Squarespace vs. Showit: An Honest Comparison

Let’s talk about Squarespace vs. Showit. Both website platforms host your website. Each platform has website templates to choose from and both are more tech and user-friendly than designing in WordPress. There are however several ways that they differ. 

So let’s break down 7 big differences between the two platforms.

We are comparing Squarespace vs. Showit for:

1. Customization Abilities
2. Mobile Responsive Design
3. Monetization & E-commerce
4. Blogging
5. SEO
6. Support 
7. Price

You can also watch my full review in this video!

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my disclosure for more details.

1. Customization

The first category we are comparing Squarespace vs. Showit for is its customization. While both platforms utilize a drag-and-drop website builder that allows users to customize their website template, the amount of customization you can do is where the two platforms differ greatly.

Squarespace

When you use a template on Squarespace, you are limited to what customizations you can actually make. The changes have to fit in with the confines of the pre-designed template. This is fine if you just want a basic site. It can feel very restrictive though if you want a site that is much more unique to you and your business.  

There are module limitations within Squarespace. If you want a truly custom look you will need to have some higher knowledge of coding, Adobe Photoshop, and tools of this nature to truly customize your template.

Showit

So while both Squarespace and Showit allow for customization, Showit gives you the complete design freedom that Squarespace lacks.

Squarespace vs Showit Customization Winner: Showit

2. Mobile Responsive Design

According to Statistica in 2022, 58.99% of global website traffic comes from mobile devices. This means it is incredibly important to have a mobile-responsive website that looks good across all mobile devices.

With Squarespace, you are only able to customize the desktop portion of your site. Whatever you do on the desktop version will be used on the mobile version of the site.  This can be a plus for those who don’t want to deal with the mobile version of their site, but you need to keep in mind that when you squish down your site to a mobile version, the same layout from the desktop may not translate that well.  

You have to be very careful with things like the images you choose to use on your desktop site because when they get resized for mobile, they can look very different. Images that look great on a desktop, may be cropped to fit, cutting off the image or making it look less than ideal.  

No matter what website platform you end up choosing, make sure that you are always checking out how the desktop and mobile versions separately before launching. This is also something I show you how to check in my course that comes with each template.  

A very unique feature of Showit is that there is a mobile site and a desktop side of the design. You can see both at the same time and the two don’t just automatically communicate with each other.  You can change the size, position, and layout of items on mobile and nothing will change on desktop.

 
The mobile responsive design in Showit provides so much more freedom to design for a strategic, clean, and user-friendly mobile site. Since almost 60%  of global website traffic is coming from mobile devices this is incredibly important. Therefore, the winner of mobile responsive design goes to Showit.

The winner of mobile responsive design: Showit

3. Monetization & E-commerce

Now let’s talk about monetization and e-commerce. 

One thing Showit does not have is a built-in e-commerce platform. This does not mean though that you cannot sell on Showit. I am able to sell my templates, courses, and coaching on my Showit website with ThriveCart as my checkout platform. You can also link your buttons to any other checkout software like Send Owl, Sam Cart, Teachable, ConvertKit Commerce, and on and on.

If you have a lot of products that you sell or plan to sell on your site, you will likely want them on something like Shopify or Shopify Lite. If you really like the design capabilities of Showit though, you can combine your Showit website with e-commerce platforms (like Shopify) to get the best of both worlds. I will put a link below for more info about this and how this works.

Here are some links from Showit that explain this further.

• Showit: Can I sell products on my site?
• Showit: Can I sell products with Shopify?

But if you don’t want to involve a third-party e-commerce site, then Squarespace may be a better fit for you. Squarespace has e-commerce capabilities built right into the platform so you get the convenience of having everything in one place. There are no transaction fees on the higher plans. You are charged a 3% transaction fee on the business plan.

While both Squarespace and Showit allow you to monetize your platform, the winner for monetization and e-commerce is Squarespace. This is due to the fact that e-commerce is built in and doesn’t require any third-party sites.

The winner of Monetization & E-commerce: Squarespace

4. Blogging

Now, let’s move on to our next Squarespace vs Showit comparison and that is blogging. 

If you are a blogger or you want to start a blog to draw people into your business the good news is that both platforms have blogging capabilities.  

It is very easy to start a blog on Squarespace and you can start one on any Squarespace plan.  The process is simple and straightforward – with a few clicks you can have a blog set up and you can start blogging.  For the most part, many of the tools you need are built-in things like categories, post-scheduling, and social sharing.  

On the other hand- Showit uses WordPress for blogging.  If you blog on Showit, you are actually using WordPress to write your blog posts.   

And WordPress is without a doubt the BEST blogging platform around for SEO and the range of blogging tools offered. You don’t have to pay for hosting or anything like blogging on WordPress because Showit takes care of that for you. It’s included in your Showit monthly price so you get the SEO benefits that only WordPress could offer with the ease of a drag-and-drop editor for building your website. It’s a Win-Win! This is what exclusively separates Showit from other platforms like Squarespace and Wix.

