WordPress Vs. Showit, which platform is best?

When clients come to us, often times they have no idea which website platform to use, only that they hear everyone is using WordPress. While there are dozens of website platforms to choose from—Squarespace, Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, ProPhoto, Showit, WordPress, Webflow, Weebly … you get my drift here—I’ll just focus on comparing the two that we utilize most for our clients: Showit and WordPress.

Before we can really decide which platform is the right fit for you, let’s weigh the pros and cons between these two platforms.

WordPress Pros

Open Source

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP. Open source means that anyone can change, use, or redistribute its source code. This has allowed WordPress to really be the website gold standard and the sky’s the limit as to its power and what it can do. For anyone with a decent design and development budget, you can get a state-of-the-art website with unlimited integrations and virtually no limitations.

Thousands of Templates and Plugins

Since WordPress is open source, there are thousands of templates available on the market that you can choose from as a starting point. This can make DIY (and even some custom-designed sites) a little bit easier. Plugins add to the power of WordPress, giving you the ability to add integrations for almost anything. This includes SEO, visual builders, forms, and so on.

Fluid Layouts

This is another term for “responsive design,” but it’s a better explanation of what responsive design is. When you make your browser larger or smaller, a fluid design will change as it encounters the set “break points” within the code. This means that items will stack, text size will change, and elements will automatically adjust depending on the browser size. Since at least 50% of website traffic will come from mobile devices, responsive design is extremely important! 

SEO Is a Dream

WordPress is written in high-quality code which makes Google and other search engines love WordPress. You can also install SEO plugins to help easily optimize your SEO, which makes it even more SEO-friendly.

WordPress Cons

Cost

WordPress can be cost-prohibitive for many small businesses just starting out. Depending on the functionality you need for your website, custom WordPress design and development can start around $7,500 (on average) and will increase from there. We always encourage our clients to protect their investment with a website maintenance plan, since WordPress plugins, themes, versions, and PHP will all need updates that require attention on a regular basis. This will add an additional monthly cost to your investment.

DIY Requires a Steep Learning Curve and a lot of Time

While there are many more drag-and-drop builder plugins or themes available for WordPress, many still require a significant amount of time to learn, navigate, and use. There is also a lot of trial and error in DIYing your own WordPress website, especially without knowledge of code. You can end up going down a lot of rabbit holes and get overwhelmed pretty quickly.

Plugins and Themes Can Slow Load Time

In an effort to DIY, many people will load up their site with dozens of plugins to help make the process easier. While plugins are awesome and useful, they can also bog down your website, making it really slow to load. This will frustrate users and they won’t hang around very long.

Design and Creative Limitations within Drag-and-Drop Builders

If using a drag-and-drop builder, you’ll inevitably run into some kind of customization issue that will take time to troubleshoot, or won’t be able to be overcome, without knowing how to code. 

Prone to Hacking and Security Breaches

Since WordPress is open-source software, this leaves it more vulnerable for anyone to study and hack, especially if your website isn’t properly maintained. WordPress is not your best option if you plan to just set-it-and-forget-it. The longer you let your site sit with outdated themes and plugins, the more susceptible it will be to hackers. If they are successful, you might lose your investment altogether (and let’s face it—if you’ve let it sit, you’re probably not keeping regular backups just in case it crashes).

No Customer Service

There is no customer service platform integrated with WordPress itself. If you run across any issues, you’re left to your own devices … which usually includes Googling the problem or figuring it out on YouTube. If, on the other hand, you’ve opted for a maintenance plan, your website developer can help you with any issues that arise.

If your website is custom developed, it can be hard to make any design or structural changes without the help of a developer or knowledge of code. So keep this in mind when making your decision. If ease of use is important to you, and you can’t afford to maintain your website, WordPress might not be the best choice for you.

Showit Pros

Full Design and Creative Freedom

Showit is a drag-and-drop visual builder that is perfect for creative professionals who don’t want to mess around with code but also don’t want to sacrifice functionality or aesthetics. Showit allows for full creative control—it’s easy to change the fonts, colors, images, and customize layouts however you want. You also don’t have to start from scratch! There are hundreds of gorgeous templates available on the market to choose from!

Easy to Use and Update Yourself

We create custom Showit websites for our clients and show them exactly how to update everything on their own. Since there is no coding required, they have creative freedom to add or change content on the fly, without feeling overwhelmed by code (or feeling like they’ll mess something up)! 

