Squarespace vs Showit: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Squarespace and Showit both offer unique strengths, catering to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Squarespace (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  is a versatile website builder that excels in providing a user-friendly experience with a wide range of templates and robust ecommerce features. It is ideal for users seeking an all-in-one solution for creating professional websites without the need for coding. Squarespace’s strong customer support, comprehensive learning resources, and advanced marketing tools make it a reliable choice for businesses and individuals looking to establish a strong online presence.
• 
  Showit (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is tailored for creative professionals who prioritize design flexibility and customization. Its drag-and-drop interface and dual canvas feature allow for highly personalized website designs, making it a favorite among photographers, designers, and bloggers. While Showit may lack some of the advanced ecommerce functionalities of Squarespace, its seamless integration with WordPress for blogging and unique design capabilities make it a compelling option for users focused on aesthetics and creative control.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Squarespace is a more robust choice for ecommerce, offering comprehensive features and ease of use, while Showit is better suited for creative professionals needing basic ecommerce capabilities.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : Squarespace excels in providing a complete ecommerce solution with secure payment processing, built-in marketing tools, and SEO optimization. It offers around 50 ecommerce templates and flexible product page customization options. Squarespace is ideal for businesses of all sizes looking for a hassle-free setup and powerful ecommerce features.
• 
  Showit
  
  : Showit focuses on design flexibility and integrates with platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce for ecommerce functionalities. It lacks the comprehensive ecommerce features of Squarespace but is a good option for creative professionals who prioritize design and need basic ecommerce capabilities.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: When it comes to creating informational and business websites, Showit slightly edges out Squarespace due to its higher degree of customization and creative freedom. However, both platforms are strong contenders, each with unique advantages.

• 
  Squarespace
  
  : Squarespace is a robust website builder that offers a user-friendly experience with a variety of professional templates. It is particularly well-suited for users who want a hassle-free website creation process. Squarespace’s comprehensive learning resources and strong customer support make it an excellent choice for those who need guidance and assistance. With a score of 8.4, Squarespace is a powerful option for creating polished and professional informational websites.
• 
  Showit
  
  : Showit is designed for creative professionals who seek a high level of customization and control over their website’s appearance. Its drag-and-drop interface and dual canvas feature allow for independent design of mobile and desktop views, making it ideal for visually driven websites. Showit’s integration with WordPress for blogging adds to its appeal, providing a seamless experience for content management. Scoring 8.7, Showit is the preferred choice for those who prioritize creative freedom and unique design in their informational and business websites.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Showit.

Showit offers a wider range of creative features and customization flexibility, making it the preferred choice for those seeking a unique and personalized website design.

Squarespace boasts an impressive variety of website templates, offering over 120 pre-designed options to choose from. These templates cater to a wide range of needs and industries, from creative portfolios and sleek online stores to professional business websites and personal blogs.

Squarespace Themes

On the other hand, Showit offers a wide variety of templates and designs, catering to diverse aesthetic preferences and business needs. Users can choose from an extensive collection that ranges from minimalist and sleek to bold and artistic, ensuring there’s something for every brand identity. The platform is known for its flexibility and user-friendly interface, allowing for easy customization of templates.

Showit Themes

🏆 Winner: Showit

. With a score of 8.6, Showit edges out Squarespace (8.3) in terms of ease of use. Showit’s user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and high degree of creative freedom make it a favorite among creative professionals. However, Squarespace is also a strong contender with its straightforward navigation and real-time preview.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Both platforms offer solid learning resources, but Squarespace goes a step further with its comprehensive Help Center, clear video tutorials, live webinars, an informative blog, and an active community forum. Showit also offers a range of learning resources, including a comprehensive training course and a more informal learning hub with videos.

Squarespace is a comprehensive ecommerce solution, offering a range of features from secure payment processing to SEO optimization. It’s designed to simplify the process of setting up an online store, making it a good choice for businesses of all sizes. On the other hand, Showit is primarily a design-focused website builder. It offers basic ecommerce functions and allows integration with Shopify and WooCommerce for enhanced ecommerce capabilities. However, it lacks the comprehensive ecommerce features found in platforms like Squarespace.

