Showit vs Shopify: Which One is Right for Your Online Shop?

Ingrid: [00:00:00] So you’re ready to open up your online shop, but you’re stuck at the crossroads between. Showit or Shopify, maybe you’re already on Showit, so that makes it even harder. One is really praised for its creative flexibility, while the other is just a pure e-commerce power, 

but which one really is the one that you should be going with?

Which one is gonna be right for. For you today, I’m diving into the real differences between Showit and Shopify, what each one does best of where they fall short, because of course nothing can be perfect, and most importantly, which one will help you make more money online? Stick around until the end because I’ll be sharing a little known factor that could make or break your decision.

Hey friend, welcome back to the Inspire Brew, where we talk all things branding, marketing, and making your website actually work for you. I’m your host Ingrid, your brand and web designer, Showit partner, and all around conversion, obsessed strategist. Today we’re talking about one of my biggest questions that I get, and when I say one of the biggest questions, I really do mean it.

I get this question at least once a [00:01:00] week, whether it’s from another designer or just from someone that is thinking about opening up their shop that they are. Not even sure what platforms they should be picking. Should I build my online shop with Showit or Shopify? If you’ve been debating between these two, you’re not alone.

They are both great. And I will say like I am a Shopify partner. I’m a Showit partner. I love the platforms, but they serve very different purposes. And choosing the wrong one could lead to frustration, lost sales, and even extra costs down the line. So let’s break it all down so that you can get a confident, educated decision.

Let’s start with the Showit pros and cons. The pros, obviously, it’s unmatched with the design freedom that we get it is drag and drop. It feels like you can do almost anything in there. If you wanna move a picture to the left two pixels, you can absolutely do that. If you wanna change a font, a color, something completely different on one page to the other, if you’re building a sales, because like you [00:02:00] have so many possibilities, it is absolutely customizable.

The layouts are not really constricted to anything. So whatever you can think of, you most likely can do it in Showit. And there’s no code needed. You can use code and I do like using code, but it just doesn’t need it to actually exist. Like those are more advance, those are extra things that you might wanna add.

So no code needed on there. Perfect for personal brands and service-based businesses, because aesthetics and storytelling are at the core of the brand. And if that is true for yours, then show is definitely gonna be your best option. It has also a seamless WordPress integration, which obviously. If you have heard any of the other episodes of You wrote my blog at some point, you know, that to me that is just the best of both worlds because we get the gorgeous front end and have super powerful blogging system on the backend.

So honestly, something that I love to have, and it’s great for digital products and memberships or shops because if you’re selling courses, downloads, memberships, [00:03:00] when you pay or Showit with a third party. Checkout or third party plugin using that WordPress set of things. It just works beautifully. Now, of course there are some cons.

I am aware that I can’t just praise it and not shine some light on the, but it is limited on the e-commerce side of things because it doesn’t have a native shopping cart, and that’s kind of big when you’re thinking of opening up a shop, right? So you’ll definitely need to have some integrations in there.

You can do Shopify Light, you can do ThriveCart, you can do any other external solution that you can think of. If you can embed it, it can happen. If you can link it, it can happen. So it’s limited because it doesn’t come with it. But you can make it happen. It’s also not ideal for huge inventory stores unless you have a very like set strategy and you are definitely going to be using the WordPress side of things because you need like a very powerful

[00:04:00] database that is gonna handle the products. So if you have dozens or hundreds of products, Showit won’t be the most efficient choice if you don’t plan to have that like backend built, if you just want to embed it. Mm, that will not be my first choice. Now let’s talk about Shopify, the pros, the cons, because obviously we love it, but there’s also some things that we need to talk about it.

The pros it’s made for eCommerce. I think that that is basically the, why is this even on the table? It’s a full fledged shopping platform built to handle everything from inventory to your checkout. It has the option for shipping as well, of course, if you’re not doing digital products. Although I think that most everyone that I have in my circles are.

Fulfilling some kind of digital product kind of order. But I do have clients and students that do ship their products. So it is an option, uh, powerful backend tools that you’re gonna find with Shopify. They are all gonna be geared towards [00:05:00] e-commerce. So I think that to me, that just immediately. Puts people at ease because you can have those automatic text calculations or shipping integrations, which by the way, Shopify has its own integrations and they’re great.

Shopify really takes that heavy lifting of your plate because the only thing that they do is e-commerce and shops. So they have curated and have their like partners and people that create plugins. And just like put them into Shopify with the marketplace. And the one thing that you do need to take into account is that not every single integration out there is going to work with the level of Shopify store that you get.

Because they do have different levels, and not every single one is gonna work with all the things. Mostly if you are using Shopify starter instead of one of their like. Regular standard Shopify shops. So just a little bit of a caution in there. And of course, it can scale with you whether you’re selling 10 [00:06:00] products or if you’re selling 10,000 products, Shopify can handle it.

