Squarespace is up, but my site isn't working

You checked status.squarespace.com and it's all green, but your restaurant's site still isn't loading. Or your customers are calling to say they're getting warnings. What gives?

Here's the thing: Squarespace's status page tracks their platform — their servers, editor, and infrastructure. When your custom domain (like yourbusiness.com) breaks, Squarespace's status stays green because the problem is somewhere else entirely.

Why the split happens

Squarespace hosts your site, but between their servers and your visitors there are a few things that can break on their own:

• Your custom domain setup — if you pointed yourbusiness.com at Squarespace and something changed in your DNS settings, your domain can stop reaching their servers even though Squarespace itself is fine.
• Your SSL certificate — if the certificate for your custom domain expires or has a configuration problem, browsers throw scary warnings even though the site still technically loads.
• Your domain registration — if yourbusiness.com expires or auto-renew fails, DNS stops working and the site vanishes. Squarespace has no way to know.
• A site-specific outage — rarely, a single Squarespace site can have an issue (bad configuration, over quota, disabled by mistake) while the platform stays up.

So when you see Squarespace status: operational but your site is down, the break is almost always in one of those four spots.

What to check (in order)

You don't need to be technical to narrow this down. Here's the checklist:

1. Check Squarespace status

Go to status.squarespace.com. If anything is red or orange, Squarespace knows about a platform-wide issue and you're waiting on them.

If it's all green, keep going — the problem is specific to your site or domain.

2. Try your Squarespace subdomain

Squarespace gives every site a built-in address that looks like yourname.squarespace.com. Try loading that in a private/incognito browser window.

• If it loads: Your Squarespace site is fine. The problem is with your custom domain — DNS, SSL, or domain expiry (jump to step 3).
• If it doesn't load: The issue is with your Squarespace site itself — contact Squarespace support or whoever manages the site for you.

3. Run a free check

Use a tool like KeepPaw's free website checker or any uptime/SSL checker. Enter your custom domain (yourbusiness.com) and let it check uptime, SSL, and DNS.

This usually tells you in plain English:

• "SSL certificate expired" or "SSL error" → Your SSL needs renewal or reconfiguration. If Squarespace manages SSL for you, contact them. If you use a third-party SSL (less common), check with whoever set it up.
• "Domain isn't responding" or "DNS error" → Your DNS settings broke or your domain expired. Check your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, etc.) to confirm the domain is active and auto-renew is on. Then check your DNS records — they should point to Squarespace's servers. If someone else set up your domain, forward them this info.
• "Site is up" → Great! If customers are still reporting problems, ask them to send a screenshot — it might be a browser cache issue or a problem on their end.

4. Forward results to your web person

If you didn't build the site yourself, take the check results and email them to whoever set up your Squarespace site and custom domain. Include:

• The error you're seeing (screenshot helps)
• The check results
• Whether yourname.squarespace.com loads but yourbusiness.com doesn't

That gives them exactly what they need to fix it without a bunch of back-and-forth.

How to avoid this next time

Set up monitoring so you find out before your customers do. KeepPaw watches your site's uptime, SSL certificate, and domain expiry 24/7 and emails you in plain English the moment something breaks — and again when it's fixed.

• Uptime checks every minute catch outages in seconds, not hours.
• SSL expiry warnings 30, 14, 7, and 1 days out mean you never get surprised by an expired certificate.
• Domain expiry tracking alerts you before auto-renew fails and your site vanishes.

You don't need to understand how DNS or SSL works. The schnauzer does — and he barks when something needs attention.

Try KeepPaw free for 14 days. No credit card, just your website URL and email. If something breaks, you'll know before your first customer does.

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The short version: Squarespace status shows their platform health, not your custom domain. When status.squarespace.com is green but yourbusiness.com is down, check your Squarespace subdomain first, then run a free check on your custom domain to find the real problem — usually DNS, SSL, or domain expiry. Forward the results to whoever set up your domain and they'll know exactly what to fix.