Excellent Customer Service

You’ll never be stranded without help! Showit’s customer support team is extremely responsive, regardless of the Showit hosting plan you’re on. You can reach them via email or their in-app chat. According to Showit themselves, since their platform was built with creative professionals in mind, they are well-trained to address issues that creatives face. 

Beautiful, Customizable Mobile Design Experience

If there is anything I can’t stress enough, it’s the ability for your website to be optimized for mobile. And it shouldn’t just be responsive (meaning it neatly collapses into mobile format), but it should deliver the best user experience possible. In the visual editor, Showit makes it easy to customize your mobile view independent of your desktop view, so you’re able to create a completely optimized mobile experience without messing up your desktop experience. This is something many visual builder tools do not offer.

Integrates with WordPress for the Blog

Showit integrates seamlessly with WordPress for its blogging platform. That means you get the best of both worlds with a Showit website: a visual editor with the CMS and SEO power of a WordPress blog. On top of that, Showit lets you customize your WordPress blog to look exactly how you want it—so your creativity is uninhibited! 

SEO is On Par with WordPress

Many Showit websites rank #1 in Google search results because they’re able to harness the power of WordPress SEO benefits alongside having very search-engine friendly code. This is a unique feature of Showit compared to other drag-and-drop editors like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly.

Secure and Inexpensive to Maintain

Since Showit is a closed platform, there is no code, plugins, or themes to keep maintained. We offer Showit design maintenance packages for busy creatives who’d rather have someone do their website updates for them, but it is absolutely not necessary to the success and longevity of your website.

Showit Cons

Learning Curve

If you want to DIY your own Showit website and start from scratch, know that there will be a learning curve and expect to invest a decent amount of time learning the ropes of Showit. Is it hard? No! I just want to be sure I’m setting proper expectations before you embark on your DIY Showit experience.

Responsive-Ready vs. Fluid

Showit is not “fully responsive,” or fluid, like WordPress is. This doesn’t mean that your Showit website won’t look fantastic on mobile. It just means that instead of having set coded “break points” where things stack, all elements shrink down to fit the browser that you’re using. This rarely ever affects mobile usability and experience, since we design our custom Showit sites and our templates with this in mind. It also will not affect your SEO ranking.

E-commerce

Out of the box, Showit does not have its own e-commerce platform. If your business is strictly e-commerce, your best bet is to use a robust e-commerce platform like Shopify, WordPress (WooCommerce), or BigCommerce. If you want shopping cart functionality on your Showit website, there are work-arounds. Many people integrate Shopify Lite easily with Showit, or you could even use ThriveCart, SamCart, or Easy Digital Downloads.

Email Hosting

Unlike when you purchase your website hosting through GoDaddy or WPEngine, you won’t get a domain-associated email address (hello@yourdomain.com) with your Showit website. To get your own branded email address, we suggest using GSuite by Google. We find this is actually the most flexible and user-friendly way to do branded email hosting. 

Platform Longevity

This is something you should consider before making your decision on any platform, but it’s worth saying that you are hosting your website within Showit’s closed platform service. To put it simply: you’re renting space on their server, and if anything were to happen to Showit, you’d lose your website. But fear not. Showit has been around since 2006 and they are growing faster and larger than ever before. With that said, it’s always smart to keep copies of your blog content somewhere other than the web, regardless of which platform you decide to use.

Bottom Line

Now that we’ve gone through the pros and cons, here’s a run-down of how to choose which one is best for you:

Budget 

• If you have a larger website budget and need specific (or unlimited) integrations and functionality, go with WordPress.
• If you’ve got a nice budget for custom design but want more control but don’t want to mess with code, Showit is where it’s at.
• If your budget is small or limited, try starting out with a Showit template! This is a great option, and you’ll still end up with a beautifully designed website.

Goals

• If you know your business will grow to need specific functionality, WordPress may be a better option since it’s able to do virtually anything you need it to (e-commerce, memberships, courses, etc.).
• If you expect that you won’t outgrow the capabilities of Showit, and you want all the benefits of a drag-and-drop editor plus WordPress SEO, Showit is the winner! 

If you still need some help deciding, feel free to schedule a call with us. We help clients decide which website platform is the best fit for them based on their unique needs and situation, and we can help you do the same. Or take our Website Platform Quiz to find out on your own!