Moving a store from Squarespace to Shopify isn't one big job. It's about twenty small ones, and most of the damage comes from doing them in the wrong order: the domain moves before the redirects exist, or the old site closes before anyone saved the orders.
This is the checklist we work through. Seven things have to move, and each one is split into what you do before, during and after the switch. Every item is checked against Squarespace's and Shopify's own help pages, so you know what each platform actually lets you take out and bring in.
In short
- Seven things move: products, customers, orders, blog and pages, URLs, the domain and email. Each has a before, a during and an after.
- Squarespace exports products, contacts and orders as spreadsheets, and one blog as a WordPress file. Photos, reviews and page designs don't come with them.
- Check your product addresses first. If they start with /shop, Shopify's redirect tool can't take them, and that changes the plan.
- Keep Squarespace until the new store is live and tested. Then cancel it. Don't delete it.
How to use this checklist
Give the first read an hour, with your Squarespace admin open in one tab and your new Shopify store in another.
Work in three passes. Before is everything you do on Squarespace while it's still live: export, list, write down. During is the build on Shopify, while customers keep buying on Squarespace. After is the switch itself and the weeks that follow it.
Tick as you go. Each of the seven items below ends with three tick lines. Copy them into a spreadsheet, one row per item. An item is done when all three are ticked.
Keep one folder for everything you export. The product file, contacts, orders, the site export, a copy of your DNS records, your list of old addresses. If something goes wrong in week three, that folder is your backup.
The 7 things to move
1. Products and photos
The export. Squarespace exports up to 10,000 products to a spreadsheet (a CSV file), and its guide describes the export as covering physical and service products. The file leaves out featured images, variant images, image alt text, "additional product information" and customer reviews (Squarespace Help).
The import. Shopify's guide for Squarespace maps the file column by column. Product URL becomes Handle, Categories become Type, and options, SKUs, prices and stock move to their Shopify names. Weight is converted from pounds to grams by multiplying by 453.6. Every column not in the mapping is removed before the import. A handle can't contain spaces, accents or periods, and a product missing a variant option won't import (Shopify Help).
The gap. Photos, and anything the mapping doesn't list. Descriptions and images aren't in Shopify's mapping table for Squarespace, so review those columns yourself. Squarespace can't export images in bulk; they come down one at a time from the Asset library (Squarespace Help). Digital products and gift cards need their own plan. For gift cards, Shopify points to migration apps (Shopify Help).
- [ ] Before: Export all products and save the file untouched. Work on a copy. Find your original photo files now, so you don't have to download hundreds of images one by one.
- [ ] During: Rename the columns, remove the rest, convert the weights, import. Add photos and alt text. Rebuild your categories as collections: a smart collection adds products automatically by conditions such as type or tag (Shopify Help).
- [ ] After: Open ten products on your phone, your best sellers first. Compare price, variants, stock and photos with the Squarespace version.
2. Customers and mailing lists
The export. Squarespace exports contacts to a CSV, all of them or a selection. Notes and saved addresses aren't in the file, except a customer's last used address on a physical order (Squarespace Help). Mailing lists export one by one from Lists & Segments. The Form Submitters segment can't be exported (Squarespace Help).
The import. Shopify's guide says the contacts file won't import until it's edited. Accepts Marketing becomes Accepts Email Marketing, with yes or no. Shipping fields become default address fields. The state needs its ISO code, and the country code isn't in Squarespace's file at all, though Shopify needs it (Shopify Help).
The gap. Passwords. Shopify can't take customer passwords from another platform (Shopify Help). On Shopify's customer accounts that matters less than it sounds: customers sign in with a one-time 6-digit code sent to their email, and no password is needed (Shopify Help).
- [ ] Before: Export all contacts, then each mailing list you use. Check that the file shows who agreed to marketing email.
- [ ] During: Edit the columns, add the country codes, import. Spot-check ten customers, including one who said no to marketing.
- [ ] After: Send marketing email only to people who opted in, as Shopify's own guide says. Tell repeat customers the store has moved before they find a new checkout on their own.
3. Orders and reviews
The export. Squarespace exports orders as a CSV and lets you choose the order statuses and a date range (Squarespace Help). For the move, Shopify's guide says to select fulfilled orders only, for all time.
The import. Shopify doesn't take this file directly. Its guide points to third-party migration apps for order history. The order of imports matters too: products first, then customers, then orders, so each old order links to the right product and the right person (Shopify Help).
The gap. Reviews. Shopify says they can't be exported from Squarespace; you add them back by hand with a reviews app (Shopify Help). Open orders are a gap of their own, because a fulfilled-only export doesn't include them.
- [ ] Before: Decide whether you need order history on Shopify at all. For many small stores, the saved file is enough for records and returns. Copy your reviews into a spreadsheet: product, name, date, rating, text.
- [ ] During: If you want the history, import it with an app, after products and customers. Add the reviews through the app you choose.
- [ ] After: Ship every order placed on Squarespace from Squarespace. Search one repeat customer on Shopify and check that their past orders show.
