Best European Alternatives to Squarespace

Why people leave Squarespace

Two things everybody says about Squarespace stopped being true in 2024, and it is worth clearing both away before making a case.

It is not a listed American company any more: Permira, a British investment firm headquartered in London with its registered office in St Peter Port on Guernsey, took it private in October 2024, in a deal signed that May at around $7 billion. And as a European customer you do not sign with New York — the entity named in the privacy policy is Squarespace Ireland Limited, at Squarespace House on Ship Street Great in Dublin.

Neither changes where your site lives. The same privacy policy says personal data moves to Squarespace, Inc. in the United States under the Data Privacy Framework, and refers plainly to servers in the US. There is no European region to select. A European owner above the company and an Irish contracting party beside it do not relocate a data centre, and that gap between who owns a firm and which law reaches it is the thing worth understanding here.

The second reason people start looking has nothing to do with law. Around ten million domain names arrived at Squarespace from Google Domains without anyone choosing it, and for a great many of those owners the domain, the hosting, the site and the shop are now one login at one supplier they did not pick.

• Your website sits on the third version of a legal bridge Transfers to the United States rest on an adequacy decision adopted on 10 July 2023. Its predecessor, Privacy Shield, was struck down in July 2020, and the one before that in 2015. The current framework has held up so far — the General Court dismissed the challenge to it in September 2025 and the appeal is running — so this is lawful today and anyone claiming otherwise is behind. It is also the third such arrangement in eleven years, and the January 2025 dismissals at the American redress body it depends on left that body short of the members it needs to function. Your business website is the thing balanced on top of that.
• An Irish signature, American servers Squarespace Ireland Limited is a contracting party, not a hosting region. Where a Jira or a Dropbox lets an administrator pin storage to Frankfurt or Dublin, Squarespace offers no equivalent switch and its privacy policy does not describe one. So the answer to "where is it stored" and the answer to "which state can compel it" are the same answer, which is unusually simple and unusually unhelpful.
• Ten million domains that nobody went looking for Squarespace bought the Google Domains business in June 2023 for about $180 million, Google stopped taking registrations on 7 September 2023, and the last of roughly ten million names finished moving across on 10 July 2024. That makes a very large number of people customers of a website builder they never evaluated. It also concentrates the registrar, the host, the builder and the shop in one account, which means leaving the builder now involves moving the domain too.
• There is no free plan, and the entry tiers take a cut Squarespace sells a fourteen-day trial and then a subscription; it does not offer a free plan at all. Its own pricing table adds a transaction fee on top of whatever Stripe or PayPal already takes: 2% of online store sales on the entry Personal plan, falling to nothing on Business and above, and 7% of digital content and memberships on Personal, 5% on Business, 1% on Commerce and nothing only on Advanced Commerce. So the plan that removes the cut is dearer than the plan most small sellers would otherwise buy. Every European builder on this page has a free tier, and the smallest of them includes a shop in it.

What you have to replace, not just match

Squarespace bundles four things, and which of them you actually use decides which entry below is right rather than which country you prefer.

The first is the design: a template that looks professional without a designer, which is why most people bought it. The second is the shop, with products, inventory and checkout. The third is the domain and the email routed off it. The fourth is whatever else drifted into the account over the years — scheduling through Acuity, a members area, a portfolio.

Framer answers the first ambitiously and the second barely. Jimdo, Webador and Mozello answer the second at a fraction of the price of a Commerce plan. IONOS answers the third better than anyone here because it has been a registrar and a host since 1988. Nothing on this page answers the fourth, and if your Squarespace has grown a members area and a booking calendar, that is a project rather than a migration.

The alternatives compared

How each alternative compares to Squarespace

What actually breaks when you switch

The export is the shock, so look at it before you decide anything else. What comes out is one XML file in WordPress format: layout pages, text, images and a single blog page with its posts. Store pages, portfolios, index pages, albums, covers, calendars, product blocks, video and audio blocks, draft posts, style settings and custom CSS all stay behind, and a trial site cannot be exported at all. If you sell things, plan to re-enter every product by hand.

