Squarespace Montauk Template: Family, Limits and the 7.1 Path

Montauk is a Squarespace version 7.0 template and it heads its own family of four. Julia, Kent, Montauk and Om share one codebase, one feature set and one template ID, so every Montauk tutorial applies to all four and switching between them changes only fonts, colours and demo content. Montauk is still available, none of the four is discontinued, and version 7.0 has no announced end-of-life.

Should you stay on Montauk, restyle it, or move to 7.1?

Montauk heads its own family: Julia, Kent, Montauk and Om

Squarespace's family guide states it directly: "The Montauk template family (Julia, Kent, Montauk, Om) features page banners and a versatile thumbnail navigation Index, putting your information, products, or love story in the spotlight."

We confirmed the shared codebase in August 2026: montauk-demo.squarespace.com, julia-demo.squarespace.com, kent-demo.squarespace.com and om-demo.squarespace.com all report "templateVersion":"7" and the identical template ID 50521cf884aeb45fa5cfdb80.

Three practical consequences:

• Search for "Montauk", not for Julia, Kent or Om. The class names and site styles tweaks are family-level, so a CSS snippet written for Montauk works on a Julia site unchanged.

• A detector tool will call your site "Montauk". It is not wrong. templateId identifies the family, not the member, so nothing in your page source distinguishes Om from Kent.

• Switching inside the family is cosmetic. New defaults, new demo images, same everything else.

There is one real difference, and it is not a design one: Squarespace lists Julia, Kent and Om as supporting non-English site languages. Montauk itself is not on that list, so a non-English site cannot switch to Montauk without changing its site language to English first.

The list of Squarespace 7.0 templates covers all 121 templates and which of the 22 families each belongs to.

What the Squarespace Montauk template does well

Squarespace's own demo describes Montauk as "a polished business template that's easy to setup and comes with many customization options," and says it is "prized by independent businesses for its flexibility, clean layouts, and professional style." The demo site is exactly that: an about page, an artists page, a shop, a blog, a contact page and an index.

The grid index. Montauk index pages "create thumbnail grids that visitors can use to explore different pages," built from page featured images with the page title below each tile. Control it with Thumbnails per row, Thumbnail ratio, Thumbnail opacity and Thumbnail hover opacity under Index styles. Layout, gallery, blog, events, store and album pages can all sit inside it.

Stacked gallery pages. Montauk gallery pages "stack images and videos vertically" with the page title and description on one side and images on the other — a genuinely distinctive layout in version 7.0. Flip it with Project layout and resize the text column with Index sidebar width, both under Index styles.

A header subtitle you can put anything in. Under Options, Header subtitle displays your Address (pulled from Business information → Physical location), your Tagline, or Custom — and Custom is block-editable, so a phone number, opening hours or a booking button can live in the header. This is why Montauk keeps turning up on restaurant, studio and clinic sites.

Three footers. An info footer with optional built-in social icons, a bottom footer, and per-page footers unique to individual pages. Very few version 7.0 templates give you that much footer.

A blog sidebar. Enable and position it with Blog layout under Blog styles, size it with Blog sidebar width. It displays on blog landing pages and posts, and "the sidebar scrolls up with the page."

A floating canvas. Canvas style under Options sets the header arrangement; Page borders and Page border color draw a border around the whole site; Canvas background with its opacity slider lets a site background image show through.

What breaks or feels dated on a Montauk site in 2026

No Fluid Engine. Version 7.0 editing is the classic block editor — a 12-column grid, no overlapping elements without CSS, no drag-anywhere canvas. Fluid Engine is 7.1-only and is not coming to Montauk.

Index sub-pages have hashtag URLs. This is Montauk's biggest structural quirk. Gallery and layout pages opened from a Montauk index get special formatting, and Squarespace is explicit that "the URL includes a hashtag (#)" and "the special formatting doesn't display if the URL doesn't include the #." Share the clean URL and the visitor gets an unstyled page; share the hash URL and you are asking search engines to treat a fragment as a page. Neither is good.

Banners are limited and rigid. Page banners exist on blog, events, index and layout pages only — not on products, not on individual blog posts. Width is fixed to the canvas, and "the height is set by the image." On layout pages opened from an index, banners "don't display" at all.

Galleries can't link out. Squarespace states Montauk "doesn't support clickthrough URLs, deeplink URLs, or lightbox functionality." A portfolio grid where the images cannot be clicked through to a project page is a real limitation in 2026.

Mobile is one inherited layout. Page descriptions "don't display on browsers smaller than 767 pixels wide." Page titles are locked to a fixed font size below 1041px. Index pages drop to one thumbnail per row. There is no separate mobile layout to edit — Squarespace 7.1 with Fluid Engine keeps a genuinely independent mobile layout per section at a 767px breakpoint.

Missing blog features that are now standard. No related posts, no infinite scroll, no author profile block, no fixed navigation bar.

Montauk bugs Squarespace documents and is not going to fix

Squarespace maintains a Troubleshooting Montauk section, prefaced with its actual position on version 7.0: "Although we still support Squarespace version 7.0, fixing bugs or issues is a lower priority for us while we focus on our current platform, version 7.1."

None of these is a fault in your setup. All are Montauk behaving as documented.

Is the Squarespace Montauk template still available?

Yes, on an existing version 7.0 site. None of Julia, Kent, Montauk or Om appears on Squarespace's discontinued list, and any of them can be installed from Design → Template → Install new template.

