← All Field Notes
SEC 01/ FIELD NOTES
Why I left Squarespace and what I create with now
Tech & Tools/July 16, 2026/1,180 words/5 min read
After ten years, the hardest part wasn't leaving... it was admitting how small I'd let my ideas get.
I was with Squarespace for well over ten years. I actually used to work for them, at their office in SoHo, about a decade ago... and back then I really believed in what they were doing. A way for a business to get a real website up, look legit, and actually sell on it. I loved it.
So consider this the story of a long relationship that quietly ran out of road... and what happened when I finally started creating on my own. This is my personal experience, by the way. Yours may be completely different... and that's fine.
The Blog Never Looked Like the One in My Head
One of my biggest frustrations was the blog. It was a very strict template... you only had so much you could do with the tools you were given. I couldn't change how it displayed, couldn't shape it into something I actually liked. Very little customization.
And I know there are people who make Squarespace look very, very good. Applause to you, honestly. But the way my brain works, I couldn't get it to do what I saw in my head. So I just kept dumbing down my ideas to fit the template.
That's a quiet cost. You don't notice it day to day... you just slowly stop imagining things your platform can't do.
The template was the first crack. The fees were the second.
Then I Actually Looked at the Fees
Until April of this year I was still running a business site on Squarespace's Business plan, selling online. And when you sell on the Business plan, Squarespace takes 3% of every sale on top of what Stripe already charges to process the card.
Read that again. Stripe does the actual work of moving the money. Squarespace takes 3% for... being the website.
Here's what a $100 sale actually leaves you with, per Squarespace's own fee schedule:
| Plan | Squarespace's cut | Card processing* | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business (what I was on) | 3% | 2.9% + $0.30 | $93.80 |
| Basic (current lineup) | 2% | 2.9% + $0.30 | $94.80 |
| Core | 0% | 2.9% + $0.30 | $96.80 |
| Plus | 0% | 2.7% + $0.30 | $97.00 |
| Advanced | 0% | 2.5% + $0.30 | $97.20 |
*Processing rates shown are Squarespace Payments' US rates for standard cards. If you connect Stripe instead, Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 applies on every plan.
And if you sell digital products or memberships, on the current entry plan that fee jumps to 7%. Seven percent.
All of that sits on top of the monthly subscription you're already paying. The plans with 0% transaction fees are the more expensive ones... so either way, they get their cut.
My checkout now runs on Stripe directly. Stripe takes its processing fee and nobody takes a platform fee on top of it.
Watching Shopify Take It All Overnight
The fees stung, but what really got me was watching the company drift.
When Shopify took over ecommerce, seemingly overnight, I was shocked. I thought Squarespace was so well positioned... and then all of a sudden everybody had a Shopify store.
Ever since then I felt like they were slipping. Not innovating. Concentrating on the wrong things. And then in 2024 they were bought out by private equity... and we all know what happens after that.
I felt sad more than anything. This was a company I'd worked for, a product I'd recommended to people for years. It just wasn't evolving.
The Moment I Knew I Was Done
The moment came when I watched Claude build things I asked for and come really close on the first try... and I realized I don't have limitations anymore.
If I have a thought, a theme, a feeling I want a page to have... the styling, the audience, the effects... all of that goes into how I create now. On Squarespace you get the one animation. Or one of five animations. Nothing outside that, not without knowing a lot more than I did.
Now the ceiling is whatever I can describe.
What My Stack Looks Like Now
My stack is definitely a stack now. It's not just one provider, and that's the real difference... you need to know where everything lives. If I'm explaining it to a friend, these are my top five:
LAYER 01 / THE BUILDERClaude CodeI describe what I want. It writes the code.REPLACES: knowing how to code
LAYER 02 / THE SITENext.js on VercelThe website and the hosting. Push an update, live in a minute.REPLACES: the template and the one-size hosting
LAYER 03 / THE DATASupabaseLeads, orders, content... in a database I own.REPLACES: data locked inside Squarespace's system
LAYER 04 / THE PICTURESCloudinaryStores every image, serves it fast, sized for the screen.REPLACES: whatever the template did with images
LAYER 05 / THE MONEYStripeDirect. No platform fee stacked on top.REPLACES: the 3% cut for being the website
(Honorable mention to Tailwind, which handles the styling... but honestly Claude deals with that one more than I do.)
The part that still amazes me: I can tell Claude to update something in Supabase and the change just cascades through the site. It's so fast now. I'm not held down by anything.
And that opens a door Squarespace never could. The next thing I'm exploring is automations... simple if-this-then-that stuff. A new lead comes in, I get notified. A blog post goes live, the social drafts get queued up. On Squarespace I wouldn't have even thought to ask for that. Now it's just the next thing to describe.
The Part That's Been Harder Than Expected
There is so much more going on under the hood than meets the eye... and on Squarespace, all of it was handled for me. Out here, it's mine to handle.
Security is the big one. I didn't know what rate limiting was. I found out. You learn along the way.
And you've got to ask yourself what you're actually building. If it's a blog, something fun, recreational... the stakes are lower. Look it over, check that it's okay, and if it's okay, great. But once you're dealing with personal information, credit cards, stored data, logins... you're going to want somebody, or something, checking that code. There are tools for exactly this. I've talked about Composure a few times on this blog... that post covers what it's caught for me.
Who Should NOT Do This
If you're looking for an easy, I-don't-want-to-learn-much deal... this is not it. There's a real learning curve. It took me a good year before I felt proficient at creating this way.
Squarespace is still a fine answer for someone who wants one bill, one login, and zero curiosity about what's underneath. No shade. That was me for a decade.
But I'd say this: don't limit yourself anymore. There are so many options now... Wix, Framer, Canva, creating with AI like I do. It depends on your skill set and what aligns with you. Go try everything you can. Dip your toes in.
Because I love how I create now.
Real talk: I use AI tools in my content workflow and in building my sites. The opinions, the decade of Squarespace history, and the fee math sting are all mine. Fee figures come from Squarespace's own published fee schedule as of July 2026... check their current pricing before you make any moves.
SEC 02/ DIRECT LINE