Migrating a therapist site from Squarespace to WordPress, step by step

Squarespace is where many practices start — fast, pretty, easy. It's also where many practices stall: limited SEO control, restricted form handling for HIPAA needs, and a ceiling on customization that arrives right when the practice starts growing. Here's how to move without drama.

Why practices outgrow Squarespace

HIPAA: Squarespace's native forms are not BAA-covered. A growing practice needs compliant intake — which means external tools awkwardly bolted on, or a platform that integrates them properly.
SEO ceilings: limited control over technical SEO, schema markup and site architecture caps what local search can do for you.
Ownership: you rent Squarespace; you own WordPress. Ten years of content should be an asset you hold.

Step 1: Set up the new home first

Provision WordPress hosting (healthcare-appropriate, with a BAA if forms will touch PHI), install a lean theme, and build the new site in full at a temporary address. Nothing about your live site changes yet — the migration happens in private.

Step 2: Move content deliberately

Squarespace exports posts and pages in a format WordPress can import, but the export is lossy — galleries, product blocks and some layouts don't survive. Budget a manual pass for your most important pages: services, about, fees. These deserve rewriting into the new design anyway.

Step 3: Rebuild the forms properly

This is the compliance moment. Replace Squarespace forms with a BAA-covered form provider, configure encrypted storage or forwarding, and make sure nothing routes client information through non-compliant inboxes. Document what you chose and why.

The switch itself is an afternoon — everything risky happens privately before it, and the old site stays alive as a fallback after it.

Step 4: The DNS switch

Map your old URLs to new ones (see our rankings-preservation guide), point your domain at the new host, and keep the Squarespace subscription alive for a month as a fallback while you verify everything works.

Step 5: Post-launch checks

Every old URL redirects to its new equivalent — test them by hand.
Forms deliver (send yourself a test inquiry).
Booking links work from mobile.
Search Console shows the new sitemap submitted and crawling clean.

Timeline expectation: a typical solo-practice migration is one to two weeks of calendar time, most of it building the new site — the switch itself is an afternoon. Done in this order, your clients and your rankings never notice the move. They just notice the site got better.