Squarespace makes it easy to start over by providing various ways for you to restart your site: cancel or delete a trial site, reactivate a cancelled subscription and create a brand-new trial trial to start from scratch.
As soon as you cancel a website subscription, your site is immediately taken offline and all related content removed from our servers – however it may still remain within our backups for up to 30 days.
How to Delete an Expired Site
If you have created a website on Squarespace but have not upgraded to a paid plan by the end of your free trial period, your site will be placed on hold for 90 days before it’s permanently deleted unless manually cancelled or started new subscription. If you would like to save any content before it’s deleted permanently, export is available as an option.
Find this option under “Account and Security” of your Settings menu, but first you will need to log in with your credentials in order to access this feature. After logging in, you will be asked if you are sure about deleting your site; click Yes if that is what you wish or cancel your subscription instead.
After canceling your website, an email will be sent out confirming its cancellation. However, any active subscriptions such as Domains, Mailing Lists or Scheduling that need cancelling must also be done separately.
Once a website is deleted from the Internet and all its data erased permanently, all attempts at recovery within 30 days may be possible.
If your domain is registered with a third-party service such as GoDaddy, such as DNS records will need to be altered so as to remove AAAA records as these don’t recognize by Squarespace and cannot populate when searched in browser.
To learn how to delete a website on Squarespace, you can visit their support center’s Managing Your Website page. There you will also find information on exporting content if you decide to leave Squarespace behind, and some of the best alternatives 2022 that might suit your needs better than Squarespace itself.
How to Recover an Expired Site
Once a Squarespace website’s subscription has expired, visitors no longer see its content; however, this does not mean it is gone forever; account owners can renew or transfer domain registration to another provider to restore access and recover lost content. There may also be other methods available to restore content as well.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to restore an expired site is with a backup, either using Site Manager’s Backup feature or through revision history of pages or posts. Alternatively, site owners may manually copy and paste their content back into Squarespace which may take more time but ensures all pages and posts have been restored.
Squarespace users who do not renew or transfer their domain to another service within 90 days will find that their website is deleted, thus no longer accessible to visitors and losing all content associated with it. To avoid this happening, it’s essential that they regularly log into their Squarespace website in order to maintain access.
Another solution for recovering an expired site is using one of the many web hosting services that support Squarespace. These companies can provide hosting at an affordable monthly rate, which will keep the website active while helping to manage domain names effectively and keep them current.
Recovering an expired site that was deleted recently may still be possible, provided it occurred within the last 30 days. Log into Squarespace and extend your trial – however after this point it may no longer be recoverable due to content loss.
If your domain has expired and you would like to recover it, the first step should be contacting its hosting provider and seeking their help. They will provide more details on the process and may even offer you a discounted renewal fee.
How to Reactivate an Expired Site
If your Squarespace website has expired, there are a few steps you can take to restore it. First off, check with your domain registrar’s policy regarding expired sites – either to reactivate it or transfer the domain elsewhere – but also contact Squarespace directly as they will only reactivate three times before disconnecting it completely from your account.
After your free trial ends, all content on your website will be temporarily suspended until you upgrade to a paid subscription plan. Otherwise, your website will eventually be deleted with all associated data being permanently lost – though you’ll still be able to access its contents through your account dashboard; just not editing or updating.
Unused websites don’t disappear forever and can be recovered at any point. To reactivate a site, its owner, administrator, contributor with billing permission and user access rights need to have been assigned by an account associated with it. Once activated, log into its dashboard to restore or make modifications as desired – or create a trial site without changing content or adding pages!
If your legacy domain needs renewing, login to its dashboard and follow these instructions. If it features a free domain linked to it, reactivating can be achieved either by connecting one paid or renewing for $20; alternatively you could also forward or move it. Lastly you could transfer it altogether with new provider.
If your site isn’t a legacy domain or part of a free trial, you can delete it by visiting its dashboard and selecting Delete. This will erase both its content from Squarespace as well as the associated domain registration with any registrars.
How to Transfer a Domain
Though you cannot move add-on subscriptions such as Email Campaigns and Member Sites between sites, domains can easily be transferred. All Squarespace websites include one free custom domain for their first year of annual website billing cycle – to see which are eligible and their pricing details visit our Domain Pricing page. Additional TLDs typically cost $20 annually while more specialized extensions, like.photography and.media may incur an additional annual charge.
When canceling your site, any associated domains will automatically expire at the end of their current billing cycle. If you would rather prevent that happening automatically, auto-renew can be disabled before or after cancelling. An expired Squarespace site remains connected to an expired domain until its DNS records are removed – once they’re gone your site will show an “This Site Can’t Be Reached” message instead.
Before its expiration date arrives, you can also transfer a domain to another provider with their help. In order to do this, simply unlock it from Squarespace Domains panel and share its transfer authentication code with new provider; after this step has taken place, edits to its DNS records will occur on their side, not Squarespace’s.
Squarespace provides support for most ccTLDs across the world. If a domain you desire isn’t listed on our Domain Pricing page, registering it through a third-party provider and connecting it to your Squarespace website should suffice – note that full DNS access must first be available to allow connection of this ccTLD to your site.
To link an existing domain with your site, follow our guide on connecting a domain with either a trial or paid Squarespace site. If your domain is already connected to an account, just skip to the section that describes how to edit DNS records for that site if applicable. If any questions arise during this process, feel free to reach out! It may take up to 72 hours before your changes become fully applied.
