WHICH PLATFORM IS BEST FOR YOU?
Showit vs. Elementor (WordPress)
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We create website templates for two different platforms: Showit and Elementor. Both are solid website platforms that provide a considerable amount of control over your website aesthetic and a great website building experience.
And if you’re here reading this post, you probably agree. But you want to know which platform will be best for your needs. Well, we’ll try to figure that out here.
For the purposes of this post, when we mention WordPress, we’re referring to Elementor, which is a website building plugin for WordPress. (There are countless page building plugins for WordPress, but we think Elementor is best.)
Showit is a drag-and-drop website builder created specifically for creative professionals.
- Design within the Showit app – a ‘standalone’ website builder comparable to Squarespace or Wix.
- App has a similar feel to Canva (but better!)
- Fully integrates with WordPress – meaning you get the design flexibility of Showit + the power of WordPress. It’s a winning combination (in our book).
- Pay Showit a monthly or annual subscription to get access to their builder and for them to host your website
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- It’s a plugin that’s installed on your WordPress website that helps you to visually design your website without needing to know code. Unlike Showit, which is totally free-form, Elementor works with columns and grids.
- Both WordPress and Elementor are free—although there is a paid version of Elementor, which we recommend (it’s about $60 for the year and renews at a discount).
- You'll need a website host to host your Elementor site.
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Elementor is a drag-and-drop WordPress page builder.
Who has the edge? Showit. By a long shot.
With that said, WordPress still requires more getting used to than Showit due to the control one has over their website. You’ll still be responsible for setting up hosting, making sure plugins don’t conflict with one another, and making sure the back-end of your website is updated.
We’ve also found that Elementor is a bit more fragile than Showit. You’ll really need to keep an eye on your site to ensure that fonts don’t become disconnected or that plugins do not break your site.
When people ask us for our recommendation for building a beautiful, high-converting site, in 95% of cases, we recommend Showit over Elementor.
Showit boasts an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that has a similar feel to Canva, which should make creative business owners feel at home. It still requires some time to get oriented, but the learning curve isn’t too steep. Additionally, Showit has an active Facebook user community and a wide array of help documentation to answer any questions you have as you get set-up.
They also have one of the best support teams around. If you get stuck along the way, you can message real humans (who live in Arizona). They will reply with kindness in a way that isn’t overly technical. Are they technical? 100%. But they’ll speak to you in a way that you can actually understand.
WordPress has a reputation of being more technically challenging. However, the Elementor drag-and-drop builder makes designing and launching a website far easier than something like Divy.
SHOWIT vs. ELementor
Ease-of-Use
Visual Learner?
Watch Krista compare platforms
Who has the edge? WordPress/Elementor (although FWIW, we would still choose Showit over Elementor any. dang. day)
When you design your desktop layout, the mobile layout generates in a fairly intuitive way. All of your styles and elements snap into place so you don’t have to redo a ton on the mobile side—just minor tweaks (although you can customize this as much as you want). Having access to the tablet view is particularly helpful because there may be things that you want to appear on tablet but not on phones.
Elementor is also naturally more responsive than Showit in that content will automatically grow with text.
Showit gives you the ability to design the mobile version of your website within a mobile frame. This is very convenient to understand exactly what your mobile content should look like on a phone.
You will need to design the mobile version of your website in addition to desktop version. Elements don’t automatically snap into place as they do in some other website builders. The advantage, however, is the amount of control over your mobile design.
Showit provides far more control over the mobile version of a website than rivals Squarespace and Wix.
Elementor not only gives you the ability to easily design the phone and desktop versions of your website, but the tablet version as well. You simply toggle between the three views: mobile, tablet, and desktop.
SHOWIT vs. ELementor
Mobile Responsiveness
It takes us 3x as long to create the Elementor versions of our sites as it does the Showit sites and we spend a LOT more time supporting users who buy these versions because the design capabilities on Elementor sites are just more limited.
Design Flexibility
Who has the edge? Showit.
It’s hard to beat WordPress when it comes to features and tools.
Due to its popularity and open-source nature, many online marketing tools have some sort of integration with WordPress.
It’s also much easier to quickly add additional functionality to your website through the use of a plugin.
One reason we really like Showit is that WordPress is used for blogging. This way Showit users can take advantage of the WordPress ecosystem.