A blog does not come with every Showit plan however, there are currently 3 Showit plans.  See more about the plans in the prising image further down in this post.

Both Squarespace and Showit are great for blogging, so both can be considered winners here depending on your needs.

If you are a casual blogger who just needs a simple blog and is not interested in ranking high in search engines – a Squarespace blog is a fine choice, but if you are hoping to monetize your blog and make an income, blogging on Showit is a much better choice due to its advanced SEO blogging capabilities and numerous plugin integrations.

And Speaking of SEO, let’s dive further into this.

5. SEO

I have already discussed that the SEO capabilities on the blogging side of things are much better on Showit because it uses WordPress and you can access powerful plugins like Yoast SEO which is known to be an excellent SEO tool but what about on the actual website side of things?  

There are solid SEO capabilities for optimizing your website pages on both Squarespace and Showit. You can manually adjust your titles, meta descriptions, and alt text for images on both platforms which is great.

With Showit you have to name your images before uploading them to the platform while Squarespace allows you to do it within the platform which is a nice perk.  On the other hand, Showit allows you to assign the title tag to whichever element of text you’d like per page which helps optimize your headlines, whereas Squarespace does not. 

If you’re like that’s great Maureen but what the heck does that mean?  In my course that comes with each website template, I show you step-by-step how to optimize each of your website pages for SEO so you don’t have to worry about figuring this out on your own. 

Again both Squarespace and Showit have good SEO capabilities so it is a draw when it comes to looking specifically at website pages; however, looking at SEO as whole-website pages and your blog- Showit edges out Squarespace.  

Squarespace vs Showit SEO Winner: Showit.

6. Support

Both Squarespace and Showit have excellent support teams and documents available to support you.  

Squarespace has a great support center with access to guides by topic. They also provide  24/7 customer support on all plans, although their response time tends to be a bit slower than Showit (up to 24 hours to respond).

Now, if you build or contribute to 3 Squarespace websites you can get access to Squarespace’s partner program – Squarespace circle. Here you can get access to a private forum and support for designers.  

Now, Showit also offers a TON of support. There are 4 key ways to get help:  

• They have an extensive library of help docs that walk you through nearly every feature in Showit.  
• They offer complimentary customer support via email and a chat button where a person responds (typically within an hour or two of your message). You can even access this before you become a Showit user should you have questions prior to signing up.  
• Showit offers help via something called emergency support. If your website is down or something is wrong with it and you need help asap, You can submit an emergency request and in my experience, you get help within a few minutes.  I think this is a fantastic feature.
• Lastly, Showit has free active FB communities for both users and designers. I have worked on a lot of website platforms and in my opinion, the support I have received from Showit exceeds all the other, so I am giving the win to Showit for support.

Squarespace vs Showit Support Winner: Showit

6. Price

Both Squarespace and Showit are subscription-based platforms. If you go with Squarespace for your business, you will want the business plan or higher, which starts at $33/month for a total of $396/year or $23/monthly if you pay annually costing you a total of $276 per year.

If you go with Showit for your business, you will need to determine if you want to have a blog included with your site or not.

Both Squarespace and Showit offer 14-day free trials, so if you are interested, I will link to these in the show notes below.  

Overall the prices don’t vary drastically and honestly your decision shouldn’t really come down to a difference of a few dollars when choosing which website platform is best for you and your business.

If you want a super simple site without any bells and whistles, don’t mind having little control over the design and layout of your site, and don’t have an interest in monetizing your blog then I think Squarespace is a good choice for you.  

If you want complete freedom with a website where you can choose to drag and drop anything anywhere on your site or just want to change a few things on your template and you want a powerful blogging platform with all the SEO benefits so you can attract your audience and monetize easier than I believe Showit is the best choice for you!

Squarespace vs Showit Price Winner: It really depends on your needs and tech skill level

Squarespace vs. Showit? Which is best for you?

We have now compared Showit vs Squarespace in seven areas including customization abilities, mobile responsiveness, monetization & e-commerce, blogging, SEO, support, and price. I hope that you now have a better idea of which platform would be best for you and your business. 

If you feel that Showit is the right fit for you be sure to check out my Showit website templates.

Website Design help

Showit website templates – Get a professional & strategic website launched in days, not months.
No tech experience needed. 

Custom Website Design – I’ll build & launch a custom-built strategic website that helps you book premium clients consistently. I take care of all the design and tech so you can focus on what you do best

Other blog posts and resources on my site that may be helpful to you:

A Showit Website: Is it right for you and your business?

Showit vs. WordPress: An Honest Comparison

How to Go from Blogger to Business Owner

Business Growth Strategies: How to grow your online business when you have no time