Where is Squarespace hosted?

Squarespace websites are hosted at Peer1 Networks in New York City. Peer1 boasts a 100% network uptime guarantee, and is an extremely reputable hosting provider.

From their website, "Peer 1 utilizes multiple major upstream providers and more than 400 peering partners to ensure continuous Internet connectivity, greater route diversity, and ultimately, enhanced Internet performance. This strategic combination allows customer traffic to be routed over the best available connections.".

Peer1's website contains additional information on their network.

What sort of systems is my website hosted on?

Top of the line, brand new Dell servers. Squarespace never uses second-hand equipment, and all systems have redundancy at the hardware and server level. This means that each system has RAID drive arrays to protect against simple hardware failures. Critical servers are placed in hot-standby, redundant configurations to mitigate downtime due to complete server failure.

How are these systems monitored?

Squarespace's systems are monitored in real-time by other, external systems that report failures to administrators within seconds of any problems. Multiple point checks and content checks are in place to identify all manner of potential issues.

How is my data backed up?

In addition to the hardware level backup, Squarespace backs up your website data in real-time to live standby servers. In the event that a primary system goes down, we can switch to these systems to restore service almost instantly, and with no data loss. Also, your data is periodically transferred to secure off-site storage, that allows for recovery even in the face of the worst disasters. Your data is our business, and we take our infrastructure and back up plans extremely seriously.

How does this compare to hosting on my own?

You'd have to deal with issues of network redundancy, co-location / shared hosting, server redundancy, data backup, and server monitoring. Some providers can provide you with a few of these services, but very few would provide you with all of them, especially when dealing with the data on your custom website. This, of course, doesn't even begin to address issues related to your website construction and management, all of which are completely managed by the Squarespace application.

Squarespace will not only save you weeks of time and headache, but will provide you with a solution that is far superior to most custom content management solutions available on the internet today. Setup is free and only takes a few seconds.

Do you host email? How do I get email accounts for my domain?

No, we do not currently provide email hosting services. However, this does not prevent you from pointing your domain's email server records to another server, while keeping your web domains pointed to Squarespace.

Much like Squarespace will be handling the web serving aspect of your domain, other services can be configured to handle the email services for a domain. We recommend contacting your domain registrar to explore email hosting options, or using Google's private-labeled email service.

What happens if Squarespace goes out of business? How can I move my content to another provider in the future?

Squarespace has been online since 2003, is a profitable company, and is growing nicely. Our infrastructure is fully redundant, and we take such redundancy issues very seriously. Everyone at Squarespace loves what they do, and we're not going anywhere :)

Squarespace additionally provides you with a number of methods for exporting and backing up your content. Each journal on your site can be exported in an MT compatible format, which can be imported to most all blog systems on the web. You can additionally back up the remainder of your site using our XML exporting feature, which lets you save your site's raw content to your computer.

Can I change my URL once I've registered?

Yes. You can change your URL by emailing support@squarespace.com. Please note that such changes may break links within your site. We do not recommend changing your URL after your account has been set up.

Can I have multiple domains or multiple sites within one Squarespace account?

You can point multiple domains to a single account, but currently, each Squarespace account represents a specific website. It is not currently possible to host two distinct sites from within one account. If you require a large number of sites, please contact us directly to discuss your situation.