Squarespace Price Increase: What to Do Before Your Renewal Date

If your Squarespace renewal notice shows a bigger number than last year, you are not imagining it. You also have more room to act than that email suggests. Most owners I talk to about this have read the notice, felt a bit stung, and closed it. That is the one move that guarantees you pay the new price.

So I am going to write to you directly, the way I would if you rang me about it this afternoon.

You chose Squarespace because it looked good and you could get going without hiring anyone. Fair enough. Nothing in this letter says that was a bad decision. What it says is that the deal has changed, and you get to decide whether the new deal still suits your business.

What Squarespace Actually Changed This Summer

There was no big public announcement. Squarespace told customers by email, which is why so many people only noticed when their own notice arrived. PetaPixel, which reported the change on 17 July 2026, said annual-billing prices went up on three of the four website plans: Basic from $16 to $19 a month, Core from $23 to $29 and Plus from $39 to $49, with Advanced left where it was ^[1]. Depending on the plan, that is a rise of somewhere between a fifth and a quarter.

TechRadar followed up at the end of July with a similar range, roughly 18% to 26% across those three plans, plus an important caveat: existing customers may see smaller increases than the headline figures ^[2]. Squarespace's explanation to TechRadar was that it had recently added capabilities to every plan that used to sit only on higher tiers.

Perhaps those features are useful to you. Maybe they are not. Either way, you are now paying for them.

Two things to keep in mind before you do any maths:

• The headline figures are US dollar list prices. The euro prices on Squarespace's own pricing page have shifted since the summer, and promotions come and go, so they are a poor guide to your actual bill.
• Your number is the only number that matters. It is in your renewal email and in the Billing panel of your account. Find it, and write it down beside the renewal date.

The Date Matters More Than the Price

This is the bit most people miss.

Squarespace's own refund policy is clear ^[3]. Annual website plans can be refunded in full if you cancel within 14 days of purchase. Monthly plans are not refunded. Renewal payments are not refunded either, and the policy's advice is simply to cancel before the renewal date if you do not want to be charged.

Read that last part again, because it changes how you should think about the whole decision. The 14-day window protects a first purchase. It does not rescue a renewal. Once an annual plan renews, you have paid for the next twelve months at the new price, whether you stay for all twelve or leave in week two.

You know how this usually goes, right? The email lands in a busy week. You flag it for later. Later turns into the morning the card is charged, and a decision worth a few hundred euro has been made for you, by default, for another year. Nobody chose that outcome. It just happened.

So your first job is not choosing a platform. It is putting the renewal date in your diary, with a reminder set at least three weeks earlier. Three weeks is enough time to decide properly instead of reacting.

Three Honest Options, Side by Side

Once you know the date and the real number, you are choosing between three paths. None of them is wrong for everyone.

Option	What it costs you	What you keep	Who it suits
Stay on your current plan	The new renewal price, and any future rises	Your site exactly as it is	Design-led sites that rarely change
Drop to a cheaper plan	Less per month, plus a cut of online sales on Basic	Your site, with fewer features	Sites that barely use what they pay for
Move to a site you own	A few evenings of rebuilding	Your content, your domain, a fixed price	Businesses that sell, grow or change often

Staying on your current plan

I will be straight with you. For some businesses, staying is the right call. If your website is essentially a beautiful portfolio, say you are a photographer or an illustrator, you like the template, you update it twice a year and it brings in the enquiries you need, the increase probably works out at a few tens of euro a year. Squarespace's templates are genuinely polished. Paying a bit more to keep something that works, and that you enjoy using, is a perfectly rational choice. I would not talk you out of it.

What I would ask is that you make it a decision rather than a default. Price rises on rented platforms rarely happen only once.

Dropping to a cheaper plan

This is the option people reach for first, and it can work. Before you click it, look at what the cheaper plan takes away. Squarespace's current pricing page shows the Basic plan charging a 2% fee on online store sales, which the higher plans do not. Sell gift vouchers, workshops or products through the site? That 2% comes off every sale, on top of what your card processor already charges. On a quiet month it barely registers. Across a busy December it starts to look like real money.

Downgrading treats the symptom, too. You are still on a platform where someone else sets the price every year.

Moving to a site you own

The third option is to leave, and that is where most of the useful detail lives. Leaving a closed website builder is not quite like moving house. Some of the furniture is bolted to the floor.

It helps to be clear on what owning a site actually means. WordPress, the open-source software behind roughly four in ten of all websites according to W3Techs's figures for October 2026 ^[6], cannot reprice you, because nobody rents it to you. You can take it to any host you like. If that sounds abstract, our piece on who actually owns your business website breaks down what you control and what you are only renting.

What Comes With You, and What Stays Behind

Squarespace does have an export tool, and it produces a file that WordPress can import. The catch is the list of what it leaves out. According to Squarespace's own export guide ^[4]:

• What exports: layout pages, one blog with its posts and comments, text blocks, image blocks, gallery pages, and the text from other blocks such as embeds.
• What does not export: store pages and product blocks; album, index and portfolio pages; any blog beyond the first; video and audio blocks; page-specific headers and footers; drafts; style settings and custom CSS.

Squarespace's help centre also describes a separate spreadsheet export for physical and service products. It leaves out featured images, variant images and customer reviews, and it cannot export digital download products at all.

In plain terms? Your words and blog posts come with you. The look of the site, the shop layout and the reviews largely do not.

The limitation worth knowing up front

I am not going to pretend this is a ten-minute job if you run a shop. Squarespace's export guide itself warns that images may not come across when you import into a self-hosted WordPress site, so plan on re-uploading your photos. Product photos and reviews need rebuilding by hand. Forty products with three photos each is an evening or two of steady work, not a single click.

