Squarespace → to Shopify

Squarespace to Shopify: what moves, what it costs, and how long it takes

Squarespace is a good place to start a store. It is a poor place to run one once you have more than a few hundred products, a wholesale channel, a second currency, or a marketing stack that needs real integrations. This guide is the process we use to move Squarespace Commerce stores to Shopify without losing products, customers, order history or search rankings, written from the migrations we have actually run.

Why stores leave Squarespace

The reasons are rarely about design. Squarespace templates are attractive and most owners like them. The friction is operational:

• Checkout you cannot change. Squarespace checkout is fixed. There is no way to add trust content, offer accelerated wallets beyond the defaults, or run post-purchase upsells. Shopify’s checkout, and Shopify Plus checkout extensibility, is the single biggest conversion lever most stores gain in the move.
• Variants and inventory. Squarespace allows up to six option types but the inventory model is flat. There is no multi-location stock, no bundles, no B2B price lists, and no way to sell a product in a second currency without a second site.
• Apps. Squarespace Extensions is a short list. Klaviyo, Recharge, Gorgias, Judge.me, Loop, ShipStation and the rest of the modern ecommerce stack are Shopify-first.
• Point of sale. Squarespace has its own POS app for selling in person from a phone or tablet. If you run retail and online together, Shopify POS with shared inventory is a different class of tool.
• Reporting. Squarespace analytics stop at page views and sales totals. Shopify’s reporting, and the apps built on it, give you cohorts, product margins and customer lifetime value.

What migrates from Squarespace to Shopify, and what does not

Squarespace gives you two exports and one API, and between them they cover most of what you need. The table is the honest version.

Data	Source on Squarespace	Moves to Shopify?
Products, variants, SKUs, prices, sale prices, stock, weights, tags, categories, image URLs	Commerce, Inventory, Export All (CSV)	Yes. The CSV is one row per variant with up to six option pairs and hosted image URLs, which map cleanly to Shopify’s product model.
Product descriptions with formatting	Same CSV	Yes, as HTML. Squarespace block content inside a product (galleries, embedded video) does not export and is rebuilt.
Orders with line items, totals, tax, shipping, discounts, fulfillment status	Commerce, Orders, Export (CSV) or the Commerce API	Yes. We import them as real Shopify orders with the original order number, date and a paid transaction, so reports and customer histories are correct.
Customers and marketing consent	Contacts export, plus the customer records embedded in orders	Yes. Marketing consent comes from the Contacts export, not the orders file, and we carry it over exactly. Nobody is subscribed who did not ask.
Customer passwords	Not exportable	No, on any platform. Customers set a new password on first login, or use Shopify’s passwordless customer accounts, which most stores now prefer.
Discount codes	Manual	Recreated. Squarespace does not export promotions.
Gift cards	Manual	Balances are recreated by hand on Shopify. Keep the Squarespace list.
Blog posts and pages	Settings, Advanced, Import and Export (WordPress XML)	Yes for the blog, via the WordPress export. Standard pages are rebuilt in the new theme.
Product reviews	Squarespace has a native review feature since 2023	Reviews export as CSV and import into Judge.me or the review app you choose.
Theme and design	Squarespace templates	No. Design never migrates between platforms. The store is rebuilt on a Shopify theme, usually Horizon, with your brand applied.
Member areas and digital products	Squarespace Digital Products	Rebuilt with Shopify’s Digital Downloads app or a course platform, depending on what you sell.

Cart2Cart, LitExtension, Matrixify or a hand-built migration

There are four ways to move the data, and the right one depends on how much history you have.

Route	Good for	Watch out for
Shopify Store Importer (free app)	Small catalogs with no order history worth keeping	Products and customers only. No orders, no redirects, no consent handling.
Cart2Cart	Stores up to a few thousand orders that want an automated first pass	Squarespace is supported as a source. Tracking numbers on shipped orders are not migrated, and the flat category export needs checking against the live URLs before redirects are trusted.
LitExtension	Similar to Cart2Cart, with a managed option	Same limits on tracking and redirects. Both tools price by record count.
Matrixify	Teams comfortable transforming CSVs themselves	Powerful, but the Squarespace export must be reshaped into Matrixify’s format first, and orders need a paid transaction added or they show an outstanding balance.
Hand-built (what we do)	Any store where order history, consent and redirects have to be right	More work up front. Every record is reconciled to the source and every old URL is tested against the live domain before launch.

We are a Cart2Cart partner and use it where it fits. For Squarespace stores with meaningful order history we usually run the import ourselves, because the parts the tools skip, per-parcel tracking numbers, refunded and partially refunded orders, and consent state, are the parts customers notice.

