Squarespace to Astro Migration Leave the Template.
Keep the Rankings.
I'm Tony Cooper, based in Telford, and I move small business websites off Squarespace and onto Astro. Same content, same design intent — but yours this time. No platform fees, no template lock-in, no editor that limits what your designer can ship. Files in Git, free hosting on Netlify, 100/100 PageSpeed as standard.
What Squarespace Is Actually Costing You
Squarespace is the polished option in the website-builder category. The polish is the trap — you choose it for the design quality, and you pay for it every month after.
The Template Owns Your Design
Squarespace 7.1 templates look good out of the box — that's why people choose them. The cost arrives later: your design decisions are bounded by what the template's Fluid Engine allows. Your designer can push it within those rails, but the rails are real. The "premium feel" is the platform's brand, and it's lent to you on a monthly subscription that ends the moment you stop paying.
It's Slower Than It Looks
Squarespace sites look fast on a fibre connection in a meeting room. On 4G in a car park, they don't. Squarespace ships a meaningful weight of platform JavaScript on every page — analytics, the visitor tracking, the editor hooks. Typical Squarespace PageSpeed scores sit between 50 and 70 on mobile, which is most of your traffic. Astro sites score 95-100. Google has been ranking sites on Core Web Vitals for years. The speed gap is a ranking gap.
The Bill Keeps Climbing
Squarespace base plans run £14-30 a month. Then there are apps — Scheduling (£12+), Members Areas (£9-£35), Acuity add-ons, premium templates, transaction fees on the lower commerce plans. Over five years, a typical UK small business pays Squarespace £1,500-3,500. An Astro site on Netlify, after the one-time migration, costs £0/month. The migration usually pays for itself within two to three years on platform savings alone.
What You Get After the Migration
Every Squarespace to Astro migration I deliver lands in the same place. The numbers don't vary because the technology doesn't compromise.
You own every file
Your new Astro site is a folder of plain text files. Pages, styling, content, configuration — all of it sits in a Git repository that you own. If you ever decide to stop working with me, you take the folder to any developer in the world and they can pick up exactly where I left off. No template extraction, no platform export quirks, no rebuild from scratch.
100/100 PageSpeed scores
Not 90. Not "close to 100." Every Astro site I build scores 100/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Astro ships zero JavaScript by default — clean HTML served from a global CDN. There is no platform code to slow it down because there is no platform.
Free hosting on Netlify
Your old Squarespace bill was £14-30 a month, plus apps. The Astro equivalent on Netlify hosting is £0 for the typical UK small business — and you don't trade ownership for the saving. Custom domain, SSL, forms, analytics, all included free for traffic levels most small businesses never approach.
SEO that improves, not just survives
Every migration includes full 301 redirect mapping built from a crawl of your live Squarespace site, structured data rebuild, and SEO foundations baked into the new site. Squarespace's structural limits — slow load, fixed URL patterns, heavyweight rendering — disappear. Within a month of the switch, the search numbers are usually better than they were on Squarespace.
The transformation, every time
Squarespace (before)
- PageSpeed: 50-70/100 (mobile)
- Load time: 2-4 seconds
- File ownership: none
- Hosting: £14-30/month + apps
- Template / editor lock-in: total
Astro (after)
- PageSpeed: 100/100
- Load time: under 1 second
- File ownership: complete
- Hosting: free on Netlify
- Editor lock-in: none
Real pattern: Squarespace sites typically hit 50-70 PageSpeed on mobile because of the platform JavaScript Squarespace loads on every page. The same content on Astro scores 100/100 because there's no platform — just your pages, served fast.
How the Migration Works
Your Squarespace site stays live throughout. The switch happens only when you've reviewed the new site and given the green light.
Audit Your Squarespace Site
I crawl every page, every URL, every form and integration. Squarespace doesn't give you a clean export, so this audit becomes the migration spec — and the source for the redirect map.