4. Blog and pages
The export. Squarespace's site export is an .xml file, and it only comes in WordPress format. It carries layout pages, text and image blocks, and one blog page with its posts. It leaves out store pages, product blocks, video and audio blocks, drafts, style settings, custom CSS and page-specific headers, footers and sidebars. If you run more than one blog, you choose which one goes (Squarespace Help).
The import. Shopify has no one-click route for that file. For blog posts and pages, its migration guide offers copy and paste, a migration app or the API (Shopify Help). Your new store already has a blog, called News, to post into (Shopify Help).
The gap. Design. The export holds words and pictures, not how the page looked. Every page is rebuilt in the Shopify theme.
- [ ] Before: List every page and post worth keeping, with its address. Pages nobody reads can stay behind, but their addresses still go on the redirect list.
- [ ] During: Move posts across, oldest first. Re-add images and alt text. Keep each post's title and main heading as they were.
- [ ] After: Open your ten most-read posts. Check images, links and headings.
5. URLs and redirects
This is the item that protects your Google traffic, and the one where the two platforms differ most.
The export. Squarespace gives you a list of your addresses for free. Your sitemap, at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, lists the pages on your site, apart from things like disabled and password-protected pages (Squarespace Help). If you've already set up redirects in Squarespace's URL mappings, under Developer tools, copy those lines too (Squarespace Help).
The import. Shopify's addresses sit in fixed folders such as /products, /collections and /pages, and you can't edit those folder names (Shopify Help). So most of your addresses change, and each old one needs a redirect to its new one. Shopify's redirect tool takes them one at a time or as a CSV import with "Redirect from" and "Redirect to" columns (Shopify Help).
The gap. Shopify can't redirect addresses that begin with /shop, along with a few other reserved beginnings such as /cart and /orders. Addresses with a question mark in them might not redirect as expected either (Shopify Help). The two-minute test below tells you whether that hits your store.
- [ ] Before: Save your sitemap. Put every old address in column A of a spreadsheet and its new address in column B. Point each one at its closest new page, not the homepage. Google warns against sending many old addresses to one unrelated page such as the homepage (Google Search Central).
- [ ] During: Import the redirects before the domain moves. Shopify's guide suggests setting them up in advance (Shopify Help).
- [ ] After: The day the domain points to Shopify, open twenty old addresses from your list. Each should land on the right page in one hop. Keep the redirects in place. Google's advice is "as long as possible, generally at least 1 year".
6. The domain
The export. Nothing to export, but a choice to make: keep the domain registered at Squarespace and point it at Shopify, or transfer it. Squarespace notes that a recently bought domain may carry a 60-day lock, and that you can point it at the new site while you wait. A transfer can take up to 15 days, and you can't change the domain's DNS settings while it runs (Squarespace Help).
The import. Shopify's guide for a Squarespace domain: open the domain's DNS settings in Squarespace, delete the existing records, add an A record for the root domain and a CNAME record for www, then connect the domain in Shopify under Settings > Domains (Shopify Help). Shopify's Squarespace guide adds that you may need to disconnect the domain from the old platform first, or you might hit SSL certificate errors.
The gap. Everything else on that DNS page. The records you're told to delete can include the ones that run your email. That's item 7.
- [ ] Before: Screenshot the whole DNS page. Decide: point now, transfer later or never.
- [ ] During: Nothing public. You build the store on its myshopify.com address while the old site stays live.
- [ ] After: Point the domain at a quiet hour. Shopify checks the records, which it says can take a few minutes. Then load the store on your phone over mobile data, not your home Wi-Fi.
7. Email
The export. Your mailbox isn't on the website. It runs on your domain's MX records. If you bought Google Workspace through Squarespace, you keep managing it through Squarespace unless you cancel it, even after a domain transfer (Squarespace Help). Cancelling the website doesn't stop it either: Squarespace says your professional email account "remains active and billed" (Squarespace Help).
The import. Nothing moves to Shopify. Shopify's guide for Squarespace domains says to save any MX and TXT records you want to keep before you delete the old records (Shopify Help).
The gap. A missing MX record. Mail stops arriving, and nothing tells you until a customer asks why you never replied.
- [ ] Before: Copy every MX and TXT record exactly, character by character.
- [ ] During: Decide where email lives after the move, and who pays for it.
- [ ] After: Within an hour of the DNS change, send an email to your store address from an outside account, and reply to it. If you transfer the domain later, set the MX records again at the new provider, as Squarespace advises for Google Workspace.
The 7 items at a glance
| # | Item | Squarespace gives you | Shopify takes | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Products | A CSV, up to 10,000 products | A CSV, after column edits | Photos, alt text, digital products, gift cards |
| 2 | Customers | Contacts and list CSVs | A CSV, after column edits | Passwords, country codes, consent |
| 3 | Orders | An orders CSV | Through an app | Reviews, open orders |
| 4 | Blog and pages | One blog, as a WordPress file | Copy and paste, an app or the API | Design, a second blog |
| 5 | URLs | Your sitemap and URL mappings | Redirects, one by one or by CSV | Addresses starting with /shop |
| 6 | Domain | Point it or transfer it | An A record and a CNAME | The 60-day lock, SSL errors |
| 7 | Nothing, it lives in DNS | Nothing | MX records |
Does your store live at /shop? The two-minute test
Open any product on your live Squarespace store and look at the address bar. On Squarespace 7.1, a product address is your store page's address, then p/, then the product's own slug (Squarespace Help). It reads something like yourstore.com/candles/p/amber-jar.
