What are the Squarespace alternatives with no monthly fee?

Squarespace's pricing page lists four plans. Billed annually they are $19 a month for Basic, $29 for Core, $49 for Plus and $99 for Advanced. Billed monthly, Basic is $25 and Core is $39.¹ There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial, and an annual plan includes a free custom domain for one year.¹ Squarespace's help page says that domain renews at $20 a year after the first year, and gives $20 a year for common endings like .com.²

We priced the two plans a small business usually starts with, Basic and Core, next to a Classic kit and Carrd's yearly plan. Prices are before tax.

If you sell online, the higher plans trade a bigger monthly price for lower fees. Card rates start at 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic and Core, 2.7% + $0.30 on Plus and 2.5% + $0.30 on Advanced, and the online store transaction fee is 2% on Basic and 0% on the others.¹ On the same arithmetic, three years of Plus is $1,804.00 and three years of Advanced is $3,604.00.

A lot of it is worth paying for, and these are the items Squarespace lists itself.

• Hosting. Every plan includes fully managed cloud hosting.¹

• Support. Squarespace lists 24/7 support, a help center and webinars.¹ We answer kit questions by email.³

• A free start. Every site starts with a 14-day free trial, and the page says no credit card is required.¹

• Selling online. All paid plans let you sell products and services. Basic charges a 2% online store transaction fee, and Core and above charge 0%.¹ Our Classic and Motion kits use tap-to-call links and have no form, so they take no orders or bookings.⁹

• More control on Core and above. Core lists unlimited contributors, advanced website analytics, code customization with CSS and JavaScript, and professional email from Google Workspace. Basic allows up to two contributors.¹

• Cancel any time. Changes take effect at the end of your billing cycle, and your service continues through the period you have paid for.¹

Four, with different catches. We read each one's own pages.

• A kit with free hosting. A Classic kit is $39.99 once.³ Cloudflare says requests for static files are free and unlimited on its free plan.⁵ You pay for a web address each year and follow the guide to put the site online. The catch is that a kit has no store or booking tools.⁹ For how a kit differs from a template, see website templates vs ready-made website kits.

• Wix's free plan. Wix lists a free plan at $0 with no credit card. Its FAQ says a Premium plan is what lets you connect your own domain and remove Wix branding.⁶ As we read it, a free Wix site cannot use your own domain and carries Wix branding. For three years of Wix's paid plans, see website kit or Wix.

• WordPress.com's free plan. WordPress.com says you can start with its free plan. It also says free sites display WordPress.com ads to visitors, and that a paid plan turns them off.⁷ Its paid plans list a custom domain, free for the first year.⁷

• Carrd. Carrd's Pro page lists yearly prices only: $9 for Pro Lite, $19 for Pro Standard and $49 for Pro Plus. Pro Standard lists custom domain URLs and forms, and every listed plan lists no Carrd branding. The page offers a 7-day free trial of Pro.⁸

Free hosts for plain files, such as GitHub Pages and Vercel's Hobby plan, have limits on business use. We go through them in can I get a website with no monthly fee.

Squarespace's help page says you can export certain content as a file in WordPress format. It lists layout pages, text blocks, image blocks, one blog with its posts and up to 1,000 comments per post, and gallery pages on version 7.0 sites.¹⁰ It lists what does not export: other page types such as album and store pages, content in page-specific headers, footers and sidebars, extra blogs, dropdowns, audio, product and video blocks, drafts, style settings and custom CSS.¹⁰ The site must be published and public, and a trial site cannot be exported.¹⁰

The page also says that if you import into your own WordPress install, images may not come across, and their links stop working after you cancel. It suggests importing into WordPress.com, which copies the images.¹⁰

On refunds, Squarespace's help page says an annual website plan canceled within 14 days of purchase is eligible for a full refund, and the cost of a free domain comes off that refund. Monthly plans and renewal payments are not refunded, so cancel before the renewal date.¹¹ For a domain you registered there, the help page says a transfer out starts with the domain being unlocked from within your site, and that closing the site is a separate step.²

These steps are ours, built on what Squarespace's own pages say.

1. Keep the Squarespace site running while you build the new one. Cancel before the renewal date, because renewal payments are not refunded.¹¹

2. Copy what you need. The export file carries layout, text and image pages in WordPress format, but not drafts, style settings or custom CSS, and images may not come across.¹⁰ For a kit, you paste your text into the pages and add your own photos.

3. Set up the kit with its guide and put it online on a free host.^{3, 5}

4. Point your web address at the new site. If the address is registered at Squarespace, a transfer out starts with the domain being unlocked from within your site.²

5. Check every page on a phone, then cancel Squarespace.

• A few pages with your services, hours and phone number. A kit, or Carrd's yearly Pro Standard.^{3, 8}

• A blog you want to keep. Squarespace says to export to WordPress, and recommends WordPress.com for moving the images. Its free plan shows ads to visitors.^{7, 10}

• A store, bookings or members. Stay on a builder. A site with no monthly fee does not run a store for you.

• You want to look before you commit. Squarespace has a 14-day trial, Wix and WordPress.com have free plans, and Carrd offers a 7-day Pro trial.^{1, 6, 7, 8}

If you sell online, want 24/7 support, or would rather never touch hosting or a web address setting, staying on Squarespace is a fair choice. For the wider cost picture, see what a small business website costs, and to weigh a kit and a builder against a designer, see kit, builder or web designer: which to choose. For kits, see website kits, such as Plumber, Hair salon and Cleaning service.

We read each company's own pricing and help pages on October 21, 2026, from New York, and worked out each total from the cents. We sell website kits, so we have a stake in this question. Squarespace is the only website builder we price here, and we name Wix, WordPress.com and Carrd only for their free or yearly plans. Prices and offers change, and a different country or a different week can show different ones, so check each page before you buy.