Squarespace ecommerce features:

• Intuitive interface
• Secure payment processing
• Built-in marketing tools
• SEO optimization
• Website analytics

Showit ecommerce features:

• Shopify and WooCommerce integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

Squarespace provides a diverse selection of around 50 ecommerce templates, catering to various industries like fashion, beauty, home goods, and technology. These templates range from clean and minimalist to bold and colorful, accommodating different brand aesthetics and product types. Showit, on the other hand, does not have any ecommerce specific templates.

Product page customization

Customizing Squarespace product pages offers options for layout, design, and interactive elements. Choose templates, customize colors, fonts, and content. Enhance engagement with features like customizable buttons, wishlists, comparisons, reviews, and related products. Advanced options include custom code injection and third-party app integrations. Showit has very basic ecommerce capabilities, primarily through its integration with WooCommerce and Shopify.

Payment processing

Squarespace provides flexible payment processing for online stores with integrated gateways like Stripe and PayPal. External gateways can be set up for specific needs. Transaction fees may apply depending on the plan and payment method. Security measures include PCI compliance and fraud prevention. Additional features include payment links, support for subscriptions, and the ability to accept international payments in various currencies. Showit supports e-commerce by allowing integration with third-party platforms like Shopify Lite, ThriveCart, WooCommerce, and Podia, rather than offering direct payment processing or POS capabilities. Users can add e-commerce functionalities to their Showit sites using embed codes for “Buy Buttons” or similar features from these platforms. The choice of platform depends on the user’s specific needs, including product type, store size, and budget, as each platform has its own pricing and transaction fee structures. Additionally the platform supports integration of PayPal pay button, allowing users to pay directly through their PayPal account.

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Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace, with a score of 8.3, offers a user-friendly editor that allows easy drag-and-drop website creation without coding. With visually appealing templates and customization options, it caters to beginners and pros alike. The real-time editing experience ensures instant previews. Prioritizing content, it’s mobile-responsive and offers functional features like forms, social media integration, and online stores. Squarespace seamlessly integrates with tools for extended capabilities.

Showit’s editor, scoring 8.0, is designed for creating custom, responsive websites with a focus on ease of use, especially for photographers and creative professionals. It allows users to design their website visually with a drag-and-drop interface, eliminating the need for coding knowledge. Users can create highly customized pages by adjusting layouts, fonts, and colors, and can also incorporate multimedia elements like videos and images directly into their designs. Additionally, Showit offers deep integration with WordPress for blogging, enabling users to manage and publish blog posts within the same platform, providing a seamless experience from website design to content management.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace offers a mobile app that allows users to manage their website on the go. The app enables content editing, website analytics, online store management, and social media scheduling. However, it’s worth noting that complex tasks such as advanced design customization or creating new page layouts require access to the desktop editor, as the app doesn’t offer the full range of functionalities available on desktop.

Showit, on the other hand, does not have a dedicated mobile editor app, and it’s not possible to edit a Showit website using a mobile browser version. Therefore, Squarespace is the clear winner in this category due to its mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Showit Wins

. Showit scores 8.3, slightly higher than Squarespace’s 7.4. Both platforms offer a 14-day free trial, but Showit stands out by allowing users to test all premium features during the trial period. Additionally, Showit offers a longer money-back guarantee period of 30 days compared to Squarespace’s 14 days.

Squarespace and Showit offer a range of pricing options, with Squarespace generally being more affordable. However, Showit’s pricing includes unique features like the dual canvas interface and WordPress integration, which may justify the higher cost for some users.

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Winner: Squarespace

Squarespace and Showit both offer reliable hosting services with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. However, Squarespace edges out Showit due to its proprietary cloud-based hosting and strategically scattered data centers across North America, Europe, and Asia. Showit, while offering managed WordPress hosting, does not disclose any information about its data centers.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

Both Squarespace and Showit have strategies for website speed optimization, but Squarespace provides more specific data and has a clear emphasis on Core Web Vital improvements.