How we run a Squarespace to Shopify migration

1. Audit and survey. We take the two exports, crawl every live URL on the Squarespace site, and inventory the extensions and integrations you rely on. You get a written scope with a fixed price.
2. Build the Shopify store in a free development store. As a Shopify Plus Partner we build in a development store, so you pay Shopify nothing until go-live. Theme, checkout, payments, shipping zones and taxes are configured before a single product is imported.
3. Sample import. Twenty of each entity, chosen for edge cases: multi-variant products, refunded orders, guest orders, customers with several addresses. You sign these off before the full run.
4. Full data run. Products, then customers, then orders, then fulfillments with tracking numbers. Historical orders are imported silently: no emails, no stock movements.
5. Redirects. Every Squarespace product, category, page and blog URL gets a 301 to its Shopify equivalent, and each one is requested against the live domain before launch.
6. Apps and integrations. Email, reviews, shipping, subscriptions and support tools installed and connected to the migrated customers.
7. Cutover. A final delta sync of orders and customers placed since the full run, then DNS. Squarespace stays live until Shopify is confirmed.
8. Audit report. Every migration ships with a reconciliation ledger that accounts for every source row down to the live count.

Timeline

Phase	Typical duration	What happens
Discovery and scope	Week 1	Exports, URL crawl, integration inventory, fixed-price proposal
Store build	Weeks 2 to 4	Theme, checkout, payments, shipping, taxes, navigation
Data migration	Weeks 3 to 5	Sample sign-off, full run, reconciliation
Integrations and testing	Weeks 5 to 7	Apps connected, test orders, redirect verification
Launch	Weeks 6 to 8	Delta sync, DNS cutover, Search Console, 30 days of monitoring

Most Squarespace stores are live on Shopify in six to eight weeks. Large catalogs, custom theme work or several integrations push that toward ten.

What a Squarespace to Shopify migration costs

Squarespace migrations start at $2,500 for stores under 500 products and $3,500 for larger stores, with a standard theme build and the data work described above. Larger catalogs, long order histories, custom design or several integrations are scoped individually, and we quote a fixed price after the audit rather than billing by the hour. Payment terms are 50 percent to begin and 50 percent once the store is live and you are fully satisfied with the figures.

SEO: keeping your rankings through the move

Squarespace product URLs follow the pattern /shop/p/product-slug or /store-page-name/p/product-slug, and categories are usually query strings such as /shop?category=Chairs. Shopify uses /products/handle and /collections/handle. Nothing lines up automatically, so the redirect map has to be built from the real URL inventory: the sitemap, the export’s Product URL column, and a crawl, because renamed products keep their old slugs in search results for months.

Three things we do on every migration: keep the same domain, carry page titles and meta descriptions across rather than letting Shopify regenerate them, and resubmit the sitemap in Search Console on launch day. Done properly, rankings dip for a couple of weeks at most and usually improve, because Shopify pages load faster than Squarespace pages.

Before you start

• Export products, orders and contacts now and keep the files. Squarespace deletes data when a plan is cancelled.
• Decide what order history you want: everything, the last three years, or a clean start.
• List every extension and third-party tool connected to the store.
• Keep the Squarespace subscription active until at least two weeks after Shopify launches.
• Note any gift card balances and active discount codes.

Common mistakes in Squarespace migrations

• Exporting products but not orders, and losing the purchase history that drives customer segments and repeat marketing.
• Letting the migration tool subscribe every customer. Consent lives in the Contacts export, and using anything else is a compliance problem as well as a deliverability one.
• Rebuilding category pages as query-string filters. Squarespace’s category links are query strings; Shopify collections are real pages that rank, and each old category link needs a redirect to one.
• Forgetting the blog. It is often the best-ranking content on a Squarespace site and it exports cleanly.
• Cancelling Squarespace on launch day. Keep it two weeks for the inevitable question about an old file, image or page.

Member areas, digital products and subscriptions

Squarespace stores often sell more than physical goods, and each of the other product types has a home on Shopify. Digital products with a file behind them move to Shopify’s free Digital Downloads app, which delivers the file automatically after purchase and lets you set download limits. Subscription products, which Squarespace sells through its own subscription feature, become Shopify Subscriptions or a subscription app such as Recharge, and existing subscribers are moved by recreating their plans and asking them to re-enter payment details, because saved payment methods usually cannot move between platforms without help from the payment processor, and we confirm what yours supports during the audit. Member areas and gated content, where Squarespace sells access to pages or courses, are the one case that needs a real decision: Shopify’s customer accounts can gate content by tag, which suits a simple members-only section, while a course with lessons and progress belongs on a course platform connected to Shopify orders. Squarespace scheduling and Acuity bookings are unaffected and keep running alongside the new store.

What you get at handover

The migration closes with a reconciliation ledger for products, orders and contacts that accounts for every row in the Squarespace exports, the redirect verification list showing the status each old URL returned when tested, the consent report showing how many customers came across subscribed and why, and a recorded walkthrough of the Shopify admin for your team.

Frequently asked questions

If you are weighing the move, the migration survey takes ten minutes and gets you a written first assessment within one business day. You can also read how we handle migrations from any platform, or compare with our Wix and WordPress guides.