Showit vs Squarespace for Wedding Planners: An Honest Comparison
By Alexey Chasin · Updated October 17, 2026 · 9 min read
Squarespace is the better choice for a wedding planner who will build and maintain the site alone: Basic is $19 a month on annual billing, the blog is built in, and the templates hold up without a designer. Showit wins on design control at $22 to $39 a month plus a template, with blogging handled by WordPress. Over three years both cost more in money and time than a site built for you free, included with hosting at $50 a month, billed $600 for the first year.
There are no affiliate links on this page. Most Showit-versus-Squarespace articles are written by Showit template designers who earn a commission when you sign up, which is worth knowing before you read them. We build on neither platform, so our interest is in telling you the third option exists, and we say so where it comes up.
What each one is
Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder: hosting, templates, a blog, forms and a store in one subscription, edited in a structured, section-based editor. Showit is a free-form design tool with hosting included: you place any element anywhere on a canvas, separately for desktop and mobile, and the blog, if you want one, runs on a WordPress install that Showit hosts for you. Showit is popular with wedding photographers and the designers who serve them, which is why so many planner templates exist for it.
Design control
Showit wins, and it is not close. If you want overlapping images, text that breaks the grid and a mobile layout designed by hand rather than reflowed automatically, Showit is built for it. The cost of that freedom is that every page is yours to design twice, once for desktop and once for phones, and a template only gets you to the starting line. Squarespace's section editor limits you to what the template allows, which for most planners is a feature: the site looks finished without a designer, and nothing can be broken by dragging a text box three pixels off.
Blogging and venue pages
This is where planners should look hardest, because the pages that rank for 'wedding planner' plus a venue or a city are blog posts and venue guides, not the home page. Squarespace's blog is built in and included at every tier. Showit's blog is WordPress: the base Showit plan at $22 a month on annual billing is described on Showit's own pricing page as the plan for people who do not need a blog, the Basic Starter Blog tier at $27 a month adds a WordPress blog with pre-installed plugins and no additional plugins permitted, and the Advanced Blog tier at $39 a month adds unlimited WordPress users and a free migration from WordPress or Squarespace. A planner who intends to write a venue guide a month is paying for and maintaining two systems on Showit.
Speed on a phone
Both platforms ship templates heavy with scripts and full-size images, and both can be made acceptable with discipline: compressed images, fewer fonts, no autoplaying video in the hero. Neither is fast by default, and gallery-heavy planner sites are the worst case. Test any template you are considering in Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile before you buy it, and test the live demo of the template, not the designer's marketing page. A score under 50 on mobile is common on both platforms and it costs you rankings and patience.
SEO basics
Both let you set a title and description per page, add alt text, submit a sitemap and connect Search Console. Squarespace adds FAQ and basic business structured data in some templates and handles redirects in a settings panel. Showit's SEO settings live per page in the design app, and the blog's SEO is WordPress's, which means a plugin. Neither writes the title tags for you, and that, not the platform, is where most planner sites lose: a home page titled 'Home' and a services page titled 'Services' rank for nothing on any platform.
What three years actually cost
Platform prices below are from the Squarespace and Showit pricing pages on October 17, 2026, on annual billing. Template and designer ranges are typical market figures. Your hours are counted at zero dollars in the money column and listed separately, because they are the largest cost of the do-it-yourself paths.
| Path | Year one | Years two and three | Three-year cash | Your hours | What you hold at the end |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace Core, DIY | $348 plus about $15 domain | $696 plus domains | About $1,090 | 40 to 80 to build, a few a month after | Content; the site stays on Squarespace |
| Showit with Basic Starter Blog and a purchased template | $326 plus $300 to $1,500 template plus domain | $652 plus domains | About $1,300 to $2,500 | 30 to 60 to build, more for every blog post | Content; design stays in Showit, blog on WordPress |
| Showit or Squarespace built by a designer | $2,500 to $8,000 plus the platform fee | $652 to $696 plus domains | About $3,200 to $8,700 | 10 to 20 for feedback | Content and a design on the platform |
| Velour Web, built for you | $600 hosting with the website included, plus domain | $1,200 hosting, or less if you move it | About $1,850 | About 2 | The code, handed over after the first paid year, and the domain and content from day one |
The honest reading of the table: a do-it-yourself Squarespace site is the cheapest in cash. It is also the one where you write every page, set every title tag and compress every gallery yourself, and where nothing leaves the platform when you do. Built-for-you on either platform costs the most. Ours sits between them in cash, with nobody's weekends in it and the code yours after the first year.
Switching later
Content moves between all of these; designs do not. Squarespace to Showit means redesigning every page on the canvas, which is why Showit offers the free blog migration and the designers offer the rest for a fee. Showit to Squarespace means rebuilding in sections. Either direction, keep the URLs the same or redirect every old one, or the rankings the old site earned are gone. A rebuild with us keeps your domain and ships with a redirect map for every URL that ranks.
Who should pick which
- Pick Squarespace if you will build it yourself, you want a blog from day one, and you would rather have limits than decisions.
- Pick Showit if design control is the point, you have a designer or the patience to design every page twice, and you accept WordPress for the blog.
- Pick neither if you do not want to build or maintain a website at all. Have it built on a design system, written from an interview, and hosted for you, with the code handed over after the first year.
Velour Web builds the same site free: it is included with hosting at $50 a month, billed $600 for the first year and month to month after that, and the code is handed over after the first paid year or on a $999 buyout. It is hand-coded, not a Showit or Squarespace template, which is why it loads in under a second on a phone and why there are no plugins to update.
Sources
- Showit pricing: Showit $22, Showit with Basic Starter Blog $27, Showit with Advanced Blog $39 a month on annual billing; the blog tiers run on WordPress. Read October 17, 2026.
- Squarespace pricing: Basic $19, Core $29, Plus $49, Advanced $99 a month on annual billing. Read October 17, 2026.