How to Archive a Squarespace Site Before Shutting It Down

Once a Squarespace site is cancelled, the public pages are gone from the internet and, after a while, from Squarespace. If you might ever want to show what the site was, prove what it said, or reuse its content, archive it first. The whole job takes an afternoon.

1. A copy of every public page

This is the archive. Each page as HTML, a full-page screenshot of each page, and the images, fonts, and stylesheets the pages use, so the pages open from a folder years from now. Dead Simple Backups does this in one run: start the monthly plan, the first backup runs within minutes, download the zip, and cancel us if the site is being retired for good. You will have paid $9 for a complete, dated copy.

If you want to see what the result looks like first, the free backup on the homepage captures one page.

2. The data that is not on the pages

• Blog posts as data. Run Squarespace's export for the XML file. It is the only structured copy of posts.
• Products. Export the product CSV from the Commerce area, and orders if you need them for accounting.
• Form submissions and mailing lists. Download them from wherever they are stored: Squarespace's form storage, Mailchimp, Google Sheets.
• Analytics. Screenshot or export the traffic reports you might want to cite later.
• Domain settings. Note the DNS records, and decide what the domain should do after the site is gone (redirect to a new site, or a simple placeholder page).

3. The account itself

• Download invoices for your records.
• Turn off auto-renew before cancelling, so nothing charges after.
• If the domain is registered through Squarespace and you are keeping it, transfer it to a registrar you control before the site plan ends.

4. Store the archive somewhere that outlives the project

Keep the zip in two places: a cloud drive and a local disk. Name it with the site and the date. Open the HTML once from each copy to confirm it works. An archive nobody can open is decoration.

Two common mistakes

Cancelling first, archiving later. Once the site is off, there is nothing to crawl. The Wayback Machine may have fragments; it is not a substitute.

Keeping only the export. The XML has text and little else. See Squarespace export limitations.

Q: How long does Squarespace keep a cancelled site?

Squarespace's Reactivating a site page says content may be permanently deleted once a site has been expired for more than 30 days. Until then you can reactivate it, but there is no public copy during that time and no download of the pages. Treat cancellation as the last day the site exists.

Q: What is the cheapest way to archive a Squarespace site?

One month of the monthly plan, $9, gets a complete copy of every public page with screenshots and images. Download it and cancel.