Website Builder Shutting Down? What to Save First

The email says your plan ends on a certain date, or the dashboard banner says a product is being retired, and suddenly your website has an expiry date you did not choose. Your first worry is simple: customers typing your address and finding nothing, forms that stop arriving, orders that stop coming in, and email that goes quiet. When a website builder is shutting down or dropping your plan, the order you save things in matters more than which platform you pick next. Some of what you need can only be grabbed while the old account is still open. Other things, like your domain, can usually stay with you no matter where the site goes, as long as you control the login. The move itself can often wait a few days. The saving should start today, and you can do the first pass in about twenty minutes.

What should I save first when my website builder is shutting down?

Save in order of what you could never get back. Losing the login to your domain can block everything else, and data left inside a closed account cannot be recreated later. The list below is a practical priority order based on what depends on what. It is not a ranking from a published study, because no national dataset ranks how often these failures happen.

The notice itself

Save the provider's email or banner as a PDF or screenshot today. Write down the exact shutdown date, the export cutoff if it is different, what product is affected, and the support page the notice points to. There is no regulator that sets a universal timetable for a builder shutdown, so the provider's own terms decide your deadline. That notice is the document everything else works backward from.

Your domain and who controls it

Your domain and your website are separate things, even when one company sells you both. Find out which company is the registrar, from your billing page or ICANN's lookup tool. Log in, confirm you can still get into the registrant email address, and check whether the domain has a transfer lock on it. Request the Auth-Code (sometimes called an EPP code) now, even if you plan to keep the domain where it is. ICANN's domain holder FAQ says a registrar must provide it within five calendar days of your request. That rule does not help if nobody can log in, so if the account belongs to a former employee or agency, recovering access becomes the first job.

Your DNS records and your email setup

Before anything changes, copy every DNS record as it stands today. Then list every mailbox, alias and forwarding rule, the email provider behind them, and the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Those records are what keep your business email flowing, and they are the easiest thing to break during a move. Do not change any of them yet. Just write them down.

Every export the platform allows

Open the export area and pull everything it offers: pages and blog posts, the product catalog, contacts, orders, form submissions, booking and customer records, and mailing lists. Make a note of anything the export screen says it cannot include. For a store, keep a dated copy of orders, customers and products before you try any import. For a site that brings in leads, keep the form records and a list of every existing URL.

Images, PDFs and video, downloaded one by one if needed

Download your original images, PDFs and videos separately. Builders do not always include media in an export, so plan on doing some of this by hand.

What does a website export leave out?

Clicking export feels like making a backup, but it usually gives you raw material rather than a working site. The gaps differ by platform, and knowing them in advance tells you what to download separately today. The table below uses each provider's own documentation.

Squarespace's import and export page describes its export as a copy, not a live connection, and says uploaded images and video cannot be exported in bulk. Wix's own help page on exporting states that a Wix site must run on Wix servers, so there is no package to download and host somewhere else. If anyone offers you a full working copy of a Wix site on another host, ask exactly how, because Wix does not provide one. Shopify's order export guide notes that transaction history covers captured payments only. The WordPress export command documentation shows the same pattern on self-hosted sites: content moves in the file, but settings and media files travel separately.

None of this means you should skip the export. It means you should run it, then fill the gaps yourself while you still can.

Has a website platform actually been discontinued before?

Yes, and the documented cases come in two shapes: a whole product switched off, or one feature retired while the platform carries on. Knowing which one you have changes how much work lies ahead.

On January 8, 2024, Google announced that websites made with Google Business Profiles would be turned off beginning March 1, 2024. Visitors were redirected to the business's Profile until June 10, 2024, and after that the websites became unavailable. That was a full shutdown of a simple site builder.

Shopify's change was narrower. According to Shopify's checkout extensibility documentation, it announced the deprecation of `checkout.liquid` in February 2023, set August 28, 2025 as the deadline to replace Thank you and Order status page customizations, and began automatic upgrades in January 2026. Storefronts kept running. Custom checkout code had to be replaced.

Read your own notice with that difference in mind. A retired feature may only need one piece rebuilt, while a closed product means the whole site has to live somewhere new. These two cases show that both kinds of change happen. They do not tell you which provider will change something next, and nobody can reliably predict that, so act on the notice in front of you rather than on guesses about the future.

Which option fits your site after a legacy plan is retired?

You have four realistic paths, and the right one depends on what your site has to do, how much you can export, and how much time is left. They are listed here from least effort to most. Each has a real use, and none of them is right for every site.

Staying with the same provider

If the provider offers a replacement plan that keeps your domain, your content and the tools you need, and you can switch safely before the deadline, that can be the right answer. It is usually the fastest. Before you accept, compare the old plan's features with the new one line by line, and confirm you still control your domain and can still export your data.

