We’ve all heard about the drag-and-drop wonders of Showit, but love the comfort and ease of Squarespace. So how do you decide between the two? 🧐

Showit vs Squarespace. Some say Squarespace is the best and others will tell you WordPress. I’ve built websites on BOTH and when I switched to Showit, it was revolutionary. Why? COMPLETE. DESIGN. FREEDOM. – with NO CODE! If I could dream it, I could design it… in SHOWIT 🤯 🤩.

However, with full customizability like nothing you’ve experienced before, comes a little bit of a learning curve if you’re designing your site from scratch. If that sounds intimidating and scary, no fear! There are tons of gorgeous Showit templates you can just purchase with a click and easily make edits to yourself before launching. If you’d rather be totally hands-off and leave it to the pros 😉 we specialize in designing Showit websites. You can learn more about that here.

Both Squarespace and Showit have their pros and cons, and the one you should choose is totally dependent on you and your businesses. Let’s dig in. ➡️

Showit Vs Squarespace: Design & Customization

(Winner by lightyears: Showit)

Squarespace:

Squarespace focuses on making it incredibly easy to build a website, and it is easy. However, they achieve this with limited customization options so users don’t get overwhelmed. You can create a somewhat more complex website in Squarespace, but you’ll need to use a lot of custom code. Gallery options are limited, font styles are limited, color options are limited…you get the idea. It’s incredibly restrictive. It’s set up like a grid, using columns and rows, so you can’t freely drag-and-drop design elements wherever you want. As someone who likes to have complete creative control, this drove my crazy.

Often people will start with Squarespace when they’re just starting their business and want a basic website builder that’s all-in-one and is easy and convenient to use behind the curtains. And it is super easy all-in-one….

But they soon find they’re extremely limited with their site’s customization and quickly outgrow it. Sure, if they took the time to learn some coding they could customize much more of it, but that’s definitely not going to happen. You’re not here to become a software engineer.

🏆 Showit:

The sky is the limit when it comes to designing your website in Showit! Showit gives you full control and freedom to create the most beautiful unique websites and this is where Showit SHINES. It’s a known thing – if you come across a stunning website and think “I wish MY website turned heads like that one!”… it was probably built in Showit.

Showit is a TRUE drag-and-drop builder so you can click on any element (text, images, videos, icons, shapes, etc) and drag it to wherever you want it to be on the site. You can alter your website’s layout, colors, fonts, shapes, icons, everything as much as you want without a single line of code. AND you have 100% control of the mobile design of the website. Squarespace could never do that. Showit allows you to unleash the inner creative inside of you and have fun doing it.

Showit Vs Squarespace: Ease of Use & Convenience

Ok, heres the deal. The main difference between Showit and Squarespace is the level of user-friendly customization available (winner: Showit) and the level of all-inclusiveness (winner: Squarespace).

🏆 Squarespace:

If you’re a new business owner just getting started and value ease of use and convenience ‘behind the curtain’ of your website which your audience doesn’t see (creating blog posts, editing e-commerce functionality, email marketing, scheduling..etc.) over the ‘on the stage’ audience experience and presentation of your website, Squarespace is for you. It’s the basic all-in-one platform and has most of what you’ll need functionality-wise right out of the box so there will be fewer 3rd party integrations to make. Squarespace makes it super easy to build a basic website quickly, but they achieve this with limited customization options.

Showit:

Showit can do everything Squarespace can do, but it takes a bit more time to integrate the functionality into Showit because it’s not natively built in like it is with Squarespace. On the flip side, you have much more freedom over exactly which tools you want to use wherease Squarespace keeps you in a box and limits you. With Showit, you can choose the scheduling calendar platform, email marketing platform, e-commerce store, etc. that’s right for your unique business and integrate it directly into Showit seamlessly. Customization baby. In ALLLLL the ways. Again, with that takes a bit more time to create your site and patience as you’re learning if you aren’t tech savvy.

It is important to note that even though Showit’s design and customization capabilities are seemingly endless, that can also feel overwhelming to someone who doesn’t feel comfortable completely taking the design reigns for their website (if that’s the case, you could also choose to edit a pre-made showit website template or just hire a showit web designer like us to make your website dreams come true). If you’ve ever used Canva or Photoshop/Illustrator, however, Showit will feel easy and intuitive. If not, you will need a little bit of time and patience to learn Showit before you use it, more so than with Squarespace.

Showit Vs Squarespace: Blogging

Squarespace:

Squarespace offers a built-in blogging interface, which is great. It’s simple and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it. However, because of its simplicity, it isn’t overloaded with features or design options. Therefore, if you’re primarily a content creator–or if it’s important to have an interactive SEO optimized blog to drive traffic to your site and scale your business –Squarespace is not the right platform for you.

