Squarespace lays off 19% of staff, about 300 people

Squarespace is laying off 19% of its workforce, about 300 people, The Verge reported on Monday. The website builder has about 1,800 employees worldwide.

Most of the cuts hit product and engineering teams, according to a companywide memo from chief executive Anthony Casalena seen by Business Insider.

“The way we need to work is changing faster than at any point in our history, and our operating model must adapt for the modern era,” Casalena wrote. “This means smaller teams, more player coaches, and a simplified organizational structure.”

Those leaving will receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, with extra weeks based on tenure, and benefits that run until May 2027. They can keep their company laptops, and staff on work visas will get continued support, per the memo.

After the memo went out, Casalena addressed remaining staff in a livestream that lasted about a minute and allowed no comments, Business Insider reported. A separate all-hands meeting is planned.

A spokesperson said the changes aim to “simplify how we operate, sharpen our priorities” and help Squarespace move faster in its next phase of growth.

The cuts come two years into the company’s life as a private firm. Private equity group Permira agreed to buy Squarespace for $6.9bn in May 2024 and completed the deal, by then valued at about $7.2bn, that October. The buyout took Squarespace off the New York Stock Exchange after three years as a public company.

Squarespace is one of the web’s best-known site builders. Casalena started the company in his university dorm room in 2004, and its drag-and-drop templates power millions of websites, online stores and booking pages.

Around the same time, Squarespace leaned into AI with Blueprint, a tool that builds websites and writes site copy, blog posts and product descriptions. Neither the company nor The Verge linked the layoffs to AI.

Squarespace competes with Wix, GoDaddy and Shopify in the crowded market for website building and e-commerce tools. That market is shifting under all of them, as AI site generators make the basics cheap and fast, and chatbots answer questions that once drove search traffic to small sites.

Other web-era companies are slimming down too. Dropbox, whose founder stepped down this year, said in October it would cut about 9% of its staff as its technology chief departs.