Checklist · 10 minutes
Migration Order Checklist.
The exact 12-step order for moving off Wix or Squarespace without breaking your site, your forms, your booking, or your search ranking. Each step has the gotcha that takes most people out.
Back to The VaultMigrations fail in predictable ways: domain locked at the registrar, redirects forgotten, intake forms going dark on cutover day, designer disappearing before handoff. The 12 steps below are the order that prevents each of those.
Check each step as you finish it. The score updates. When you hit 12 of 12, you are done. If you skip a step, the gotcha line says exactly what breaks.
Step 01 · Week 0
Take inventory of your current site
List every page, form, integration, and embed. URL on the left, what it does on the right. A spreadsheet works fine. This is the single most-skipped step and the one that costs the most when skipped.
Skip it: rebuild with missing pages
Without an inventory, the new site ships with 80 percent of the content. The 20 percent missing is the part you forgot existed. Find out from a customer 6 weeks later.Step 02 · Week 0
Verify domain is in your name + registrar account
Log into your registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare). Confirm the WHOIS shows your name. If your designer registered it, request transfer to your account before anything else.
Skip it: cannot point DNS at the new site
A domain in your designer's account means you cannot move it without their cooperation. If they have gone dark, you are looking at a 60-day UDRP claim before you can launch.Step 03 · Week 1
Export current content
Copy every page's text into Google Docs, one page per heading. Download every photo. Export blog posts to markdown if you have any. Save it all in a single folder labeled with today's date.
Skip it: lose blog posts and photos at cutover
Wix's content export is unreliable for blog posts and image assets. Manual scrape is the only way to know you have a clean copy. Do this BEFORE you cancel anything.Step 04 · Week 1
Document integrations + their auth
For each integration (Calendly, Stripe, your CRM, Mailchimp, etc.), write down: where it lives, what email it is connected to, and who has admin access. You will reconnect each one to the new site.
Skip it: forms stop on cutover day
The most common cutover-day failure: a form on the new site still posts to an old endpoint that no longer exists. Document each integration's destination so you can update it cleanly.Step 05 · Week 2
Build the new site at a temporary URL
Use a staging URL (yoursite.pages.dev, yoursite.netlify.app, or a subdomain). Your live site keeps running through the entire build. Nobody sees the new site until you flip DNS.
Skip it: build under public domain, break SEO
Building directly on your live domain creates duplicate-content issues and SEO chaos. Always build on a staging URL and flip in one step.Step 06 · Week 2
Rebuild forms + test every submission
Every form on the new site, send a real test submission. Confirm it lands in the inbox or CRM you expect. Confirm the auto-responder fires if you have one. Do this BEFORE the DNS flip, not after.
Skip it: silent form failure for weeks
A form that "looks like it worked" but did not actually deliver is the worst failure mode. Customers will not call you to say their submission disappeared. Test every form before launch.Step 07 · Week 3
Build the redirect map
For every page on the old site, decide where it should redirect on the new one. Most pages map cleanly. Pages that no longer exist redirect to the closest equivalent. Save the map as a CSV: old URL, new URL.
Skip it: lose 30 to 60 percent of organic traffic
Without redirects, every page Google has indexed becomes a 404 on launch day. Your search traffic disappears overnight and takes 8 to 12 weeks to recover. Most never fully recover.Step 08 · Week 3
Pre-stage DNS at your registrar
Lower the TTL (time-to-live) on your DNS records to 5 minutes 24 hours before cutover. This makes the actual switch propagate worldwide in minutes instead of hours.
Skip it: 8-hour mixed-state launch
Without lowering TTL first, half your visitors hit the old site and half hit the new one for up to 8 hours after the switch. Both groups see broken redirects.Step 09 · Cutover day
Flip DNS + verify each redirect
Update the A record (or CNAME) at your registrar to point at the new host. Within minutes, run through your redirect map. Click every old URL, confirm it lands on the right new URL.
Skip it: redirects silently broken for weeks
A redirect map that "should work" sometimes does not. The only way to know is to manually walk through the list. Skip this and you will not find broken redirects until search traffic drops.Step 10 · Cutover day + 1
Submit new sitemap to Google + Bing
In Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the new sitemap.xml URL. This tells search engines to re-crawl your site under the new structure. Speeds recovery from any redirect issues.
Skip it: 4-week ranking drop instead of 1-week
Without sitemap submission, Google discovers your changes via crawl-rate, which can take weeks. Submitting forces a re-crawl within 24 hours.Step 11 · Cutover day + 7
Monitor 404s + fix the strays
In Search Console's Coverage report, watch for new 404 errors. Each one is a redirect you missed or a page Google had indexed that you forgot about. Patch each one with a redirect to the closest match.
Skip it: long-tail traffic stays gone
The first wave of redirects covers your top pages. The second wave (weeks 1 to 2) is the long-tail. Most operators miss this and lose 10 to 20 percent of organic traffic permanently.Step 12 · Cutover day + 14
Cancel old hosting + confirm domain stays
Once Search Console shows clean redirect coverage and no new 404s for a week, cancel your Wix or Squarespace subscription. Confirm cancellation does NOT release the domain (if the domain is still on Wix at this point, transfer it FIRST).
Skip it: domain expires + site disappears
Wix sometimes keeps the domain renewing on its own clock even after you cancel hosting. Other times canceling releases the domain entirely. Confirm in writing where the domain lives before pulling the trigger.Want this emailed to yourself?
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