What is this?
Earlier this year, Squarespace entered an agreement with Google Domains to purchase all domain registrations and related customer accounts. This impacts the Marketing Services website offering, as Google Domains was our preferred domain provider.
What’s changing?
We will no longer be offering a free website domain with every Marketing Services website product purchase.
For all new website builds, partners and their customers will need to purchase a domain separately, either through our Marketplace or through their preferred domain provider. Rest assured, we will continue to support our customers in setting up their domains as part of the website build process.
How does it impact you?
We are encouraging our partners and their customers to purchase a GoDaddy Domain through our Marketplace or through their own preferred provider for all new website purchases. We will continue to support our partners and their clients to connect their domain to their newly built website as we always have. The only difference is that they will incur a small additional annual cost for their domain.
If a customer has purchased a website (with a complimentary Google Domain) with us in the past, they will have two options moving forward:
Option 1: Customers are welcome to maintain their agreement with Squarespace, which has agreed to maintain the current rate of renewal for 12 months of the acquisition. However, it’s possible that this rate could increase based on the discretion of the vendor, so it’s important that our partners consider this when pricing the product for their customers.
Option 2: Customers can also easily purchase a new GoDaddy Domain directly through the Vendasta Marketplace. This will also incur an annual domain fee, though we predict it will be more affordable than option 1. Please keep in mind that:
- This product does not allow for transfers in or out of the product without the assistance of our Support on Demand team.
- On the plus side, you will now be able to manage your DNS records right in the platform.
No matter which option is chosen, our team will help make sure the domain is connected to the website and is functioning as intended moving forward.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this Google & Squarespace agreement has caused. If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to discuss this change further, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’d be happy to help.