Build on Staging
I rebuild your site in Astro on a staging URL. Content, design intent, forms, structured data — everything transferred and improved where the platform constraints disappear. Your Squarespace site stays live the entire time.
You Review
Walk through every page on the staging site. Test the forms, check the content, compare it against your Squarespace original. Adjustments happen here, not after launch.
Switch and Monitor
Domain points to the new Astro site. 301 redirects catch every old Squarespace URL. I monitor search performance for 30 days to make sure rankings hold and improve.
Why I'm the Right Person for This
I'm not an agency with a Squarespace department and an Astro department. I'm one developer who's spent 26 years moving sites between platforms and knows where the friction sits.
One Person, Start to Finish
I do the audit, the rebuild, the SEO mapping, and the launch. No handoffs, no project managers relaying messages between teams. When you call, you speak to the person who migrated your site.
I've Done This Before
I've moved sites off Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, EKM, and Magento. I've also migrated my own sites, including webuildstores.co.uk. I know what goes wrong because I've fixed it on my own projects first.
Honest Recommendation
If you genuinely need a real ecommerce checkout, I'll point you at the Squarespace to Shopify route instead. I'd rather send you to the right destination than sell you a migration that doesn't fit your business.
When an AI Migration Tool Is Enough
AI-driven Squarespace-to-Astro converters exist (BrowserCat and similar tools) and they're genuinely useful for one specific job: taking the rendered HTML and CSS of your Squarespace site and producing an Astro codebase you can deploy. They typically charge $49 to $149 one-time and deliver a GitHub repository.
If that's all you need — you're technical, you'll handle the deployment, you don't care about preserving Google rankings, and you don't need anyone to look after the site afterwards — use one of those tools. I'd rather you got the right product than overpay for mine.
The custom migration I do is a different product. It includes the conversion plus the redirect map built from a crawl of your existing URLs, structured data rebuild, form rebuild, the staging-review-cutover process, and the relationship that picks up after launch — content updates, SEO work, the phone call when something needs fixing. Choose the route that matches what you actually need. Both are legitimate.
Ready to move? Start with a pay monthly website from £49/month on Astro, or talk to me about a custom Astro build. Either way, the Squarespace bill stops next month.
Everything Transfers. Nothing Gets Lost.
A migration is only as good as the detail. Here's what I move across from your Squarespace site.
Content and Design
- All pages and blog posts
- Images and media (optimised)
- Design intent and brand styling
- Navigation and site structure
Functionality
- Contact forms (rebuilt natively)
- Analytics and tracking
- Scheduling integrations (case by case)
- Members area routing (case by case)
SEO and Technical
- 301 redirects for every URL
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Structured data (Schema.org)
- XML sitemap and SSL setup
Squarespace to Astro Migration — Frequently Asked Questions
Things people ask before we talk.
Related Services
Everything you need once the template subscription is behind you
Astro Website Design
Professional Astro websites from £49/month. The platform your migrated Squarespace site will run on — built fresh from the ground up if you'd prefer.
Learn more →WordPress to Astro Migration
The sister page for businesses leaving WordPress instead. Same approach, different starting point.
Learn more →Wix to Astro Migration
Leaving Wix instead of Squarespace? The same approach with a different starting point and a different platform tax to escape.
Learn more →Astro Hosting UK
Where your Astro site lives after the move. Netlify-based, free for typical small-business traffic, UK CDN edge.
Learn more →5 Stars from 12 Google Reviews
Don't just take my word for it — see what my clients say
"Tony has had the patience of a saint with all the changes and tweaks and endless calls about our website and business."
Dee Little
28 Jul 2021
"Tony and the Team at We Build Stores have been invaluable in upgrading and streamlining our online presence. We needed a complete overhaul and they delivered."
David Behan
5 Jun 2021
"Very patient, professional and a brilliant guide through any problems. Traffic through the store has increased significantly."
Kieran Richardson
18 Aug 2021
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