How to Build a Course in Squarespace Easily 2026

Every site you own appears as a card on the Squarespace dashboard, with its trial expiry date and quick links to Website and Selling. The Blueprint AI shortcut on the right generates a new site design from a short questionnaire.

It helps if you're starting a dedicated course site from scratch; skip it if the course is going on a site you already have. Open the site you want to build on.

Open the Pages panel and click + beside the navigation section where the course should appear. Under Sell, click Content & Memberships, then click Course at the top of the window.

Pick a layout and enter a title. The recording shows the same step as a "Name your course" dialog, which notes that you can change the name later.

The overview page then opens on the right. Duplicating a course page copies all its lessons too, which is a safe way to rework a live course without visitors seeing half-finished changes.

In the course page panel, click Course Content, then + and choose Lesson. Give it a title of 200 characters or fewer.

An excerpt, custom URL and thumbnail are optional. On the Video tab, upload a file, reuse one from your library, or paste a YouTube or Vimeo link.

Lesson videos can run up to three hours, storage allowing. On the Status tab, publish now, schedule, or leave it as a draft.

Then click Edit to add page sections with text, images or forms under the video. Chapters are optional: Course Content, +, Chapter.

Drag lessons into them and drag chapters into order. The overview page lists everything in the order shown in this panel.

A course holds up to 250 lessons. Mind the storage.

Basic sites get 30 minutes of uploaded video across the whole site. Embedding from YouTube or Vimeo doesn't use it.

Nothing is locked until the course belongs to a pricing plan. Click the course page, then in Selling tools click Add a pricing plan and Create pricing plan.

Review the name and description, list up to five benefits (60 characters each), and choose a structure: Free, where visitors trade an email address for access; Fixed amount, paid once or in instalments for permanent access; or Subscription, billed weekly, monthly or yearly. Paid structures can offer up to two pricing options.

You can also set sign-up start and end dates for a cohort, and bundle up to 10 other course, blog, video or member-site pages into the same plan. Click Create. The course now shows a Paywall label in the Pages panel.

In Selling tools, click Paywall and pick the placement. All content hides the overview and every lesson until the visitor signs up.

Lessons only leaves the overview public, so visitors can read the outline and lesson titles, and puts the paywall on the lessons. Here you also edit the paywall's headline and description and choose which plans it shows; this setup features a Silver Tier and a Gold Tier.

Lessons only unlocks one more tool. Hover over a lesson in Course Content, click ..., and choose Set as public preview.

That lesson becomes free to watch and gets a preview badge on the overview, which is often the best sales pitch the course has. Under All content, preview lessons can't be reached.

Course pages follow your site-wide fonts and colours, so changes in Site Styles (Themes, Fonts, Colors, Buttons, Forms) carry across. In the recording, Recommended Color Palettes preview directly against the Sample Course title and Start Course button.

For course-specific layout, click Edit on the overview, then Edit Layout. Elements toggles the course title, description, button, lesson thumbnails and excerpts.

Design sets spacing, alignment and a List or Grid layout. Colors picks a theme.

Lesson pages have the same three tabs, plus extra settings for course navigation and mobile buttons that appear only once you click Start course and edit from inside a lesson. Lesson styles apply to every lesson at once.

Paid plans need a payment processor. Squarespace Payments and Stripe take cards for every structure.

PayPal only works for one-time fixed-amount plans, not instalments or subscriptions, and Apple Pay can't be used for pricing plans at all. When it's ready, enable the course page, publish the site if needed, and add the course to your navigation.

One thing to plan for: every page in a pricing plan is hidden from search engines. The course itself won't rank in Google, so give it a public sales or landing page outside the plan and point your marketing there.