Squarespace for Selling Digital Products: Complete Guide

Squarespace handles four distinct types of digital product natively: simple file downloads, online courses, membership sites, and paywalled content like a gated blog or video library.

Each one lives in a different part of the dashboard, and this guide walks through all four from a completely empty store, click by click.

By the end, you will have a working digital product live and tested, know exactly which plan you need for it, and know precisely where Squarespace’s native tools stop.

Key Takeaways

• Squarespace groups digital selling under two systems: simple Download products for single files, and Content & Memberships for courses, member sites, and gated content.
• A single digital download file is capped at 300MB, with no quantity, variants, or SKUs available on download products. Multiple files mean zipping them together first.
• Every site gets 30 minutes of total video storage included regardless of plan, a real ceiling for anyone building a video-heavy course.
• Squarespace Courses is only available on version 7.1, and is not SCORM or xAPI compliant.
• Your site must be set to Secure in the SSL panel before selling downloads, or customers can run into problems accessing their purchase.
• You cannot re-download or export your own file after uploading it to a product, keep your own separate copy of every file you sell.

Before You Start: One Setting to Check First

Go to Settings, then SSL, and confirm your site is set to Secure. This is not optional for selling downloads, an insecure connection can cause the download link customers receive after checkout to fail. Do this before creating any product.

Which Plan You Actually Need

Digital product sales carry a Squarespace-side transaction fee that decreases as you move up plan tiers, separate from standard payment processing fees.

On the entry-level Basic plan, that fee runs around 2 percent on top of processor fees. Core and above reduce it further.

For anyone selling digital products at real volume, not just testing the idea, Core is the practical starting point.

The fee reduction typically pays for the plan’s higher price within a small number of sales each month, the same math covered in our Squarespace pricing breakdown.

One account-level quirk to know: if your site is still on the legacy Business plan, you will not see a Selling option on your main account dashboard.

Instead, open the site editor directly and click the Products & Services panel to reach the same commerce settings.

Method 1: Selling a Simple Digital Download

This is the right method for a single file: an ebook, a template, a PDF guide, a single audio track.

Step 1: Find Your Store Page

1. Log in and open your site editor
2. Open the Pages panel in the left sidebar
3. Look for your store page, it has a small $ icon next to its name in the pages list
4. Click into that store page

If you do not have a store page yet, click the + icon at the top of the Pages panel, choose Store or Products from the menu that appears, give it a title, and press Enter.

Step 2: Add the Product

1. With your store page open, click the + icon
2. A product type selector appears
3. Select Download

Step 3: Prepare Your File Before Uploading

If you are selling more than one file as a single product, combine them first:

1. On your computer, select all the files for this product
2. Right-click and choose Compress (Mac) or Send to, Compressed folder (Windows)
3. This creates a single ZIP file, which is what you will upload

If your combined files still exceed 300MB even zipped, do not try to force the upload. Instead, host the files externally on Google Drive or Dropbox, generate a shareable link, and create a simple PDF containing that link as the actual product you upload to Squarespace.

Step 4: Upload and Complete the Product Details

1. In the product editor, find the file upload field and upload your single file or ZIP
2. Fill in the Name field with your product title
3. Fill in the Description field
4. Click Add images, or drag and drop, to add a product cover image
5. Set your Price

Note what you cannot do here: download products do not support quantity limits, variants, or SKUs, and cannot be sold as a subscription. If you need size, color, or format variants, you need separate product listings for each one.

Step 5: Save Your Own Copy

Before publishing, save a personal backup of the exact file you just uploaded somewhere outside Squarespace. Once uploaded to a product, that file cannot be downloaded back out or exported from your dashboard, this is a one-way upload.

Step 6: Publish and Run a Real Test Order

1. Click Save, then Publish
2. Visit your live store page in a new browser tab
3. Place a real test order using your payment processor’s test mode
4. On the checkout confirmation page, click the download link that appears and confirm the file opens correctly

What to Do If a Customer’s Link Expires

Download links expire after a period of time. If a customer contacts you because their link stopped working:

1. Open the Products & Services panel
2. Click Orders
3. Find and click their specific order
4. Click the … menu in the top-right corner of that order
5. Click Resend email notifications, then Resend and Refresh digital goods

This generates a new, working link and emails it to the customer automatically.

Method 2: Building and Selling an Online Course

Courses suit structured, multi-lesson educational content sold as a complete package or a subscription.

Before you start: confirm your site runs on Squarespace version 7.1. Courses are not available on 7.0. Check under Settings for a version indicator, or contact Squarespace support if you are unsure.

