Does Squarespace Automatically Back Up Your Website?

No. Squarespace does not automatically back up your website as a copy you can download, email, or hand to a developer. It keeps the live site running on its servers, and that is the only version it holds.

What people mean by "automatic backup" is usually one of three things, and Squarespace covers only the first.

1. Hosting: yes

As long as the subscription is paid, the current version of the site exists on Squarespace's servers. If a payment fails there is a 15-day grace period, then the site expires and stops being visible to visitors and search engines, per My site is past due. Squarespace's Reactivating a site page says content on a site that has been expired for more than 30 days may be permanently deleted.

That is hosting, not backup. It is one copy, the current one, and it belongs to the subscription.

2. Version history: no

There is no way to see or restore an earlier version of a page. Squarespace's Troubleshooting lost content page says there is no auto-save or revision history, and that content is lost if the browser closes mid-edit or a page is edited in two places at once. Once you click Save, the previous version is gone.

What exists instead:

• Undo and redo inside an editing session. In 7.1 the arrows are in the top left of the editor; in 7.0 you click Cancel to discard the session's changes. Both stop working once you save and leave.
• A 30-day trash for deleted pages and blog posts. Deleted Pages at the bottom of the Pages panel, and Deleted Posts at the bottom of a blog page's panel, per Restoring deleted pages and blog posts. Sections and blocks deleted inside a page that still exists are not covered. Neither is text you overwrote.
• Duplicate site. A copy of a site of up to 150 pages, made into a new trial site in the same account, per Duplicating a site. Useful before a redesign. Trial sites expire after 14 days, so it is not a lasting copy.
• The export. An XML file in WordPress's format with one blog page's posts and page text. No layouts, no image files, no products, no styles. See Squarespace export limitations.

3. A backup you own: not from Squarespace

A backup, in the sense that matters, is a copy of the site stored outside the account that runs it, made on a schedule, that you can open years later. Squarespace does not make one. Nothing in the account does.

To get one, you save the public pages yourself: each page as HTML, a full-page screenshot of how it looked, and the images, fonts, and stylesheets it used. That is what Dead Simple Backups does on the 1st of every month, from the site's address alone. No plugin, no password. It emails a private link, keeps 12 months of history, and lists which pages changed since the previous copy.

What it cannot do: restore. Squarespace has no import for HTML, so a backup is the material for rebuilding a page by hand, not a button. It also sees only what a logged-out visitor sees, so password-protected and members-only pages are not included.

When the difference matters

• A bad edit, saved. Squarespace has the new version only. A backup has last month's text and a screenshot of the layout.
• A deleted page, noticed six weeks later. The 30-day trash has emptied. A backup has the page.
• A lapsed subscription. After 30 days the content may be gone. A backup does not care whether the subscription is paid.
• A hacked or locked account. Whatever the site said before is only in a copy made before.

Take one page now

Paste your homepage into the free preview on our homepage. In about a minute you get that page as HTML with a full-page screenshot, no account needed. That is what one page of a backup looks like. The monthly plan does the same for every public page.

Q: Does Squarespace keep backups of my website?

Squarespace keeps the live site while the subscription is active. It does not keep earlier versions of pages, and it does not provide a downloadable copy of the site.

Q: Can I restore a previous version of a Squarespace page?

Not inside Squarespace. There is no version history, and undo only works until you save and leave the editor. A copy of the page made before the change is the only way back.

Q: How long does Squarespace keep deleted pages?

Deleted pages and blog posts can be restored from the Pages panel for 30 days. After that they are permanently deleted.

Q: Is duplicating my Squarespace site a backup?

It is a temporary copy. The duplicate is a trial site that expires after 14 days, it lives in the same account, and sites with more than 150 pages cannot be duplicated.