Moving From Wix or Squarespace to WordPress

Migrating to WordPress from Wix or Squarespace is usually a rebuild with careful content transfer, not a one-click move. Neither builder was designed to let you leave. Squarespace exports part of a site in a format WordPress can import; Wix states in its own help centre that sites cannot be exported to other platforms and have to be recreated. What can be fully protected, with planning, is your domain, your content and your search rankings.

If you are still deciding whether to move at all, custom website vs website builder covers that choice. This article assumes you have decided.

What can be exported

Those are the positions in each platform's help documentation at the time of writing (October 2026): Squarespace's export guide lists what its XML export includes and excludes, and Wix's guidance on exporting explains that sites must be recreated. Wix does let you export CMS collection data as CSV, which helps if you used its CMS for structured content.

In practice, for a typical small business site of 15 to 40 pages, the export saves some copying but the work is mostly rebuilding templates and moving content with care.

Migrating to WordPress, step by step

1. Crawl the old site. Use a crawler such as Screaming Frog to list every URL, title and meta description. Export Search Console's pages report to see which URLs actually get traffic.
2. Plan the new structure. Decide content types and URLs on WordPress. This is your chance to fix a messy structure, but every changed URL needs a redirect.
3. Build the new site on staging. Theme, templates and content model. Custom WordPress theme vs premium theme covers the theme decision.
4. Move the content. Import what the export allows, then copy the rest, page by page, checking headings, links and images. Keep the wording of pages that rank well; this is not the moment to rewrite them.
5. Re-host images. Download originals, compress them and upload them to WordPress with proper file names and alt text.
6. Map redirects. Every old URL gets a 301 redirect to its new equivalent. Wix blog URLs, which typically sit under /post/, and Squarespace collection URLs almost always change.
7. Rebuild forms and integrations. Contact forms, booking widgets, newsletter sign-ups and analytics all need setting up again.
8. Test. Every page, every form, every redirect, on mobile and desktop.
9. Switch the domain. Point DNS at the new hosting, confirm HTTPS works, and check the redirects on the live domain.
10. Monitor. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and watch for 404 errors and traffic changes over the following weeks.

The website migration SEO checklist goes deeper on steps 1, 6 and 10.

The domain

If your domain is registered through Wix or Squarespace, you have two options. You can keep it registered there and change its DNS records to point at the new hosting, or transfer the registration to an independent registrar. Transferring takes longer but leaves nothing tied to the old platform. Either way, do not cancel the old subscription until the domain is pointing at the new site and email is confirmed working, because some builder plans also handle email routing.

A worked redirect example

Hypothetical, but typical. Say a physiotherapy clinic on Wix has a homepage, six treatment pages, a prices page, a contact page and 25 blog posts. Its old and new URLs might map like this:

Every one of the 34 old URLs gets a line in the redirect map, including the posts with almost no traffic, because some of them will have links from other sites. Redirects are set up on the new WordPress site, through the server configuration or a redirect plugin, and checked one by one after the domain switches. A spreadsheet of old URL, new URL and tested status is the simplest way to keep track.

Note the pattern: the content keeps its meaning, so each old page has an obvious new home. Where a page is being merged or dropped, redirect it to the closest relevant page, never to the homepage by default.

What usually goes wrong

• No redirects. The single most common cause of lost traffic after a move.
• Rewriting content during the move. Changing what ranks and where it lives at the same time makes problems impossible to diagnose.
• Forgotten embeds. Booking widgets, maps and forms that were part of the builder silently disappear.
• Email broken by DNS changes. Check MX records before and after switching.
• Images left at full size. Builders resize images automatically; WordPress needs them sized properly or the new site is slower than the old one.

Is it worth it?

Moving makes sense when you have outgrown the builder: you need content types it cannot model, functionality its apps do not provide, better performance, or ownership of your own site. It does not make sense purely because WordPress is popular. A five-page site that does its job on Squarespace can stay there.

Next step

If you have decided to move, I handle Wix and Squarespace migrations as part of the WordPress development service, including the redirect map. The WordPress website development guide explains what you are moving to and what owning a WordPress site involves.