Showit vs. Squarespace 2025: Which Is Better For Small Business?
When I was 12, most kids were trading Pokémon cards or figuring out who they had a crush on. Me? I was knee-deep in HTML and CSS, building my first clunky websites on free hosting platforms and learning how to make buttons glow.
Over the years, I dabbled in Joomla, played around with Blogspot, Wix, and eventually made my way into the big leagues: WordPress, Showit, and finally—my personal favorite for small business clients—Squarespace.
So, if you're here googling Squarespace vs. Showit wondering which platform is actually better for your business, let me break it down for you based on experience, not hype.
I've worked with all of them professionally.
I’ve seen their strengths.
I’ve hit their limitations.
And I’ve sworn at all three, pulling my hair out at some point.
Let’s compare them in detail—ease of use, convenience, customization, templates, blogging, SEO, and security—so you can decide what’s best for your business.
Squarespace vs. Showit: TL;DR
Best for freedom and unique design? Showit
Best for all-in-one simplicity and speed? Squarespace
What do I personally use (and recommend for 90% of small biz owners)? Squarespace
Now let’s dig into the why.
Ease of Use
Showit:
Showit offers a true drag-and-drop experience, like Canva for websites (before Canva started offering their website feature - more about that in another blog post). It’s a dream if you want to break out of cookie-cutter templates. But this freedom comes at a price: there’s a learning curve, especially if you’re used to structured platforms.
You work with “canvases” instead of traditional sections, and organizing your site without breaking your layout (especially on mobile) can get tricky.
And don’t even get me started on list alignment. It’s fiddly. Really fiddly.
Squarespace:
Squarespace (And when I say Squarespace, I mean version 7.1 with Fluid Engine) gives you the best of both worlds: drag-and-drop flexibility, but within helpful structure. It's intuitive, smooth, and beginner-friendly. You won’t accidentally break your mobile site just by moving something on desktop.
✅ Winner: Squarespace – Easier for non-designers, faster for professionals.
Convenience
Showit:
Here’s the thing: Showit doesn’t handle blogging natively. It integrates with WordPress. That means you have two backends, two login areas, and the best and worst of both worlds when it comes to updates and maintenance. Also, want to add custom code to your whole site? You’ll have to paste it onto every page individually. (Yes, really.)
Squarespace:
Squarespace is the poster child of convenience. One login, one dashboard, everything built-in. From blogging to e-commerce to forms and SEO tools—it’s all there. Mobile versions are automatically generated and need just a few tweaks. You can literally build and launch a full website in a weekend.
✅ Winner: Squarespace – No duct tape & bailing twine setups or multiple platforms to juggle.
Customization & Design Freedom
Showit:
This is Showit’s strongest suit. You can build just about anything—overlapping elements, wild layouts, animations, asymmetry, floating text—it’s all possible. It's perfect for designers and visual creatives who want to push every pixel around like a digital collage.
But that freedom comes with responsibility. You need to be meticulous about layering, alignment, mobile responsiveness, and design hierarchy. You need to keep layers ordered to avoid messing up your SEO. And adding custom CSS? The live preview doesn’t show it—you have to publish and open a preview site to see the changes. Not ideal when you're experimenting.
Squarespace:
With Fluid Engine, Squarespace finally caught up in the design department. You can move elements around a grid, adjust padding, stack items creatively, and make a beautiful site without fighting the interface. While it’s not as “freeform” as Showit, it’s more than enough for 99% of business owners—and far less prone to disaster.
As a designer, I love that you can see the effect of the custom CSS that you can apply globally to the website—even if it’s a little buggy sometimes and may need to refresh the page.
✅ Winner: Showit (for creatives), but Squarespace wins if you want beauty without chaos.
Templates
Showit:
Showit templates are jaw-droppingly beautiful. Especially popular with photographers, coaches, and creatives. Many are built by independent designers, and they don’t come cheap ($350-$1200)—but they’re fully customizable and visually stunning.