You cannot start a new site on Montauk. The live gallery at squarespace.com/templates returned 198 templates in August 2026, every one of them version 7.1 — we counted them. Montauk and the rest of version 7.0 are absent, and the old squarespace.com/templates/montauk-demo URL now serves that generic gallery, which is why older links to a "Montauk demo" land somewhere unrecognisable. Squarespace's demo, montauk-demo.squarespace.com, is still up.

Version 7.0 has no announced end-of-life. Squarespace's migration guide says the move is optional in as many words: "Updating your site from version 7.0 to 7.1 is optional." Squarespace 5, from 2008, is still running.

One rule worth knowing even though Montauk is not affected: uninstalling a discontinued template is permanent. Encore, Lincoln, Bryler and Taylor cannot be switched to at all, though you can switch away from them. Whether old Squarespace templates are still supported covers the support position in full.

Moving a Squarespace Montauk site to version 7.1

The tool is at Design → Update to Version 7.1. Before you touch it:

1. It is permanent. Squarespace: "After you click Publish update, your site will update to version 7.1 permanently."

2. It caps at 150 pages and errors above 200 products on a store page.

3. Developer mode must be off, and Developer Platform code disappears when you disable it.

4. Custom CSS survives commented out. Remove the comment tags in the CSS editor and save. Selectors written against Montauk class names will mostly not match 7.1 markup.

What happens to the parts a Montauk site is built from:

Montauk converts more cleanly than the stacked-index families, because Squarespace maps grid index pages onto portfolio pages and carries a redirect for the index URL itself. What it does not carry is the settings on every sub-page inside that index.

Audit before you press the button. Count pages and products. List every index, album and cover page, and export each sub-page's SEO title and description to a spreadsheet — that is the data the tool throws away. Export the Custom CSS. Screenshot the Options, Index styles and Blog styles tweaks.

And the expensive one: changing a page slug on Squarespace creates no automatic 301 redirect, ever. Montauk sites are index-led and index sub-pages have real URLs; if the move changes them, you write the redirects.

The screen-by-screen version is in the Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1 guide, and the Squarespace 7.0 template comparison chart shows how Montauk's feature set compares with the other 21 families. The Squarespace Brine template guide works through the same stay-or-move decision for the largest 7.0 family.

So: stay on Montauk, or move?

Stay if the Montauk site does its job, the content is stable, and nothing on your list requires 7.1. It is not a liability.

Restyle if the objection is aesthetic — fonts, colours, borders, canvas width, banner treatment and index thumbnail ratios are all site styles values. Do not switch to Julia, Kent or Om expecting anything functional to change; it will not.

Move if you need Fluid Engine, courses, video pages, a store past 200 products per page, clickable portfolio thumbnails, or an independently editable mobile layout. Move deliberately if your index is large — the sub-page metadata loss is the part that quietly costs rankings.

For scale: across 54 Squareko-built client sites measured in August 2026 (Playwright/Chromium lab test, cloud datacenter, unthrottled, single run per site), 53 of 54 run Squarespace 7.1. Version 7.0 is the minority case now, but a working Montauk site is not an emergency.

Most Montauk sites we are sent come through the update tool intact and then need a fortnight of tidying — re-entering sub-page SEO data, rebuilding the header subtitle, replacing the blog sidebar. The exception is the Montauk site whose entire structure is one deep index with years of Custom CSS layered over it: there, rebuilding from a premium Squarespace template built for 7.1 and Fluid Engine is usually the shorter path. The table at the top of this page settles it for most people without spending anything.

FAQ

• What templates are in the Squarespace Montauk family?

  Four: Julia, Kent, Montauk and Om. All four report the same template ID, 50521cf884aeb45fa5cfdb80, and run identical code. They differ only in default fonts, colours and demo content, so any Montauk tutorial or CSS snippet works on a Julia, Kent or Om site unchanged.

• Is Julia the same template as Montauk?

  Functionally, yes. Julia is a Montauk family member with different default styling and wedding-oriented demo content. Switching from Julia to Montauk unlocks no features. The one genuine difference is language support: Julia, Kent and Om support non-English site languages, and Montauk itself does not.

• Why is there a hashtag in my Montauk index page URL?

  Montauk gives gallery and layout pages opened from an index special formatting, and that formatting depends on the # in the URL. Squarespace states the special formatting doesn't display if the URL doesn't include the hashtag. It is expected behaviour, and it makes those sub-pages awkward to share or index.

• Does the Montauk template have a blog sidebar?

  Yes. Enable and position it with Blog layout under Blog styles, and set its width with Blog sidebar width. It appears on blog landing pages and posts, and the same sidebar shows across every blog on the site. Squarespace 7.1 has no sidebar layout, so it does not survive migration.

• Is the Squarespace Montauk template still available in 2026?

  Yes, on an existing version 7.0 site, via Design → Template → Install new template. None of Julia, Kent, Montauk or Om is discontinued. You cannot start a new site on Montauk — the live template gallery returned 198 templates in August 2026 and all of them are version 7.1.

• Why won't my Montauk mobile menu open?

  Squarespace documents one specific cause: an invalid video banner URL or embed code on the homepage stops the mobile menu opening. Open the homepage's page settings, click the Media tab, then the Video tab, and confirm the Video URL field contains a valid URL.

Author Bio

I'm Walid Hasan, a Certified Squarespace Expert and Squarespace Circle Platinum Partner with over 12 years of hands-on experience designing and optimizing high-performing websites. Over the years, I've had the privilege of building more than 2,000 Squarespace websites for clients around the world, always focusing on clean design, strong user experience, and conversion-driven results.