How to protect your Squarespace account while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Squarespace account. While the account holder is alive, Squarespace allows transferring the account and transferring the domain to another registrant.
Squarespace decides requests about a Squarespace account after a death case by case, so nothing in its terms promises a survivor anything; what the account holder sets up in advance is what holds. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a Squarespace account. While the account holder is alive, Squarespace allows transferring the account and transferring the domain to another registrant.
How to protect your Squarespace accounts
- •Invite the new owner as a contributor and make sure they accept.
- •Open the Permissions & Ownership panel, click your name under Owner, then click Transfer Ownership.
- •Verify your own account, select the new owner from the dropdown, then click Continue and Confirm.
- •Domains, Google Workspace and Acuity Scheduling attached to the site change owner with it.
- •Site content as an .xml file from the Import & export content panel; many page types do not export.
- •Orders as a .csv file from Products & Services, Orders, Export data.
- •Email Campaigns contacts as a .csv file from the Contacts panel (Export all contacts).
Naming who acts after a death
What Squarespace's terms say about sharing and transfers2
- Transferring the account or registration
The current owner transfers a site to another contributor from the Permissions & Ownership panel, and the subscriptions, Squarespace domains and Acuity Scheduling attached to the site change owner with it.1
A parked domain changes owner by inviting the new owner as a domain manager and choosing Transfer Domain Ownership; the new owner accepts by email.1
A domain moves to another provider with a transfer authentication code, emailed within 24 hours to the domain's contact details; the whole transfer can take up to 15 days.3
A domain cannot transfer away during a 60-day lock after it is registered or transferred in, or during a contact update lock after its registrant details change.3
Squarespace acquired the Google Domains registrations and their customer accounts on September 7, 2023, so a former Google Domain is now managed at Squarespace.4
- Exporting and backing up data
Site content exports as an .xml file for WordPress, and many features do not export, including store, portfolio, album and index pages.5
Commerce orders download as a .csv spreadsheet from the Orders panel.6
Contacts export to a .csv file from the Contacts panel; notes and saved addresses are not in the export.7
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Squarespace primary sources (12 pages reviewed). How we research.
Squarespace customer support
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