Cancelling is easy; the surprises come afterwards. Here is the timeline, what you keep, what you lose, and the order that avoids the two common mistakes: losing the website files and losing the domain.
The timeline
You cancel. Nothing visible changes. The site stays online until the end of the period you already paid for.
Renewal date. The public site goes offline. Visitors see a Squarespace page saying the site is expired.
Domain clock. A domain bought through Squarespace renews separately. It keeps working for email forwarding and DNS until its own expiry, but it no longer points at a website.
After expiry. You can still log in for a while and subscribe again, but you cannot export the public site anymore, because there is no public site to read.
What you keep
Your content belongs to you. The text and blog posts come out through the WordPress XML export. Your images can be downloaded one by one or, better, as part of a full static export while the site is live. Your domain is yours to transfer.
What you lose
The design, layouts and everything that runs on Squarespace servers: store checkout, member areas, scheduling, comments, search. Adobe Fonts also stop serving off Squarespace. If you want the site to keep looking the way it does, you need a static export done before the renewal date.
The right order
Run a static export while the site is live. Check it opens on your phone.
Move or unlock the domain. Squarespace Domains lets you transfer out; start this a week ahead, transfers take days.
Put the exported site on a host (Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, S3) or let us host it, and point the domain there.
Only then cancel the website subscription. Keep the domain subscription until the transfer completes.
Leaving soon? The free check shows your page count and what will carry over in about a minute. The export is $79 once, hosting $9 a month if you want us to run it.
FAQ
Does the site disappear immediately? No, at the end of the paid period.
Can I export after it expires? Not as a working website. Export first.
Do I keep the domain? Yes, while its own subscription is active or after you transfer it.
StaticExit is not affiliated with Squarespace, Inc.
