Publish Your Site

Once you have edited your styles, added your content, completed the various steps in our Before You Launch section, and connected your domain, it is officially time to publish your website. We recommend that you go through each page on your website on desktop and mobile testing all of your buttons and verifying that the site looks the way you want it to. It’s also a good idea to have a few friends or family members test the site before you publish it.

Overview of Squarespace Pricing Plans

When you’re ready to publish, you’ll need to select your plan. Squarespace (like all other website-hosting platforms) charges a monthly hosting fee to host your website on their servers. Squarespace has four pricing plans—Personal, Business, Basic Commerce, and Advanced Commerce. To see the current pricing of each plan and a side-by-side comparison, visit Squarespace’s Pricing page. Below is an overview of each of the plans.

Personal Plan

We generally don’t recommend the Personal Plan for most of our templates, because it doesn’t support custom code. That means, that the 100–200 lines of custom CSS that we’ve included wouldn’t be used. It also lacks features that most businesses would use—most notably, Commerce functionality. This plan is likely sufficient for blogs or hobby sites, but we wouldn't recommend it if you plan on selling anything. You can, however, upgrade at any time.

Business Plan

The Business Plan offers all the premium features and Commerce functionality. This is a great starting point for any website. The only downside to this plan is the 3% transaction fee on all sales made through the site. This isn't a lot if you're only making a few sales, but if you plan on selling more than $200 a month, then the Basic Commerce plan pays for itself.

Basic Commerce Plan

There are a few differences between the Business plan and the Basic Commerce plan. Most significantly, the Basic Commerce plan has zero transaction fees.

Advanced Commerce Plan

The most notable additional features included in the Advanced Commerce plan are:

• Abandoned Cart Recovery – This feature automatically sends customized emails to users who've abandoned their cart without completing their purchase.

• Real-Time Carrier Shipping – This feature allows you to get access to live shipping quotes, which can be valuable for stores selling physical goods.

• Automatic Discounts – You can automatically apply discounts to users' carts without a coupon code when certain criteria are met (e.g., free shipping over $100).

Changing Plans

Please know that you can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. You may wish to start small and increase your plan as your business grows. Or you may want to scale back if you aren't using all the features.

Monthly vs. Annual Plans

There are discounts for signing up for an annual plan (27%–36% discounts, depending on the plan), plus you get the custom domain name for free. If your budget allows, going annual is a much better deal.

Station Seven Circle Member Discount

Because you purchased your template through Station Seven, and we are Squarespace Circle Members, you will receive an additional 20% off your first year if you pay annually.

How to Upgrade to a Paid Plan

1. To upgrade to a paid plan, click the Publish Your Site button at the bottom of any screen while editing the template. (You can also get to the same page by clicking the gear settings icon from the Home menu and clicking Site Availability under the Website tab. From there, you can click Upgrade to Publish.)

2. You will then be redirected to select a plan and follow the steps to complete your paid plan order.