If the part before /p/ is anything other than shop, the redirects work as normal. Map each product to its new /products address and import the list.
If it's shop, every product address you have begins with /shop, and that's one of the beginnings Shopify's redirect tool can't take. Your old product links, and the Google rankings attached to them, have no built-in way across. Shopify's tool has no setting that changes this, and the right answer depends on the store: how many products, how much traffic those pages bring, and how much of it comes from Google. Find this out before you set a launch date, not on the day.
Ready to set a date? Count the open boxes
Before launch, you have fourteen boxes to tick: the before and during lines of all seven items.
- All fourteen ticked, and your products don't live at /shop. Set the date. Pick a quiet weekday, not the start of a sale.
- One to three open. Wait a week and close them. Every open box is cheaper to fix now than after launch.
- Four or more open, or your products live at /shop. Don't set a date yet. Work out the redirects and the email first. Those are the two that hurt most when they go wrong, and the two customers notice.
When moving won't help
A new platform changes the tools, not the demand. If the store isn't selling because of the product page, the delivery cost or too few visitors, those are their own jobs, before or after the move, and they're ours too, in our conversion and SEO work. Write down why you're moving before you start: an app you need, a checkout option, how you run stock across channels. It's how you'll know the move worked.
The switch, in order
Once every before and during box is ticked:
- Freeze Squarespace. No new products, prices or posts from now on. Anything that has to change goes on a list for Shopify.
- Take the final exports. Products, contacts and orders, all into the one folder, dated.
- Test the Shopify store end to end. Shipping, taxes and payments set up, then place test orders, as Shopify's guide lists (Shopify Help). Buy on a phone, refund, and check the emails the customer gets.
- Check the redirects are in. Import any addresses added since the first list.
- Save the DNS records, then point the domain. Copy the MX and TXT records first, every time.
- Test the live store. Twenty old addresses, one email in and one out, one order on a phone.
- Tell Google. Verify the domain in Google Search Console and submit your Shopify sitemap, which Shopify builds for you at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (Shopify Help). If you're keeping the same domain, you don't need Search Console's Change of Address tool. Google says it's only for moves from one domain or subdomain to another.
- Cancel Squarespace, don't delete it. After you cancel, you can still log in to see contacts, past orders and payment history. Deleting removes the content and data for good (Squarespace Help). If you're keeping the domain or email there, those subscriptions carry on.
- Watch for a month. Google says that for medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more before the new addresses show instead of the old ones (Google Search Central). Compare search traffic, sales and 404 errors each week.
Do it yourself, or hand it to us?
What the move takes on your own. Twenty-one tick boxes across seven items. Column edits on three exports, photos downloaded one at a time, reviews copied by hand, a redirect for every old address, the /shop problem if your products live there, and DNS records copied character by character before the switch. Then a month of watching search traffic and 404s. It's weeks of evenings, and the mistakes cost search traffic and email you don't see going.
What we do. We work through this checklist on your store: exports, imports, photos, posts and the redirect list, a Shopify store set up with a current theme, and the domain and email switched at a quiet hour and checked the same day. Your Squarespace store keeps selling until then. The work takes us days. That's our Migrations & Replatforming work, and our Wix guide shows the same job from the other platform.
Questions store owners ask
Can I move my Squarespace store to Shopify myself?
Yes, with time. The move runs on spreadsheet exports and imports, and the imports are the easy part. The work that decides whether it goes well is the redirect list, the /shop problem and the DNS change, and that's the part we take on.
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Not if the redirects are right. Every old address points permanently to its closest new page, and the redirects stay for at least a year. Expect some movement in the first weeks while Google swaps old addresses for new ones. If your products live at /shop, solve that before anything else.
Do my customers need new passwords?
Passwords can't move to Shopify. On Shopify's customer accounts, customers sign in with a one-time code sent to their email, so there's no password to reset. Their details and addresses come across with the customer import.
Can I keep my domain at Squarespace?
Yes. You can keep the domain registered at Squarespace and point it at Shopify with two DNS records. Transferring is optional, and a domain bought in the last 60 days may be locked anyway.
What happens to my email?
Nothing, as long as the MX records survive the DNS change. A mailbox bought through Squarespace keeps running, and keeps billing, after you cancel the website. Copy the records before you touch anything.
How many products can I export from Squarespace?
Up to 10,000 in one file, according to Squarespace's help page as of September 2026. Some older guides quote a lower number, so check the page on the day you export.
Not sure where your store's gaps are?
Send us your Squarespace store's URL. We reply within one business day with what your move would take, item by item, including whether your products live at /shop, and we do the move while your Squarespace store keeps selling.