Step 1: Open Content and Memberships

1. From your main dashboard, find Content and Memberships in the left-hand menu
2. Click Courses
3. Click Create a Course

Step 2: Set the Course Basics

1. Give the course a title
2. Add a description that will appear on the course’s sales page
3. Upload a cover image

Step 3: Build the Chapter and Lesson Structure

1. Inside the course editor, add your first chapter, this is a top-level section of the course
2. Within that chapter, add individual lessons
3. For each lesson, choose the content type, video, text, image, or an attached downloadable file, and add the content
4. Repeat, building out chapters and lessons until the full course structure is in place

Step 4: Configure How Students Move Through the Course

1. Decide whether lessons must be completed in sequence or can be accessed in any order, and set this in the course settings
2. If you want visible progress tracking, confirm this is enabled so students see their own completion status as they move through lessons
3. Set up the automatic emails that fire on sign-up and on course completion

Step 5: Set Your Price and Access Model

1. Choose between one-time lifetime access or a recurring subscription
2. If offering multiple tiers (a basic tier and a premium tier with bonus content, for example), create a separate pricing plan for each
3. Decide whether the first lesson or chapter should be free to preview, a common way to increase sign-ups

Step 6: Publish and Add a Way to Buy

1. Publish the course
2. Go to any page where you want to sell it, your homepage, a dedicated sales page, or a blog post
3. Add a block, then choose Pricing Plan from the block menu
4. Connect that block to the pricing plan you created in Step 5

Step 7: Test the Full Enrollment Flow

Sign up for your own course using test payment details. Confirm you receive the enrollment email, can log in, and that lessons unlock in the order you configured.

The Storage Limit to Plan Around

Every site includes only 30 minutes of total video storage across all video blocks, course pages, and video pages combined, regardless of plan tier. A course with more than a few short videos will hit this quickly.

Check your current usage under your video storage settings. If you are close to the limit, either purchase additional storage there, or host longer videos externally on YouTube (set to unlisted) or Vimeo and embed them into your lessons instead of uploading the video files directly.

Method 3: Building a Membership Site

A membership site suits ongoing, evolving content, a resource library, a community space, or several content types bundled into one subscription.

Step 1: Start the Member Area

1. Go to Content and Memberships
2. Click Member Areas
3. Click Create a Member Area

Step 2: Plan Your Content Structure First

Decide what sits behind this paywall before you start adding content. A member area can bundle a course, a video library, and a members-only store section into one offer. Restructuring this later means manually moving content between areas, so it is worth ten minutes of planning up front.

Step 3: Add Content to the Member Area

1. From within the member area, add existing pages, blog posts, or courses you have already built
2. Arrange them into a logical navigation structure for members
3. For any piece of content you want to use as a hook for non-members, mark it as free-preview accessible

Step 4: Create Your Pricing Plans

1. Still inside Content and Memberships, click Products in the side panel to see your list of pricing plans
2. Click Select plan at the bottom of the panel
3. Choose Monthly or Annual billing for this plan
4. Set the price
5. Repeat this process for each membership tier you want to offer

Step 5: Add Sign-Up Blocks to Your Site

1. Edit any page where you want to promote membership sign-up
2. Add a block, then select Pricing Plan from the menu
3. Repeat across multiple pages if useful, or build one dedicated page comparing all tiers side by side if you offer more than one

Step 6: Test as a Member

Sign up for your own membership using test payment details. Confirm you can log in to the password-protected area, that content displays correctly, and that anything you marked as free-preview is actually visible to a logged-out visitor.

Method 4: Paywalling a Blog or Selling Video on Demand

This method suits ongoing content, a paid newsletter-style blog, or individual videos sold on demand.

For a Paywalled Blog

1. Go to Content and Memberships
2. Find the paywall option associated with your blog
3. Turn the paywall on and connect it to a pricing plan, created the same way as in Method 3, Step 4
4. Decide whether each paywalled post shows a free preview snippet before the paywall kicks in, this is a real, common way to convert casual readers into subscribers

For Video on Demand

1. Add your videos to a dedicated videos page, or a video block on an existing page
2. Apply a paywall to that page or block
3. Connect the paywall to a pricing plan
4. Remember the same 30-minute shared video storage allowance from Method 2 applies here too, check your usage before uploading a large video library

Test Both the Same Way

Whichever you build, run through it as a non-paying visitor first to confirm the paywall actually blocks access, then as a paying test customer to confirm the unlocked content displays correctly.

Frequently Asked Questions