Most people find out what happens when they stop paying for Wix or Squarespace at a bad moment: a card expires, a renewal fails, or they’re halfway through switching platforms. The two platforms handle it very differently, and the domain is a separate story on both.
We build sites clients own outright through our WordPress development service, so weigh that. Every fact below was checked against the Wix and Squarespace help centers and Google’s Search documentation in October 2026.
Short answer: if you stop paying Wix, your site doesn’t disappear. It drops to the free plan, moves to a wixsite.com address and shows Wix ads. If you stop paying Squarespace, the site goes offline and visitors see a “Website expired” message. After 30 days expired, Squarespace says the content can’t be recovered. On both platforms the domain is a separate subscription that keeps running, or lapses, on its own.
Wix vs Squarespace at a Glance
As of October 2026, from the Wix and Squarespace help centers:
| Wix | Squarespace | |
|---|---|---|
| Site after the plan ends | Stays live on a free wixsite.com URL with Wix ads | Offline, shows “Website expired” |
| Failed renewal payment | Plan can be canceled for payment issues; you buy a new plan to restore it | Site stays visible 15 days while the charge is retried, then expires |
| Your content | Stays in your account on the free plan | Not recoverable after 30 days expired |
| Domain | Separate subscription; about 30 days’ grace, then about 30 days’ redemption | Separate subscription; 30 days’ grace, then a redemption fee may apply |
| Full site export | Not possible; the site must run on Wix’s servers | Partial WordPress XML export |
| Other subscriptions | Domains, business email and apps keep billing | Domains, Google Workspace, Acuity and Email Campaigns keep billing |
When You Stop Paying Wix
When you cancel a Wix site plan after the first 14 days, the plan stays active until the end of the billing cycle. After that, the site address reverts to the free Wix URL (siteprefix.wixsite.com/siteaddress) and Wix ads appear on the site (source). First-time plan purchases have a 14-day money-back guarantee, and canceling inside that window ends the plan immediately.
You keep the site itself. Wix lets you cancel the plan and carry on using the free version (source). What you lose is what the plan paid for: the connected custom domain, ad removal, more than 500MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth, and on most plans the ability to accept online payments (source). For a store or a booking site, losing payments is the part that hurts.
Two billing details catch people out:
- Wix plans can renew early. A plan may renew up to 3 weeks before its expiration date. Canceling turns auto-renewal off (source).
- Canceling the plan doesn’t cancel anything else. Domains, business email and app subscriptions in your Wix account must each be canceled separately (source).
If a renewal payment fails, update your payment details and Wix retries the charge. If the plan was already canceled because of payment issues, you restore it by upgrading the site again (source).
When You Stop Paying Squarespace
When a Squarespace website subscription ends, visitors to any of the site’s domains see a “Website expired” message and the site goes offline (source). You can no longer edit content, but you keep access to the Contacts panel, Products & Services (order history and past payments), Billing, Domains & Email, and Import & export.
A failed payment gives you a short buffer. Squarespace emails you, shows a banner only you can see, and keeps the site visible to visitors and search engines for 15 days while it retries the charge. If the charge still fails 15 days after the renewal date, the site is marked expired and is no longer visible to visitors or search engines (source).
You can reactivate an expired site by logging in and resubscribing (source). Timing matters: if the site has been expired for more than 30 days, Squarespace says it’s not possible to recover its content (source). Legacy pricing plans can’t be restored on reactivation either.
Canceling the website doesn’t cancel the rest. Domains, Google Workspace, Acuity Scheduling and Email Campaigns stay active and keep billing. Digital Products pause for 30 days (source).
What Happens to Your Domain
On both platforms the domain is its own subscription. Canceling the website doesn’t cancel it, and letting it lapse doesn’t take the site with it. The domain lapsing is the bigger risk, because that’s the address customers, Google and every backlink point to.
Wix domains go through set stages after expiry (source):
- Grace period, about 30 days. The domain is disconnected from your site but stays in your account. You can renew without extra fees.
- Redemption period, about 30 days. Retrieving the domain costs a redemption fee, and it can take up to 7 days after you pay.
- Pending delete. You can no longer retrieve it. It’s released 5 to 10 days later.