The domain is the second job and it has to go first. For the millions of names that came across from Google, the registrar and the website are the same account, so unlock the domain and get the authorisation code while the subscription is still live and paid. Check where mail for that domain points before you touch anything, because Workspace subscriptions bought through Google Domains moved across too.

Then keep the old site paid for a fortnight after the switch. Squarespace's URL mapping tool disappears with the subscription, so the redirects that protect your search rankings have to be rebuilt on the new host before the DNS changes, and the ones you forgot only reveal themselves once real visitors start hitting them.

Squarespace is owned by a European firm now. Is that not enough?

No, and the reason is worth getting straight because it comes up constantly in this directory. Permira is British, with its registered office in Guernsey, and it has controlled Squarespace since October 2024. Ownership determines who takes the profits and who appoints the board. It does not determine which state can serve an order on the company that holds the data.

Squarespace, Inc. remains a company operating from 225 Varick Street in New York, running servers in the United States. A demand lawfully served on that company is answered by that company, and its shareholders' nationality is not a defence available to it.

This is the exact inverse of the case on some other pages in this directory, where a European-sounding company turns out to contract through an entity somewhere else. Here a European owner sits on top of an unambiguously American operating business. Read the privacy policy rather than the cap table, every time.

Is the Data Privacy Framework about to collapse?

Not so far, and pages that say it already has are simply wrong. The adequacy decision has been in force since 10 July 2023, the action seeking to annul it was dismissed by the General Court in September 2025, and the appeal to the Court of Justice is pending. Transfers to a certified American provider are lawful as you read this.

What has weakened is the American machinery the decision was built on. In January 2025 members of the redress body were dismissed, leaving it without the numbers to take decisions, and after the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter in June 2026 the campaign group noyb called for the framework to be repealed outright.

You do not need to predict the outcome to draw the practical conclusion. Two of the three arrangements since 2000 were annulled, each time at a few months' notice, and each time a great many European businesses spent a quarter re-papering their suppliers. A builder established in Germany or the Netherlands takes that question off your list permanently rather than until the next judgment.

What actually comes out when I leave Squarespace?

Less than you expect. The export is a single XML file in WordPress format, and it carries layout pages, text blocks, image blocks and one blog page with its posts. That is the complete list of what survives intact.

What does not come out: store pages, index pages, portfolios, albums, covers and calendars; product blocks, video blocks and audio blocks; draft posts; anything in a page-specific header, footer or sidebar; your style settings; and your custom CSS. If you run a shop, none of your products are in that file.

The detail that surprises people most is that the export cannot be imported into another Squarespace site either. This is not a European-versus-American problem. It is how this whole market works, and the honest version of this page says so before recommending anything.

My domain came from Google Domains. Does that change anything?

It changes the order you do things in. Google stopped accepting registrations on 7 September 2023 and the last names finished transferring to Squarespace on 10 July 2024, so if you have not touched your domain settings since then, your registrar is now the same company as your website builder.

That means cancelling the site subscription and moving the domain are two separate jobs that live behind one login, and doing them in the wrong order is how people lose a week of email. Unlock the domain, obtain the authorisation code and move the registration first, while the account is still active and paid.

It is also worth checking where mail for that domain currently points, because Google Workspace subscriptions bought through Google Domains were migrated as well, and the billing relationship moved with them.

Which one to pick

If your reason for leaving is that the data ends up in New York on the third version of a legal arrangement in eleven years, all seven entries fix that equally and the choice comes down to what kind of site you have.

If Squarespace stopped being enough because you kept fighting the template, Framer is the only entry here that gives you a canvas and a real CMS, and it is Dutch end to end.

If it is a shop, price the cut as well as the plan: Webador at about €5 or Mozello on its free plan will carry a small catalogue without taking a percentage at all, and a German or Austrian trader should take Jimdo for the imprint generator alone. If the domain is what you actually care about, IONOS has been doing that job since 1988 and holds the only audited ISO 27001 certificate on this page.

And be clear-eyed about what nobody here fixes. Walking out of any hosted builder means rebuilding the site somewhere else; you take the text, the images and the domain. If that is the thing you object to, the honest answer is not on this page at all — it is WordPress or a static site on European hosting, and it costs you a developer instead of a subscription.