Showit vs WordPress (2026): Which Is Right for You?

Showit vs WordPress isn’t quite an either-or choice, because Showit’s blog runs on WordPress. Showit is a drag-and-drop website builder for creative businesses: you design every page visually, with no code, and Showit hosts it. If you want a blog, Showit adds a WordPress blog that it hosts and styles to match your design. Self-hosted WordPress, by contrast, runs your whole site (pages and blog) on hosting you choose, with full access to themes and plugins.

So the real question is how much design freedom you want versus how much control and room to grow. This comparison explains Showit’s plans and their limits, what WordPress costs, and who should pick which, using Showit’s pricing page and WordPress.org, checked on the date at the end.

Showit vs WordPress at a glance

Showit prices from its pricing page when this comparison was updated, in US dollars.

What Showit is

Showit is a website builder where you drag and drop text, images and shapes anywhere on the page, without code, starting from a template or a blank canvas. Showit hosts your site and includes HTTPS, and its plans start with a 14-day free trial that doesn’t need a credit card.

Its blog is different from the rest of the site: blog plans add a WordPress blog that Showit hosts, with its design built in Showit. That means your blog posts live in WordPress, while your pages live in Showit’s builder.

Showit plans and prices

Showit’s pricing page opens with yearly billing selected, which saves about 20%. The Advanced Blog plan includes a free migration of an existing WordPress or Squarespace blog (posts, images, comments and plugins, with a 4-day turnaround) and design backups every 10 minutes kept for 7 days. Showit also lists higher-traffic plans for bigger blogs.

What WordPress is and what it costs

WordPress is free, open-source software licensed under the GPL that runs millions of websites. You install it on web hosting, often in one click, and choose from thousands of themes and more than 75,000 free plugins for SEO, forms, shops, memberships and almost anything else.

Your main cost is hosting. Shared hosting starts at a few dollars a month for the first term; for example, Hostinger’s Premium plan is $2.99 a month on a 48-month term (renewing at $10.99), and IONOS web hosting is $4 a month for the first year, then $8. Managed WordPress hosting such as Kinsta costs more, from $35 a month. See cheap WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting to compare.

Design and ease of use

Showit’s strength is design. You place elements exactly where you want them, and you don’t need to understand themes, blocks or code. For photographers, designers and other creative businesses whose website is their portfolio, that freedom is the main reason to choose it.

WordPress design depends on your theme. The block editor lets you build pages visually, and page builders add drag-and-drop editing, but you work within the theme’s layout more than in Showit. In return, the same tools work across thousands of themes, and developers can change anything.

Blogging

On Showit, blogging needs a blog plan, and the blog itself is WordPress. On the Basic Starter Blog plan you can’t add your own plugins, only the pre-installed ones, and the plan covers up to 10,000 blog visits a month. The Advanced Blog plan allows custom WordPress plugins and up to 25,000 visits. So a growing blog on Showit eventually meets a traffic tier or a plugin limit.

On self-hosted WordPress, the blog and the pages are the same system, there’s no visit cap beyond your hosting plan, and every plugin is available. For a site where the blog is the main thing, that’s a big advantage.

SEO

Both can rank well; what you publish matters most. With WordPress you can install SEO plugins such as Rank Math or Yoast SEO for titles, descriptions, sitemaps and schema across the whole site. On Showit, the blog is WordPress, so blog-side SEO works similarly on the Advanced plan, while your Showit pages are managed in Showit’s own settings. The WordPress SEO tutorial covers the WordPress setup.

E-commerce and features

Showit’s Advanced Blog plan lets you extend the blog with WordPress plugins, including e-commerce plugins. For a full online shop, memberships or courses as the core of the site, self-hosted WordPress with plugins such as WooCommerce gives you more room. The best WordPress plugins guide lists the essentials.

Maintenance, backups and security

With Showit, the hosting is part of the plan. Showit runs the servers, includes HTTPS, and keeps backups for you: the Basic Starter Blog plan has daily blog backups kept for 30 days, and the Advanced Blog plan adds design backups every 10 minutes, kept for 7 days. You don’t install updates for the builder itself, which is a real time saver if you’d rather not think about the technical side.

With self-hosted WordPress, you’re responsible for keeping the site healthy. That means updating WordPress, your theme and your plugins, and making sure backups run. Many hosts handle part of this for you: managed WordPress hosts usually include automatic backups and updates, and on cheaper shared hosting a backup plugin and a security plugin cover the basics. It’s not hard, but it’s a job Showit takes off your plate.

Cost over a year

• Showit with a blog: $326 to $470 a year billed yearly ($408 to $588 paying monthly), with hosting included.
• Self-hosted WordPress: roughly $36 to $100 a year for the first term on budget shared hosting, more at renewal or on managed hosting, plus any paid themes or plugins.

Ownership and switching later

WordPress is open-source software licensed under the GPL, so you can download it, run it on any host and move your whole site (files and database) to another host whenever you like. Nobody can change your plan limits or prices except your hosting company, and you can switch hosts without rebuilding anything.

On Showit, your pages are built in Showit’s own editor and hosted by Showit, so they stay on Showit. The blog is the exception: because it’s WordPress, its posts can be exported and imported into a self-hosted WordPress site later. If you think you might outgrow a builder, that’s worth knowing before you design dozens of pages.

Pros and cons

Showit

• Pros: free-form drag-and-drop design without code; hosting, HTTPS and backups included; a WordPress blog without managing WordPress hosting; a 14-day free trial without a credit card.
• Cons: blog visits are capped by plan (10,000 or 25,000 a month); custom plugins only on the Advanced Blog plan; $27 to $49 a month is more than budget hosting; your design pages can’t move to another platform.

WordPress

• Pros: free software; more than 75,000 free plugins; no visit cap beyond your hosting plan; any way of earning, from ads and affiliate links to shops and memberships; you can move host at any time.
• Cons: you choose and pay for hosting separately; you look after updates and backups (or pay a host to); design freedom depends on your theme or a page builder.

How to get started with either

Showit: start the 14-day free trial, pick a template or a blank canvas, and design your pages. Choose a blog plan if you want a blog, and if you already have a WordPress or Squarespace blog, the Advanced Blog plan includes a free migration.

WordPress: buy hosting, install WordPress (most hosts do it in one click), choose a theme, then add a few essential plugins for SEO, backups and security. Start with the smallest hosting plan that fits; you can upgrade as traffic grows.

Showit vs WordPress: which should you choose?

• Choose Showit if your website is your portfolio, design freedom matters most, you don’t want to touch code or hosting, and your blog is secondary.
• Choose WordPress if the blog is the heart of the site, you want to grow traffic without plan tiers, need any plugin, or want to keep costs low.
• Already on Showit and outgrowing it? Your blog is already WordPress, so moving the blog to self-hosted WordPress is straightforward; the design pages need rebuilding in a WordPress theme.

Comparing other builders too? See Blogger vs WordPress.