How to publish a Squarespace site: upgrade the trial to a paid plan, open Site Availability (search it in the Home menu, or Website, Website Tools on older layouts), choose Public, and save. That is the whole publish action, and it is why people who have “finished” their site and cannot find a Publish button are confused: there is no such button, only that setting. Every Squarespace site starts Private and stays that way until the plan is paid and the availability is switched. The rest of this post is what to do before flipping the switch (domain, SEO fields, forms, the checks that catch the usual launch-day problems), what changes the moment the site is public, and how to unpublish or hide it again without losing rankings.
How to publish a Squarespace site, step by step
- Upgrade to a paid plan. Billing, then choose Basic, Core, Plus or Advanced. A trial site cannot be made public; Squarespace’s publish guide lists the paid subscription as the first requirement.
- Connect or register the domain under Domains, so the public site answers on your own address rather than the squarespace.com subdomain. The domain change guide covers the DNS side for domains bought elsewhere.
- Open Site Availability and select Public.
- Save. The site is live on every connected domain within seconds; DNS for a newly connected domain can take up to a day or two to propagate everywhere.
What should you check before publishing?
| Check | Where | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Every page has an SEO title and description | Page settings, SEO tab | Google shows what you set; otherwise it invents one |
| Home page title names the business, service and place | Page settings, SEO tab | The one title every search will show |
| Site title, logo and favicon set | Site Styles; favicon under Website, Website Tools | Browser tab, results and shares |
| Social sharing image set | Social Sharing panel | Shared links show a photo instead of a grey box |
| Forms send to the right email | Form block, Storage tab | Confirm the address on the paid site; it defaults to whoever built the form |
| Test every form and button | The live site in a private window | Broken contact forms are the most common launch defect |
| Unfinished pages disabled or in Not Linked | Pages panel | Half-built pages otherwise go public and into Google |
| 404 page and redirects from any old site | Developer Tools, URL Mappings | Old URLs with links or traffic must 301 to new ones |
| Mobile check | Editor mobile preview and a real phone | Most visitors are on phones |
| Search Console connected, sitemap submitted | Analytics, Search Keywords, or Google directly | Indexing starts the day you publish |
| Analytics set up | Developer Tools, External API Keys (Google Analytics) | Day-one data |
| Cookie banner and privacy page | Website Tools, Cookies & Visitor Data | Required in most places |
The launch checklist Collaborada publishes makes the same point in one line: connect the domain, upgrade, set Public. The table is what stops the following week being spent on fixes.
What changes when the site goes public?
- Search engines can crawl it. Squarespace generates the sitemap automatically; submit it in Search Console the same day and request indexing for the home page. How long a new site takes to appear on Google sets expectations for the first weeks.
- Commerce goes live. If a payment processor is connected, real orders can be placed.
- Forms and commerce work for real people, so a wrong storage address is now a lost enquiry.
- The lock screen disappears. Visitors see the home page instead of the private-site notice.
- Nothing about the design changes. The site looks exactly as it did in preview; anything wrong now was wrong before.
Why is my Squarespace site not showing after publishing?
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| “Private site” screen on your domain | Site Availability still Private, or a trial | Upgrade and set Public |
| Domain shows a parking page or an old site | DNS not pointed, or propagation in progress | Check Domains panel status; wait up to 48 hours for third-party DNS |
| Works on squarespace.com address, not on the domain | Domain not connected or SSL still issuing | Domains panel; SSL can take a few hours after connection |
| Visitors see it, you see the editor | You are logged in | Open a private window |
| Not on Google | Normal for the first days to weeks | Submit the sitemap; request indexing; wait |
| Some pages missing | Disabled or password-protected pages | Pages panel; enable them |
How do you unpublish or hide a Squarespace site?
Site Availability, then Private (nobody but contributors) or Password Protected (anyone with the password). Both work on paid and trial sites. Two cautions: a site made private stops being crawlable and Google begins dropping its pages within days, so hiding a live site for a redesign costs rankings; and hiding is not cancelling, so the plan keeps billing. For a redesign, duplicate the site and build on the copy, or hide only the pages being worked on, and keep the live site public throughout.
Should you publish before the site is finished?
Yes, with a coming soon page as the home page and everything else disabled, because a public domain with one indexable page starts earning age and a first ranking for the business name while the rest is built. The alternative, staying private until every page is perfect, means launching with zero history on the day it matters most. What should not go public early is a half-finished site with placeholder text, since Google indexes what it finds and visitors judge it. Publish the placeholder, build in private behind it, enable pages as they are finished. That is the sequence every Squarespace project I run follows, and the launch-day handover is mostly the checklist above.
Frequently asked questions
Upgrade to a paid plan, connect your domain, then open Site Availability, choose Public and save. There is no separate Publish button; that setting is the publish action.
Site Availability is the control: set it to Public on a paid plan. Trial sites can only be private or password-protected.
No. Making a site public requires a paid subscription. On a trial you can share the site with a password, but visitors and search engines cannot reach it publicly.
Immediately on the Squarespace subdomain and on a domain that is already connected. A newly connected third-party domain can take up to 48 hours for DNS to propagate, and SSL a few hours.
Set Site Availability to Private or Password Protected. Google starts dropping a private site’s pages within days, so for redesigns duplicate the site or hide individual pages instead.
SEO titles and descriptions on every page, site title, favicon and social sharing image, form email addresses, all forms and buttons tested, unfinished pages disabled, redirects from any old URLs, mobile layout, Search Console and analytics connected.
