For more than a decade, Squarespace has positioned itself as the go-to website builder for creatives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners who want polished design without the headache of coding. But as competition from Wix, WordPress, and newer AI-powered builders intensifies, the company has been doubling down on a less glamorous but strategically critical offering: custom domain registration and management.
The move is more than cosmetic. According to a detailed review published by TechRadar, Squarespace’s domain services have matured into a full-featured platform that competes directly with dedicated registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap, while offering tighter integration with its own website-building tools. For industry watchers, this vertical integration signals a broader ambition: owning the entire stack of a small business’s online presence, from the URL to the storefront.
A Veteran User’s Perspective on What Has Changed
TechRadar’s review comes from a writer who has used Squarespace for over ten years, providing a longitudinal view that most product reviews lack. The author notes that Squarespace’s domain search tool has become notably more sophisticated, allowing users to explore not just traditional .com and .net extensions but a wide array of newer top-level domains (TLDs) such as .shop, .design, .art, and .studio. These niche extensions, once considered gimmicky, have gained traction among small businesses and freelancers looking to differentiate themselves in crowded markets.
The review highlights that Squarespace offers a free custom domain for the first year with most annual website plans, a perk that effectively bundles domain registration into the cost of hosting. After the first year, renewal pricing is competitive with standalone registrars. For users already committed to the Squarespace platform, the convenience of managing both the domain and the website from a single dashboard is a significant draw. The author emphasizes that this integration eliminates the often-confusing process of pointing DNS records from a third-party registrar to a hosting provider — a step that trips up many non-technical users.
The Strategic Logic Behind Owning the Domain Layer
Squarespace’s push into domains is not new — the company acquired Google Domains’ assets in 2023, absorbing millions of domain registrations in one of the most consequential deals in the registrar space. That acquisition, reported widely at the time, gave Squarespace immediate scale in a market it had previously treated as a secondary feature. The Google Domains customer base, accustomed to a clean and transparent registration experience, represented exactly the kind of user Squarespace courts: technically literate enough to register a domain, but not interested in managing server infrastructure.
The integration of those Google Domains customers has been gradual, with Squarespace migrating accounts over the past year. Industry analysts have noted that the transition has been smoother than many feared, though some users have reported confusion about pricing changes and feature parity. What the acquisition accomplished strategically, however, is hard to overstate. Squarespace went from being a website builder that happened to sell domains to a major domain registrar that happens to build websites. The distinction matters because domain registration is a recurring revenue stream with high retention rates — customers rarely move domains once they’re set up.
New TLDs and the Branding Arms Race
One of the more interesting developments in Squarespace’s domain offering, as noted by TechRadar, is the emphasis on newer, more creative domain extensions. The traditional .com remains the gold standard for credibility, but supply constraints mean that most short, memorable .com addresses were claimed years ago. This has created a secondary market where desirable .com domains can cost thousands or even millions of dollars.
For small businesses and solo practitioners working with limited budgets, alternative TLDs offer a practical workaround. A photographer named Sarah, for instance, might find that sarah.photography is available and affordable, while sarahphotography.com is either taken or prohibitively expensive. Squarespace’s domain search tool surfaces these alternatives prominently, and the platform’s templates are designed to display any domain extension cleanly. The TechRadar review notes that Squarespace supports hundreds of TLDs, giving users a broad menu of options.
How Squarespace’s Approach Compares to Competitors
The website builder market has consolidated significantly in recent years. Wix, Squarespace’s closest competitor in the design-forward segment, also offers domain registration, but has not made the same aggressive push into the registrar business. WordPress.com, operated by Automattic, provides domain services as well, but its audience skews more technical and is often comfortable using third-party registrars. Shopify, which dominates e-commerce, offers domains but treats them as a minor feature relative to its payment and fulfillment infrastructure.
What sets Squarespace apart is the degree to which it has invested in making domain management a first-class feature rather than an afterthought. The platform includes WHOIS privacy protection at no additional cost — a feature that some competitors charge extra for. DNS management tools are built directly into the Squarespace interface, and the company provides guided setup for email forwarding and third-party email services like Google Workspace. For users who want a single vendor to handle their domain, website, email routing, and even basic e-commerce, Squarespace is making a compelling case.
The WHOIS Privacy and Security Angle
Domain privacy has become an increasingly important consideration for small business owners and individuals. When a domain is registered, the owner’s contact information — including name, address, phone number, and email — is typically recorded in the public WHOIS database. Without privacy protection, this information is accessible to anyone, including spammers, scammers, and competitors.
Squarespace includes WHOIS privacy protection as a standard feature with all domain registrations, as highlighted in the TechRadar review. This is a meaningful differentiator. GoDaddy, the largest domain registrar by volume, has historically charged for full privacy protection, though it has adjusted its policies over time. For users who are comparing total cost of ownership, the inclusion of free WHOIS privacy can tip the balance in Squarespace’s favor, particularly for those registering multiple domains.
Pricing Realities and the Fine Print
While Squarespace’s first-year-free domain offer is attractive, prospective users should examine renewal pricing carefully. Domain costs vary significantly depending on the TLD. A standard .com domain might renew for $20 per year through Squarespace, while more exotic extensions like .io or .design can cost considerably more. The TechRadar review notes that Squarespace’s pricing is generally in line with the broader market, though it is not always the cheapest option for every extension.
The real value proposition is not in raw domain pricing but in the elimination of friction. Managing a domain through Squarespace means automatic SSL certificate provisioning, one-click connection to a Squarespace website, and integrated analytics. For a freelancer or small business owner who values time over marginal cost savings, this bundled approach can be worth a modest premium. The alternative — registering a domain at one provider, hosting at another, managing DNS records manually, and troubleshooting SSL issues independently — is a tax on time that many users are happy to avoid.
What This Means for the Broader Market
Squarespace’s domain strategy reflects a broader trend in the small business technology market: the consolidation of services under single platforms. Companies like Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify are all moving toward becoming one-stop shops that handle everything from domain registration to payment processing to email marketing. The logic is straightforward — the more services a platform provides, the higher the switching costs for customers, and the more predictable the revenue stream.
For small business owners, this consolidation has both benefits and risks. The benefit is simplicity: fewer vendors to manage, fewer invoices to track, and fewer integration headaches. The risk is vendor lock-in. If a business builds its entire online presence on Squarespace — domain, website, email, e-commerce — migrating away becomes a significant undertaking. The domain itself is portable, but the website design, content, and integrations are not.
Squarespace appears to be betting that for its target market — design-conscious small businesses, creative professionals, and entrepreneurs — the convenience of an integrated platform will outweigh concerns about lock-in. Given the company’s track record of steady growth and the successful absorption of Google Domains’ customer base, that bet appears to be paying off. The question for the industry is whether this model of vertical integration will become the norm, or whether a more modular, best-of-breed approach will reassert itself as AI tools make it easier to build and manage websites across platforms.
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