Case Study: Squarespace migrates to CockroachDB with 80% of apps needing no code changes
Key results
The challenge
Squarespace concluded that PostgreSQL was no longer the right fit for its global workloads and needed a database that could deliver distributed, horizontal scale. A key concern was how much downtime would be acceptable during migration and whether a new system could keep reaching customers reliably.
The solution
Squarespace adopted CockroachDB as a distributed SQL system of record, running clusters across three regions (two GCP regions and one data center) and migrating applications environment by environment.
“There's a fluidity to CockroachDB that lets you respond dynamically without having to make changes to your application. This is really powerful to us because the teams managing the application are different from those managing the data systems.”
GMGavin McQuillanSr. Staff Software Engineer, Squarespace
The results, in context
Squarespace reported that 80% of its applications required no app-level changes during the move to CockroachDB, and that migration cutovers ran with under 10 milliseconds of downtime. The team migrated 50 clusters across two environments and described a fluidity that let application teams and data-systems teams operate independently.