From Squarespace to Claude Code: How I Rebuilt My Portfolio and Saved $528 a Year

For years, I paid $44 a month for Squarespace. That's $528 a year for a website that looked like thousands of others, loaded more slowly than I wanted, and was impossible to truly customise.

As a designer, I knew exactly what I wanted my portfolio to look like. The problem? I'm not a developer. I can read code. I understand how things work in principle. But sitting down and building a Next.js application from scratch? It wasn't something I'd done before.

Then I started using Claude Code.

What is Claude Code?

Claude Code is Anthropic's AI-powered coding tool that runs directly in your terminal. Think of it as a senior developer sitting next to you: reading your entire codebase, writing code, fixing bugs, and explaining decisions as it goes. Unlike a chatbot where you copy and paste snippets back and forth, Claude Code works directly on your files in real time.

Why I decided to switch

• $44/month is too much for a portfolio site I couldn't fully customise.
• I wanted a blog powered by Notion, where I already write everything.
• I wanted full control over my design: my own dark theme, typography, and booking flow.

How it started

I gave Claude Code a brief: build me a portfolio site. Dark theme. Clean. Fast. Here's what I need on it. Within a single session, I had a working Next.js 14 application with TypeScript, my own design system using CSS variables, a homepage with a typing animation hero, portfolio case study pages, and a contact form.

What surprised me was how collaborative it felt. I could describe what I wanted in plain English, push back on suggestions I didn't like, and ask why something was built a certain way. It never felt like I was fighting the tool. It felt like working with someone who actually listened.

Connecting Notion as a CMS

The feature I was most excited about was using Notion as my blog CMS. The idea of publishing a post just by changing a status from Draft to Published inside Notion, where I already write everything, was exactly the workflow I wanted.

Claude Code set-up a Notion database with the right properties (Title, Status, Date, Author, Tags, SEO Keywords), installed and configured the Notion client library, built API routes with server-side caching, and auto-generated URL slugs from post titles. No extra configuration required. I just write and publish.

The booking integration

This was probably the most interesting build. I use Setmore for client bookings and wanted a Book a Free Consultation button on every page that opens an overlay, with no redirecting users away from my site.

The first approach failed. Claude Code diagnosed the issue, scrapped the broken implementation, and rebuilt it from scratch as a two-step custom modal. Users first pick a service (App Design, Product Design, Web Design, or Branding), then see the Setmore calendar to choose a slot. Mobile-friendly, with a bottom sheet on small screens and proper iOS safe-area handling.

Deploying to Vercel

GitHub plus Vercel is the best free hosting stack for a Next.js site. Claude Code initialised the Git repo, pushed it to GitHub, set-up the Vercel project, added environment variables via CLI, and configured automatic deployments. Every push to main goes live within two minutes.

I also added Google Analytics, Vercel Speed Insights, Vercel Analytics, and security headers, all in a single session.

The domain transfer

This was the trickiest part. My domain (sanjaytarani.com) was registered through Squarespace and connected to my old site. Even after adding the correct DNS records pointing to Vercel, the old site kept showing.

The issue was that Squarespace was set as the primary domain host and was intercepting all traffic before DNS could kick in. I couldn't disconnect it through the normal settings, either. Squarespace blocks you from disconnecting your primary domain.

The fix was to set the Squarespace site to Private. That stopped Squarespace serving anything on that domain, and within minutes the Vercel DNS records took effect. Total visible downtime was around ten minutes.

Adding a Subscriber List (Without Paying for It)

One thing I knew I'd need on the new site was a way to collect email subscribers. On Squarespace, this was baked in — but of course, that convenience was part of the $44/month I was trying to escape.

I looked at a couple of options. Resend caught my eye first since it's developer-friendly and fits the whole "build it yourself" ethos. But when I compared pricing, Kit (formerly ConvertKit) won out for one simple reason: it has a genuinely usable free tier. For someone rebuilding a portfolio site to save money, paying for yet another SaaS to handle a sign-up form felt like defeating the purpose.

Setting it up was surprisingly painless. I created a Kit account, built a form through their dashboard, and grabbed the embed code. That was really it on Kit's side — no complex integrations, no webhook plumbing, no API keys to wrangle.

Then came the fun part. I dropped the form details into my Claude Code session and asked it to wire everything up on the site. A couple of prompts later, the subscribe form was sitting on the page, styled to match the rest of the design. I asked Claude to test it, and it just worked — submission went through, subscriber showed up in my Kit dashboard, confirmation email landed in my inbox. No debugging, no Stack Overflow rabbit holes, no "why is CORS blocking me" meltdowns.

It's one of those moments that really drives home why I made the switch. What would've taken me an evening of reading docs and troubleshooting took about five minutes of conversation with Claude. And the subscribe form I ended up with? It looks exactly how I want it to, not how a template decided it should.

What I'd tell other designers

You don't need to be a developer to build a custom site in 2026. Claude Code bridges that gap better than anything I've used. I could describe what I wanted in plain language, question decisions I wasn't sure about, and get clear explanations throughout.

The result is a site that's 100% mine. Faster than my old Squarespace site. Free to host on Vercel. Connected to Notion. With a booking flow built exactly the way I wanted it.

And I'm saving $528 a year.