Why I Switched from Squarespace to WordPress

After building a collection of over 500 recipes, I recently made the leap from Squarespace to WordPress.

For a long time, Squarespace served me well. It’s user-friendly, allowing you to create a beautiful website quickly—even if your technical expertise is limited to turning a switch off and on to fix the internet.

But as my blog grew, I began running into roadblocks. For a while, I was able to make do, but I soon realized making do was hindering my growth.

That’s when I knew it was time for a change. In this post, I’ll share my experience, the specific challenges I faced, and why I ultimately switched from Squarespace to WordPress.

The most frustrating issue with Squarespace was its lack of a proper pagination system. Imagine having over 500 recipes but being able to display only 30 in a single category and worst, forcing everything to load on one massive page.

I tried to get creative with tags to make all my recipes accessible. This workaround made things somewhat functional, but it resulted in a more complicated tagging system than it needs to be.

In contrast, WordPress has no limit on how many posts can be displayed, and its pagination system works smoothly, showing a manageable number of posts per page. This not only keeps my site organized but also reduces load times.

Customer Service

Another major issue was customer support. Squarespace’s customer service felt like navigating a maze. They used to offer live chat, right on the dashboard, but that quickly disappeared. Now, to get help, you must wade through help articles before you can even send an email. Their response time was painfully slow too, and sometimes they quickly closed a help desk ticket before it was resolved.

WordPress, on the other hand, offers far better customer support, including live chat. Whenever I run into a problem, I feel like I have someone ready to help. And they usually respond within minutes! For more complex issues, it takes only a few hours at most. I’m crossing my fingers that this is the norm.

Plugins

One of the biggest limitations with Squarespace was the lack of plugins. In short, there aren’t any.

What you see is pretty much what everyone gets. If you want something different, you’re out of luck.

I specifically wanted a plugin for recipe cards that would display recipes nicely with a bit of search engine optimization (SEO).

For Squarespace users, there’s only one third-party option: RecipesGenerator. While it worked, it wasn’t ideal. Since it wasn’t built into Squarespace, I had to use two websites. I created and edited recipes on RecipesGenerator’s platform, then copy-pasted the code into Squarespace. This back-and-forth got tedious fast.

And if you didn’t like RecipesGenerator? Too bad—it’s the only option.

WordPress, however, offers a wide range of plugin options for recipe cards. If you don’t like one, you can simply switch to another until you find the perfect fit. I currently use WP Tasty plugin and it works great with a great support team.

Plus, all plugins work within WordPress. No more jumping to different websites. This simplifies my work flow significantly.

The Migration Experience

Migrating a large website can be daunting, but WordPress offers detailed guides to make the transition from Squarespace easier.

Of course, there were still some hiccups during the migration. After everything was imported, I had to manually review each post to fix issues like images not scaling properly and formatting inconsistencies. It was tedious and time-consuming, but it had to be done, and I was ready for the grind.

The Major Problem No One Talks About

Before I decided to transfer, I looked up many blogs that said transferring is easy, and if the domain is the same, it should be a smooth process. It was not.

Although my domain essentially stayed the same, it really didn’t. My Squarespace domain was “https://www.vickypham.com“, but the change to WordPress was “https://vickypham.com/“. This caused a major disruption that quickly decreased my traffic to about 55%. Yikes!

After the switch, traffic plummeted as expected, as my website went offline. It rebounded after a day due to old indexing, but soon after that, Google had to start all over, reindexing my blog (page by page) from the URL “change.”

Fortunately, this was temporary, and after about two weeks, my traffic started to stabilize, and my website got reindexed and I resumed my old positions in Google Search.

Final Thoughts

Switching to WordPress has been a game changer for both my workflow and the growth of my blog.

I still recommend Squarespace for those with limited technical skills or anyone looking for a simple website that doesn’t require frequent updates. However, for food blogs or any site with regular updates, WordPress is definitely the way to go.

I love having full control over my website and access to all the tools I need right at my fingertips.

I’m so glad I made the move and came out the other side relatively unscathed. Now that the foundation of my website is solid, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

With the migration finished, I can go back to creating more and better recipes for my readers.