The Strange Loop: Why Monadic Fired Squarespace and Built a Custom Stack

In Douglas Hofstadter’s philosophy, a "Strange Loop" occurs when you move through the levels of a hierarchy only to find yourself right back where you started.

In business, this is often called "eating your own dog food."

At Monadic, we spend our days telling clients to own their data, architect their infrastructure for efficiency, and stop paying for "bloatware" they don't need. Yet, for nearly a year, our own website lived on Squarespace.

Squarespace is excellent. It is beautiful, easy, and convenient. But it is also a "Walled Garden." You rent the land. You play by their SEO rules. You pay a premium for convenience.

We realized we were violating our own Monadic Method. We were paying for a "bundled" solution instead of architecting the right solution.

So, we fired our host. We migrated monadic-llc.com to a custom stack using Google Sites and Cloudflare. Here is the technical case study of how—and why—we did it.

Phase 1: Identification (The Squarespace Ceiling)

Using our IAM (Identification, Aggregation, Mapification) framework, we first identified the friction points.

1. Cost vs. Value: We were paying $200+ a year for a static brochure site.

2. The "Black Box": Squarespace controls the SSL certificates, the DNS propagation speeds, and the server response times. We wanted control.

3. Vendor Lock-in: Moving away from Squarespace is notoriously difficult because they use proprietary code. We wanted a universal standard.

Phase 2: Aggregation (The "Unlikely" Stack)

We aggregated our options. WordPress was too high-maintenance (security patches). Wix was just another walled garden.

We chose an architectural approach that separates the Content from the Edge.

• The CMS (Google Sites): It’s free. It’s incredibly fast. It integrates natively with our Google Workspace environment. It creates clean, HTML5 code.

• The Muscle (Cloudflare): This is the secret sauce. Google Sites is basic, but when you put Cloudflare in front of it, it becomes a powerhouse. Cloudflare handles the DNS, the caching (CDN), the SSL encryption, and the security firewall.

Phase 3: Mapification (The Migration)

Moving from a "done-for-you" platform to a custom architecture requires specific technical steps. Here is how we engineered the new site.

1. The "Naked Domain" Problem Google Sites has a known flaw: it loves www.monadic-llc.com but hates the naked monadic-llc.com.

   • The Fix: We used Cloudflare’s "Page Rules" to perform a 301 Forwarding Redirect. This forces all traffic to the www version instantly, ensuring no user ever gets a "Site Not Found" error.

2. The Security Layer Squarespace gives you a basic SSL certificate.

   • The Upgrade: By routing our traffic through Cloudflare, we now have Enterprise-grade DDoS protection and a Web Application Firewall (WAF) sitting in front of our site. We can block malicious bots before they even load the homepage.

3. The Speed Upgrade Google’s servers are fast. But Cloudflare’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) is faster.

   • The Result: Our site is now cached in data centers in 300+ cities around the world. Whether a client views our site in New York or Tokyo, it loads instantly.

The Result: Efficiency & Ownership

By applying our own philosophy to ourselves, we achieved:

• 100% Cost Reduction: Hosting costs went from ~$276/year to $0.

• Total Ownership: We own the domain logic. We own the content file structure.

• Simplicity: No plugins to update. No databases to crash.

We didn't just build a website; we built an infrastructure.

This is what Monadic does. We don't just sell services; we engineer solutions. If your business is stuck in a "Walled Garden," paying high fees for low performance, maybe it’s time for your own migration.

Ready to architect your web presence?