There has never been a time when there were so many site builders present on the market today. Among those there is a number of key players who pathed their way to market share through long time.  Squarespace templates are on the market since 2006 and have been evolving ever since.  But are they really that good to be picked from huge numbers of other site builders’ products.

Before going any further we need to understand the core evolvement of site builder platforms.

Each site builder poses itself as a tool for certain profile activity. For example, Wix used to offer its site building tools primarily for artists. Showit performance was mainly aimed at photographers and artisans.

Shopify e-store builder was created and still exists solely as an e-commerce platform.  It is a really single well-known platform that incorporated itself solely around e-commerce.

Other site builders started to move in every direct. Wix, for example, evolved into multifunctional site builder that can fit the needs of customers from almost any profile.

Showit being a robust photographer templated builder, started to change its focus towards niche e-commerce stores. Stores that are selling limited quantity of quality goods.

So did the Squarespace. Being created as a platform exclusively for on-line commerce, Squarespace gradually evolved into a comprehensive site builder tool.  A tool that can help almost anybody.

Site builder’s evolvement.

When we are talking about evolvement of established site builders, we can see that most of them have grown immensely and became more versatile. However, if we would have a closer look there are major differences in between.

Let’s compare four well known site builders that are having biggest market share. They are:

Wix. Squarespace, Showit, WordPress and Shopify. They all been established long ago and undergone lots of transformations. At the same time the type of transformation is different. 

Wix.

For example, Wix, initially built for artist, now offers versatile profiles for almost any kind of profession. Lots of features such as e-commerce and scheduling were added to the templates.

Apart from that Wix made big improvements in user interface.

Now it became as easy to build complex template with many features integration as it was to build a simple business card type website not long ago.

Showit.

 Showit is another example of relatively low transformation. Platform is solely built on wordpress and allows you to add features manually or inject code. Its evolvement was mostly gone around simplifying the work with drawing the website itself. As a result. Showit gives an unprecedented performance in outlook and design comparing to any other site builder.

At the same time, most of extra features are still available through code injections. When other site builders were working onto simplifying additions of extra features, Showit mainly concentrated on its design and outlook.

Shopify.

This site builder was initially created with one goal. To serve people who does sales online.

All its development were done around optimizing performance of the shopping card and check out proceedings.

At the same time, there not much done towards developing this platform towards flexibility and availability for wider range of internet profiles. What Shopify did was concentrating on more options for the sellers with little attention to the outlook.

Going along this road made Shopify an excellent tool for wholesale traders online. But it still has rigid design and almost no space for site lay out customization. To get more or less decent website you have to hire a professional programmer.

WordPress.

This system is a pioneer in site builders. Initially created as a tool to facilitate blog activity it quickly developed into a major platform for all kind of sites. WordPress allows side contractors to create features and plugins that can be used on its template.

As a result of such partnership WordPress has the highest number of possible features and options that can be integrated in the template.

However, it does not make the set up easier. Although today WordPress has lots of templates such as Kadence or Elementor that allow for easier and nicer graphic setup, it still has big limitations in terms of design and outlook.

WordPress is far more flexible than Shopify but gives you way less freedom than Wix or Squarespace.

Squarespace.

Initially Squarespace templates were set up only for e-commerce. It was the same way as Shopify.

However, contrary to Shopify, Squarespace paid lots of attention to general development of user interface.

We decided to stress our attention on Squarespace templates as today they offer web design flexibility as ones from Wix. At the same time their e-commerce part is still stronger as Squarespace templates were initially created to work for e-commerce. But in Squarespace 7.1 version they developed such a beautiful user interface that you can easily set up a nice website to start.

Premade templates.

Another reason for choosing a site builder is an actual template that you can get in a certain platform.  Wix and Squarespace templates have the biggest number of crafted presetup templates created by designers. Squarespace even has its own marketplace of templates.

 Crafted design templates not only have outstanding look, but are usually optimized for SEO campaign. What I mean by that is that professional website designers optimize picture and graphic that allow for better SEO performance.

SEO optimization.

Another important point in choosing the right template to start its chances for good search engine optimization. Today most of the site builders offer the meta tags set up to optimize websites for SEO.

However, it is also important to have pictures and lay out setup as long as loading speed to become a candidate for SEO purposes.

Final thoughts.

Squarespace templates to our point of view is an ideal place to start a website. It allows for relatively quick and easy installation of the template itself. The same with attaching e-commerce and other features. At the same time Squarespace has definite graphic advantage and convenient options and features addition.

In case you want to progress with your project you mainly have two options. Switch to Showit templates for better graphic or to Shopify if you want to start more items on wholesale basis.