Migrating from Squarespace to Payload.
We move teams off Squarespace and onto Payload, pages, assets, URLs and search rankings intact. Tell us what you're running below and we'll scope the move.
What the migration involves
A Squarespace exit starts with one correction: the site export is a WordPress-format .xml file for supported content, not a backup of the site. Squarespace's own guide says not everything exports, because many features rely on its JavaScript and CSS. Layout pages, one blog with its posts and comments, text and image blocks and gallery pages come across. Album, cover, index, info, calendar, portfolio and store pages do not, nor do drafts, style settings, custom CSS, dropdowns, or audio, video and product blocks. Products are a separate CSV, and nothing in Squarespace's member documentation describes moving member accounts or their subscriptions at all.
Staying is often the right answer, and it is worth saying plainly. Squarespace runs the hosting, the certificate, the updates and the commerce plumbing, and a team without engineering capacity gets all of that for a subscription. If the site is a handful of pages and a blog, the design is doing its job, and nobody is fighting the platform, a migration buys ownership you may not need. The move earns its place when the model has outgrown what the blocks express, when the content has to feed something else, or when the front end needs to be yours.
Start with a trial export and a walk through the live site to list what is missing. Assign owners for re-authoring unsupported pages, preserving comments and drafts, and collecting product images and alt text. For paying members, establish whether the billing provider supports the proposed move and plan any required re-enrolment before promising a cutover date. That inventory and those decisions turn a quote into a scope.
What transfers and what gets rebuilt
Vendor pages read 14 September 2026: Exporting your site, Exporting products to a CSV, Managing members.
The breakdown below assumes a content-led business site: layout pages, one blog, a gallery, images throughout, a contact form and a small shop of physical products. Adjust the rows against your own estate before costing anything. Squarespace facts are from its own documentation on the date given; the Payload side names the official plugin where one exists.
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Pages and blog content
- Comes across
- Layout pages and version 7.0 gallery pages, plus one blog with all its posts and up to 1,000 comments each. Text and image blocks travel with them; embed and Instagram blocks arrive as text with minimal structure.
- Gets rebuilt
- Album, cover, index, info, calendar, portfolio and store pages are re-authored, and so are drafts, dropdowns, audio, video and product blocks, a second blog, and anything placed in a page-specific header, footer or sidebar. What does export is markup, so the structure a CMS can query still has to be designed.
CheckMatch the published page and post counts, then read the ten longest pages against the live site. Length alone will not catch a missing embed.
OwnerContent owner, with an engineer on the model
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Images and media files
- Comes across
- Image blocks export in the XML. Squarespace warns that an importer may not retrieve every image and recommends checking the destination media library or downloading images manually.
- Gets rebuilt
- Treat fetching the files as its own step: collect them from the live site, load them into an upload collection and re-link them. Confirm what your importer actually pulls before trusting a count.
CheckCrawl the new site for broken images, and check the largest originals arrived at full resolution.
OwnerEngineer
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Design, layout and custom code
- Comes across
- Nothing. Style settings and custom CSS are on the does-not-export list, and Squarespace says many features rely on its own JavaScript and CSS.
- Gets rebuilt
- The destination needs its own front end, using agreed templates or a custom build. Scope layouts, responsive behaviour and custom interactions explicitly; the content export does not reproduce them.
CheckAgree the templates that matter before the build starts, then review them against the live pages.
OwnerDesign and front-end
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Forms and integrations
- Comes across
- Neither form blocks nor stored submissions appear in what Squarespace says exports. Analytics, email, booking and chat tools are configured inside Squarespace and do not travel either.
- Gets rebuilt
- Forms are rebuilt on Payload's official Form Builder plugin, which makes the fields and storage configuration and leaves delivery and any CRM hand-off as integration work. Every third-party tool is reconnected at its own service.
CheckSend a real submission through each form and confirm it lands where the old one did. Check each integration is reporting again.
OwnerEngineer, with whoever receives the enquiries
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Products
- Comes across
- Physical and service products export to a CSV, up to 10,000, in the import CSV format plus a column for pages. Additional product information, customer reviews, featured images, product image alt text and variant images are not included.
- Gets rebuilt
- Map the product CSV to the destination schema. Collect excluded images, alt text and reviews separately while the old store is available; do not assume they are lost just because they are absent from the CSV. Payload has official Ecommerce and Stripe plugins, but the storefront, checkout and integrations still need to be built and tested.
CheckMatch the product count, then open a variant-heavy product and confirm every image and its alt text is there.
OwnerMerchandiser and engineer
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Customers, members and subscriptions
- Comes across
- Squarespace documents a membership-order CSV with purchased plans and membership or subscription dates. That is useful reconciliation data, but the guide does not establish a transfer of login credentials, gated access or recurring billing to another platform.
- Gets rebuilt
- Inventory accounts, entitlements, plans and the payment provider separately. Confirm supported migration options with Squarespace and that provider; re-subscription may be needed, but the content export alone cannot decide that. Scope Payload authentication, gated access and billing integration explicitly, including any member communication and re-enrolment.
CheckReconcile members and paid-through dates, test login and gated access for each plan, and confirm renewals and cancellations reach the intended billing system without duplicate charges.
OwnerWhoever owns the customer relationship, with finance
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URLs and search visibility
- Comes across
- The exports are not a complete redirect map or search inventory. Capture the live URL set by sitemap and crawl while the site is still up, and retain any paths present in the export for reconciliation.
- Gets rebuilt
- Every old URL is mapped to its new route and implemented as single-hop redirects. Payload has official Redirects and SEO plugins. Titles and descriptions travel only where the export carried them, so check rather than assume.
CheckCrawl the captured URL list against the new site and confirm each one resolves in one hop, not two.
OwnerEngineer
Who runs the migration
We are a Payload partner agency and a top contributor to the project. When something in the platform needs attention, we have direct access to the maintainers.
We have run this kind of move at enterprise scale. We migrated Ingersoll Rand's China sites off Oracle Content Manager in five months, with zero downtime at cutover, and we built the Council of Europe Development Bank's events platform to the deadline of their 70-year anniversary.
The first conversation is a free consultation. Scope, cost, and timing are agreed before any work starts.