How to Connect Planning Center Online to Your Squarespace Church Website
If your church uses Planning Center Online and your website runs on Squarespace, you've probably run into the same frustration: your calendar says one thing, your website says another, and someone on staff is spending way too much time keeping both in sync.
The good news? You don't have to choose between the two — and you don't have to rebuild your website to make them work together. Here's what actually works.
Why This Comes Up So Often
Most churches land on Squarespace because it's clean, easy to manage, and doesn't require a developer to update content. And Planning Center is the gold standard for church management — scheduling, groups, giving, check-in, all of it.
The problem is they weren't built to talk to each other out of the box. So churches end up either abandoning their Planning Center data on the website side, or manually copy-pasting events and forms into Squarespace every week. Neither is a great use of anyone's time.
What You Can Actually Embed
Planning Center's Church Center platform supports modal embeds — which means you can trigger PCO-powered popups directly from your Squarespace site without sending visitors to a completely different page. Here's what's supported:
Giving — Embed a giving button that opens a Church Center giving modal directly on your site. Visitors never leave your page.
Forms — Registration forms, connect cards, volunteer signups — any PCO form can be embedded as a popup link.
Groups — With a tool like The Church Co's Embeds plan ($19/month), you can display your PCO groups directly on your site and keep them automatically synced.
Events and Calendars — Tools like Display.Church connect to your PCO calendar and display a clean, automatically updated calendar widget on your Squarespace site.
The Basic Setup for Giving and Forms
This part is simpler than it looks. Here's the general approach:
- Add the Church Center modal script to your Squarespace header via Settings > Advanced > Code Injection
- Create a button or link on any page
- Set the link URL to your Church Center giving or form URL, with
?open-in-church-center-modal=trueadded to the end - Make sure "Open in new tab" is turned OFF — this is what triggers the popup instead of a redirect
That's it for giving and forms. Most church admins can handle this without any developer help once they know where to look.
When You Need a Little More Help
Groups and events are where it gets slightly more involved. Tools like The Church Co Embeds and Display.Church do the heavy lifting — but they still require some configuration to connect to your specific PCO account and display correctly on your Squarespace layout.
That's usually where we come in. Not because it's complicated, but because there are enough moving pieces that having someone who's done it before saves you a few hours of trial and error.
The Bottom Line
You don't need to rebuild your website, switch platforms, or hire a full-time developer to get Planning Center working with Squarespace. The tools are already there — it's mostly a matter of knowing which ones to use and how to connect them.
If you'd rather hand it off and have someone else set it up, we're happy to help. And if you want to try it yourself first, the steps above are a solid starting point.
Either way, your congregation will thank you for having a website that actually reflects what's happening at your church.
Have questions about connecting Planning Center to your website — Squarespace or otherwise? Get in touch and we'll point you in the right direction.