Should You Leave Squarespace After the 2026 Price Increase? An Honest Take
A client messaged me last week in a bit of a panic. She'd just opened one of those cheery little emails, the kind that dresses up bad news in friendly language, telling her that her website was about to cost quite a bit more. Her message to me was short. "Right, that's it. Where do we go instead?"
If you've had the same email and the same gut reaction, you're in very good company. Squarespace has put its prices up, and people are not happy about it.
Head to social media right now and the frustration is everywhere. One widely shared post from a long time user summed the mood up perfectly. She was cancelling and deleting her account because, in her words, the company had "lost their everlasting minds." It's generated hundreds of comments, and scrolling through them is a proper snapshot of how the whole community is feeling at the moment.
So let's talk about it properly. I build websites on Squarespace for a living, so I'm not here to defend a price rise nobody asked for. But I also don't want you making an expensive, stressful decision in a moment of very understandable anger. Here's my honest take on whether you should actually leave, and what I told that client when she asked me the same thing.
First, what's actually changed?
The short version is that prices have gone up, and it's a dramatic jump. Steep enough that when people see the new figure written out as one annual number, it lands like a punch. It's not a quiet little inflation nudge. It's the sort of increase that makes you stop and question the whole thing, which is exactly why so many people are talking about it.
Here's the part that catches people out, though. Most existing customers aren't being charged more overnight. Squarespace bills annually, so you feel it when your own renewal date rolls around, not the day the news breaks. That's why the anger is building in waves rather than all at once. Someone renews, gets the new price, posts about it, and off we go again.
The upshot is that this is a good moment to review your setup calmly, well before your renewal lands, rather than a moment to panic.
The community isn't wrong to be annoyed
Let me be really clear about something. The frustration is completely valid, and I'm not going to try to talk anyone out of how they feel.
The comments are full of people who genuinely loved the platform and feel let down. One person cut straight to the heart of it, asking why they were being charged more "like with no added features?" That's the real sting. It isn't just that it costs more. It's paying more for exactly the same thing you had yesterday. Another was blunter still. "I feel abused." Someone who'd been a loyal customer for years wrote, "I really like them. It's a shame. I will most certainly not be renewing."
It wasn't only site owners either. A few web designers chimed in, with one saying she has "so many website clients leaving." And a comment of the lot came from someone replying to a person who felt trapped by the sheer effort of moving. Four words. "That's what they're banking on."
That one stuck with me, because it's sharp and it's true, and it cuts in both directions. Yes, Squarespace is almost certainly counting on the fact that most of us can't be bothered to move. But before you let that push you out the door, there are two things worth sitting with.
First, whether it's really fair to say nothing has changed, and second, what walking away would actually cost you.
In fairness, it hasn't stood still
So much of the anger boils down to a single line. Paying more for no added features.
I understand exactly why it feels that way, because the things that have changed are really easy to miss if you're not the sort of person who reads release notes for fun. But it isn't quite true that nothing's new.
Squarespace has actually poured a lot into the platform recently, and a fair chunk of it is genuinely useful. There's a whole suite of AI design and content tools now that help you write your website copy, your product descriptions and your email campaigns. There are proper SEO tools built in, including a scanner that checks your page titles, descriptions and alt text and fixes them in a click.
On the business side there's automatic tax handling, and Tap to Pay so you can take card payments straight from your phone with no card reader. Under the bonnet, the editor itself has had a serious upgrade for finer control over your layouts - it’s called ‘stacks’.
Now, none of that makes a price rise feel good, and you might personally never touch half of it. That's completely fair. But "they've done nothing and just want more money" isn't really the honest version of events. The platform has been investing, particularly in AI and in helping you actually get found, and that's worth weighing in the balance before you write it off.
What leaving actually costs you
The instinct when a company hikes its prices is a very natural one. Fine, I'll take my business elsewhere. Completely fair in principle. The problem is that a website is not a phone contract you can port over in an afternoon. Moving off Squarespace carries real costs, and almost none of them show up on the pricing page.
Let me walk you through the ones people forget.
Your time, and it's a lot more than you think.
Rebuilding a site is not a rainy Sunday job. Every page has to be laid out again. Every image reuploaded and reoptimised. Every scrap of copy poured into a new system that does everything its own way. One commenter painted the picture beautifully. She runs an art shop with, in her words, "over 200 art listings, print shop, memberships, courses and 3k email subscribers." She doesn't like the increase one bit. She just, very reasonably, does not fancy rebuilding all of that from scratch. If your time is worth anything, and it absolutely is, that's the biggest invisible bill of the lot.
Money you weren't expecting to spend.
This is the one that really gets people. "Free" alternatives rarely stay free once you add the bits that make a website actually work. A move to WordPress, which loads of people in the comments recommended, often means paying separately for hosting, a premium theme, a page builder, security plugins, backups, and very often a developer to stitch it all together and keep it running. It's a perfectly good route, and some of the suggestions flying around were solid ones. But "the platform of the people" comes with a running to do list that Squarespace quietly handles for you in the background. You don't notice everything it does until you're the one doing it.
Your SEO, which is the cost that hurts most quietly.
This is the big one, and it's the thing I most want you to understand before you jump. Here's a story I've seen play out more than once. A business gets fed up, rebuilds somewhere new in a hurry, and flips the switch without mapping their old web addresses to the new ones. Within a few weeks their traffic quietly falls off a cliff. Enquiries dry up. Nobody can work out why, because the site looks lovely. What's happened is that Google has effectively met a brand new website, and all the ranking you'd earned over years has evaporated. Done properly, with your old links carefully redirected to the matching new pages and your page structure preserved, the damage is minimal. Done in a rush because you're cross about a bill, it can cost you far more than the price increase ever would. And unlike the invoice, you don't see that bill until months later.
