Squarespace to Code: How to Migrate to Astro, Next.js, or Payload CMS

Why leaving Squarespace is different from leaving Webflow

Squarespace is a mature, content-first website builder. Most Squarespace sites are marketing sites, blogs, portfolios, or small stores, not complex apps. That shapes the migration: the hard part is rarely logic, it is content and design, because Squarespace deliberately couples your writing, your layout, and your styling into one closed system that does not come apart cleanly.

The instinct is to reach for the export button and assume you have a backup. You do not. Squarespace's export is a partial WordPress-format XML file. It carries your written words and some pages, but it drops galleries, products, forms, custom code, and almost all of your design. Knowing exactly what survives the export, and what you have to re-extract by hand, is the difference between a clean migration and a launch where half the site is missing.

This guide is the map. It covers what the export actually gives you, how to choose a destination (Astro, Next.js, or Payload CMS), what reliably breaks, what it costs, and the step-by-step playbook to do it without losing rankings.

What the Squarespace export actually includes (and drops)

Squarespace gives you one export path: Settings, then Advanced, then Import / Export, which produces a WordPress-format XML file. It is genuinely useful, but only for a slice of your site.

What the export includes: blog posts, basic pages, text blocks, image blocks, and embed blocks. That is most of your written content, which is the part you least want to retype.

What the export drops, and what you therefore have to re-extract by hand: product and Commerce data, all style and layout, gallery blocks, summary blocks, audio and video blocks, album pages, event pages, product pages, form block content and configuration, and any custom code you injected. It also exports only one blog page if you run several. In practice this means the export is a head start on your text, never a complete backup of your site. A real migration treats the XML as a draft and re-extracts the missing pieces from the live, rendered pages before the Squarespace subscription lapses.

Choosing your destination: Astro vs Next.js vs Payload CMS

The destination matters less for price than people expect, and more for fit. Here is how to choose.

Astro: the default for content sites

If your Squarespace site is a marketing site, blog, or portfolio, Astro is usually the right answer. It is built for content-driven sites, ships zero JavaScript by default, and turns each blog post into a simple Markdown or MDX file in a content collection. Images get optimized at build time. The result is typically sub-second load times, a clean Git repo, and a site that passes the Core Web Vitals Squarespace's render path often fails. For the large majority of Squarespace sites, Astro is the cheapest, fastest landing spot.

Next.js: when the site is really an app

Choose Next.js when your site does more than present content: gated areas, dashboards, search, serious e-commerce, or interactive features. Pages become React components, Squarespace's built-in features get replaced with dedicated services, and a data layer (a headless CMS or a database via Prisma) backs the dynamic parts. Next.js ships more JavaScript than Astro, which is the right trade only when you genuinely need the interactivity. For a static blog or brochure site, Astro is the better and cheaper target.

Payload CMS: when editors need an admin UI

If non-technical people must edit content daily without touching code, pair your frontend with Payload CMS. Squarespace pages and collection items map to Payload Collections with typed fields, references, and rich text, and editors get a clean admin UI with drafts, autosave, and live preview. The reason to prefer Payload over re-hosting on another builder is ownership: Payload is open source, self-hosts for effectively zero licensing, and keeps your schema, content, and frontend in one TypeScript repo, which is what makes the whole site editable by AI tools.

The pattern across all three: the migration mechanics are nearly identical, and the destination barely changes the one-time price. What it changes is your long-term cost and freedom.

What breaks when you leave Squarespace

Every Squarespace migration hits the same predictable rough edges. Scope these first, because they cause the surprises.

Commerce does not come out cleanly. Squarespace Commerce products, variants, customers, and orders are not in the export at all. If you ran a store, products have to be re-extracted (often via the product CSV where available, plus manual work for the rest), and checkout has to be rebuilt on a dedicated service such as Stripe or a headless commerce platform. This is the single most expensive part of a Squarespace migration.

Galleries, summaries, and media blocks vanish. Gallery blocks, summary blocks, and audio and video blocks are excluded from the export. Image-heavy portfolios and galleries usually need their assets pulled directly from the CDN and rebuilt as components.

Forms stop working. Form blocks and their configuration do not export. Every contact form, signup form, and survey has to be rebuilt and re-wired to an email service or backend endpoint.

Custom code injections are gone. Anything you added through Code Injection or code blocks is not in the export. Tracking scripts, custom CSS, and embeds must be inventoried from the live site and re-added intentionally.

Design and layout do not transfer. The export carries no styling or layout. The new site's design is rebuilt to match, which is usually a feature, not a bug, because it produces clean, semantic, fast code instead of Squarespace's heavier markup, but it is real work to budget for.

URLs change unless you plan for it. Squarespace's slug patterns will not match your new structure automatically. Without 301 redirects on every old URL, you lose rankings.

What it costs and how long it takes

For a typical 20 to 60 page Squarespace site, budget $5,000 to $18,000 and 3 to 7 weeks. The drivers are page count, blog volume, design complexity, and whether you ran Squarespace Commerce. A simple brochure site with no store sits at the low end. A content-heavy blog with a store sits at the high end, because re-extracting products and rebuilding checkout adds the most cost and time of any single piece.

The destination (Astro, Next.js, or Payload) barely moves the price, because the expensive work, re-extracting dropped content, rebuilding the design, re-hosting assets, and SEO-safe redirects, is the same no matter where you land. What the destination changes is the recurring bill and the freedom afterward: clean code you own removes the monthly Squarespace fee and the lock-in, and makes the site AI-editable.

The step-by-step migration playbook

The process is the same regardless of which destination you choose. Inventory the live site first, export what you can, re-extract everything the export drops, rebuild content and design in code, then redirect and launch. The detail that protects your business is the redirect map: do not cut DNS until every old Squarespace URL points at its new home.

Where to go next

If your Squarespace site is a content or marketing site, start by reading why Astro is the best framework for marketing websites, then the SEO migration survival guide so you protect rankings through the move. If non-technical editors must own content, the Payload CMS playbook from our Webflow guide applies almost directly, since the destination work is the same.

Not sure which destination fits your site, or worried about what the export will drop? That is exactly what a free migration review is for. We look at your actual Squarespace site, tell you what the export will and will not carry, and recommend honestly whether Astro, Next.js, or Payload is the right landing spot.