At the end of the day, that is the only thing that it’s built to do. Now, of course, we have some cons. The design flexibility. Is not there. It is. It has honestly evolved so much, but Shopify needs to have a great theme and it has some amazing ones. Of course, I. But they’re more structured. So customization usually requires a little bit of extra coding or premium apps.

There are even some apps that are more like page builders and you can be moving things around here and there and it just makes it a little bit easier. but just a little like fun fact, Shopify uses liquid code and you can also add CSS and whatnot. But, In Showit with the WordPress side, we use HTML, which is a little bit more common, but with Shopify it requires liquid coating.

So not everyone is as versed on it as we would want to because it will be so nice. But just a little FYI. and then of course [00:07:00] I mentioned that they have different levels, so the subscription cost can add up. Shopify’s plans, they start low, honestly, but you have obviously your transaction fees, which those come with the realm of selling anything online.

But if you start adding plugins or apps. Then those have their own costs. And then if you have a premium theme, it can just make it pricier over time. And one of the things that I will say, it’s a major con for me, it’s that it is an overkill for businesses that are just purely service based. Because if you’re primarily selling like coaching services or a small number of digital products, Shopify’s features might feel like more than what you actually need.

So to me that’s a little bit of an overkill. it’s up to you to decide, but that’s just like my professional opinion. So if you put this on the table, who should use which platform at the end of the day? To me, it just boils down to. You can Showit or have it as your top [00:08:00] option if your service provider or a personal brand that just wants a complete setup of creative control over everything.

And if you sell a small number of digital products or a membership or a course and you plan to grow with it, that is also a good one. Blogging and content marketing are part of your strategy all around, and that is a big part of your business. Then Showit is definitely what you wanna consider.

And finally, a highly design experience is more important than any advanced e-commerce features that could come out of the box. So if you have those four things in your like, yeah, these are my must-haves. Go with Showit now, use Shopify. If you are running a purely product-based business with multiple items and variations, and you will never, ever want to focus too much on content marketing and blogging and creating pages and landing pages.

And yeah, if [00:09:00] you want to have that kind of thing, then no. If you need a robust inventory management, payment processing, shipping automation. Shopify is great. If you want like a true e-commerce powerhouse, it’s just gonna scale with your business. If you don’t need the flexibility of a fully custom design and are happy working with the structured templates, then that’s for you.

But I will say even with that, I’ve had clients that are purely e-commerce, but they wanted the flexibility of having more design like control to not be boxed in a theme that they can just look. Kind of similar to others because obviously if they’re not having a designer help them, or a developer that’s gonna be editing the liquid code from Shopify, then it’s just another theme that you are putting in your colors, your fonts, and your images into to create the actual shop that you want.

So I feel like Shopify is great when you are starting out because it is very boxed and it tells you, [00:10:00] put this here, put this here, put this here. Start selling. But if. Content marketing. If selling services, if putting landing pages out there is important to you, then you’re gonna start feeling extremely limited with Shopify.

And I’ve had clients that we’ve moved from Shopify because they were already boxed in and they weren’t even selling that well because they can’t use their site as they want it to. So both of them have their pros and cons but I’ve seen. The frustration from some people coming in from Shopify and we move them on to Showit.

We use WooCommerce most likely because if they’re coming in from Shopify, that means that their databases were already kind of robust and we make the most out of it by moving them into a system that will potentially just like grow with them the same way. So the one factor people overlook your long-term business model.

And that sounds [00:11:00] like it has nothing to do with it, but it is the make it or break it for your shop. If you see yourself scaling a shop with hundreds of SKUs, Shopify’s a no-brainer, whatnot. But you still need to think, how am I building this brand? If you’re building a brand where storytelling services and high-end aesthetics matter, Showit gives you a brand forward advantage, honestly, and the kicker.

You can actually combine the best of both worlds because it can. Many business owners build their main site on Showit and then link out two Shopify Power stores for their shop pages. That is absolutely valid. It just gives you the Showit design freedom whilst you’re getting the Shopify’s e-commerce power.

But if you don’t wanna be running two shops or two sites in one, then I would highly suggest that you consider having Showit. With a, an advanced level for your blog so that you can get plugins on the backend of Showit for the WordPress site and use something like WooCommerce, which is also built just [00:12:00] for e-commerce, and it just functions the same way as the Showit blog.

It uses the WordPress database as the actual, like saving area of everything. And you use Showit as a theme builder, and you have the total creative control that we all love. So. Now, you know, there’s no one size fits all answer, I don’t believe in cookie cutters, and it’s all about your business goals, how you sell, what you.

What kind of experience you really want to create for your audience and your customers. But if you’re still unsure, I need some guidance, let’s chat. Hit me up. You know that that is kind of like where my nerdy brain goes to. And if you’re considering setting up a shop on Showit, I wanna make sure that you’re doing it right.

Let’s connect. I do have a course for it. Working with WooCommerce and Showit, but of course, it’s one of my most loved kind of projects that I do one-on-one with my clients. So you can check out my website at Penguin Designing dot com. And if you love this episode, do me a favor, subscribe. Leave a review, and share it with a friend who needs to hear this.