Elementor might have a few more features built-in, but we’ve found that in order to really maximize Elementor + get it running quickly, it takes a LOT of plugins. And all of those plugins add load time to your site.
SHOWIT vs. ELementor
Features & Tools
Who has the edge? Tie.
Who has the edge? Showit. By a long shot.
One major ranking factor for sites is the speed in which a site loads and right out of the box, Showit wins over Elementor.
We spent years and a whole lot of $$ trying to optimize our old Elementor site only to change back over to Showit in the end.
If you like spending hours tweaking with caching to preload javascript on your site, offloading images and digital assets to AWS and compressing images, go with Elementor.
But if you want to spend time actually doing what you love and running your business, let Showit do those tedious tasks for you.
Let’s clear something up: Showit is not ‘bad’ for SEO (more about that in this post 5 Things We Wish People Knew about SEO). Showit integrates fully with WordPress and allows you to create optimized content to drive traffic to your site.
I think the best example of the power of Showit when it comes to SEO is our old photography site. Davey and I were wedding photographers in Annapolis, Maryland for several years and during that time, we had a Showit site.
When our oldest child was born in 2018, we stopped photographing weddings and thus stopped blogging or updating that site. But because of the optimization that we put into that site, it stayed on the first page of our (previously desired) search results for SIX MORE YEARS.
Up until we took the site down in early 2024, we were still getting a few inquiries a week from a Showit site that was incredibly outdated.
SHOWIT vs. ELementor
SEO & Optimization
WordPress is used by millions of people. So needless to say, there’s probably someone out there that can help if you’re having a problem with your WordPress website.
Moreover there are seemingly countless WordPress-oriented Facebook groups and YouTube channels dedicated to community support for some aspect of the platform. Elementor also has their own community group on Facebook, which—at the time of writing this—has over 150,000 people.
Showit has a much smaller user base, but an active community and mighty support team. The Facebook group has thousands of members and there are plenty of Showit designers in the group that are usually willing to lend a hand. If you purchase a template from us, for instance, you get email support from us and access to our Showit set-up course in addition to your access to the Showit support team and their help documentation. That’s a lot of support. (Note: Users who purchase an Elementor design from us also get access to our email support and Elementor set-up course.)
Both Elementor and Showit have support teams that can be reached by email. Showit’s support team, however, can also be reached by live chat within the Showit app. Ask five Showit users why they like Showit, and don’t be surprised when all five say ‘outstanding support.’
Help & Support
Who has the edge? Showit.
Who has the edge? It’s a toss-up. While WordPress *can* be less expensive, the two platforms ultimately end up costing about the same if you’re using a solid WordPress host.
(P.S. If you’re looking for a host, we recommend Flywheel or Siteground, or letting us manage your hosting.)
A Showit subscription will run between $228-$408/year depending on what subscription is chosen (and it will cost more if you choose a monthly subscription)
If you want to blog on Showit, you’ll want to grab the Advanced plan. It allows you to take advantage of services like a content migration as well as add SEO tools like RankMath (our favorite).
Elementor, on the other hand, costs $69/year and renews at a 25% discount the following year. You would be responsible for finding a website host, which could, of course, vary in cost.
If you’re going with Elementor, make sure you invest in a quality host. Elementor is a bit of a load on your site and cheaper hosting (less than $20 a month) likely won’t be able to support it. Keep in mind that while you might be paying a bit less for a host, you’re ultimately going to be paying more in time to maintain the site.
SHOWIT vs. ELementor
Pricing
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Ecommerce can be done successfully on Showit, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not natively an e-commerce website platform. Usually we recommend WordPress for e-commerce websites if the business is primarily an e-commerce business.
If you want additional control over your website (like to configure your own server settings) or you need membership or e-commerce functionality, you’ll probably want to go with WordPress.
Of the two platforms we build on, Showit is (hands down!) our favorite and in 95% of cases, that is the platform we recommend for our audience.
It’s possible to create a beautiful, functional website with both platforms.
We find that for many photographers and creative businesses, Showit is a great choice. Especially if you don’t feel comfortable with—or don’t want to deal with—the more technical aspects of having a website like hosting.
We also typically recommend Showit to people who are switching from a platform like Squarespace or Wix since it’ll be closer to what they’re used to with added creative control.
For what it’s worth, we typically explore whether Showit is a good fit for a client before exploring other platforms. This is because Showit is typically easier for someone to learn and we LOVE designing on that platform.
WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
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