How I Moved My Website Off Squarespace and Saved $324 a Year
For years, contentalive.com ran on Squarespace. It worked, but I was paying a monthly subscription for a website builder I rarely used as a builder, and I didn’t have control over the things that matter most for SEO and speed.
So I rebuilt it. The new site is faster, scores better in Google’s own tests, does more for search engines and AI assistants, and costs about 94% less to run. Here’s exactly how it’s put together and what it costs to run.
Why I moved
- Cost. I was paying Squarespace $324 a year for my website plan, plus $22 a year for my domain. Website builders charge whether you change your site or not, and the fee goes up as you need more features.
- Speed. Builder templates load a lot of code you never use. Every extra script slows the page down, and speed affects both rankings and whether visitors stay.
- SEO control. I wanted full control over page titles, structured data, redirects, sitemaps and how the site presents itself to AI assistants.
- Ownership. With a builder, your site lives on their platform. I wanted the site’s code in my own account, so I can move it anywhere.
The tech stack
| Piece | What it does | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| Astro | Builds the website into fast, lightweight pages | $0 (open source) |
| GitHub | Stores the site’s code and full history of every change | $0 (free plan) |
| Cloudflare Pages | Hosts the site on Cloudflare’s global network, with HTTPS | $0 (free plan) |
| Cloudflare DNS | Points the domain at the site and redirects www to the main address | $0 |
| Cloudflare Web Analytics | Cookie-free visit counts and page speed data | $0 |
| Formspree | Delivers contact form enquiries by email, with spam filtering | $0 (up to 50 submissions a month) |
| Google Tag Manager + Google Analytics 4 | Conversion and analytics tracking, after visitors consent | $0 |
| Self-hosted fonts | Brand fonts served from my own site, not Google Fonts | $0 |
| Domain name | contentalive.com | $22 a year |
| Total | $22 a year |
Before and after
| Squarespace | New site | |
|---|---|---|
| Website plan / hosting | $324 a year | $0 |
| Domain name | $22 a year | $22 a year |
| Total per year | $346 | $22 |
That’s $324 saved every year, about 94% less. The domain is now the only bill, and even that can shrink: some registrars, including Cloudflare, sell .com domains at cost, which is roughly half what I pay.
My business email runs on Google Workspace, which is a separate cost either way. Moving the website didn’t change it.
How the pieces fit together
- I edit the site’s content, which is plain text files for pages and articles.
- The change is saved to GitHub.
- Cloudflare Pages notices the change, rebuilds the site with Astro and publishes it worldwide, usually within a few minutes.
There’s no server to maintain, no plugins to update and no database to back up. If a build ever fails, the previous version simply stays live.
How the migration went
- Exported the content. I pulled every page’s text and images from the old site.
- Rebuilt the design. Same brand, same logo and colors, rebuilt as a lightweight Astro site.
- Kept every page address. Pages like
/services/google-search-adskept exactly the same URL, and the few old addresses that didn’t carry over got permanent (301) redirects, so search engines transfer their rankings. - Replaced the built-in form. Squarespace handled forms itself; the new site sends enquiries through Formspree, with spam protection and no email address exposed on the site.
- Moved the domain’s DNS to Cloudflare and pointed it at the new site. The email records stayed exactly as they were, so email never went down.
- Added what Squarespace didn’t give me: a cookie consent banner with Google Consent Mode, a privacy policy, structured data for search engines, and a resources section for articles like this one.
- Submitted the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
What improved
I tested the live home page with Google’s Lighthouse tool:
| Lighthouse score | Mobile | Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 96 | 100 |
| SEO | 100 | 100 |
The home page weighs about 180 KB in total, less than a single typical smartphone photo, and has no layout jumping as it loads.
Beyond speed, the site now has:
- Search-focused titles and descriptions on every page.
- Structured data describing the business, each service, articles, FAQs and breadcrumbs, which Google and AI assistants use to understand the site.
- An
llms.txtfile, a plain-text summary written for AI assistants. - An automatic sitemap and RSS feed that update whenever I add a page or article.
- Privacy by default. Nothing loads from Google or ad platforms until a visitor agrees in the cookie banner.
The honest trade-offs
This approach isn’t for everyone:
- No drag-and-drop editor. Changing text is easy, but new layouts and features are developer work.
- Not built for large online stores. A shop with hundreds of products and inventory is better served by an e-commerce platform.
- Someone needs to own it. Free plans are generous, but someone should keep an eye on the domain renewal, form limits and updates.
If you publish new pages yourself every week or run a big store, a builder like Squarespace may still make sense. For most service businesses whose website exists to be found and to generate enquiries, a fast, low-cost site you own is a better deal.
Want the same for your business?
I now build and migrate sites like this for other small businesses: fast, search-ready, with hosting that costs next to nothing. See Low-Cost SEO Websites for what’s included, or read how to rank in Google Maps to pair your new site with stronger local visibility.
Frequently asked questions
Is free hosting on Cloudflare reliable enough for a business website?
For a site like this, yes. Cloudflare runs one of the largest networks on the internet, and a static website (pages built ahead of time, with no database) has very little that can break. Pages are served from data centers close to each visitor.
Do I need to know how to code to run a site like this?
Not if someone sets it up and maintains it for you. Day-to-day text changes are simple, but adding new page designs or features is developer work. That's the main trade-off against a drag-and-drop builder.
What if my site outgrows the free plans?
Most small business sites never come close. Cloudflare's free plan already includes unlimited static traffic. If you receive more than 50 contact form submissions a month, Formspree's paid plans start at roughly $10 to $15 a month, which is a nice problem to have.
Will moving off Squarespace hurt my Google rankings?
It shouldn't if the move is planned. I kept every page address the same, set up permanent redirects for the few that changed, and submitted the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.