Showit is the new Squarespace for creative female entrepreneurs who want the flexibility to DIY their own websites, without the stress of code or plugins.
Hop into any Facebook group thread asking “Where should I host my website?” and you’ll see two prime contenders in the female entrepreneur world: WordPress and Squarespace.
WordPress tends to be the go-to for techy business owners who are familiar with coding, plugins, and website development.
For those who want something simpler yet customizable, Squarespace was the answer – until now.
Showit is the new Squarespace, bringing the flexibility of drag and drop, the power of WordPress, but better. Lots of people are asking Squarespace vs. Showit in terms of user-friendliness and design so I wanted to break down why I recommend it!
Showit truly doesn’t need any code to make customizations
While Squarespace seems like a drag and drop platform on the surface, you’re limited in the ways you can customize your website. Each Squarespace website is built from one of numerous templates, but unless you know code, your Squarespace website is going to look like everyone else’s.
You might want to reposition the way an image sits on your Squarespace site. You’ll have to either drag it in a way that looks good on mobile and desktop or code the positioning of the image. If you have minimal coding knowledge, this can pose as a problem.
On Showit, all you need to do is drag your image to where you want it to go and save it. No code needed.
You can also create your Showit website from the ground up. Showit offers several templates to get you started but if you have a clear idea of what you want your website to look like, you can start building from scratch. (Squarespace doesn’t allow you to do this so in the matter of Squarespace vs. Showit – Showit wins hands down).
WordPress blogging capabilities
Squarespace’s blogging features are like the Medium blogging platform. It’s minimalistic, limited, and filled with white space. However, if you want something like “related posts” to populate in your Squarespace blog, you have to add code or manually create this every time you make a new blog post.
Showit’s blog is hosted on WordPress which means you have access to unlimited plugins (with a tier 3 subscription – tier 2 comes with standard, awesome plugins though!). You can use Prettylink to create custom short links for affiliate marketing or use plugins to help with your SEO. You’ll utilize Yoast for SEO and If you’re new to SEO and need a guide, having a plugin can save you the headache of trying to figure it out yourself.
ConvertKit Bonus: If you use ConvertKit, you can use the ConvertKit plugin and use a shortcode to insert your forms inside of your blog posts. Squarespace forces you to upgrade to their business plan for you to add custom code and doesn’t allow for ConvertKit integration in their newsletter block without a time-consuming workaround.
Load Speed Bonus: You can use a plugin to automatically compress your Showit images. Squarespace websites will eventually get bogged down with all of their images, which increases loading time (your SEO will get hit for this). With automatic compression, you save time from needing to shrink your image. Your blog and Showit website will continue to load quickly even as you add more content.
Integrations with eCommerce websites
There’s software that are okay at a lot of things and software that does one thing extremely well. Squarespace is great for a beginner drag and drop site, storefront, and blog, but your options are limited to only what Squarespace allows you to do.
Showit integrates directly with Shopify which is a powerhouse eCommerce and dropshipping platform. You’ll have to pay a few dollars extra for Shopify but you’ll have features like coupon popups, abandoned cart sequences, the ability to customize each item, and integration with your email provider.
Squarespace is limited to Mailchimp if you want to directly link your store to your email marketing system. Shopify allows you to integrate with most email marketing systems (especially ConvertKit) so if you get automated tagging and nurturing of customers. This helps you create efficient sales and make bonus offers specifically for people who haven’t purchased from you.
Not only does Showit play nicely with Shopify but you can also direct link to any checkout if you are a course creator. For example if your course is in teachable or kajabi, you can simply create a button on a beautiful Showit landing page, link to your checkout page and get sales. The pages you create in Showit will be much better than using the standard landing page through a course provider most likely which is great for promoting products and courses. I’m telling you, when it comes to Squarespace vs. Showit, it’s really no argument for service based entrepreneurs.
Simplified dashboard on Showit
If you wanted to change your font size, font color, button color, resize your image, or really, do any sort of customization, you have to click through several pages to find what you’re looking for on Squarespace’s dashboard.
For example, if you wanted to change your heading font color, you’d have to go all the way back to the main page of Squarespace, dig for the design and customization page, find the header, and edit it from there.
On Showit, you can change font colors, font sizes, even font types, all on the same page. You can also resize, drag, and drop elements without needing to switch pages. You can even edit the mobile site on the same screen as the desktop site. Using Showit will save you so much time since you don’t need to click back and forth like on Squarespace. Want to get a feel for Showit’s setup? Watch this video.
You can migrate your Squarespace or WordPress blog directly to Showit
Both WordPress and Squarespace have migration features that allow you to export your blog to WordPress. Since Showit’s blogs are hosted through WordPress, you can freely move your content from WordPress to Showit or Squarespace to Showit.
However, if you wanted to move from WordPress to Squarespace, you’d have to manually copy and paste each blog post since there is no feature to automatically migrate to Squarespace. If you’ve been blogging for several months or longer, this could be a timely and expensive process.
Custom mobile-friendly websites
I bet more than half of your readers are coming from a mobile device. All of Squarespace’s websites are mobile-friendly. While this sounds great (especially since some WordPress templates still aren’t mobile-friendly) the process is completely automated. You have no control over how your website looks on a mobile device unless you meticulously test each page you make.
Even then, you’d most likely need to add code or compromise different elements on your website to ensure it’s mobile-friendly.
Showit is completely mobile-friendly but you have full creative control over how your mobile site works. Maybe you want less copy, to make it easier to read. Maybe you want to change placements of images or buttons to simplify the mobile site. You can do whatever you want to make sure your mobile users are happy.
Easy Integration with Third Party Apps & Widgets
The two big ones you’ll most likely want from the beginning are email sign up forms and your instagram feed. You can easily embed your email forms and I highly recommend the you check out flodesk which is the new kid on the block and has beautiful forms that integrate with your website seamlessly with no coding at all!
For your instagram feed, check out Lightwidget.com for the best widget – it’s a $10 one time fee and totally worth it.
For anything you are needing to “embed” into your website you’ll simple click the embed code button, paste in the code and adjust the sizing and placement as needed with the drag and drop tools! Seriously, couldn’t be easier and it’s so nice.
No one can tell where your website was built on
Squarespace websites are pretty obvious. Everyone has the same buttons (pill, rounded, or square). The navigation looks the same. The footers are all replicas of each other. The blog section is clunky and rarely has a sidebar. Unless there is some serious custom coding happening, your Squarespace website will always look like it’s “Powered by Squarespace.”
Since you can customize pretty much anything on Showit, you’re not limited to any templates (though if you’re a beginner, I suggest starting out with a template and expanding as you grow). Unless you tell people, no one knows whether it was built on WordPress, custom coded, or how the website was built.
This adds to the professional feel of Showit websites (while keeping your bank account happy!)
Squarespace has been ahead of its time. While people were spending months trying to DIY WordPress websites, Squarespace gave the capability to make a stunning website in a weekend. However, it rarely grew past that stage.
Showit is the new Squarespace. Alongside quick DIY options, Showit makes SEO, designing, customizing, and integrating easy so you can focus on building your business.
Still feeling like it’s alot to learn? I get it. That’s why I created a step-by-step course that walks you through the entire process in quick, bite-sized videos that you can get through within a day and get launched FAST. This course comes free with my templates so you can get started right away!
Need help picking your Showit template? Send me an email at jg@jessicagingrich.com and let’s chat!
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