Squarespace:
Squarespace’s built-in templates are sleek, modern, mobile-responsive out of the box and way more affordable than Showit ($100-$400). There’s a large third-party template market, too, with options for every niche. And because the platform is structured, these templates are easier to customize without breaking things.
✅ Winner: Tie – Showit wins for uniqueness, Squarespace for speed and usability.
Blogging
Showit:
Surprise! Showit doesn’t have its own blogging system—it uses WordPress. That means all the benefits (SEO plugins, powerful post editor) but also all the headaches (spam comments, complicated backend, decision making when it comes to custom plugins). Plus, integrating your blog with the rest of the design takes extra effort, some CSS knowledge to keep the headings consistent, and it’s pretty easy to mess up when you don’t have the experience.
Squarespace:
Squarespace blogging is simple, streamlined, and fully integrated. No separate setup. No maintenance. Just click “New Post” and go. Great for small business owners who want to blog without tech drama. The only downside is that blog pages (just as all collection pages) don’t use fluid engine but the classic editor. Which isn’t really a problem.
✅ Winner: Squarespace – Built-in, easy, and reliable.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
If you’re wondering which is better for SEO—Showit or Squarespace—I’ve got good news. Both can rank at the top when done the right way.
Showit:
If you're blogging, you'll use WordPress’s SEO tools (Yoast), which are great—assuming you know how to use them. But Yoast works only for the blog. For the rest of the site, you’ll need to manually enter image alt text, meta descriptions, and make sure your canvases are properly labeled. It's not bad, just not intuitive.
Oh, and there’s one tricky thing you need to keep in mind—the way you order your design layers within a canvas should always be from bottom to top. Which makes it kinda messy and adds a lot of work to your plate.
Squarespace:
Squarespace offers solid SEO functionality out of the box. You can easily update titles, descriptions, slugs, and image alt text. It auto-generates sitemaps and has clean URLs and built-in SSL. You still need to write good content and strategy, but the tech won’t get in your way.
✅ Winner: Squarespace – Easier, simpler, less fiddly.
Security & Maintenance
Showit:
Showit handles the design side, and your blog runs on a managed WordPress installation, which is important to note—it’s not the wild west of self-hosted WordPress. You’re not on your own here.
You don’t have to worry about running plugin updates manually, and you can’t install just anything from the WordPress plugin jungle. Showit curates a list of approved, compatible plugins that work with their system, which keeps things more secure and stable.
That said, having two systems (Showit + WordPress) means slightly more complexity—and occasionally needing to reach out to support if something hiccups.
Squarespace:
Squarespace is the king (or queen) of low-maintenance websites. No plugins, no updates, no backend surprises. Everything is fully hosted and secured for you, which means fewer headaches and no late-night panics over broken contact forms or security breaches. For busy business owners, this is gold.
✅ Winner: Squarespace – Still the simpler, more hands-off option—but Showit does a decent job of managing the tech for you too.
Final Verdict: Showit vs. Squarespace—Which One Is Better for Small Business?
Let’s be real. Both platforms are great—for the right person.
✨ Choose Showit if:
You’re a creative with a strong design eye and you want to break every design rule in the book (on purpose). You’re okay learning a slightly complex system and working with WordPress for your blog.
⚡ Choose Squarespace if:
You want to build a stunning, functional website fast, without needing tech support every five minutes. You care about SEO, blogging, and looking professional without breaking the bank—or your brain.
For 90% of small business owners, Squarespace is the smarter, simpler, and more sustainable choice.
And yes—after years of bouncing between platforms, I now build all my client sites on Squarespace 7.1. It's streamlined, powerful, and just works. End of story.
Need help choosing the right Squarespace template or making your site shine?
I help coaches, service providers, and creative entrepreneurs turn "meh" websites into "take my money" moments.
Let’s chat or check out my template shop!
