Before you leave Squarespace over the price rise, ask whether you want to own your website or rent it. On Squarespace or Wix you own your words and domain, though not the site itself. Self-hosted WordPress is yours to move. Choose on ownership and fit, not this year's price.
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A price rise lands in your inbox and the first instinct is to move. Hold that thought for a minute, because switching platforms in a temper is how founders lose six months and a chunk of their search visibility at the same time.
Here's what changed, what it means, and the question I'd actually be asking instead.
How much did Squarespace prices go up?
Squarespace lifted its published plan prices in 2026 by as much as 26 per cent, with the sharpest rises landing on annual billing. On the annual plans, Core went up 26 per cent and Plus went up 26 per cent, while Basic rose about 19 per cent and Advanced held where it was. Monthly billing moved less, somewhere between 8 and 16 per cent depending on the plan.
In Australian money, the Core plan on annual billing sits at roughly A$41 a month, up from roughly A$33. Plus lands around A$70, up from around A$55. Those are conversions from the published US list prices at current rates, so treat them as the shape of it rather than the invoice.
Your own number depends on when you signed up and what promotional rate you were sitting on, which is why some people are reporting a mild bump and others are looking at a jump that feels much bigger. Go and look at your renewal notice, not at someone else's outrage in a Facebook group.
Opening the renewal email.
Should you own your website or rent it?
Cost is the surface of this. Underneath it sits something more useful: your website is the one digital asset you own, and a rented platform can change the rules on you at any time. Price is only the most visible version of that.
On Squarespace or Wix you own your domain, your words and your photos. You don't own the site. The design, the templates, the functionality, all of it lives inside their system. Leave and you can export your written content, though you can't take the working site with you, which is why migrations off closed platforms are rebuilds rather than moves.
Self-hosted WordPress works the other way round. The software is yours, the files are yours, the database is yours, and hosting is a service you buy from whoever you like. If your host annoys you, you move the whole thing and keep the site. That's the actual difference, and it matters far more over five years than eight dollars a month does.
Renting is fine. Just know that you're renting.
A landlord can put the rent up. That's not a betrayal, it's the deal. The trouble starts when you assumed you'd bought the place.
When Squarespace is genuinely fine
I'm not here to talk anyone off it. Squarespace is a good product and for plenty of businesses it's the right call. It earns its keep when you're a service business with a handful of pages, when nobody in the business wants to think about updates or backups, and when the site's job is to look sharp and take enquiries.
It's also fine when the alternative is nothing. A tidy Squarespace site that's live beats a beautiful WordPress build that's been eighty per cent finished since March.
When it stops being fine
The ceiling shows up in a few predictable places. When you want something the platform doesn't do and there's no way to build it. When your content operation grows past what the editor comfortably handles. When you're running real ecommerce and the transaction fees start looking like a second salary. When your search visibility depends on technical control you don't have.
Those are all versions of the same signal: the platform is now deciding what your business can do. That's the moment to move, and notice that none of them are a price rise.
What owning it looks like
If you land on owning your site, WordPress on decent hosting is the sane version of that. The hosting is the part people get wrong, because cheap hosting is how WordPress got its reputation for being slow and fragile.
I use and recommend SiteGround for this. It runs on Google Cloud, it does automatic daily backups with a 30 day history, free SSL, a free CDN, and free migration if you're bringing an existing site across. Support is human and awake at 3am, which you'll care about exactly once and then care about forever.
The honest catch, because I'd rather you heard it from me: the headline price is an introductory rate prepaid for twelve months, and it goes up sharply at renewal. StartUp is A$4-odd a month to begin with and renews at around A$27. That's still competitive with what Squarespace now charges, and you own the site at the end of it. Go in with your eyes open on year two rather than being surprised by it.
The five-year test
Add up what the platform costs over five years, then ask what you'd be left holding if you walked away tomorrow. On a rented platform the answer is your domain and a folder of text. On a site you own, it's the site.
How do you choose a website platform?
Forget what the loudest people online are doing. Three questions get you there.
What does the site need to do in three years? Not now, then. If the answer involves ecommerce at volume, memberships, integrations or a lot of content, build on something you own.
Who's going to look after it? If nobody in the business wants that job and you're not paying someone, a closed platform is doing real work for you. Pay for it and get on with your day.
How much does being found matter? The more your business depends on search, the more you want technical control over the thing search is looking at.
If the answers point at owning it, move deliberately rather than in a panic. Map your URLs, keep your redirects, rebuild the pages that earn, and let the rest go. If they point at staying put, stay put and stop reading Facebook groups about it.
This is one corner of a bigger picture. Your website is Home in the Digital Triangle, the one asset you own outright, and it only pays out when Found and Seen are pointing at it.
Questions I get asked
Do I own my Squarespace website?
You own your domain, your words and your images. You don't own the site itself, since the design and functionality live inside Squarespace's system. Leave and you can export your written content, though not the working site.
Is it worth moving because of the price increase?
Not on price alone. A migration costs time and usually some search visibility while things settle. Move when the platform is limiting what your business needs to do, and treat the price rise as the prompt to check rather than the reason to switch.
Is WordPress harder to run?
There's more to look after, yes. Updates, backups and hosting become your responsibility. Good managed hosting takes most of that off your plate, and in exchange you get a site you own outright and can take anywhere.
That's exactly the sort of thing you ask me. Pocket Zoë is advice on tap: you send the question as a voice note, I come back with a straight answer and a Claude prompt you can run with.
Or if you'd rather not think about any of it, I'll build the thing for you.
