How to Move Your Squarespace Store to Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide

Squarespace is a great place to launch an online store. But as your catalog, traffic and ambitions grow, many merchants hit its limits: fewer checkout options, a smaller app ecosystem, and less flexibility for scaling. That's when Shopify becomes the natural next step.

The good news: moving is very doable. The risk is in the details. Below you'll find a practical step-by-step guide, plus tips to avoid the most common mistakes. And if you'd rather skip the manual work, Hopover moves your Squarespace store to Shopify for you, and you can try a free preview of your migration before committing.

Why merchants switch from Squarespace to Shopify

• Commerce-first platform: Shopify is built around selling, with more advanced checkout, discounts and inventory tools.
• App ecosystem: thousands of apps for marketing, subscriptions, shipping and reviews.
• Scalability: better suited for growing catalogs, multiple sales channels and international selling.
• Payments and shipping options: more flexibility for local payment methods and fulfilment setups.

Step 1: Audit what you have

Before touching anything, make a full inventory of your Squarespace store:

• Products, variants, images and descriptions
• Collections and categories
• Customers and their contact data
• Order history
• Blog posts and static pages
• Discount codes and gift cards
• Your current URL structure

💡 Tip: use this audit as your migration checklist, and take the chance to remove old products and duplicates instead of carrying them over.

Step 2: Export your data

Squarespace lets you export products and orders as CSV files, and customer data can be exported as well. Blog content and pages are harder to move and usually need a separate process.

💡 Tip: keep a backup of every export before you continue. You'll want a clean copy to compare against later.

Step 3: Set up your Shopify store

Create your Shopify account, choose a theme, and configure the basics: currency, taxes, shipping zones and payment providers. Doing this first means your imported products land in a store that's ready to sell.

Step 4: Import products, customers and orders

Shopify accepts product and customer CSV imports, but the column formats differ from Squarespace's. Expect to map fields manually: variants, SKUs, images, prices and inventory are the usual trouble spots.

💡 Tip: import a small batch first and check images, options and prices before running the full import.

This is the step where most merchants lose the most time. Hopover automates the data move from Squarespace to Shopify, so you don't have to wrestle with CSV mapping. See it on your own store with a free preview.

Step 5: Protect your SEO with 301 redirects

This step makes or breaks a migration. Squarespace and Shopify use different URL structures, so every old product, collection and page URL needs a 301 redirect to its new equivalent. Without them, you lose inbound links, rankings and customers hitting dead pages.

Also carry over:

• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Image alt text
• Your sitemap, resubmitted in Google Search Console

Step 6: Test everything before going live

Run through a full checklist:

• Place a test order with each payment method
• Check shipping rates and tax calculation
• Test discount codes
• Review the store on mobile
• Confirm emails and order confirmations look right

Step 7: Switch your domain and launch

When you're confident, point your domain to Shopify, verify the SSL certificate, and monitor Google Search Console for crawl errors over the following weeks.

💡 Tip: keep your old Squarespace plan active until the transition is confirmed stable.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Skipping redirects. The single biggest cause of traffic loss after a migration.
• Importing messy data. Clean duplicates and outdated products first.
• Launching without testing checkout. A broken checkout costs real revenue.
• Cancelling Squarespace too early. Keep it until everything is verified.

DIY or let Hopover do it?

For a small store with a handful of products, a manual migration is realistic. For larger catalogs, years of order history, or a store where SEO matters, the time and risk add up quickly.

That's exactly why Hopover exists. We move your Squarespace store to Shopify so you can keep running your business instead of debugging spreadsheets.

• ✅ No manual CSV mapping
• ✅ Less risk of missing data or broken links
• ✅ See the result before you commit

Try a free preview of your migration

Not sure how your store would look on Shopify? See it before you decide.

👉 Start your free migration preview at Hopover

Final thoughts

Migrating from Squarespace to Shopify doesn't have to be stressful. Plan carefully, protect your URLs, test thoroughly, and you'll come out the other side with a store that's ready to grow. Whether you do it yourself or with Hopover, the checklist above will keep you on track.