This is probably the question I get asked most before a new project kicks off.
“Should I go with Showit or WordPress?”
It’s a fair question, and honestly, a smart one. These are the two platforms I work with most, and they’re genuinely different in ways that matter for small business owners. There’s no universal right answer, but there is a right answer for your specific business, your goals, and your relationship with technology.
Here’s exactly what I tell my clients in Madison, Huntsville, and throughout North Alabama when they ask.
First: A Quick Introduction to Both Platforms
Showit is a drag-and-drop website builder that gives designers (and business owners) complete visual freedom. Nothing is locked to a grid. Every element can be placed exactly where you want it, styled however you want, and designed separately for desktop and mobile. It uses WordPress under the hood for blogging, which means you get Showit’s beautiful design capabilities plus WordPress’s powerful SEO tools for content.
WordPress (specifically self-hosted WordPress.org) is the world’s most widely used website platform, powering over 43% of all websites on the internet. It’s open-source, endlessly customizable through thousands of themes and plugins, and can be built into virtually any type of website imaginable: blogs, service sites, e-commerce stores, membership platforms, and more.
Both are legitimate, professional platforms. The question isn’t which one is “better”, it’s which one is better for you.
Where Showit Wins for Small Businesses
1. You Can Actually Update It Yourself
This is the one I come back to most often with small business owners, and it matters more than people expect.
When your website is built on WordPress using a page builder like Elementor or Divi, making updates after launch is workable, but it comes with a learning curve. Layouts can break if you don’t understand how blocks and settings interact. Plugins conflict with each other. A simple text change can trigger a cascade of formatting issues if you’re not careful.
I’ve heard from so many business owners who had a WordPress site built, then paid their designer every single time they needed to change a photo or update a service description, because touching it themselves was too risky or too confusing.
Showit is genuinely different. The editing experience is close to working in Canva. You can click on any element, change the text or image, and publish. There’s no code. There’s no plugin to update first. You won’t crash your site by moving a button.
For small business owners who want autonomy over their own website and don’t want to pay a designer $150 every time their hours change, Showit wins this category cleanly.
2. The Mobile Design Is Actually Designed
On most website platforms, including standard WordPress setups, your mobile site is just a compressed version of your desktop site. The platform auto-scales everything and does its best to make it fit a phone screen. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t, images crop strangely, sections get jumbled, and your carefully designed layout turns into a mess at 375px wide.
Showit gives you a separate mobile canvas. You design the mobile version deliberately and intentionally, side by side with the desktop version. Elements you want visible on desktop but not mobile? Hidden. Sections you want to reorder for a better phone experience? Done. Mobile headings that need different sizing? Adjusted independently, without affecting desktop.
For businesses where most of their traffic comes from local mobile searches which, in Huntsville and Madison, is most businesses, this level of mobile control is a significant competitive advantage.
3. No Maintenance Headaches
WordPress requires ongoing maintenance. Plugin updates, theme updates, and core software updates need to happen regularly for security and functionality. And updates don’t always play nicely together. A plugin update can break your contact form. A theme update can shift your layout. A security vulnerability can expose your site to malware if you fall behind.
Managing this either requires your own technical knowledge, a maintenance retainer with your designer, or a separate service. It’s an ongoing cost of ownership that many business owners don’t factor in when they’re comparing platforms.
Showit handles hosting, security, SSL certificates, and updates on their end. You log in, design, and publish. The backend infrastructure isn’t your problem.
4. Design Freedom Without a Developer
Showit was built for creatives who want beautiful, custom-feeling designs without needing to hire a developer for every custom layout. There are no column restrictions, no block alignments to fight, no grid limitations. If you can imagine it, you can build it, or your designer can.
The result is that Showit sites tend to look genuinely custom and polished rather than “template-y,” even when they started from a template. That design quality is a real differentiator for service businesses trying to stand out in a competitive local market.
