Squarespace Deleted My Site: What You Can and Can't Recover

A Squarespace site that has disappeared can usually be reactivated if it expired or was canceled less than 30 days ago. If it was deleted, or it has been gone longer than that, Squarespace may not be able to restore it, and the answer depends on how much time has passed.

Here is what "deleted" can mean, what Squarespace says it can do in each case, and what you can recover on your own.

First, find out why the site is gone

Squarespace sites go dark for four different reasons, and each has a different fix.

The subscription lapsed. A failed renewal payment gets a 15-day grace period, then the site expires and stops being visible to visitors and search engines, per My site is past due. Visitors see a "Website expired" message.

Someone canceled it. A canceled site goes offline at the end of the billing period. Squarespace keeps the data for a while so it can be reactivated, per Cancel your website subscription.

A trial ran out. Trial sites expire after 14 days. Squarespace can extend a trial once, by seven days, and an expired trial can be upgraded to a paid plan for a while afterward, per Canceling a Squarespace website trial.

Someone deleted it. Deleting a site from the account dashboard removes its data and content from Squarespace's system, per Delete your site and its content. Squarespace also deletes sites whose owner has been inactive for a while, with no billing or login activity.

Log in to the account dashboard. An expired or canceled site is still listed there with a reactivate option. A deleted site is not listed.

What Squarespace can restore

Expired or canceled, under 30 days. Log in and resubscribe. Squarespace's Reactivating a site page says content may take a few hours to repopulate and should appear as you last left it.

Expired or canceled, over 30 days. The same page says that after 30 days site content may be permanently deleted, and that content which does not reappear after reactivation is not recoverable. Reactivating still costs a subscription, so try it only if the site is worth that on the chance the content is there.

Deleted by you or a contributor. Contact Squarespace support. Their deletion page says they may be able to restore the content depending on how much time has passed. There is no published window, and no guarantee.

Deleted by Squarespace for inactivity. Contact support with the domain and the account email. Recovery is at their discretion.

Squarespace has no version history and no backup of its own to fall back on. Their Troubleshooting lost content page is explicit that there is no auto-save or revision history. What they can restore is the site as it was when it went dark, or nothing.

What you can recover without Squarespace

If Squarespace cannot bring the site back, the content still exists wherever a copy was made.

• A backup you made. If you kept a copy of the public pages, you have the text, images, and screenshots to rebuild from. This is the only source that has everything.
• The XML export, if anyone ran it. It has blog posts and page text, not images or layout.
• The Wayback Machine. It may have some pages from some dates, usually with images and styling missing. Search archive.org for the domain.
• Search engine caches. Short-lived and text only, but worth a look in the first days.
• Your own files. Image originals, drafts, and emails from whoever built the site.
• Your email. Squarespace's monthly and yearly emails, invoices, and any "site expired" warnings help establish dates when you talk to support.

None of these load back into Squarespace with a click. A recovered site is rebuilt page by page in a new site, using the copies as the reference.

Protect the domain while you sort it out

If the domain is registered through Squarespace, it keeps renewing on its own schedule and does not expire with the site, per What to do with your domain if you cancel your website. If it is at another registrar, check that it is not about to lapse. Losing the domain is harder to recover from than losing the pages.

Next time

Every case above gets easier with a copy of the public site made before it went dark. Dead Simple Backups makes one on the 1st of every month: every public page as HTML plus a full-page screenshot, with images and fonts, emailed to you as a private link. It only reads what a visitor can see, so password-protected and members-only pages are not included, and it cannot restore a site into Squarespace. It gives you the material to rebuild, with a date on it.

To see what a copy looks like, paste any page from a site that is still online into the free preview on our homepage. It takes about a minute and needs no account.

Q: Can Squarespace restore a deleted website?

Sometimes. Squarespace says to contact support after deleting a site, and that they may be able to restore the content depending on how much time has passed. There is no promised window, and a site that has been expired for more than 30 days may be permanently gone.

Q: How long does Squarespace keep an expired site?

Squarespace says a site that has been expired for more than 30 days may have its content permanently deleted. Within that window, reactivating the subscription brings the content back.

Q: Why did my Squarespace site disappear?

The common reasons are a failed renewal payment followed by a 15-day grace period, a canceled subscription, an expired 14-day trial, or a deletion from the account dashboard. Squarespace also deletes sites after long periods with no billing or login activity.

Q: Can I get my Squarespace site back from the Wayback Machine?

Sometimes partly. The Wayback Machine keeps copies of pages it happened to crawl, often with images and styling missing. It is a source of text to rebuild from, not a restore.