I’ve been paying $192 a year for a Squarespace site that’s literally just family photos. Birthdays, weddings, that kind of thing. Every year I look at the renewal email and think “this seems like overkill for what it is” and then I just pay it anyway because migration sounds annoying.

Then I realized - wait, I already have Vercel for this blog, and they have a free Hobby tier that includes 100GB bandwidth per month. For a family site that gets maybe 50 visits a month from relatives? That’s more than enough. So I could drop from $192/year to basically $0/year just by moving platforms.

The thing that always stopped me was the actual migration work - rebuilding pages, moving photos, figuring out the domain stuff. But I’ve been using Claude Code for a bunch of projects now, and this feels like exactly the kind of thing where screenshots and a solid prompt can do most of the heavy lifting.

THE PROMPT I’M PLANNING TO USE

Instead of manually rebuilding everything or spending hours explaining what the site looks like, I’m going to give Claude everything it needs upfront:

I need to migrate my Squarespace site to Vercel using Astro (static site). Here's what I need:

CONTEXT:
- Current site: [domain].com (Squarespace Personal plan)
- Simple family site - events and photo galleries
- About 20 pages total, mostly static content
- Needs to maintain existing URL structure for family bookmarks

ASSETS:
- Screenshots of all major pages (attached)
- Exported photos from Squarespace (in /assets folder)
- Current domain registrar info (attached)

DELIVERABLES:
1. Astro site that matches the current design and layout
2. All photos migrated and optimized
3. URL structure preserved (or redirects set up)
4. Domain configured to point to Vercel
5. Deployment to Vercel

TECHNICAL APPROACH:
Write an RFC first that covers:
- Site structure and routing
- Photo/asset organization and optimization
- Domain migration steps
- Deployment configuration
- Testing checklist

Then build it, test it, and deploy it.

WHY SCREENSHOTS Screenshots give Claude visual context it can’t get from descriptions. Instead of me trying to explain “there’s a grid of photos with rounded corners and…” it just sees what I’m trying to match.

The RFC part is key - it forces Claude to plan the domain transfer, figure out redirects if needed, and think through the photo optimization strategy before touching any code. If the plan looks wrong, I can course-correct before it spends tokens building the wrong thing.

THE DOMAIN AND PHOTO PARTS (WHERE THINGS USUALLY GET ANNOYING)

Domains and photos are always the tricky parts of any site migration. Domains because DNS is confusing if you don’t do it often, and photos because they’re the biggest files and you don’t want to lose quality or break links.

For the domain, Squarespace makes it relatively painless to point elsewhere - you just update DNS records to point to Vercel instead. Vercel’s docs are pretty clear on what values to use, and the RFC should lay out the exact steps so I can verify before making changes.

For photos, Squarespace lets you export everything, but they might not be optimized for the web. Astro has built-in image optimization, so the RFC should cover where photos live in the new project structure, what sizes and formats to generate (webp for modern browsers, jpg fallbacks), and how to preserve any alt text or captions from the original.

THE ACTUAL MONEY BREAKDOWN

Current (Squarespace):

  • Squarespace Personal plan: $192/year
  • Domain renewal through Squarespace: ~$20/year
  • Total: ~$212/year

After migration (Vercel Hobby):

  • Vercel Hobby: $0/year
  • Domain renewal (transfer to Cloudflare or Namecheap): ~$10-15/year
  • Total: ~$10-15/year

Saving $200/year isn’t life-changing, but it’s also not nothing. And more importantly, now the site lives in the same ecosystem as my other projects - same deployment workflow, same domain management, same platform. One less login to remember, one less bill to track.

WHAT MIGHT BREAK

The main risk is the 100GB bandwidth limit on Vercel’s Hobby tier. If the site suddenly gets a traffic spike - someone shares a photo gallery on social media and it goes semi-viral - I could hit that limit fast. Photos are bandwidth-heavy.

But realistically, this site gets traffic from family members checking in on events. Not exactly viral content. And if it did somehow spike, Vercel would just stop serving the site until the next billing cycle, or I could upgrade to Pro for that month. It’s a $20 safety net, not a disaster.

The other risk is photo quality. Squarespace’s image handling is pretty good, so I need to make sure the Astro migration doesn’t compress things too aggressively or mess up the aspect ratios. The RFC should include a visual QA step where I compare a few key photos side-by-side before going live.

I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY DONE THIS YET

Writing this before I actually migrate the site because I want to capture the plan while it’s fresh. The actual migration will probably take a few hours - most of that will be me reviewing the RFC, testing the domain transfer, and checking that photos look right.

I’ll update this article with the real results and any fumbles when I actually do it. My guess is the domain transfer will be the most annoying part (DNS propagation always takes longer than you want), and there’ll probably be at least one photo aspect ratio issue I didn’t anticipate.

Update (post-migration): [This section will be updated with actual results and any issues encountered]

Cost sources: