Squarespace 7.1 does have a small, little-known native option for events — but it's limited, and there's no add-to-calendar button you can place on a normal page or that carries your full event details. So most of the time you'll want to add one yourself. Here's exactly what Squarespace gives you out of the box, where it falls short, and the three ways to add a proper button.
Why an "Add to Calendar" button matters
An event on a webpage is passive. A visitor has to notice it, remember it, and manually re-enter the date and time into their own calendar later — which most people never do. An add-to-calendar button removes every one of those steps. One tap and the event — with its title, time, location, and description — lands in their calendar, complete with the default reminder they already have set.
For anyone whose business depends on attendance — a studio, a restaurant with ticketed dinners, a coach running a webinar, a nonprofit with a fundraiser — that's a direct lever on how many people actually show up.
What Squarespace gives you out of the box
Squarespace 7.1 Events pages have an optional setting — "Show export links" — that adds small Google Calendar and iCal (.ics) links to your events, on both the events list and the individual event pages. It's off by default and buried in the events section's design settings (Edit Section → Format → Event Display), which is why most people never find it — here's a step-by-step walkthrough if yours aren't showing.
It's better than nothing, but it's the bare minimum, and it comes with real limits:
- The saved entry is nearly empty. The calendar event it creates includes only the title, date and time, and location — with no description and no link back to your event page. So when the reminder fires days later, the person is left with a bare line and no way to click back to your site to RSVP, buy a ticket, or get the details.
- They're tiny text links, not a button. Small "Google Calendar · ICS" text is easy to miss — far fewer people notice and use it than would tap a clear button.
- Google and Apple only. No Outlook, Office 365, or Yahoo.
- Events pages only. You can't place these links on a regular page, a landing page, a product page, or an announcement — just on Events Collection items. (If you need a button somewhere other than an Events page, here's how to add one to any Squarespace page.)
If a bare title-time-location entry on an Events page is all you need, that toggle is worth switching on. But if you want a real button — one that carries the full event details, links back to your site, works anywhere on your site, and covers every calendar — you'll need to add it yourself. Here are the three ways to do that.
Option 1: The manual approach (hand-built calendar links)
The DIY route is to build the calendar link yourself and attach it to a button using a Squarespace Code Block or button link.
At a high level, each calendar service accepts a specially formatted URL that pre-fills an event. Google Calendar, for example, takes a "template" link containing the event's start time, end time, title, and details as parameters. For Apple Calendar and Outlook, you generate a small .ics file with the same information, host it, and link to it.
The upside: it's free and requires no plugin.
The downside: it's fiddly and easy to get wrong. Dates and times have to be written in a precise UTC format, every field has to be URL-encoded, and you need a different link for each calendar service if you want to cover everyone. You'll also be hand-editing raw code for every new event, and a single formatting slip produces a button that silently opens the wrong date. It works, but it doesn't scale past a couple of events, and it's not something most clients can maintain themselves.
Option 2: Third-party embed widgets
There are external services (for example, AddEvent) that generate an add-to-calendar widget you paste into a Squarespace Code Block. This saves you from hand-writing the URLs.
The upside: less manual coding than Option 1.
The downside: these are typically separate subscriptions with their own monthly fees, the widgets often carry the provider's branding, and because they load from a third-party server, some also track your visitors. The styling rarely matches your site, so the button tends to look like an embedded widget rather than a native part of the page. It's also not a seamless workflow: you build and edit every event inside the provider's dashboard, then copy embed codes over to Squarespace — and any time you need to change an event, you're back on their platform rather than working right in your own site.
Option 3: A native "Add to Calendar" block (the easy way)
The simplest option is a purpose-built Squarespace plugin. CalButton adds a native "Add to Calendar" block directly to the 7.1 editor — it appears in your + block menu like any other content block. You fill in the event details in the editor (no code, no date formatting), and it generates buttons that work across Google, Apple, Outlook, Office 365, Yahoo, and .ics automatically. It also drops buttons onto your Events page items for you.
Because it's built for Squarespace, the button inherits your site's fonts and colors instead of looking like a bolted-on widget. It installs with a single line of code, it's a one-time purchase, yours forever, and it doesn't track your visitors — the calendar link is generated in the browser.
The upside: no code per event, every calendar service covered, brand-matched, and something a client can use on their own.
The trade-off: it's a paid plugin rather than a free hand-built link — though at a one-time price, it typically costs less than a single month of a subscription widget.
The four options at a glance
| Squarespace export links | Manual code | Third-party widget | CalButton | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free | Monthly fee | One-time |
| Where it works | Events pages only | Anywhere | Anywhere | Anywhere |
| Calendars covered | Google, Apple | Whatever you hand-build | Usually all | Google, Apple, Outlook, Office 365, Yahoo, .ics |
| Full details (description + link back) | No | If you build it | Varies | Yes |
| Matches your brand | No — tiny text links | Manual styling | Generic widget look | Automatic |
| Effort per event | None (automatic) | Hand-code each one | Paste an embed | None (automatic) |
| Account / dashboard | None | None | Separate dashboard | None needed |
Every option has a place — the free routes are genuinely fine for simple, one-off needs. This is just here to make the trade-offs easy to see at a glance.
Which option is right for you?
- One event, ever, and you're comfortable with code? The manual approach (Option 1) will do.
- A few events and you don't mind a monthly fee and third-party branding? An embed widget (Option 2) is workable.
- Recurring events, client sites, or you just want it to look right and take one tap to set up? A native block (Option 3) is the least-effort, best-looking path.
Skip the code — add the button in 2 minutes
CalButton drops a native "Add to Calendar" block into your Squarespace 7.1 editor. One-time price, yours forever.
See CalButton →Frequently asked questions
.ics), Outlook, Office 365, and Yahoo. Hand-built links require a separate link per service; a plugin like CalButton handles all of them from one block.The bottom line
Squarespace's Events pages get you a basic set of Google and Apple export links — worth switching on, but bare, easy to miss, and stuck on your events pages. To actually turn interest into attendance, you want a real Add to Calendar button: full event details, a link back to your site, every calendar covered, and one you can place anywhere. You can build that by hand, rent a third-party widget, or add it as a native block in a couple of minutes. If you value your time — or you're building this for clients — that last route is the one worth looking at. You can see CalButton in action here, or weigh the free and paid routes side by side in our comparison of every Squarespace add-to-calendar option.