Showit vs. Squarespace (2025 Comparison) – Forbes Advisor

Showit and Squarespace both hit the mark with most of the features you expect from every website builder, but they go about it very differently. Showit focuses on the look and feel of the website plus blogging to connect with your viewers in a personal manner, while Squarespace focuses on a guided e-commerce experience.

Templates

While Squarespace has more free templates and a wider variety than Showit, Showit templates are generally more aesthetically pleasing to start from and offer more end-use flexibility than Squarespace’s blocky, grid-based templates.

Showit

Showit has some absolutely gorgeous templates, complete with mobile and desktop previews, but they do have an Instagram feel to them. After all, it started out as a photographer’s space, and most templates are geared to showing off images. There are three dozen free themes and paid themes range from $50 to a whopping $1,200.

I do love that Showit’s theme store includes indie designers, and you can sort by designer when you find a template style you like. However, many of the paid templates are pretty equal to free templates on other platforms such as Wix, and a few remind me of Canva-style elements.

Squarespace

Where Showit is a creative free-for-all, Squarespace is very controlled and contained. It does have far more free templates (nearly 200) but some of them look pretty dated, like the early 2000’s industrial-style McDonald’s buildings. Everything is much more blocky and stark, regardless of color schemes.

Winner: Showit

Customization

Showit’s nearly unlimited customization features stand out in a field of very similar drag-and-drop builders. Nearly every pixel can be adjusted in just about any way imaginable without custom coding. While Squarespace enables quick website setup, it just can’t hold a candle to Showit’s depth of customization.

Showit (left) uses a photo editor-style interface to enable deep website customization that is very easy to use.

Showit

Customization is no-holds-barred for Showit. Want to put a title on a diagonal? Sure. What about text layered on a photo? Of course. Different colors on mobile and desktop navigation? Why not? Showit’s customization features and interface are light-years ahead of other drag-and-drop editors. Nearly every item can easily be adjusted with familiar keyboard shortcuts or quick mouse clicks.

Squarespace

Everything with Squarespace is on a grid. While you can adjust grid spacing for tighter adjustments, you still have to follow that grid (no lovely tilted titles allowed). Designed to make edits less overwhelming for users, a lot of creative freedom was sacrificed, with website design customization reduced mostly to adding blocks and changing images, text, colors and fonts.

Custom coding is supported, but most folks looking for all-in-one platforms aren’t coding gurus. The ones with a little coding under their belts are looking at more fully featured builders such as Elementor (one of my favorites for custom work) for a hybrid drag-and-drop/coding builder.

Winner: Showit

Mobile Optimization

Showit really shows off for in-depth mobile optimization during design. Compared to Squarespace’s automatic optimization with minimal adjustments available, Showit crossed the finish line before Squarespace got out of the starting gate. Showit is how mobile optimization should work.

Showit (left) allows side-by-side custom mobile optimization for a streamlined workflow.

Showit

During testing, I immediately fell in love with Showit’s integrated side-by-side mobile and desktop editing for a truly effective mobile optimization experience. No more images piling on top of each other when checking the mobile view after a design session, and you can see the mobile version in real time and edit elements as needed if your desktop changes cause any issues.

Squarespace

Squarespace’s auto-optimization with few adjustments allowed is a nearly unforgivable oversight, considering mobile devices are the most common computing device in U.S. homes. While you can easily swap between mobile and desktop views in editing, mobile-specific manual changes are limited to minor navigation adjustments.

Winner: Showit

Blogging

Blogging isn’t a feature I often break out in comparisons because it usually means comparing blogging templates on platforms. Showit tosses that narrative right out the window and supercharges WordPress, the most popular blogging platform on the planet.

Showit (left) gives you the power to design a blog page in its editor and then auto-populate text from WordPress.

Showit

It costs a plan upgrade to use, but Showit really came up with something really special. By combining a preinstalled WordPress blog plugin with its no-holds-barred customizable website builder, users get the best of both worlds. Sure, there are builders that integrate WordPress, but not quite to this level of creative freedom.

Setup takes several steps, but once done, the easy-to-manage WordPress type-to-blog system automatically populates into blog pages you designed for the ultimate customized look. It’s a blogging experience that’ll have you seeing double rainbows if you aren’t afraid to go off the grid (literally) when designing.

Squarespace

Squarespace has one of the better-organized blogging setups for an e-commerce-targeted platform. Honestly, if I was comparing it with any platform other than Showit, it’d be a close race or even a win for Squarespace. Post management and SEO controls are nicely laid out and a nice safe space for those new to blogging. But the layout options are limited, and it just doesn’t feel as organic as Showit.

Winner: Showit

Integrations

While Showit taps into the huge library of WordPress plugins on advanced plans, the more stable and controlled nature of Squarespace’s targeted and tested extensions gives it the edge in terms of time spent and minimizing frustration.

Showit

Showit’s integration with WordPress plugins is extremely powerful, and the combination of blogging with nearly infinite customizable design is outstanding. However, other WordPress plugins rely on third-party developers and don’t all operate as smoothly as they should. Plus, one plugin can clash with another plugin, and updates can throw the whole mix into chaos. It’s not a failing on Showit’s part, but it is the core reality of managing WordPress plugins.

Squarespace

Squarespace includes an extensions market with a reasonable selection of free and paid plugins made to work with Squarespace. Topics are geared toward e-commerce and business management, including connections with accounting software, shipping and fulfillment providers, print-on-demand (POD) suppliers and inventory management.

Winner: Squarespace

SEO

Squarespace makes SEO easy with a step-by-step approach, integration with Google Search Console reports and automated sitemaps. Showit offers basic SEO and expands that with Yoast for higher packages, but it just can’t quite reach the high bar Squarespace sets in this category.

Squarespace (right) integrates SEO data entry into pages and product menus, plus automates more advanced features such as XML sitemaps.

Showit

Showit offers basic SEO tools that are quite serviceable. Plus, if you get a blog package, you have access to Yoast, which is a fabulous SEO helper and one of the best free SEO tools. However, without a blog package, you’re pretty limited to standard meta titles, descriptions and alt text, with Showit handling automatic markups for heading levels.

Squarespace

SEO is where Squarespace really shines. Tedious tasks such as sitemaps and product collection page static URLs are automated, and menus are well laid out for adding metadata, descriptions and alt text in a very beginner-friendly way. All that, plus integration with Google Search Console, really gives a lot of control to users.

Winner: Squarespace

E-Commerce

E-commerce is a bit of a toss-up when comparing Squarespace vs. Showit. Both have great e-commerce options but are targeted at different needs. However, Squarespace’s built-in tools for all plans without the need to juggle as many plugins, plus point-of-sale (POS) and POD support, give it an edge for most small shop owners.

Squarespace (right) offers several POD options, including a built-in integration with Printful.

Showit

E-commerce is handled through WordPress plugins, so it isn’t available until the Showit & Advanced Blog packages. It does mean users have much more freedom of choice in mixing and matching e-commerce platforms and tools, plus it gives you the portability to take your shop with you to another WordPress-enabled host later if needed.

However, it also means users need more technical skills and experience in how all the tools work together, or things can get jumbled and break quickly.

Squarespace

Designed for e-commerce, every plan has built-in features to make selling easier. Squarespace walks you through setting up products, even including social sharing, SKUs, upselling tools and SEO all in one place so nothing gets forgotten.

Combined with a choice of internal or external payment processors, it’s a strong package of tools that works for experienced and new store owners. The Squarespace transaction fee on most pricing plans is the only real downside to how it handles e-commerce.

Winner: Squarespace