Multilingual Squarespace: Weglot vs Manual Duplicate Pages
Squarespace doesn't do languages. There's no toggle, no translation panel, no per-language URL structure. That surprises people, because it's a mature platform and most of its European users need at least two languages.
There are two ways to do it properly and one you should avoid. We've built all three, mostly for German and English sites in Switzerland and for US clients reaching Spanish-speaking customers.
Option 1: Weglot
Weglot is a translation service that connects to your Squarespace site, machine-translates every page, lets you edit the translations, and serves each language at its own address. On Squarespace, that address is a subdomain: de.yoursite.com, fr.yoursite.com. Visitors get a switcher, search engines get hreflang tags, and you keep editing one site in your main language.
Cost. Starter is about USD 17 a month for one extra language and 10,000 translated words. Business is USD 32 for three languages and 50,000 words. Pro is USD 87 for five languages and 200,000 words. A ten-page service site is usually under 10,000 words; a site with a blog blows through that fast, because every post counts.
Set-up. An afternoon. Create the Weglot account, add the subdomain DNS records, paste the Weglot script into code injection, choose languages, review the automatic translations.
Editing. You edit your site as usual. New content is translated automatically within minutes. You review and correct translations in Weglot's editor, either in a list or visually on the page. Anyone who can edit the site can correct translations.
SEO. Good. Each language has its own URLs, its own page titles and descriptions (translated), and correct hreflang. Subdomains are slightly weaker than subdirectories for consolidating authority, but the difference is small and Google has said it treats them equivalently for this purpose.
Downsides. A monthly cost forever. Machine translation that's very good for German, French, Spanish and Italian and noticeably worse for less common languages. Some elements, particularly text inside custom code and third-party embeds, need manual attention. Forms submit in the source language. And the translated site is a proxy of the original: if Weglot has an outage, the translated languages are down.
Option 2: Manual duplicate pages
You build each language as its own set of pages inside one Squarespace site. German pages live under /de/, English under /en/ (or at the root). A folder in navigation per language. A switcher, usually a small link in the header, points to the equivalent page in the other language. Hreflang tags are added by hand in each page's header injection.
Cost. No subscription. The cost is build time: every page exists twice, so a five-page site is ten pages. Roughly 40 to 60 percent of the base build per additional language, mostly in content entry and layout checks.
Set-up. Squarespace 7.1 lets you set a page URL with a slash in it, so /de/ueber-uns is a real URL, not a hack. You duplicate each page, translate the content, set the URL, and put it in the right navigation folder. The header shows the switcher and the navigation for the current language; you either build two headers with a code-based show/hide, or use a single header with the language folders as top-level items.
Editing. Every change happens twice. Add a service in German, add it in English. This is fine for sites that change monthly and painful for sites that change daily.
SEO. Very good, if you do the hreflang. Same domain, subdirectories, each language page a first-class page with full control over titles, descriptions, slugs and content. This is the structure Google likes most.
Downsides. Squarespace's site language setting is one per site. It controls things like date formats, "Read more" links, form validation messages, and cookie banner text. Your second language gets the first language's system strings unless you override them with CSS or JavaScript, and we do, but it's fiddly. The blog is one blog; a bilingual blog means two blog pages and two RSS feeds. Search inside the site returns both languages. And the switcher, done properly, has to know which page it's on, which is a small piece of JavaScript rather than a static link.
Option 3: Don't
Google Translate widgets. Browser auto-translate. A single page with both languages stacked. All three exist and all three give search engines nothing to index in the second language, which means a German visitor searching in German will never find you. If the second language matters to your business, it needs its own URLs.
Which to choose
Our rule:
Under about 15 pages, two languages, content changes rarely: manual. Cheaper over three years, better SEO, no dependency. Typical for practices, consultancies, restaurants, small studios.
Over 15 pages, or three or more languages, or a blog: Weglot. The duplication cost becomes real and the monthly fee is cheap against the hours. Typical for product companies, tourism, anyone publishing regularly.
A shop: Weglot. Product pages in Squarespace can't be duplicated per language without duplicating the product, which breaks inventory. Weglot translates products in place.
Regulated content where every word matters (legal, medical, financial): manual, with a human translator. You want each language page to be exactly what a professional wrote, not a corrected machine draft.
The set-up we use for a German and English site
For a Swiss SME on the manual route, this is what we build.
Structure: English at the root (/, /services, /about, /contact), German under /de/ (/de/, /de/leistungen, /de/ueber-uns, /de/kontakt). Two navigation folders, one shown per language.
Home page: Squarespace has one home page. It's the English one. /de/ is a normal page set to look like a home page. A short script detects a first-time visitor's browser language and offers (not forces) the German version.
Switcher: a link in the header that a small script points at the sibling page, using a lookup table of en to de URLs. Falls back to the other language's home page if no sibling exists.
Hreflang, in each page's header injection:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://www.example.com/services" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-CH" href="https://www.example.com/de/leistungen" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.example.com/services" />System strings: a CSS rule that hides the English "Read more" on German blog pages and shows a German one via a ::after, and a handful of JavaScript overrides for form messages. Not elegant. Works.
Forms: two forms, one per language, each with its own confirmation text and its own notification email.
SEO settings: titles and descriptions written per language, per page. The site-wide SEO title format uses the site name only, so it doesn't inject English into German titles.
Two blogs if there's a blog. Otherwise none.
Swiss German conventions: ss not ß, and CHF 1'250.00 number formatting, typed as such. Squarespace's German interface is German-German, and clients notice.
The set-up we use with Weglot
Add the languages, exclude the URLs that shouldn't be translated (checkout, account pages), set the switcher to appear in the header as a text link rather than the default flag widget, and go through the top 20 pages correcting translations with someone who speaks the language. Then set up a monthly review of new translations as part of the support plan, because machine translation of a new blog post goes live before anyone reads it.
Turn off the automatic redirect based on browser language. A German-speaking visitor in Zurich who typed the English URL wanted the English URL.
Cost over three years
Five-page site, two languages. Manual: about USD 2,000 to 3,000 of build time once. Weglot Starter: about USD 600 over three years plus a few hours of set-up, but you're limited to 10,000 words, and the site will grow. Roughly a wash at this size; manual wins on SEO and independence.
Twenty-five page site with a blog, three languages. Manual: 50 extra pages to build and maintain, USD 8,000 and up, plus ongoing double or triple entry. Weglot Business: about USD 1,150 over three years. Weglot wins clearly.
The break-even is around 12 to 15 pages for two languages. Above that, the subscription is cheaper than your own time.
Questions we get
Can Weglot run on a subdirectory instead of a subdomain on Squarespace? No. Squarespace doesn't allow the routing Weglot needs for subdirectories, so it's de.yoursite.com. On WordPress or Webflow subdirectories are possible; on Squarespace they aren't.
Does Squarespace's built-in site search work per language? No. Search covers the whole site. With Weglot, search happens on the original-language content. With manual pages, results mix languages. For most business sites, search is turned off anyway.
What about the cookie banner and legal pages? Manual: create each legal page per language and use a consent tool that supports language detection. Weglot translates Squarespace's built-in banner text along with the rest.
Can I have a different home page per language? With the manual approach, yes, since /de/ is a page you design freely. With Weglot, the home page is a translation of the original.
Does hreflang matter if I only have two languages? Yes. Without it, Google may show the German page to English searchers or treat the two as duplicates. Five minutes per page.
We have a shop. Can we do manual? Not for products. Products exist once, in one language. A bilingual shop is Weglot, or two stores, or Shopify with its native markets and translation.
