Hi All. I have a client who has a Squarespace website that was built by a company that has granted them editor access to use. It is the clients website in the sense that he pays for it but the company retains control and if they terminate relationship then the client loses the site and all access, essentially shutting it down.
Here is the site: https://www.3springscattle.com/
The client wants me to rebuild the same site in WordPress so they can have control of their site. After they cancel with this company the site will be shut off.
The site design is very generic and used by countless other websites out there. The brand assets are the property of the customer and if stock is used I would relicense it or use something similar. I guess I’m wondering if you see a problem with this?
Thoughts on this?
Thanks!
I would argue that the other agency have acted irresponsibly here.
If you are going to use something like SquareSpace to build a client project then it should be done using an account registered to them/in their name.
Aside from the situation you list - if they are recording customer data or information using cookies or a form, if they do not own the account, they do not own the data. You could help this through careful wording and consent on forms etc. but it’s still not ideal.
In terms of what you can/should do.
- Register (decent) hosting in your client’s name e.g. siteground/wp-engine etc.
- Get your client to buy the them you want to use so if you part company then thy still have access to the updates which they rightfully get
- There’s no way they. Could protect that design but it’s a good opportunity to improve and update the design and any functionality
What is www.barn2door.com? Is this a specific script/software they need to use? If it works with SquareSpace then it should work with other themes but you might need to check
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Hi Charlie, thanks for the reply 
I agree with you completely, Barn2Door is not acting in the best interest of their client. In fact I believe they prey on farmers as they are good at farming, not so great at web related topics.
Barn2door uses Square space to build client sites and then links to their ecom platform which is garbage. They lock the client in by holding their site hostage if they leave. They could easily give them the squarespace account or even sell it to them (though they already charged them $599 to build that generic templated site)
I found the following in their TOS that basically tells me we can copy this site.
“Website. The hosting of your site will be
discontinued, and unfortunately, your website is
non-transferable (the same would be true if you
canceled with another website provider). It’s not
possible to “move” your website to another content
management system (you have to build it from
scratch, again). However, you can export certain
content into a .xml file that would be helpful to
building a site in the future.”
Here is what Squarespace allows you to transfer:
- Your basic pages (which will become WordPress pages)
- One blog page (this will appear as a WordPress blog page)
- The blog posts under that one blog page
- Text, embed, and image blocks
- Your gallery pages
Again, thanks for your reply. - Josh
I’m not sure how useful that xml file will be depending on how you plan to rebuild the site
I suggest you screenshot every page too as a back up reminder and even go through and save down the copy/images from each page (depending how big the site is of course) so you have it prepared
$599 for that website! This sounds like a big scam. Your customer should be more careful in the future and in legal terms should be fully covered to prevent those scam companies to act like this.
As @charlie4282 mentioned. Copy everything you can images / text and rebuild it in wordpress. Hope the client register the domain name and have access to DNS.
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