Squarespace is an American company that provides website building, web hosting and domain registration, based in New York City. Its software as a service (SaaS) lets users build sites from templates with drag-and-drop editing. It also sells online store, scheduling and marketing tools to its customers.
History of Squarespace
Creator: Anthony Casalena. Year: 2003.
Anthony Casalena founded Squarespace in 2003. It began as a blog hosting service. He started it at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was the only employee until 2006. That year the company reached $1 million in revenue. Its About page says it started in his dorm room.
In January 2004, he launched the company as a do-it-yourself website builder for the public. The launch used a $30,000 seed fund from his father. A grant from the university helped too. The launch also had 300 beta testers who paid a reduced rate. He was the sole developer.
He graduated in 2005 and moved to New York City. The company had 30 employees by 2010. That year it received $38.5 million in venture capital funding. Index Ventures and Accel Partners led the round. From 2009 to 2012, yearly revenue grew by an average of 266 percent.
By 2015 the company had $100 million in revenue. It had 550 employees. In April 2019 it acquired Acuity Scheduling, and in April 2021 it bought Tock for more than $400 million. Tock is a hospitality management platform. It sold Tock to American Express in June 2024.
The company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on 19 May 2021. It listed directly under the symbol SQSP. In May 2024 it agreed to be taken private by Permira. Permira is a British private equity firm. The deal was finalized in October 2024.
Changelog and latest update
The company was first built to make and host blogs. In 2011 it released version 6. Version 6 had new templates and a grid layout. Version 7 went live in 2014. It replaced the coding base with a drag and drop tool. It also linked with Google Workspace. It also linked with Getty Images.
On 15 June 2023 the company agreed to buy the Google Domains business. The deal covered about 10 million domains. They were registered domain names. In 2019 it added booking through Acuity. It added online tickets and bookings through Tock. It sold Tock in 2024.
Anthony Casalena remains the chief executive, according to the Wikipedia infobox. Permira owns the company after the 2024 take-private deal.
Latest update: Press coverage item (no product release found), 2026-04-10
The press page lists one dated item. The item is from 10 April 2026. It comments on the company's ads in the NFL championship game broadcast. The MediaPost Podcast ran it. It is outside coverage, not a product release. The official pages show no dated product release. So this entry uses the newest dated press item.
Usage examples
The examples show three things that a Squarespace site does. They show an embed of outside HTML. They show the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) feed of a site. They show the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed of a blog. The first example is plain HTML. A Squarespace code block accepts it. The second and third examples add the format parameter to a Squarespace page address. The examples run against the company site. That site is a Squarespace site.
<iframe
src="https://youtube.com/embed/ID"
width="560" height="315"
allowfullscreen></iframe>This iframe (inline frame) embeds an outside video in a page of the site. The src value is the embed address of the video. Replace ID with the ID of the video. The width and height set the size of the player on the page.
U=https://www.squarespace.com/blog
curl -s "$U?format=json" \
| head -c 200Adding format=json to a Squarespace page address returns the page data as JSON. The response starts with a website object. That object holds the site ID and settings. The head command prints only the first 200 characters of the response.
U=https://www.squarespace.com/blog
curl -s "$U?format=rss" \
| head -n 3Adding format=rss to a blog address returns the blog feed as RSS XML. XML means Extensible Markup Language. Feed readers and search engines use this feed. They use it to find new posts. The head command prints the first three lines. These lines include the XML declaration and the generator line.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
Squarespace
Wikipedia
The encyclopedia article on Squarespace. It covers the 2003 founding by Anthony Casalena, the 2004 launch, the products from version 6 to version 7, the NYSE listing in 2021 and the 2024 take-private deal, with citations to the sources. The article also lists the company headquarters and its main products.
About Squarespace
Squarespace, Inc.
The About page of Squarespace. It states that the company was founded in 2003 in Anthony's dorm room at the University of Maryland and that millions of websites have been created on the platform since launch. The page is the company own statement of its founding, so it is the primary source for the founding year used in this entry.
Squarespace press coverage
Squarespace, Inc.
The press coverage page of Squarespace. It lists dated third-party articles about the company, with the newest item dated 10 April 2026, and it carries the copyright line for Squarespace, Inc. from 2003 to 2026. Readers can use the page to check the dates of each article against the source.
Squarespace developers
Squarespace, Inc.
The developer site of Squarespace. It describes the Commerce APIs, the Reseller APIs and the code injection spec for sites on the 7.1 platform, which is the platform that current Squarespace sites use. Developers use these specifications to build apps and integrations for Squarespace sites.
Squarespace or your own files?
The first decision is where your site will live. Squarespace is a website builder that stores your pages in its own system. Many owners pick it because the setup looks simple. Before you buy a plan, ask one question: do you want to keep your own files and move them later? That answer sets your path for years, so we help owners make it before any money changes hands.
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