How to: Change Squarespace Domain Owner

Short answer

You can’t.

What’s happening?

So say you find yourself in the situation of having had a bunch of domains registered on the lovely Google Domains. It was working splendidly there and made sense to keep those together with your other google workspace stuff, then one day google told squarespace to come kick you in the *****. Welp that was unexpected. Now you have a bunch of domains on Squarespace, where you struggle to even remember how to login with your old google login? Just never logout and you’ll be fine. Anyway, now some of your clients, the businesses whose domains you were managing nicely on Google with a Cloud Free account need to update their billing info, and you want to share access with them so they can update their own billing info. Welp, surprise. You can’t do that.

Long answer (not the solution)

They have this really long convoluted process to add the domain to a new fake site on squarespace, then share permisssions, changes owners, etc. etc. It’s a horrible process. Plus if you have more that one domain you gotta do this nonsense every time. Non-starter. It’s a really odd situation for a company that makes pretty nice interfaces and has been in the website business for so long. Maybe they don’t know about managing domains?

Ridiculous answer (but easier)

Swap the login info with a Domain Manger. Seriously this is so much easier, though still not a good solution.

Say hypothetically you are now logging into Squarespace domains with your previous Google Cloud Identity Free account (Account #1) that was under your Client’s Google account. Welp. Here’s the dumb way to fix this.
Login to Google, create a new Cloud Identity Free account (Account #2), add all the same permissions you had before (on Account #1) to it, then go back to SS and add that new Google account (#2) as a manager. That’s your new access. Now go back to Google and remove any extraneous permission from your original account (#1). Now just give your client that accounts login info so that they can login to SS and manage all their domains. Voila!

I know that sounds totally ridiculous, but it really is so much simpler and cleaner. It’s fewer steps than Squarespace recommends, and gives your client the domain owner access they need.

Practical Answer

Just move all your domains off Squarespace. It’s such a PITA. Any other domain registrar is easier to use. Gosh godaddy is light years better (I didn’t say that).

Done.

Now never register another domain on Squarespace ever again.

You’re welcome.