- Available to all. Anyone can register it.
Squarespace domains have a 30-day grace period. After that, Squarespace can’t guarantee the domain will still be available to renew, and it may charge a redemption fee on top of the domain cost (source). After you cancel the website, a Squarespace domain stays registered, and you can manage its DNS or transfer it (source).
If you plan to leave either platform, keep the domain alive until it’s pointed at the new site, or transfer it to a registrar you control first.
What You Can Export Before You Go
Wix says plainly that a Wix site must run on Wix’s servers, so it can’t be exported or hosted anywhere else (source). Blog posts can’t be exported to other platforms either (source). What you can export:
- CMS collections, as a CSV file (source)
- Your product list, which can then be imported into a new store (source)
Pages, layouts and blog posts have to be rebuilt on the new platform.
Squarespace exports a WordPress-format XML file (source). It includes:
- Layout pages
- One blog page with its posts
- Text and image blocks
- Gallery pages
It leaves out:
- Store, index, portfolio, album and calendar pages
- Product, video and audio blocks
- A second blog
- Drafts
- Style settings and custom CSS
The export covers your words and images, not your design.
What It Does to Your SEO
Google doesn’t index URLs that return a 4xx status code, and URLs already in the index that start returning one are removed (source). An expired Squarespace site is hidden from search engines. A Wix site that drops to the free plan moves to a wixsite.com address, so the URLs on your own domain stop serving it. Either way, the pages Google ranked on your domain stop answering.
The fix is a 301 redirect from each old URL to its new home. Google treats a redirect as a strong signal that the target should be indexed in place of the old URL (source). Those redirects live on the new site, on your domain, not on the old platform. So the thing to protect is the domain, not the old subscription. Keep the domain, export a list of every live URL before you cancel, and map each one to a new page. Our Wix to WordPress migration guide walks through that mapping.
Before You Cancel: A Checklist
- Crawl the live site and save every URL. You’ll need the list for redirects, and you can’t crawl it once it’s offline.
- Export what the platform allows. On Wix, export CMS collections and products. On Squarespace, run the XML export and download your images.
- Download images and files. Neither export gives you a clean media archive.
- Export contacts and orders. Squarespace keeps the Contacts and Products & Services panels open after cancellation, but don’t rely on it.
- Decide what happens to the domain. Renew it, point it at the new site, or transfer it. Don’t let it drift into a grace period.
- Cancel the extras on purpose. Domains, email, scheduling and apps keep billing on both platforms until you cancel each one.
- Launch the new site before the old plan ends. Overlap means no downtime and redirects in place on day one.
Related Posts
- Wix to WordPress migration: moving content, redirects and SEO
- WordPress vs Wix for business: what you trade for the convenience
- WordPress vs Squarespace for small business: ownership, plugins and growth
- Website ownership explained: who actually owns your domain, code and content
FAQ
What happens if I stop paying for Wix?
Your site drops to the free plan. It moves to a free wixsite.com address, shows Wix ads, and loses plan features such as the custom domain and, on most plans, online payments. The site and its content stay in your account.
What happens if I stop paying for Squarespace?
The site goes offline and visitors see a “Website expired” message. After a failed payment you get 15 days while Squarespace retries the charge. Once a site has been expired for more than 30 days, Squarespace says its content can’t be recovered.
Will I lose my domain if I cancel Wix or Squarespace?
Not straight away. The domain is a separate subscription on both platforms, so canceling the website doesn’t cancel it. If the domain itself isn’t renewed, it enters a grace period of about 30 days, then a redemption period with a fee, and can then be released for anyone to buy.
Can I move my Wix site to WordPress?
Not as a file. Wix says its sites must run on Wix’s servers and blog posts can’t be exported to other platforms. You can export CMS collections and products, but pages and posts have to be rebuilt, with 301 redirects from the old URLs.
Can I export my Squarespace site?
Partly. Squarespace exports a WordPress-format XML file with layout pages, one blog, and text and image blocks. Store pages, product and video blocks, drafts, style settings and custom CSS don’t export.
Can I get my Squarespace site back after it expires?
Yes, by logging in and resubscribing, as long as it hasn’t been expired for more than 30 days. Legacy pricing plans can’t be restored.