Squarespace’s approach to enhancing site speed includes responsive design, image optimization, use of a content delivery network (CDN), code minification, and lazy loading of images. Analysis of Squarespace websites showed a range of page speed scores from 20/100 to 93/100, averaging 62.7/100, with load times ranging from 0.7 seconds to 9.1 seconds, with an average of 2.9 seconds. Squarespace also places a strong emphasis on improving Core Web Vitals (CWV), specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Showit, on the other hand, does not provide specific data on load times or PageSpeed scores, stating that these vary depending on optimization and website complexity. Their key strategies for speed optimization include the use of optimization plugins and caching. However, Showit does not disclose any information on their Core Web Vitals improvements.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace.

With a score of 6.8, Squarespace offers better plugins and integrations than Showit, which scores 5.8. Squarespace supports integrations and extensions through custom code injection and third-party tools, offering seamless functionality. Showit, on the other hand, offers plugins primarily for users with the Advanced Blog plan. Squarespace’s top integrations cover email marketing, SEO optimization, user behavior analytics, and varied payment options, while Showit integrates with platforms like Powr.io to enhance website functionality.

Squarespace Applications

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Overall Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace stands out for its built-in email marketing and detailed analytics. Showit, on the other hand, relies heavily on third-party integrations for email marketing and analytics.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Comparing Squarespace vs Showit, Squarespace takes the lead in this category with a customer support score of 7.8. Squarespace offers a variety of support options, including live chat, email, a community forum, and a comprehensive help center. Live chat and phone support are available on weekdays, while email support is accessible 24/7. The community forum and help center provide round-the-clock access, ensuring users can find help whenever they need it.

Showit, with a customer support score of 6.4, provides support via email and chat during business hours from Monday to Friday, with limited support on weekends. While Showit typically responds within 1-2 hours during business hours, it lacks the 24/7 support availability that Squarespace offers. Despite this, Showit is appreciated for its quick response times and personalized assistance during its support hours.

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Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace’s security measures are comprehensive, including secure server storage, encryption, strict access controls, and compliance with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. It also has vulnerability scanning and malware detection. These measures collectively safeguard your website content and customer information. Squarespace also prioritizes website security through built-in features, including secure hosting, SSL certificates, vulnerability scanning, malware and spam filters, two-factor authentication, data encryption, and compliance with security regulations like PCI-DSS and GDPR.

Showit also prioritizes user data privacy and security, adhering to GDPR guidelines and using Amazon’s S3 for secure and redundant data storage. It also automatically backs up design work and blog content. For website security, Showit provides robust security features for all hosted websites, including free SSL certificates for secure HTTPS connections and automated backups. It also has additional protections for WordPress-integrated sites, such as firewall protection, disc write protection, and automatic updates for WordPress Core, PHP, and MySQL. However, it falls slightly short compared to Squarespace’s extensive security measures.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Squarespace, with a score of 7.5, utilizes AI to enhance the website creation and eCommerce experience. Its AI features focus on SEO optimization, customer behavior analysis, inventory management, and content generation.

Showit, on the other hand, does not have any AI capabilities. This lack of AI features may limit the efficiency and effectiveness of website creation and management on the platform.

🏆 Winner: Squarespace

. Both Squarespace and Showit offer different user roles and access levels, but Squarespace provides more flexibility and control.

• Squarespace allows varying numbers of users depending on the plan. The Personal Plan allows one owner, Business and Commerce Plans permit 2 collaborators with different access levels, and the Enterprise Plan offers unlimited users, each with customizable access privileges.
• Showit allows only one user on lower plans, but on its Showit + Advanced Blog plan, the platform allows an unlimited number of users with different access levels.

Squarespace User Roles and Access Levels:

Showit User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Squarespace is well-liked for its easy-to-use interface and versatile tools, making it ideal for those who aren’t tech-savvy. It offers various features like website creation, SEO, online selling, and more, catering to different users. Customers appreciate its good customer support and visually appealing templates, creating a professional online presence. However, some users find issues with domain transfer/setup, limited customization options, and consider the pricing slightly higher. There are also occasional concerns about customer service and technical limitations like template rigidity and missing features.

Showit, while not available on G2 for reviews, is designed primarily for creative professionals such as photographers, designers, and bloggers. Its drag-and-drop interface and dual canvas feature for independent mobile and desktop design are highly praised. The seamless integration with WordPress for blogging makes it a popular choice for users who want design flexibility combined with powerful blogging capabilities. This unique approach to website building provides a high degree of customization and control over the website’s appearance on different devices.

FAQ