Moving to another hosted builder

A self-serve builder can suit a brochure site or a simple store, and a small, well-documented site with a working export can often be moved by its owner without hiring anyone. Expect to rebuild pages in a new template, set forms and integrations up again, and recreate by hand whatever the export missed.

Self-hosted WordPress

WordPress gives you portability and a great deal of control. The trade is responsibility: you choose a host, and you or someone you hire keeps up with updates, backups and security from then on.

A custom build

A custom site makes sense for workflows, integrations or speed requirements that off-the-shelf tools cannot handle. It takes the most planning and build time, so it is a poor fit for a short deadline unless you first put up a simple, accurate temporary site to hold the address while the full build happens.

Whichever you pick, keep your existing domain if you can. Choosing a new platform is a hosting decision. It does not have to become a domain decision.

How do you move a website before the deadline without losing email or search traffic?

Work backward from a go-live date set well before the cutoff, not on it. That buffer is what gives you time to fix a DNS record or a broken form while the old site is still up. Google's site move guidance lays out the same core steps: prepare and test the new site, map old URLs to new ones, set up redirects, and watch traffic afterward.

Change one thing at a time

Google's site move page puts it plainly: "Change only one thing at a time." A forced platform move is not the moment for a new brand name, a new page structure and a new domain all at once. Move what works first. Improve it once the new site is stable.

What redirects do for your search traffic

If your URLs change, permanent redirects carry visitors and search engines from each old address to its new one. Google's redirect documentation says permanent redirects such as 301s do not cause a loss in PageRank. Google also says rankings can fluctuate while it recrawls and processes a move, and that settling can take weeks or more. Plan for a wobble and watch Search Console, rather than expecting identical numbers on day one. If your URLs stay the same and only the hosting changes, the move is simpler still.

Keeping email alive through the switch

Your website and your email often share one domain but run on different services. When you point the domain at a new host, change only the records the website needs. Replacing the whole DNS zone at once is how mail records get wiped. Once the switch is done, send a test message in and out of every important mailbox.

Can you do a twenty-minute check today?

Yes, and it tells you how big the job really is before you spend anything. This is an inventory, not a finished migration.

Minutes 0 to 3: read the notice and write down the deadline, the affected product, the export cutoff and the support link. Minutes 3 to 7: find your registrar through your billing page or ICANN's lookup, confirm the registrant email works, and check whether the domain is locked. Minutes 7 to 14: open the export area, start every export available, and note what it says it cannot include. Minutes 14 to 18: look at your DNS records and identify the MX records and your email provider, without changing anything. Minutes 18 to 20: list your most important pages, forms, products, order data, downloads and integrations.

When you finish, you will know whether you have a small site with clean exports that you can likely move yourself, or a store, booking system or custom setup that needs more careful planning. Help makes sense when the deadline is short, the domain login is unclear, the export is incomplete, many URLs need mapping, or revenue depends on checkout, bookings, subscriptions or lead forms. For a simple, well-documented site, the provider's own instructions may be all you need.

Frequently Asked Questions About website builder shutting down

Can I keep my domain if my website builder shuts down?

Usually, yes, if your business controls the registrar account. Moving the website does not require moving the domain. Confirm the login and registrant email now, and request the Auth-Code early in case you need it.

How do I export website content before my plan ends?

Use the platform's export tools for pages, posts, products, contacts, orders, form entries and mailing lists. Then download images, PDFs and video separately, since exports often leave media out.

Can I download my Wix site and host it somewhere else?

No. Wix says a Wix site must run on Wix servers. You can save your text, images and records, but the site itself has to be rebuilt on the new platform.

Will my email stop working if I move my website?

It can, if the DNS mail records are changed or deleted by mistake. List your MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records before the move, leave them in place when you switch, and test every mailbox afterward.

Will I lose my Google rankings when I move my website before the deadline?

Google says permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank, though rankings can fluctuate while it recrawls the move. Map every old URL to its new page, set up redirects, submit a sitemap and monitor. Nobody can promise unchanged rankings.

When can I cancel the old plan?

Only after the new site is live and you have checked redirects, forms, orders, bookings, data and email. There is no universal deadline, so go by the date in your provider's notice.

What This Means for You

A shutdown notice feels like the site is about to vanish, but most of what matters can be protected in the first day. Secure the domain, copy your DNS and email records, run every export, and download your media separately. Then choose the path that fits your site, whether that is the provider's new plan, another builder, WordPress or a custom build, and set a go-live date with room to spare.

Handled in that order, the move keeps your address, your inbox and your customer records in your hands. Customers keep landing on a working page, forms keep arriving, and search engines follow your redirects to the new site.

If the deadline is tight or the move involves a store, bookings or lots of pages, Web Leveling can help you work through the inventory and plan the cutover. Our web hosting runs on accounts registered in your name, so the login stays yours. We work with small and medium businesses across the country and overseas. Tell us what your shutdown notice says, and we will help you map out what to save and when to switch.

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