects run four to eight weeks end to end, across discovery, design, build, QA and launch. Timelines hold because the sequence is the same every time. This route spends its first phase reconciling four different lists of what your site actually is, and its last one waiting rather than cancelling.
Export and crawl, both
The XML export, a full crawl of the live site, the Squarespace sitemap and the indexed pages in Search Console, reconciled into one list, because the four disagree and the differences are exactly where the orphaned pages are.
YoursOwner access to Squarespace, Search Console and analytics.
Model the collections
Every Squarespace collection becomes a CMS collection with named fields. This is where a blog with four kinds of post stops pretending to be one kind of post.
YoursHalf an hour to tell us which fields your team actually fills in.
Take back the decisions
Design for the pages the template was shaping: the ones where the layout is a compromise, and the ones where injected CSS is holding something together.
YoursBrand assets, and a decision on anything being retired rather than moved.
Build, and move the content
The Webflow build on a staging domain, content into the CMS, every asset re-uploaded at full size rather than linked back to the Squarespace CDN.
YoursSign-off that nothing important is missing. You know the pages we do not.
Parity, then load the map
Page-by-page parity against the old site while it is still live, then every redirect rule entered and fired against the real URL list on staging.
YoursCheck the pages that make you money, the way your customers use them.
Cutover, then wait to cancel
TTL down, DNS across, sitemap submitted, logs watched. The Squarespace subscription stays open until the content is verifiably all across, the moment that site is unpublished, the only complete copy of it goes with it.
YoursNothing on the day. Do not cancel the old plan because the invoice arrived.
What a template-shaped site looks like once the template is gone
Defy Facial Spa was a build rather than a Squarespace migration, and we are not going to claim otherwise. What it shows is the outcome this route is aimed at: a treatment menu rebuilt underneath the booking action, and organic traffic measured after launch.
Defy Facial Spa
Spa & cosmetic 2023
Rebuilt from the treatment menu up, so booking became the shortest path on every page.
- +35%
- organic traffic
- +25%
- bookings
When you should not move off Squarespace
Squarespace is a good product that a great many businesses should keep paying for. These are the five cases where we say so on the first call, and there is no proposal.
Five pages, one editor, no blog
If the site is a business card that changes twice a year, Squarespace is doing its job and Webflow will not make you money. Spend the budget on something that will.
The shop is the business and it works
A catalogue already running inside Squarespace Commerce, with no complaints from the people packing the boxes, is not a migration candidate. It is a working system.
The template has never actually refused you
Template lock-in is only a cost when it bites. If nobody has ever asked for a layout and been told no, you are paying to solve a problem you do not have.
Scheduling is what the site really does
When ninety per cent of the value is an Acuity embed, moving the pages around it is cosmetic. The embed works the same on either platform.
The content is thin and the budget is not large
A thin site moved to Webflow is a fast thin site. Fix the content first, on Squarespace, where it costs nothing to try.
The case for moving is a specific one: the template is refusing you layouts you need, the content has outgrown one blog collection, or search is worth more to you than the subscription saved. If none of those is true, stay where you are.