Leaving Wix or Squarespace: what each builder will export and what you must rebuild

Wix: the content is yours, the site is not portable

Wix says plainly that a Wix site has to run on Wix's own infrastructure. It relies on proprietary technology, so the site cannot be exported and hosted somewhere else. The content you build belongs to you under Wix's terms, and a domain can be kept with another provider and connected to Wix, but the pages themselves have to be rebuilt elsewhere.

Blog posts are the sharpest edge. Wix states that it is currently not possible to export blog posts to other platforms; its suggested alternatives are about sharing, not moving. Webflow's own migration guidance for Wix sites adds that CMS collections can be exported and used to populate a Webflow CMS, store products can be exported (digital products cannot), and media must be downloaded one image at a time from the media manager.

• Plan to copy blog posts by hand or from the live pages.
• Export CMS collections and store products before anything else changes.
• Download images individually and keep the originals.

Squarespace: an export for WordPress, with gaps

Squarespace provides an XML export meant for WordPress. It includes layout pages, one blog page with its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post, text and image blocks, and gallery pages. It does not include other page types such as album, cover, index, calendar, portfolio and store pages, content in page-specific headers, footers and sidebars, a second blog, dropdowns, audio, product and video blocks, drafts, style settings or custom CSS. The site must be published, and you cannot export from a trial site.

Images need particular care. Squarespace warns that with the WordPress Importer on a self-hosted site, images may not migrate; WordPress can end up referencing the original image links, which stop working after the Squarespace site is cancelled. Importing into WordPress.com copies images to its servers, or you can download images manually and upload them.

• Check the media library on the new site after every import.
• Do not cancel the old site until images load from the new one.
• List the page types that are not in the export and rebuild them from the live site.

What the WordPress importer does and does not do

The WordPress importer reads an export file and offers to map authors, then brings in posts, comments and categories. Attachments come across only if you tick the option to download and import file attachments. Very large files can exhaust the server's memory, and the remedy is to raise the limit or split the file and import in parts.

A failed import can leave content behind, so running it again may create duplicates; check and delete leftovers first. An export file does not clone a whole site: themes, plugins and settings need separate handling.

• Split a large file rather than raising limits blindly.
• Count posts before and after.
• Never repeat a failed import without checking what it left.

Start from a page list, not from a file

Because no export is complete, the reliable way to move is to list every page, post and address first, with its title, description and images, then rebuild and compare page by page. Webflow's guidance says the same: list every current address with its meta titles, descriptions, Open Graph and canonical tags, and note existing redirects before you start. Keep the old site live until the new one is accepted.

The fixed-price route is the site move project, built on Webflow and quoted from £3,200 for up to 60 old addresses in all (for example 10 pages and 50 posts) as an untested proposal; a WordPress target needs a separate quote. It is accepted in two stages. Before the domain is switched, every listed page has a counterpart that matches the parity sheet, each form delivers a test, and you sign off. After the switch, every old address redirects once to its new page or is on the approved list of addresses the builder cannot redirect. It does not cover stores, bookings or member areas, and makes no promise about search rankings.