Squarespace Domains
Where ten million Google Domains customers were sent in 2023–24: free privacy, DNSSEC and 100 email forwards, but a renewal price that is not shown before checkout (.com £8 on sale, £16 presumed to renew), no API, no phone support, and a 2024 migration-account hijack on the record.
How we testSquarespace Domains (Squarespace, Inc., New York, taken private by Permira in October 2024; UK customers contract with Squarespace Ireland Ltd; registrar entities Squarespace Domains LLC and Squarespace Domains II LLC, the latter the ICANN accreditation inherited from Google) became a top-tier registrar overnight when it bought Google Domains: agreement announced 15 June 2023, closed 7 September 2023, migrations completed November 2024, with Google Domains' renewal prices honoured for twelve months and then moved to Squarespace's standard rates. The included features are respectable: free WHOIS privacy on eligible TLDs, DNSSEC enabled automatically, Google Cloud DNS-backed nameservers, up to 100 free email forwards, free Let's Encrypt SSL for domains pointed at a Squarespace site, optional 2FA including passkeys, and free transfer-out. Part of its 400-TLD catalogue is fulfilled through Tucows and Key-Systems as registrar of record.
Two things a business buyer should know. Squarespace publishes no price list; prices appear only in the search results, where a UK visitor on 5 September 2026 saw .com at £8 with "Former price: £16" struck through, .co.uk at a single £8, and .io at £48 (was £56), and no renewal price anywhere before checkout. The help centre says a domain "renews at the same price" and quotes USD 20 for .com, so £16 is our presumed renewal and the pattern is a first-year discount, not the flat pricing Google Domains was known for. Prices are ex VAT per the VAT help page (marketing copy says "taxes included", and the two disagree). What Google Domains users lost is documented by Squarespace itself: no API, no dynamic DNS, no ACME DNS validation, so certificate automation for third-party hosts breaks. Support is email and chat only (English chat Monday to Friday, US hours), no phone. In July 2024 at least a dozen migrated organisations had domains hijacked; researchers attributed it to pre-created accounts without email verification and MFA not carried over, which Squarespace disputed. Trustpilot is 3.5 on 5,162 invited reviews, 41% one-star, but it covers the whole website builder; the domain-specific complaints are about expiry and renewal delays, the Google transition and chatbot-gated support. The affiliate programme on impact.com pays on website subscriptions, not domains, so nothing here earns Saaskly a commission.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +Free WHOIS privacy, automatic DNSSEC, 100 free email forwards and passkey 2FA
- +Free transfer-out
- +Google Cloud DNS-backed nameservers
Cons
- −Renewal price not shown before checkout and a first-year-discount pattern on the UK site
- −No API, no dynamic DNS, no ACME automation
- −Email and chat support only, no phone; 2024 migration hijacks
Pricing
Minimum commitment: £16 (£16/yr for the entry licence). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
.com renewal
£16/yr · annual commitment
Month-to-month: not published
- ✓Presumed renewal = the struck-through "former price"; GBP ex VAT (help centre); first year £8 on sale; .co.uk £8; .io £48 then £56 presumed; renewal not displayed before checkout.
Specifications
| Rating | 2.9 |
| .com renewal / yr | £16 |
| .com first year | £8 |
| Renewal premium* | 100% |
| .co.uk renewal / yr | £8 |
| WHOIS privacy | Free |
| Pricing pattern | Intro discount |
| Checkout upsells | Light |
| Transfer out | Free, self-serve |
| Bring your own DNS | ✓ |
| DNSSEC | ✓ |
| 2FA | ✓ |
| API | No |
| MCP server | No |
| UK phone support | No |
| Blocks AI agents by default** | No |
| Trustpilot (reviews)† | 3.5 (5,162) |
| .co.uk first year | £8 |
| Transfer-out fee | Free |
| TLDs offered | 400 |
| Free DNS hosting | ✓ |
| Transfer lock by default | ✓ |
| Free email forwarding | ✓ |
| Free SSL with domain | No |
| 24/7 live chat | No |
| Support channels | Email 24/7, Live chat (English, Mon–Fri 04:00–20:00 ET), X / Messenger |
*Renewal premium: how much more the second year of a .com costs than the first, as a percentage of the first-year price. Registrars advertise the first year; you pay the renewal every year after. 0% means the advertised price is the real price. Prices are per domain per year as shown to a UK visitor on the research date, in the currency the registrar bills UK customers in; see each profile for the VAT basis.
**Blocks AI agents by default: whether the registrar's bundled DNS/CDN stops AI agents (chat fetchers, browser-use agents) reaching customer sites unless the owner changes a setting. Recorded only where the vendor documents such a default (Cloudflare, from 15 September 2026, on pages that carry ads).
†Trustpilot: uk.trustpilot.com TrustScore and review count on the research date. Two profiles are not representative of the registrar and are shown for completeness: Cloudflare (1.4) is mostly non-customers blocked by CAPTCHAs on other companies' websites, and Hover (1.3) is 120 unprompted reviews the company has not answered.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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