Should I move my website from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress?

The honest answer is: probably yes, if you've outgrown what they can do, and probably no, if you haven't. The trick is knowing which side of that line you're on, because the project itself isn't a quick migration. It's effectively a rebuild.

Here's what's actually involved, when it's worth doing, and how to protect what's working on your current site through the switch.

Migration is the wrong word

This is the first thing worth being clear about. You can't really migrate a Wix or Squarespace site to WordPress in the way you can migrate, say, one WordPress install to another. The platforms are too different under the hood, and there's no clean export path that preserves the design, the layout, and the structure.

What actually happens is a rebuild. We treat the existing site as a reference for content, brand, and visual feel, and we build a new site on WordPress that captures the parts that are working and improves the parts that aren't. The content can be reused, the brand carries across, the look and feel can be replicated or refreshed depending on what the client wants. The underlying site is new.

Calling it a migration sets the wrong expectation. Calling it a rebuild gives you a more honest picture of what you're committing to.

When it's worth doing

Most of the people who come to us wanting to move off Wix or Squarespace have hit the same wall. They started with a DIY or low-cost site that did the job for the first few years, and now they need more. More functionality, more performance, integrations with tools the platform doesn't support natively, or simply someone to manage the site properly so they can get on with running their business.

The trigger is usually one of three things. The site has stopped being able to do what the business needs. Performance has become a real problem and the platform doesn't give them enough control to fix it. Or they've reached the point where the time they spend wrestling with the platform is worth more than the cost of having someone else manage a proper site for them.

Any one of those is a good reason. All three together is a clear signal that the move is overdue.

When it isn't

If your Wix or Squarespace site is still doing what your business needs, isn't holding back your performance, and you don't have ambitions for it that the platform can't support, there's no good reason to move. The platforms are genuinely fine for small, simple sites with simple needs.

The mistake is treating the platform itself as the problem. WordPress isn't automatically better. It's better when you need the things WordPress is good at, which are flexibility, ownership, and the ability to do almost anything you can describe.

If you're not using those advantages, you're just adding maintenance overhead for no real gain.

What the project actually involves

A move from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress is essentially a normal web design project, with a couple of extra considerations.

Content carries over, but you'll usually want to revisit it as part of the move rather than just lift and shift. The structure of the new site is rarely identical to the old one, so the copy gets reorganised, sometimes rewritten, and the visual content gets reviewed to see what's still good and what needs replacing.

Design is fresh, even if the brand stays consistent. You're not constrained by what the old platform's templates allowed, which usually means the new site can be tighter, faster, and more closely shaped around how visitors actually use it.

Functionality is where you tend to gain the most. Things that were difficult or impossible on the old platform become straightforward on WordPress. Custom forms, deeper integrations, proper landing pages, advanced SEO controls, tailored user journeys.

Timelines and costs are similar to a normal bespoke build. We'd usually quote it as a project from scratch with the existing site as a reference, rather than as a "migration" with a separate price.

Protecting your SEO through the switch

If your existing site has been ranking well in Google, this is the part to take seriously. Done right, an SEO-aware rebuild should preserve and often improve your search performance. Done badly, you can lose months of traffic for no good reason.

The key things are matching the URL structure where possible, setting up proper 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones for anything that has to change, preserving meta titles and descriptions on pages that are currently performing, keeping your most valuable content intact (or improving it rather than replacing it), and resubmitting your sitemap to Google after launch so it picks up the changes quickly.

If your old site wasn't really doing SEO in any meaningful way, this matters less. Most DIY sites we see haven't built up a lot of organic equity, so the redirects are more about tidiness than rescue. Either way, it's worth doing properly.

How to decide

Two questions. First, is your current site genuinely holding the business back, or are you just bored of it? If it's the second, hold off and spend the budget somewhere else. Second, are you ready for what's actually a rebuild, with the time and budget that implies? If yes, the move is usually worth it. If you're hoping for a quick switch, you'll be disappointed by the reality.

Our web design page covers how we approach builds, our website migration doc covers the technical side of moves like this, and our pricing post gives a sense of what to budget.