The Squarespace Ecosystem Is Bigger Than Squarespace
The Square Design Summit happened earlier this week.
And looking through this year’s lineup, one thing stood out to me:
Very little of it was really about “how to build a Squarespace website.”
There were sessions on business, marketing, AI, accessibility, APIs, templates, process, design, and all the other things that surround the actual work.
I think that says something about where this ecosystem is now.
Squarespace may be the tool that brought everyone into the room, but the work has gotten much bigger than the tool.
A Squarespace designer today might be thinking about positioning one minute, accessibility the next, figuring out how AI fits into their process, building custom functionality, selling templates, improving their client experience, or trying to figure out how to land larger projects.
That’s a very different conversation from choosing a template and changing some fonts.
And I like that.
A more mature Squarespace ecosystem
I’ve been around this community for a long time, and one of the more interesting shifts has been watching an entire professional ecosystem form around a platform that was once mostly associated with DIY websites.
There are designers building serious businesses on it.
Developers extending what it can do.
People building tools, templates, courses, communities, agencies, and entire careers around it.
And clients hiring Squarespace professionals for work that goes well beyond putting together five pages for a small business.
The conversations have matured along with the work.
That’s what I think a gathering like the Square Design Summit captures particularly well.
Kate brought together more than 30 people from around the ecosystem this year, including Christy Price, Will Myers, Becca Harpain, Phil Pallen, and plenty of others doing interesting work in their respective corners of it.
You could spend three days learning about the Squarespace business world without spending very much time talking about Squarespace itself.
That’s probably a sign of a healthy ecosystem.
If you missed the Summit
The live event is over, but Kate has made the sessions available through the 2026 Square Design Summit All-Access Pass.
So if there were talks you missed, or sessions you caught and immediately thought, I need to come back to this, you can keep the whole thing and work through it on your own time.
That feels like the better way to use something like this anyway.
You don’t need 30 new ideas this week.
You need the right idea when the problem in front of you makes it useful.