I have got this wrong myself. Some years back I told a business owner what they would save in a year before I had counted their product pages, and the move took them far longer than either of us expected. These days I count the pages first and quote the saving second.

For a five-page brochure site with a blog, though, the picture is very different. Your text exports. The design you would rebuild anyway, because a new platform means a new theme, and that part has become the quick bit.

Your Domain Is a Separate Decision

Plenty of owners panic about their web address, especially those whose domains moved across to Squarespace when it took over Google Domains. Take a breath. Moving your website and moving your domain are two different jobs, and the first does not force the second.

You can leave the domain registered where it is and simply point it at your new site. If you want to move the registration as well, Squarespace's domain transfer guide ^[5] sets out the rules:

• A domain that was registered or transferred in recently can carry a 60-day lock.
• You unlock the domain and request a transfer code from the domains dashboard, and the code is emailed to the domain's contact address.
• The transfer itself can take up to 15 days to complete.

One detail catches people out. Transferring your domain does not cancel your Squarespace site. That subscription has to be cancelled separately, before the renewal date, or it renews anyway.

What a Price That Does Not Move Looks Like

Step back from Squarespace for a moment and think about what you want from whatever comes next. The point of moving is not to swap one renewal surprise for another.

A sensible standard looks something like this:

• The same price at renewal as on day one. No introductory rate, no tier reshuffle.
• Software you can take elsewhere. If the provider lets you down, you leave with your whole site, not a partial export.
• The essentials included. Hosting, SSL, backups and security should not be add-ons you discover later.
• No cut of your sales. Your payment provider charges a processing fee. Your website platform should not take a second slice.
• A quick way to build. If rebuilding takes six weeks, the saving is not worth the disruption.

Web60 was built to meet that standard. It runs full WordPress, so the ownership question is settled: open-source software you can move whenever you like. Web60's €60-a-year all-inclusive plan covers hosting, SSL, automatic nightly backups with one-click restore, server-level security hardening and malware scanning, with no hidden fees, upsells or per-feature charges. Set that against a Core plan that now runs to a few hundred euro a year before you add anything.

The rebuild, the part that used to put people off WordPress, is where AI has changed the maths. You describe your business, the AI Website Builder produces a fully designed WordPress site in under a minute, and your evenings go on moving your words and photos across rather than wrestling with layouts. Your data stays on Irish infrastructure, and if you get stuck, the support team is Irish-based and human.

Consider a typical case, the kind of conversation I find myself having a lot this autumn. A garden designer in Wicklow, renewal due in November, runs a Squarespace portfolio with a small shop selling design consultations and gift vouchers. The renewal notice came in noticeably higher. Staying on Core means paying more for features the business does not use. Dropping to Basic means a 2% cut of every voucher sold in the run-up to Christmas, the busiest stretch of the year for them. For a site like that, mostly text and photos with a handful of products, the rebuild is a weekend's work, and a fixed price takes the renewal question off the table for good.

If you want a fuller side-by-side of the two platforms beyond price, our comparison of what Squarespace owners hit at year two goes through design, SEO and selling online in detail.

Before the Card Is Charged: Four Steps

1. Verify the renewal date and amount. Open the Billing panel, note the exact date and the new price, and set a reminder three weeks ahead.
2. Audit what you actually use. List your pages, products and blog posts, plus any feature you would genuinely miss.
3. Export and save everything. Run the WordPress export, download the product spreadsheet and your order history, and keep copies of your original photos.
4. Build and verify before you cancel. Get the new site working and checked on a free temporary address first (on Web60 that is a smartsitebuilder.ie subdomain), then point your domain at it and cancel Squarespace before the renewal date.

Where This Leaves You

The price rise itself is not a disaster. For most small sites it amounts to tens of euro a year, perhaps a little over a hundred. What deserves your attention is the pattern behind it. A platform you rent can change the deal every year, and the renewal date is the one moment you get to answer back.

So find that date this week. Decide whether the site you have is worth the new price to you. If it is, stay with a clear conscience and a reminder in your diary for next year. If it is not, you have time to build something you own, on a price that will not move, before anyone charges your card.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much has Squarespace increased its prices?

PetaPixel reported in July 2026 that annual-billing prices rose on three of the four website plans: Basic from $16 to $19 a month, Core from $23 to $29 and Plus from $39 to $49, with Advanced unchanged. TechRadar put the rise at roughly 18% to 26% and noted that existing customers may see smaller increases. Your renewal email and the Billing panel in your account show the amount you will actually pay.

Can I get a refund on a Squarespace renewal?

Not under Squarespace's published refund policy. Annual website plans can be refunded within 14 days of purchase, but renewal payments and monthly plans are not refundable. If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel before your renewal date.

Can I move my Squarespace site to WordPress?

Yes, partly. Squarespace exports layout pages, one blog, text and image blocks and gallery pages in a file WordPress can import. Store pages, product blocks, extra blogs, video blocks, custom CSS and style settings do not export, and images may need re-uploading. Physical and service products can be exported separately as a spreadsheet, without featured images or reviews.

Will I lose my domain name if I leave Squarespace?

No. You can keep the domain registered with Squarespace and point it at your new site, or transfer it away. Squarespace says transfers can take up to 15 days and that a recently registered or transferred domain may carry a 60-day lock. Transferring the domain does not cancel your Squarespace website subscription, so cancel that separately before the renewal date.

Is it worth leaving Squarespace because of the price increase?

It depends on your site. A simple portfolio you rarely change may well be worth an extra few tens of euro a year. If you sell online, update often or want a price that does not change at renewal, moving to WordPress on an all-inclusive plan usually costs less over a few years and removes the renewal surprise.

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