Showit vs Squarespace
Showit Or Squarespace
The pros and cons of each platform and which one is right for you
If you’ve been wondering where the best place to build your brands website is or you’re considering a switch, this guide will lay out whether Showit or Squarespace is the right platform for you. Squarespace has been an industry leader for many years when it comes to website building platforms. Chances are that you heard of Squarespace way before you ever heard of Showit!
But Showit is gaining a lot of growth, especially since they’ve started expanding their target market from photographers (where Showit first made a name for themselves) and growing to serve a wide variety of business types.
While you might encounter some bias opinions on whether Showit or Squarespace is the best platform, as a designer that works with both platforms I can wholeheartedly say that both platforms are amazing! It really comes down to what you NEED from your website.
A quick overview if you’re not familiar!
What is Showit?
Showit is a drag and drop website building platform that works hand in hand with WordPress for blogging. (It’s what I’m using on my own site!)
Showit offers a ton of creative freedom and design flexibility. You’ll find that a lot of Showit sites have bold and creative designs.
Showit is also a great alternative to working directly with WordPress to build your site while still allowing you to get that traditional WordPress blogging experience.
If you’re an OG blogger you’ll appreciate that you can keep your Yoast plugin and that traditional backend interface that you’re used to, but without the clunky look that often accompanies most WordPress sites. An added bonus: you can avoid a lot of the buggy glitches and security issues that you may run into when working solely in WordPress.
Showit is trusted by tons of leaders in the online space such as Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Boss Babe, Xayli Barclay, and more!
What is Squarespace?
Squarespace is a huge website building platform that rivals WordPress in terms of status and trust.
It’s been around since 2003 and has made huge leaps forward in recent years becoming an industry leader and household name. Or maybe “home office name”
Thanks to Squarespaces’ new 7.1 Fluid Engine, it is also a drag and drop builder that offers more flexibility than some builders but less than Showit, more on that in a minute.
Squarespace also has a ton of built in functionality and features that few other web builders can brag about, such as scheduling appointments, e-commerce, email marketing, digital products, blog, and even courses!
Squarespace is used by a wide variety of industries and is used by major brands like Pixar, Airwalk, and more!
So how do they stack up?
Design Ability
When it comes to design, Showit is the winner.
If design flexibility and creative power are what you’re looking for, Showit is an incredible option. Squarespace will require more CSS skills to fine tune and get things looking exactly how you’d like.
For example, if you’d like an element to be slightly rotated and tilted, you would need to use CSS to achieve this in Squarespace.
That being said, you can still create show stopping sites in Squarespace, but it may require a professional designer or advanced knowledge of the platform to get things looking the way you’d like.
Functionality + Features
In terms of functionality, Squarespace takes the cake!
Squarespace uses Acuity Scheduling to make booking in person OR online classes a breeze, e-commerce functionality means that you can have your site and shop all in one place something I WISH Showit would release.
Digital products? Online courses? Subscriptions? Memberships? Paywall content? You can do it with Squarespace!
If your tech stack is full of a million and one different software and tools that you use for course hosting, selling products, blogging, 1:1 services etc, and you wish you had a one stop shop for all these tools, Squarespace is a great answer.
While other “all in one” platforms like Kajabi or Kartra may have “everything you need” you’ll find that they excel in one area like courses, but are severely lacking in other areas like website building or 1:1 booking functionality.
That’s not to say that you aren’t going to be able to do what you want with a Showit site, there are tons of tools that you can integrate with Showit to achieve the functionality you need.
Shopify lite, woocommerce, and Thrivecart are great ways to add payment processing and Podia, Teachable, and Thinkific are robust course hosting tools.
Price
Squarespace and Showit are relatively neck and neck in terms of price, with Squarespace having an edge.
The lowest tier plan for Squarespace is $25/month with a monthly plan and Showit coming in at $24/month with a monthly plan however, the basic Showit plan does not include blogging functionality. To get blog ability you’ll have to bump up your monthly payment to $29/month.
Showit maxes out at $39/month and Squarespace maxes out at $79/month.
Squarespace offers more features/functionality for the price but you will pay for additional features like Acuity Scheduling, and email marketing.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization AKA getting found by Google)
Showit and Squarespace are pretty equal when it comes to SEO but Showit has more room for error!
Squarespace does a great job at taking care of a lot of the backend SEO settings for you whereas Showit isn’t as intuitive when it comes to SEO.
Squarespace uses something called “Site Settings” which pre-sets all of your text tags, and while Showit has a similar function, its design flexibility often means that you’re using the wrong tags in the wrong places. I see the same mistake often made with Squarespace but much less frequently!
Luckily Showit allows to directly edit text tags so even if you use the wrong tags across the site, you can manually change them without effecting the design at all! In Squarespace you will either have to change the design or use code to correct the tags.
Both platforms allow you to edit meta-data, alt tags, and page descriptions which are important features when implementing an SEO strategy.
Blogging
Both platforms have a great blogging interface but Showit offers more customization and features in the blogging department, so this one goes to Showit.
If you’re looking for a more simple blog interface you might prefer Squarespace but if you’re a WordPress Almuni you will fall in love with Showit.
E-commerce
Squarespace takes the cake for e-commerce when compared to Showit but is secondary to Shopify.
Showit doesn’t have a built in e-commerce functionality which is a big downside, hopefully this is something they roll out in the future!
But there are a lot of ways to integrate e-commerce functionality into your Showit site such as Shopify Lite, Thrivecart, and Woocommerce.
Courses
This is also neck and neck even though Squarespace now offers course hosting!
If you have a course platform you love or if the idea of moving your courses over makes you want to puke then Showit is a great option to get the design capabilities that you’re lacking without needing to migrate your whole course.
If you would like to have everything in one place then Squarespace might be the one and done solution you’re looking for!
Here’s a quick summary of how Squarespace and Showit stack up:
DESIGN ABILITY: Showit
FUNCTIONALITY + FEATURES: Squarespace
PRICE: Both, with Squarespace being a slightly better value
SEO: Both
BLOGGING: Showit
E-COMMERCE: Squarespace
COURSES: Both, depending on what you’re looking for
Okay but which one is right for me?
Generally I recommend Showit to more tech savvy business owners or business owners that are past that initial phase of business, who can afford to hire a professional to take care of their site for them.
I generally recommend Squarespace to business owners that need something more simple to manage, or to business owners that need a higher degree of functionality without a huge tech stack.
Thinking of making the switch or pulling the trigger on a new site? Great news! I know an amazing designer who can get you an amazing new site STAT. It’s me… I’m the designer 🙂 To work together fill out the inquiry form on our site to get started.
Whether we work together or not, I’m sending you digital good vibes on your new website!
Cheers!