🏆 Showit:

Winner! Showit actually uses WordPress as a blogging platform that integrates right into your site. So you can have complete creative freedom over how all your blog pages visually look in Showit. Then you login to WordPress, add and edit blog posts, hit “update” and BAM – Showit will automatically populate your custom designed blog pages in Showit with your WordPress blog content. This gives you access to the best blogging platform in the world (with some of the best SEO tools for optimizing your blog and getting it seen by the world) without any of the headaches associated with it. With Showit, you get unlimited design possibilities, paired with unlimited blogging possibilities.

SEO

Both Squarespace and Showit offer simple search engine optimization features to help you rank on search engines (HTML tags, meta title and descriptions for each page, image alt text, etc). However, Showit wins this race when you have a blog simply because WordPress offers the ability to integrate various SEO plugins like Yoast to help improve your website’s rankings on search engines, by helping you optimize your site’s content and keywords. Having an SEO optimized blog is a huge way to generate traffic to your website and having those tools built in ready to use, like Yoast which comes installed and ready to use with your Showit blog, is a game changer.

Showit Vs Squarespace: Customer Support

When it comes to Showit vs Squarespace’s tech support, both are good options. With both platforms, you’ll receive helpful support. You’ll also find countless tutorials and articles to help you if you run into problems.

🏆 Showit wins in this category for me because they have a small team that you’ll soon recognize through their profile photo and name and they’re incredibly friendly, responsive, helpful…. and personable. Sometimes I’ll receive funny GIFs from them that crack me up and make me feel heard and understood and like I’m part of the fam. ❤️

More importantly, the Showit team really strives to make your website building experience an easy one. They handle your blog migration for you and guide you step-by-step through a super simple launch process.

With Squarespace, on the other hand, you’re just kind of on your own when it comes to launching. 😳You’ll need to handle your blog transfer and figure out how to connect your domain by yourself. That’s a pretty big bummer for most looking for an easy website builder.

E-Commerce

E-commerce is possible with both Squarespace and Showit, although the setup is different. You can easily create an online store on Squarespace, fill in your product details, and begin selling right away.

On Showit, you’ll need to use a plugin to manage your online store. If you sell up to 10-20 products, Showit can be great for your e-commerce needs by integrating Shopify Lite. It’s simple to integrate third party apps to transform your Showit website into a money-making machine and then you get the complete design control over every pixel of your shop on Showit.

If your main focus for your website is e-commerce, when comparing Squarespace vs Showit, I’d honestly pick neither. I’d recommend going with a more robust platform that specializes in e-commerce like Shopify if you’ll have a large shop, a shop with constantly changing products, or a website whose sole purpose is to sell products.

Showit Vs Squarespace: Pricing

Squarespace and Showit are both subscription-based platforms that will also host your website. Depending on your needs, 🏆 Squarespace often comes out as the cheaper option here, especially when you start needing to add integrations to your Showit site (which depending on the package, Squarespace will already include) such as an e-commerce store, scheduling platform, email marketing. Note, there are free options for these integrations when you’re starting out that you can integrate seamlessly into your Showit site.

As of August, 2022 Showit has 3 main packages ranging from $19-$34/month (which is $228-$408/year). Most of my clients need the middle package which is $24/month ($288/year). If you want to add an e-commerce shop, using a plugin like Shopify lite (what I use for my clients) requires a Shopify Lite subscription which is ($9/month).

Squarespace has 4 main packages ranging from $16-$49/month (which is $192-$588/year).

So which site is better for YOU?

🏆 Squarespace is great for:

1. The brick and mortar business owner who doesn’t depend heavily on an online presence for their business.
2. The business owner wants to quickly and easily create a simply-designed website, launch it, and not think about it again.
3. The new business owner who has a smaller budget and just needs a basic simple website to get started

🏆 Showit is best for:

1. The business owner who’s used WordPress before and wants a seamless transition to a new platform.
2. The (new or old) business owner that needs to showcase their work to their clients through their website and make it look premium and super high quality and high value. (Creatives like photographers, digital marketers, videographers, interior designers, home organizers, vacation rentals, florists, realtors, etc.).
3. All online service-based businesses ESPECIALLY personal brands (coaches, consultants, therapists, counselors, educators, online teachers and trainers, nutritionists, virtual assistants, event planners, etc).

For online personal-brand, you are the face of your business and your website is an anchor for your business. It’s going to do a lot of the selling for you (attracting your dream clients and converting them into paying customers) and a lot of the heavy lifting (scheduling and booking clients, email marketing, blogging, selling some products, etc.). Your website’s design and user experience on your site is incredibly important – more so than the “convenience” and ease of use Squarespace.

➡️ And this is why I see so many people who have online service based businesses switch to Showit from Squarespace when they’re ready to level up.