The Squarespace Free Trial: What You Can Do and What Happens After

Squarespace's trial gives you 14 days to build and preview a full site with no credit card required, but the trial site itself doesn't reach the public web the way a paid site does — search engines don't index it, and commerce features are turned off. Here's exactly what the trial lets you do, what it blocks, how to extend it, and what happens when it runs out, sourced from Squarespace's own help center, checked September 2026.

How long is a Squarespace trial, and does it need a credit card?

Squarespace's help center states the length plainly: "We offer a 14-day free website trial so you can try Squarespace and get to know our features before subscribing" (Squarespace, "Starting a Squarespace trial site", checked September 2026). No payment method is required to start: "We don't require credit card information to sign up for a trial" (same source). You sign up by going to squarespace.com, starting a design, and creating an account with your name, email, and a password — the trial site is live in the editor immediately, before you've paid anything.

One exception worth knowing: if you buy a website plan as part of a bundle with a domain purchase, there's no separate trial period for that site — the bundle purchase skips the trial stage entirely.

What can I actually build during the trial?

You get the real editor: template selection, Fluid Engine's block-based layout system, Squarespace's built-in AI tools, and the ability to add pages, content, and products exactly as you would on a paid site. The trial isn't a stripped-down demo version of the product — it's the same Website Builder, with a handful of specific features turned off rather than a reduced feature set overall.

What does the trial specifically not let me do?

This is where a trial site behaves differently from a paid one, and Squarespace's help center is direct about each limit:

• Search engines don't index trial sites. Squarespace's help center states this exactly: "Search engines don't index trial sites. After publishing your site, your site is visible to search engines." A trial site existing and being reachable by URL isn't the same as it showing up in Google.
• No payment processing. You can't accept payments through Squarespace Commerce during a trial, and it's not possible to send customer email notifications for orders.
• Commerce extras stay off. Features like abandoned checkout recovery and subscription products don't work on a trial site, and you can't connect a PayPal Business account.
• Form submission emails are disabled. If you're testing a contact form during the trial, submissions don't generate the usual email notification — Squarespace suggests routing form data to a third-party storage option like Google Drive instead if you need to capture it during this period.
• A handful of narrower restrictions apply too: a five-contributor cap, image and file URLs that only work for logged-in contributors, audio blocks that only function on Squarespace's built-in domain rather than a custom one, and no ability to submit a podcast to Apple Podcasts or license Getty Images.

None of these are bugs — they're documented trial behavior, and every one of them goes away once you upgrade to a paid plan.

Can I extend my trial if I need more time?

Yes. Squarespace's help center states: "we can extend your trial by seven days" if you need more time to decide before it expires. That's a one-time extension mechanism described in the same trial article — reach out before the original 14 days run out rather than after, since the extension is meant to buy you more evaluation time, not to revive a site that's already lapsed.

What happens when my trial expires?

Squarespace sends a warning first: you get a notification email the day before your trial ends. If you don't upgrade or request an extension by then, the consequence is stated directly: "When your trial expires, the site won't be public, and all content is marked for permanent deletion." That's a stronger outcome than simply going offline — the content is flagged for removal, not just hidden. Squarespace's documentation does note a window where you can still upgrade to a paid plan shortly after expiration and recover the site "as you last left it," so an expired trial isn't necessarily an instant, irreversible loss — but the safer approach is not to let it lapse in the first place if you've put real work into the site.

What should I do before my trial runs out?

• Track the expiration date from day one, especially if you're building the site across more than one sitting.
• Decide on a plan before the deadline, not after — Squarespace's four plans (Basic, Core, Plus, Advanced) differ mainly in contributor limits and commerce fees, not in which templates or design tools you get; see our full breakdown of Squarespace's pricing if you haven't picked one yet.
• Don't test commerce or form-notification features and assume they're broken — a trial site not accepting payments or not emailing on form submissions is expected behavior, not a bug to troubleshoot.
• Request the seven-day extension early if you're close to the deadline and genuinely need more evaluation time, rather than letting the trial expire and hoping the recovery window covers you.

Does starting with Blueprint AI Builder change any of this?

No — if you use Squarespace's Blueprint AI Builder to generate a starting site from a questionnaire, you still land on the same trial terms once you're building and previewing it. Blueprint AI Builder itself is free to use, but the trial limits above (no indexing, no live payments) apply the same way regardless of whether you started from a blank template or an AI-generated one. Our guide to how Squarespace's AI builder works covers the generation steps themselves in more detail than fits here.

Where does Figment fit in?

Nowhere directly — Figment isn't a Squarespace alternative in the trial-and-plan sense above. Figment publishes a website from a Figma design you've already built, through its Figma plugin; it has its own plans and its own free tier (unlimited sites on figment.so, with a badge), rather than a time-limited trial that expires and deletes content. If you're specifically deciding whether to commit to Squarespace's plan structure, that decision is the one this guide and our pricing breakdown are meant to help with.

Bottom line: the Squarespace trial is a real 14 days in the actual editor, with no card needed to start, but it's not a public-facing preview of a live site — no search indexing, no live payments, no form-notification emails. Extend it once if you need more time, and don't let it lapse if the site matters, since Squarespace's own documentation calls expired trial content marked for permanent deletion.