Quick answer: Squarespace raised its prices in early July 2026 without announcing it. There was no press release and no blog post; customers found out when automated billing emails landed. Headline rises run up to 26% on annual plans, and users on older legacy plans report far bigger jumps at renewal, with renewal notices showing the new rates applying from 12 August 2026. Prices are quoted in US dollars, so Australian businesses also wear the exchange rate, plus GST. Here is what changed, how to check what your renewal will actually cost, and what your options are.
What changed, and when?
In the first week of July 2026, Squarespace quietly moved to new pricing. PetaPixel and Fstoppers pieced the numbers together from the billing emails customers received, because Squarespace itself published nothing. On annual billing, Basic went from US$16 to US$19 a month (up 19%), Core from US$23 to US$29 (up 26%) and Plus from US$39 to US$49 (up 26%). Advanced held at US$99. Monthly billing rose less: Core from US$36 to US$39 and Plus from US$56 to US$65.
Then it got messier. On 23 July, Squarespace emailed some customers to say the increase on “certain plans” had been an internal error and was higher than intended. It never said publicly which plans, or by how much. So the practical takeaway is blunt: the numbers in any article, including this one, may not match your account. The only figure that matters is the one on your own renewal notice.
For context, Squarespace was taken private in 2024 when Permira bought it for US$7.2 billion. Subscription products under private equity ownership tend to get more expensive, not less. This is unlikely to be the last rise.
The 12 August date, and why legacy plans are copping it worst
If you signed up years ago, you are probably not paying the prices in that table. You are on an older plan structure, possibly grandfathered pricing that survived earlier restructures. Those are the accounts reporting the sharpest jumps. On r/squarespace and in a Squarespace forum thread that started on 8 July, users report old pricing being moved up to current rates at renewal rather than rising by the headline percentage. One widely shared user report described a 48% jump on renewal. TechRadar Pro quoted a customer whose subscription has climbed over 60% since 2021, from US$216 to US$348 a year, and who summed up the mood: “I’m paying for things I sincerely did not ask for.”
Those legacy repricing figures are user reports, not published Squarespace numbers, which is exactly the problem. The date that keeps coming up in those reports is 12 August 2026: users on legacy plans say their notices show renewals billing on or after that date at the new rates. If your renewal lands after 12 August, do not wait for the charge to find out what it is.
Checking takes two minutes. Log in to Squarespace, go to Settings, then Billing, then Subscriptions. You will see your plan, the renewal date, and the amount the next renewal will charge. Compare it against your last invoice. If you received a pricing email before 23 July, check again now, because the correction emails mean some earlier figures were wrong. Annual plans auto-bill, so set a reminder a few weeks before your renewal date while you still have time to decide.
The Australian maths: USD billing and GST
The prices in the coverage are US dollars. Many Australian Squarespace accounts, particularly older ones, are billed in USD, which means two extra costs before you ever see the real number. First, the exchange rate: at around 65 US cents to the Australian dollar, the new Core annual price of US$29 a month is roughly A$45 a month, or about A$535 a year. Second, GST: Squarespace collects it from Australian customers, which takes that Core figure to roughly A$590 a year. Basic lands near A$385 a year with GST. Your bank may also add a foreign transaction fee on USD charges.
There is a quieter cost too. A USD subscription floats with the currency. When the Australian dollar weakens, your website gets more expensive without anyone raising a price. Check the currency on your last invoice so you know which version of the maths applies to you.
Your options from here
Stay, but tidy up the bill. If Squarespace is doing its job, the cheapest move may be staying on purpose rather than by default. Check whether you are on a higher tier than you use; plenty of small businesses pay for commerce features they never touch and could drop a tier. Annual billing is meaningfully cheaper than monthly. Just make the decision before renewal, not after.
Move to another builder. Wix, WordPress.com and the rest will happily take you, and switching can buy a cheaper year. But you are swapping one subscription for another, and every builder is playing the same game: get you in, then ratchet. GoDaddy went a step further and killed its builder entirely, which we covered in what GoDaddy discontinuing its website builder means. Migration also costs time. Rebuilding pages, redirecting URLs and preserving your Google rankings is real work, so a sideways move only makes sense if the destination is genuinely better, not just cheaper this year.
Own the site instead. The third option is a site built once, on your own domain and hosting, with no platform subscription attached. Hosting a fast static site costs very little, and nobody can reprice the build after the fact. The upfront cost is higher than a month of Squarespace, and we have written honestly about what a website actually costs in Australia, including when a builder is the right call. But over three to five years, ownership usually beats renting, and this July is a live demonstration of why: renters get repriced. If you want to see how we approach that kind of build, our websites service page explains it.
When Squarespace is still the right tool
Being annoyed at how this was handled does not make Squarespace a bad product. If you have a portfolio or a simple brochure site, you enjoy editing it yourself, and roughly A$50 a month is immaterial to your business, staying is a perfectly rational choice. The templates are polished, the editor is genuinely good, and for small-scale selling the built-in commerce works. The issue here is not quality. It is that a platform your business depends on repriced itself without telling anyone, got some of the numbers wrong, and corrected them by private email. That is worth weighing whether you stay or go.
A note on our angle: we build websites for a living, so we benefit when people leave website builders. Read this with that in mind. The advice we would give a mate stands regardless: open your Squarespace billing page this week, before the 12 August renewals start landing, and make whatever decision you make with the real number in front of you.