Moving from Wix or Squarespace to a custom build: what carries over
What a business keeps and what it leaves behind when it moves from a hosted site builder to a coded site of its own, and how the move is planned.
The short answer
A business moving from a hosted site builder to a coded site of its own keeps more than it fears and less than it hopes. The content carries over: the text of pages and posts, the images, the structure, the domain and, with care, the rankings. The design does not, nor do the builder’s forms, galleries, bookings or store features, which are the builder’s and are rebuilt properly on the new site. Rankings survive if every old address is redirected to its new equivalent, which requires a complete list of the builder’s addresses before anything changes. The domain and email, often bundled with the builder subscription, are untangled first: the domain into a registrar account in your name, mail onto a dedicated provider. The move itself follows the standard order: inventory, content export, rebuild with previews, redirect map, DNS switch in a quiet window, verification, and cancellation of the builder after a billing cycle with everything working.
What carries over and what does not
| Asset | Carries over? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Page and post text | Yes | Export tool or structured copying into the new content model |
| Images and documents | Yes | Downloaded, optimised, re-uploaded with alt text |
| Page structure and navigation | Yes, as a map | Recreated in the new site, improved where sensible |
| Domain | Yes | Transferred to a registrar account in your name before the move |
| Yes, if moved first | Mailboxes migrated to a dedicated provider; records updated | |
| Rankings and backlinks | Yes, with redirects | Full address list mapped to new addresses; permanent redirects |
| Design and layout | No | Rebuilt on owned components from the business’s design |
| Forms | No | Rebuilt with server-side validation, bot checks and proper delivery |
| Galleries, bookings, store features | No | Rebuilt or replaced with proper services |
| Analytics history | Stays in the analytics account | Property retained; new site connected to it |
| Builder-specific features | No | Assessed; most are not needed or are done better |
The plan
- Inventory: every page, post, image, form, feature, address, and where the domain and email live.
- Untangle domain and email: registrar account in your name; mailboxes on a dedicated provider; verified.
- Export content into the new structured content model, cleaning as you go.
- Rebuild the site on owned components with previews, including forms and any feature the business genuinely uses.
- Redirect map: every old address to its new equivalent; tested on the preview.
- DNS switch in a quiet window with a low time-to-live; the new platform serves redirects from that moment.
- Verify: pages, forms, redirects, certificates, analytics, search console; submit the new sitemap.
- Cancel the builder after a billing cycle, having exported anything left and confirmed nothing points at it.
What the business gains
A site that is faster by construction and stays that way, forms that validate and deliver properly, accessibility and performance tested on every change, content in a structured model that can move again, code in the business’s repository, hosting in its own account at the real price, and no subscription ceiling on what the site can become. The move is a project; the result is an asset rather than a tenancy.
What this means for you
Moving from a site builder to a coded site keeps your content, domain, email and rankings if the move is planned: untangle domain and email first, export content into a proper model, rebuild the design and features properly, map and test every old address, switch DNS in a quiet window and verify before cancelling. What you leave behind is the builder’s design and features and its ceiling; what you gain is a site you own.
Frequently asked questions
Can we export our site from the builder?
Content, mostly: pages and blog posts as text, images as files, sometimes through an export tool and sometimes by structured copying. The design and layout do not export in any usable form, and neither do the builder's forms, galleries, bookings or store features. Plan for the content to move and everything else to be rebuilt, which is also the opportunity to rebuild it well.
Will we lose our Google rankings?
Not if every old address is redirected to its new equivalent with a permanent redirect. Builders generate their own address patterns, so the first task is to list every address the old site has, from a crawl, the sitemap and analytics, and map each to its new home. The redirects are served by the new platform from the moment DNS switches. Pages left to return not-found lose their rankings; pages redirected keep them.
What about our domain and email?
If the domain was bought through the builder, transfer it to a registrar account in your name before the move; if email was included, move mailboxes to a dedicated provider first and verify. Both are commonly entangled with builder subscriptions, and both are worse to lose than any page. Once they are independent, the website move cannot affect them.