Migration
Moving off Squarespace or Wix without breaking things
Website builders are good products, and outgrowing one is a normal thing to do rather than a mistake to regret. The move is usually less painful than people fear — but there are two or three places where it goes badly wrong, and they're mostly about email and redirects rather than about the website itself.
Rather just ask someone? Talk to usIn short
Your domain and written content come with you; your design, forms, integrations and any builder-specific features do not, and generally have to be rebuilt. The two things that actually break businesses are email going down during a DNS change and old page addresses losing their redirects — plan both before you touch anything.
What actually works
Work out where your email actually lives first
This is the single most common way a migration hurts a business. If your mailboxes are bundled with the builder, moving the site can take your email with it. Establish who hosts the mailboxes and what happens to them before you change a single DNS record.
Confirm you control the domain
If the builder registered it for you, make sure the account is in your business's name and that you can unlock it and get the transfer code. Sort this early — registrar processes take days, not minutes.
Export everything before you cancel anything
Pages, posts, images, product data, customer records, form submissions. Once the subscription lapses, access usually goes with it. Take a full crawl of the live site as well, so you have a record of every URL and every word.
Build the redirect map from the old URL structure
Builders use their own patterns, and your new site almost certainly won't match. Every old address needs a 301 to its new equivalent, in place on launch day. This is what protects your rankings.
Rebuild the design rather than trying to copy it
Templates don't transfer, and recreating one pixel for pixel is usually the most expensive way to end up where you started. Take the migration as the opportunity to fix what never worked.
Re-do the integrations deliberately
Booking, payments, mailing list, reviews, chat, analytics. List every one currently in use, decide which are still earning their place, and set them up properly rather than reproducing a decade of accumulation.
Keep the old site live until the new one is verified
Build on a staging URL, verify everything, then switch. Don't cancel the builder subscription for at least a month afterwards — it's cheap insurance and it's the only copy of things you'll discover you forgot.
Do the DNS cutover with low TTL and a clear head
Drop the TTL a day ahead so the change propagates quickly, keep the mail records exactly as they are unless email is deliberately moving, and do it on a quiet weekday morning.
What comes with you
Roughly consistent across the major builders. Check yours before committing to a date.
| Criteria | Comes across | Has to be rebuilt |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Yes — transfer or repoint it | — |
| Written content | Yes, by export or by hand | — |
| Images | Yes, downloadable | Often need resizing properly |
| Blog posts | Usually, via export | Formatting and embeds |
| Design and layout | — | Rebuilt; the template doesn't travel |
| Forms | — | Rebuilt, plus new delivery and storage |
| Shop and products | Product data usually exports | Checkout, payments, shipping rules |
| Mailbox contents stay with the provider | May need a new provider entirely | |
| Rankings | Kept, if you redirect properly | Lost, if you don't |
When this isn't your problem
If the builder is doing what you need and the only complaint is the monthly fee, staying is often the right answer — a custom site is a bigger commitment and it needs maintaining. The reasons to move are real limits: things you can't build, performance you can't fix, or a business that has outgrown the platform's ceiling.
Want us to look at it?
Send us your site and what you're trying to improve. We'll tell you what we'd do first — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.
Common questions
Not if you redirect properly. Map every old URL to its new equivalent with a 301, keep the content that ranks, and submit a new sitemap. Migrations that lose traffic almost always skipped the redirect map.
Partly. You can generally export written content and blog posts and download your images. Design, forms, integrations and platform-specific features don't transfer and have to be rebuilt. Export everything before you cancel — access ends with the subscription.
It depends on who hosts the mailboxes. If they're bundled with the builder you may need to move to a separate provider, which is a project of its own. If they're already with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the site can move without touching them — just leave the mail DNS records alone.
For a small business site, typically two to four weeks and $3,000 to $10,000 depending on how much is being rebuilt rather than copied. Shops with a lot of products or complex integrations run longer.
It's one option and it suits content-heavy sites, but it carries a real maintenance burden — updates, plugins, security. For a small business marketing site a modern static or server-rendered build is usually faster, safer and cheaper to keep running. The right answer depends on who will be editing it.
Also worth a look
- How to Redesign Without Losing Your Google Rankings
- Why Your Website Is Slow, and What It's Costing You
- How to Rank Locally in Your Own Town
- Weighing up who should build it, and what it should cost?
Last reviewed . Figures are indicative Australian ranges, not quotes.