Where WordPress Wins
1. E-Commerce at Scale
If you’re running a serious online store, more than a handful of products, complex inventory management, advanced product filtering, subscriptions, or memberships, WordPress with WooCommerce is the better choice. The e-commerce ecosystem for WordPress is massive, mature, and deeply integrated.
Showit does support e-commerce through third-party integrations (like Shopify, ThriveCart, or WooCommerce on the advanced plan), but the setup is more complex, and the experience can feel less seamless than a native WordPress/WooCommerce build.
For local service businesses, coaches, creatives, and most small businesses in the Huntsville market, this distinction doesn’t apply. But for a boutique retailer, a product-based brand, or anyone managing hundreds of SKUs, WordPress is the stronger foundation.
2. Advanced Plugin Functionality
WordPress has over 60,000 plugins. If there is a specific piece of functionality you need, an advanced booking system, a custom database, a learning management system, a specialized CRM integration, a directory, a job board, there is almost certainly a WordPress plugin for it.
Showit handles most standard business needs beautifully: contact forms, scheduling tools, email marketing integrations, video embeds, galleries, and more. But if you’re building something with highly specialized functionality requirements, WordPress’s plugin ecosystem gives you more depth.
3. Longer Track Record, Larger Community
WordPress has been around since 2003 and has an enormous global community. For developers and technically-minded business owners who want to deeply customize their own site, WordPress’s documentation, forums, and tutorial ecosystem is unmatched.
The Honest Middle Ground: Showit Uses WordPress for Blogging
Here’s something that surprises a lot of people: Showit and WordPress aren’t entirely separate platforms.
Showit uses WordPress to power its blog. When you choose a Showit plan with blogging (which I recommend for almost every business that wants to grow their SEO), your blog posts are actually hosted on a WordPress install. That means you can use Yoast SEO, one of the most powerful SEO plugins available, directly within your Showit site.
In practice, this means you don’t have to choose between Showit’s beautiful design and WordPress’s blogging/SEO power. You get both.
So What Do I Actually Recommend?
After building websites on both platforms for small businesses across North Alabama, here’s my honest breakdown:
I recommend Showit for:
- Service-based businesses (coaches, consultants, photographers, designers, healthcare providers, beauty professionals, home service companies)
- Business owners who want to update their own site without calling their designer
- Brands where visual design and first impression carry significant weight
- Anyone focused on local SEO with a content marketing strategy
- Businesses that want a polished, custom-looking site without a custom development budget
I recommend WordPress for:
- Businesses with complex e-commerce needs (large product catalogs, memberships, subscriptions)
- Companies that need highly specialized plugin-based functionality
- Clients with in-house technical resources or an ongoing developer relationship
- Larger organizations with content-heavy sites that require complex user roles and workflows
The truth is, most small businesses in the Huntsville and Madison area fall into the first category. They need a professional, conversion-focused website that they can maintain themselves, with a solid SEO foundation and a design that actually reflects the quality of their work. Showit is built for exactly that.
One More Thing Worth Saying
The platform is only one piece of the puzzle. A mediocre website on the right platform is still a mediocre website.
What makes a small business website actually work is the strategy behind it, the user journey, the messaging, the calls to action, the SEO foundation, the mobile experience, and the load speed. A thoughtfully designed Showit site will outperform a poorly built WordPress site every time, and vice versa.
The platform you choose should support your strategy. It shouldn’t be your strategy.
Ready to Figure Out Which Platform Is Right for You?
If you’re trying to decide between Showit and WordPress for your new website, or if you’re on WordPress now and wondering whether to switch, I’m happy to talk through your specific situation.
At PiperMâché, I build on both platforms and recommend based on what actually fits your business, not on which one I happened to specialize in first. My goal is a website that works for you long after launch day.
If you are still not sure what would be a great fit for your business, schedule a free discovery call with me, and we can look into it together.
PiperMâché is a custom website design and SEO studio based in Madison, AL, serving small businesses throughout the Huntsville metro area. Specializing in Showit, Shopify, and WordPress websites.
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