Thinking of migrating your older Squarespace sites to Squarespace 6? A cost-benefit analysis
I have been using Squarespace for a few years now to host the few websites that I maintain. Last July, Squarespace released the latest version of their software: Squarespace 6 (which I will refer to as ss6 from now on). While I mostly prefer the changes that have been made in ss6, I've put off migrating all of my sites. This is partly through laziness, but partly because I've been confused as to how the pricing differences with Squarespace 5 (ss5) will affect me.
Luckily, Squarespace has fantastic support, and so I emailed them and they revealed all. I thought that others, who are also thinking of migrating, might find their answers to my questions useful. My original email is below, and I've interspersed their answers. A brief summary follows that.
My email exchange:
Background
Currently I have one master Squarespace 5 (ss5) account, two Squarespace 5 sub-accounts, and one Squarespace 6 (ss6) account that — if I understand this correctly — remains free while connected to my master ss5 account. I also have plans to start a fifth Squarespace site and trying to decide whether to migrate any or all of them to ss6 is the cause of my confusion. So here are my questions:
Question 1
With the 15% discount I get for the three ss5 accounts, this currently costs me $25.50 per month (the ss6 account remains free). If I migrated all accounts to ss6, would this end up costing me a flat fee of $8 per month (standard accounts, billed annually) for each account? I.e. a total cost of $32 for the current accounts I own ($40 if I create a new ss6 account)? I haven't seen any mention of discounts for managing multiple ss6 accounts.
There are not any special discounts for multiple sites associated with the same email address. You will need to upgrade each account individually. Also when you pay for an annual account you pay for the whole year right away totaling to $96 per account
If you decide to go for monthly billing you will be paying $10 per month
You can refer here form more information on our paid plans: http://help.squarespace.com/customer/portal/articles/1257605
Question 2
Under ss6, I understand that all accounts can be tied to a single email address which is fine, but is all the billing centralized as well, or would this be 4 or 5 separate payments off of my credit card?
All of you accounts would be billed separately
Question 3
If I went ahead and migrated everything to ss6, I guess I'd have to start with my master account. So I assume that initially I'd create a new ss6 account (which would have to have a new name?) and then I would import the ss5 content to it and finally redirect my domain name to the new site. Once I have the new ss6 master account I could connect other ss6 accounts to it, but my one current ss6 account is tied to my ss5 master account. The question here is whether everything will be okay if I disconnect the current ss6 account from the master ss5 account and then reattach it to the new master ss6 account?
There is no such thing as a master account within V6. All Squarespace 6 sites are managed individually. You are, as mentioned earlier, able to have several sites associated with the same email address.
When you unlink your Squarespace 6 site from your old Squarespace 5 account it will now function as its own independent site. You will not need to link it to anything else
So the bottom line is that Squarespace 6 removes the concept of centralized billing for multiple accounts. So this also means no multiple account discount. Without that discount, ss6 sites are 50 cents cheaper per month than ss5 (assuming you pay for a year at a time). But, I currently have one free ss6 account which would no longer be free if I get rid of the ss5 sites.
So if I moved my three current ss5 sites to ss6, I'd end up with four ss6 sites which would work out to $32 per month...a ~25% increase on what I currently pay. Hmm, still not sure whether the extra features in Squarespace 6 will tempt me to switch.