Transferring a domain from one Squarespace site to another

Squarespace don't tell you this, but it might save you hours/days of frustration.

My experience applies to 3rd party domains - Squarespace domains probably don't need this step.

If your domain is already connected to a Squarespace site and you want to transfer the domain to another website, Squarespace takes you through the steps here. I recommend you make a note of the verification CNAME record for the new website.

What you need to do:

The last step that they don't tell you is to make the old site private by going to Settings > Site Availability > Private.

If you don't do this, you might forever see the old site, even though Squarespace says the new domain is connected to the new site.

And within 72 hours, Squarespace support will not help you, saying you need to wait for the DNS updates to propagate.

This isn't true 😡 Typically transferring a domain within Squarespace takes maybe a few hours at most because you only need to update the verification CNAME record.

This happened to me. It was almost 48hrs since the domain DNS was updated, and Squarespace wouldn't help. I used a DNS checker which said the updates had propagated globally. To do this I went to https://dnschecker.org/, selected CNAME from the dropdown and entered the CNAME verification record like this XXXXXXXX.newdomain.com

The results showed this was globally pointing to verify.squarespace.com, which is correct. So I knew it was a Squarespace issue.

Just by chance, I made the old site private, and voila, the new site appeared when visiting the domain instantly.

I hope this helps someone because my client and I have had a stressful couple of days with no support from Squarespace.

Thank you so much for posting this. I came across the same issue (it's been 65 hours since I initiated the transfer). Once I switched the old site to private, this was fixed.

I'm also grateful for you sharing this information!! You saved me immediately! I checked an old link and saw that it still showed up and luckily I found your post. Once I set old site to private all worked as it should. Thank you!