“Should I use Showit or Squarespace for my website?” This is a question we hear from many clients. And no wonder. Figuring out whether you should create a website using Squarespace or Showit is like trying to find a consensus over whether pineapple belongs on pizza or not.

There are a lot of passionate opinions defending each “side”.  With that in mind, it’s important to first answer the question: What is best for your business?

When we work with our clients, we have a brand strategy call to find out your goals and help answer this question. We consider the things you’ll need from your website now and in the future. Spoiler: In almost every case, we recommend Showit over Squarespace. 

Boom. Blog post done. Just kidding. 

While we’re definitely Showit fans overall, there are circumstances where Squarespace could be a better fit for your business. That’s why it’s incredibly useful to understand the differences between each. This way, you can feel confident about your choice and know what to expect with whichever platform you go with. In this post, we’ll cover what each platform does well and where each can improve. 

What We Love About Squarespace

An All-In-One E-Commerce Platform

The great thing about Squarespace is it has tons of built-in features that make it easy for small business owners to navigate. You’ll have an account where you can access all of your pages, marketing tools, domains, and sellable products and services. That’s why, usually, the only time we would recommend Squarespace over Showit is for eCommerce businesses who can benefit from these built-in features.

Abundant Resources and Tutorials

It can be tricky to learn any new platform right off the bat. But, Squarespace makes the process quite a bit easier thanks to the many great tutorials and resources available online. There’s also a large, supportive community of users that help each other out. A fellow Squarespace user is always ready to answer your question.

The Best Support Team 

Our experience with Squarespace’s support team is that it is hands down the best one ever. They’re not only quick to answer questions but they showcase their expertise by providing accurate solutions and suggestions. This is great when you’re feeling overwhelmed with an annoying tech question. 

What We Think Squarespace Can Improve On

Highly Limited Design Options

One of the biggest drawbacks about Squarespace is the limitations when it comes to design. Squarespace websites restrict what is possible using “block” elements. Even seemingly small functionalities, such as a dropdown FAQ, aren’t achievable using only Squarespace’s blocks. There are three options. 1. Scour the internet and teach yourself how to “hack” the blocks using CSS, Markdown and HTML, 2. Accept a reasonably generic-looking site that doesn’t provide your visitors with a compelling brand experience, or 3. Hire and rely heavily on a website developer/designer who can write custom code. That said, if design flexibility isn’t your biggest concern, Squarespace should remain in the running!

Lack Of Control On Mobile Design

Squarespace has a nice feature that lets you create a responsive mobile view for each template you choose. Unfortunately, they do not offer customisation for the mobile view once you add images, videos, and other text apart from the template itself (unless you can do custom code). The fact that you can’t customise how your website appears on mobile is a big limiting factor to consider. After all, mobile is huge for user-friendliness. 

What We Love About Showit

Design Flexibility

This is one of our favourite things about Showit. Whether you want to start on a blank page or choose a template, nearly all elements—from fonts and colors to images and layouts—can be customised. This makes it easy for you to drag images and text exactly where you want them. You have the creative freedom and full control of how you want your website to look and function. 

No Code Necessary

Showit makes building websites a breeze because it doesn’t require you to code a thing. This combined with the platform’s design flexibility is amazing, which is why we love it so much for our client websites. Since we mainly work with photographers and health professionals, it’s important they have a website they feel empowered using if they need to make minor updates themselves.

Customisable Mobile Design

Showit allows you to create a completely custom and unique experience for your mobile users. Having full control over how your site appears on a smaller screen size is a dream in the age of social media. It also has the power to improve your SEO performance, as mobile users will spend longer on a site that is truly optimised for a small screen.

Blogging and SEO

This is another big one. Since Showit uses WordPress as its blogging platform, there are many more blogging and SEO options. Showit users can take advantage of the powerful tools available in WordPress including SEO plugins like Yoast and Tasty Pins. This makes ranking in search engines accessible for the average user. The best thing is if you already have an existing WordPress blog, it’s going to be a seamless transfer into Showit. 

What We Think Showit Can Improve On

Third-Party Plugins Need To Be Manually Added

Showit is not a completely integrated platform. If you want to add your email newsletter or an eCommerce shop, you’ll need to embed code from the third party website. This makes it a time-consuming, and clunky process.

No Automation On Elements

There are certain elements in Showit that we wish were automatic. For example, when setting up the menus, you have to configure it manually to work as a drop-down menu. That means it takes more work and a few experiments here and there to get the outcome that you want. 

What Platform Is Best Suited For You?

Both Showit and Squarespace are great options if you’re looking to create a professional website with ease. That said, we definitely play favourites. 

Showit takes the cake for us because it gives you almost total creative control over your website. 

Showit is basically made for business owners who want freedom when designing their website to attract their target audience (without relying on code). It’s super easy to showcase your work and message in a beautiful way, while also reaping all the benefits of WordPress’s SEO functions. 

Squarespace is great but it’s much more limited when it comes to design. You’re stuck with certain style parameters and rely on restrictive blocks. These parameters are chosen by Squarespace’s Design Team to make creating a website easier, but it also drastically limits your ability to present your brand in a unique way.  

That said, if you’re a new eCommerce business or you’re DIYing and less concerned with customisation, Squarespace is a great option. Squarespace is made for eCommerce businesses who want to grow their business from the ground up. 

With each side of the argument laid out for you, we hope that you feel more confident choosing a suitable website platform. We work with clients to design and build both Showit and Squarespace websites. Check out our packages here to learn more about how we can help your business to flourish!

Where to next?

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Want to know how we create high-converting and user-friendly websites at Hello Magic Studio? Read more on our best tips to creating a website that converts!