How to Go Live with Squarespace Website, Can I Publish My Squarespace Website for free in 2026?

Go to squarespace.com and click Login in the top right. On the sign-in screen, enter your account email and password, or use one of the faster options — Continue with Google, Apple, or Facebook — if your account is linked to one of those. The login screen also has a Can't log in? link if you've forgotten your credentials, and a reCAPTCHA-backed secure login notice, which is normal and just Squarespace's standard account protection.

After logging in, you land on the Dashboard, which lists every site tied to your account as a card with its name, current domain (often a placeholder squarespace.com address before launch), and trial status — including the exact date the trial expires if you haven't upgraded yet. Click into the site you're ready to publish; each card has Website and Selling buttons, and if you already own a custom domain, a Domains button appears too. If you manage more than one project, double-check you're opening the right card before continuing, since the settings you change next apply only to that site.

Inside your site's editor, open Settings from the main menu. The Website section is the default landing view and lists a column of options — Site Availability, Site Languages, Regional Settings, Cookies and Data Privacy, Favicon, Social Links, and more further down. Site Availability is the one that controls whether your site is public, private, or password-protected, and it currently shows a Password tag here, meaning the site is restricted to only visitors with the password until that's changed.

Clicking into Site Availability shows your current visibility setting and, if you're still on a free trial, a button labeled something like Upgrade to Publish rather than a simple toggle. That's Squarespace's way of confirming your site is otherwise ready — the only thing missing is a paid plan attached to the account, which is required before the site becomes visible to the public at large. Click that button to move into the plan selection flow.

The plan screen lays out Personal, Business, and two Commerce tiers side by side, each with a monthly price and an annual-billing discount clearly marked — the Business plan is typically flagged Most Popular. Pick based on what your site actually needs: Personal covers a straightforward content site, while the Commerce tiers add store and selling features if you plan to sell products. After selecting a plan, the checkout flow moves through Billing, Address, Payment, and Review before finalizing — complete each step with accurate billing details, since this is what activates the paid subscription your site needs to go public.

Before you confirm the upgrade, scroll through your site one more time looking for typos, placeholder text like "Lorem ipsum," broken links, or images that never got swapped out. This is also a good moment to check that your navigation menu, footer links, and contact forms all work as expected, since a live site gets real visitors immediately and first impressions on a freshly launched page are hard to walk back.

Once payment completes, your site publishes immediately and Site Availability updates to reflect that it's public. If you're using a free squarespace.com subdomain for now, you can add and connect a custom domain later from the same Settings area without taking the site offline again. Visit your site's URL in a private browser window to confirm it loads the way you expect for a first-time visitor, not just how it looks while you're logged in as the owner.