The learning curve nobody warns you about.
Someone in the comments said it out loud about WordPress. "So clunky and awkward to use. Not hard, just not nice." That's the honest experience for a lot of people. The whole point of Squarespace is that you can run your own website without turning into a part time web developer. The day you leave, you either climb that learning curve yourself or you pay someone who already has.
"Forget it, I'll just vibe code it myself."
This is where a lot of people are landing right now, and I completely understand the appeal. The pitch doing the rounds goes like this. Build the whole site with an AI tool, push it to GitHub, host it for free somewhere like Vercel or Netlify, and just buy yourself a domain. Job done, and it costs you almost nothing. And honestly? If you're technical and your site is genuinely simple, that can work brilliantly.
But here's the kicker, the bit the excitement tends to skip over, and it's easier said than done precisely because Squarespace has already quietly done so much of the hard work for you. Getting a nice looking page on screen is the easy 20 percent. The hard 80 percent is everything that comes after, and most of it is stuff you'd never even think to do.
Let me give you a real example.
Would it occur to you to add a robots.txt file to your site so search engines crawl it properly?
To generate and submit an XML sitemap?
To sort out your SSL certificate so browsers don't slap a "not secure" warning across your homepage?
To make sure every image is compressed and served at the right size so the thing doesn't crawl on mobile?
To keep it responsive across every screen size, patch the security holes, run the backups, and keep everything updated so it doesn't quietly break six months from now?
Squarespace does every single one of those things for you in the background, without you ever knowing it's happening. Honestly, that's brilliant when you stop and think about it. You've had all of that bundled in quietly for years, doing its job so well that you never once had to notice it. That's the whole magic of the thing, and it's exactly the kind of value you only really appreciate the day it's gone and it's suddenly your job.
So the moment you want a blog, a shop, online bookings, email sign ups, contact forms that actually deliver, or a client who can edit their own words without accidentally breaking the whole thing, you have quietly become the developer, the host and the support desk all at once. When the site goes down at 9pm on a Friday, there's no help team to email. It's just you. AI can absolutely help you build a website. What it can't do yet is quietly run, secure, back up and maintain it for you month after month, which is the invisible thing you're actually paying Squarespace for.
Free to run is not the same as free to own.
So who actually should move?
I'm not going to pretend staying put is right for everybody, because it isn't, and this community deserves straight talk rather than a sales pitch.
You've got a genuine case for leaving if you're running a serious online shop and something like Shopify fits you far better. Or if you're a developer who wants full control and doesn't mind the upkeep that comes with it. Or if your site is tiny and a simple one page option covers everything you actually need. Or if you've simply outgrown what Squarespace can do. If that's you, then moving is a smart strategic call rather than a reaction to an email, and I'd happily help you plan it so it goes smoothly.
The key word there is planned. There's a world of difference between choosing to move and fleeing.
My honest verdict
For most people reading this, it will cost you more to leave than it will to stay and swallow the increase.
Once you add up your time, the rebuild itself, the new tools, the very real risk to your search rankings and the ongoing upkeep, the maths usually tips back in favour of staying. A price rise feels enormous in the moment you read the email. A migration gone wrong, with lost rankings, weeks of your life gone and a website that's now harder to run, costs a great deal more. You just don't get that invoice up front.
That commenter was right that Squarespace is banking on you just leaving things as they are. But here's the thing. There's a real difference between staying because you can't be bothered, and staying because you've done the sums and it's genuinely the smart move. I'd just like you in that second group, making the choice on purpose rather than by accident.
What I'd do instead
Before you cancel anything, squeeze more out of what you're already paying for. Check you're actually on the right plan and not quietly overpaying for a tier you don't use. Make sure you're billed annually rather than monthly. Clear out any add ons you signed up for once and forgot about. If your site is feeling a bit tired, a design and SEO refresh will nearly always give you a bigger return than starting again from scratch somewhere new, for a fraction of the cost, the hassle and the risk.
That client who messaged me in a panic? We didn't move her. We spent an afternoon tightening up her existing site instead, and she came away happier with it than she'd been in years, still paying less than a rebuild would have cost her.
A price increase is a perfectly fair reason to review your website. It's rarely a good reason to panic move it.
If you're genuinely torn
I know this is a personal decision, and everyone's situation is different. If you're sitting there staring at a renewal email, honestly unsure whether to grit your teeth or get out, feel free to get in touch. I'm always happy to give you an honest, no pressure second opinion, even if the answer turns out to be "you know what, moving really is the right call for you." No hard sell. Just a straight answer from someone who does this every single day.
Your questions answered
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Yes. Squarespace has raised its prices in 2026, and it's a steep jump. Most existing customers only see the new price when their annual subscription renews, so you might not feel it until your own renewal date comes round.
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No. Try not to make the decision in the heat of the moment. A renewal notice is a great prompt to review your website and check you're on the right plan, but a rushed migration usually costs more than the increase ever would. Give yourself time to weigh it up properly.
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For most site owners, no. Once you factor in the time to rebuild, the cost of new hosting and tools, the risk to your Google rankings and the learning curve of a brand new platform, leaving usually works out more expensive than staying. Moving makes sense if you've outgrown Squarespace or another platform genuinely suits you better, but as a plan, not a knee jerk reaction.
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It can, if it's rushed. Changing platforms changes your web addresses and your page structure, and without your old links carefully redirected to the new ones you can lose rankings you've spent years building. Done carefully the impact is small. Done carelessly it can cost you a serious chunk of your organic traffic.
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The obvious cost is the subscription price, but the bigger ones are usually hidden. Your time to rebuild everything, paid hosting and premium themes or plugins on platforms like WordPress, potential SEO losses during the move, and the ongoing maintenance and learning curve you take on the moment you leave an all in one platform behind.
