How to Migrate Your Website to a New Builder

People migrate because they outgrew Wix, because Squarespace cannot do the catalog, because they want Shopify checkout, or because an agency sold them Webflow. The failure mode is the same: they rebuild the homepage and forget that Google, customers, and email links still point at the old paths. Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, and Squarespace will not automatically honor someone else’s URL scheme. This is an operations sequence: inventory, redirects, content that will not copy, DNS, and a period where the old host stays up as insurance.

Crawl the live site or export a sitemap. Spreadsheet the paths that get traffic in Search Console and the paths that get used in ads, QR codes, and email footers. Homepages are easy. Nested blog posts, product handles, and old campaign landing pages are where rankings leak. Note which pages can die and which must 301. If you are leaving WordPress, the post slug pattern matters. If you are leaving Shopify, product and collection handles matter. Wix and Squarespace URLs can be ugly; you may choose cleaner paths on the new host, which makes redirects mandatory rather than optional. Do not start in the new template gallery until this list exists.

Every important old URL should 301 to the closest new URL, not to the homepage as a dump. Shopify has a URL redirects import. WordPress has plugins and server rules. Webflow, Wix, and Squarespace have lists with limits—read the limit before you have 2,000 blog posts. Test with a tool or at least with curl in your head: old path in, new path out, 301 not 302. After launch, Search Console coverage will show not-found URLs; that is your punch list, not a mystery. Keep the spreadsheet. Future you will thank present you when a partner still prints a flyer from 2024.

Blogs can usually move as HTML with some cleanup. Layouts cannot. Webflow and Framer will not import a Wix canvas. Shopify themes will not recreate Squarespace sections. Forms, member areas, and bookings almost always get rebuilt. Export products and customers from Shopify or BigCommerce as CSV; import and then spot-check variants, not just titles. WordPress can export WXR; importers into other CMSs are imperfect. Images may reupload at new sizes—watch hotlinks. Legal pages and cookie banners need a pass for the new stack. Budget time for the unglamorous pages: 404, password, shipping policy. Those are the ones customers hit when something goes wrong.

Lower TTL ahead of time if you control DNS. Point the domain with the records the new builder specifies—A, CNAME, or nameservers. Do not move email accidentally: if Google Workspace MX records live at the registrar, changing nameservers at GoDaddy to “the builder’s easy DNS” can break mail. Staging on a temporary domain should be tested on mobile. Pick a low-traffic window. After cutover, check HTTPS, www versus apex, and that the old builder is not still serving on a leftover A record. Cloudflare users should confirm the proxy is not caching the old origin. Tell the team not to edit the old site except for a holding note.

Do not delete the Wix or Squarespace site the same afternoon. Leave it redirecting if you can, or at least keep the account until the new property shows the important URLs indexed. Watch Analytics for a traffic cliff that is actually a missing measurement ID. Compare revenue on Shopify if you moved stores—theme and checkout changes convert differently. Password-protect leftovers so they cannot compete as duplicates. Ninety days is a reasonable insurance window for a small site; bigger archives need longer. When the redirect report is boring, then cancel. Migrations fail in the week after launch, not in the Figma file.

Map URLs, import redirects, rebuild what will not copy, switch DNS without breaking mail, and keep the old host until Search Console looks sane. The new Webflow, Shopify, or WordPress site can be beautiful. If the old links 404, you did not migrate. You opened a second store and left the lights on at the first.