Elementor Review: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
Trying to decide if Elementor is the right page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll assist you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who need to utilize Elementor
- The special features that assist Elementor stand apart from the competitors
- Whether you should utilize the free variation or open up your wallet for the premium version
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
We’ve developed Astra, among the most popular themes for Elementor, as well as a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can most likely guess that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a positive Elementor review. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
But understanding why we like Elementor and have built products in the Elementor community is more vital than just the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you ought to have whatever that you need to make an informed choice about whether or not Elementor is the ideal tool for your WordPress site.
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not familiar with these terms, this indicates that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will look like to visitors as you’re developing it.
- Drag and drop different content and design elements to develop the best design.
Basically, it transforms developing a great-looking, customized web design from something you require to be a developer to do, to something that anyone can do. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Elementor is now actively used by over four million WordPress sites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise kept an outstanding 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so the majority of those users are quite delighted with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page home builders that offer a visual, drag-and-drop interface, though, so what makes Elementor stand out and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth later on, however some of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content elements – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive style – many people browse the web on mobile phones, so it is necessary that your designs look excellent on all devices. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get lots of alternatives to manage how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor comes with hundreds of professionally developed templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Style alternatives – you get lots of comprehensive style choices to make your style pixel-perfect without resorting to custom-made CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get lots of useful tools like right-click support, a quick discover tool, and more to help you develop great-looking pages faster.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro variation, you can develop your whole WordPress theme utilizing Elementor (though we still advise combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic material – you can consist of vibrant content from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro variation, you can likewise design all kinds of popups utilizing the exact same visual, drag-and-drop user interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re developing an eCommerce shop, you can create your WooCommerce store using Elementor and include items in your other styles. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, nearly anyone who’s utilizing WordPress.
For instance, a digital marketer might enjoy Elementor for its ability to help them rapidly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be trying to find a method to include some additional style to their post.
Let’s look at some specific situations:
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user searching for a way to add some style to your article or develop a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll have the ability to use the visual user interface to spin up some beautiful designs without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably have the ability to do it for free! More on whether you should use the complimentary or paid version later. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is excellent for digital online marketers and teams since it consists of tons of marketing aspects.
For example, the Form widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all kinds of lead types and link them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM.
You can likewise use the Popup Builder to produce opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re offering products or services, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
Finally, the core Elementor plugin itself is also an excellent option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re building sites for customers, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) option.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible style like Astra to develop 100% custom customer sites with no code needed. You can also utilize Style Builder when needed, like designing the design template for a custom post type and including dynamic data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base variation of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally complimentary to use. There is also a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
Have a look at our short article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get a detailed review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. It is limited at certain points.
With Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
The Elementor base version delivers the bare minimum you need to develop and tailor your website. However if you wish to have the liberty of upgrading the whole website, Elementor Pro is the very best option.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise include pop-ups, contact types, membership kinds, worldwide widgets, and custom-made CSS.
Here is a list of extra functions that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete website customization through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing item and classification pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with innovative functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to show certain pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Type Builder that can be incorporated with popular email marketing tools
- You can develop worldwide widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Include customized CSS
- Release any Elementor widget basically anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Pricing
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing plan based upon the number of licenses you want.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Vital Plan would be best for you. If you are dealing with multiple websites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be better.
All the plans feature a yearly subscription.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How Elementor Works: Exploring the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical area.
Just like any other plugin, you have to install and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to personalize Elementor settings or dive directly into creating.
If you are just starting out, we advise utilizing the default settings just. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you want to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin modifying.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra theme and imported among its demonstration sites constructed with Elementor. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel using that demo site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel looks like.
Here’s the label of different parts numbered.
- The working area or the primary canvas. This is where you modify and revamp your site
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Modification history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are totally brand-new to building sites, you need to understand the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page constructed with Elementor includes sections and columns.
Section. A section is basically a row. You can add a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides a section into various columns. You can then manage each column separately. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
A page can have any variety of areas in it. Areas consist of columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration revealing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When designing a web page, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this section, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Step 2: Click the “+” button to add a brand-new area.
Step 3: Select a section with a single column or multiple ones depending on your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
When you more than happy with the placement, you can adjust the finer details in the Material, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the options when discovering to find the best styles for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you might need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not very different in this case either. In fact, it is a lot easier to modify an existing Elementor page than going back to square one.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the left.
To reorganize a widget on the visual preview, you can likewise use drag and drop. If you want to edit text, simply click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To produce the layouts for your widgets, use areas and columns.
To personalize a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Utilize a comparable technique to customize sections and columns:
As you alter a component’s settings, you’ll quickly see those changes reflected on the visual sneak peek.
Eight Awesome Functions That Help Elementor Stand Apart
Next, let’s go through a few of the things that assist Elementor stick out from other visual, drag-and-drop page contractors.
1. Practical Modifying Functions for Faster Design
Elementor comes with some hassle-free editing functions that assist you construct designs quicker.
For instance, Elementor comes with right-click support, which most other page contractors don’t use.
You can right-click on any element to duplicate it, copy and paste designs, and more:
It likewise features a beneficial Navigator view that gives you a bought list of all the material on your page, separated by areas and columns. You can use this to rapidly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can likewise rename components to make them simpler to find: Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
And to help you quickly navigate between your designs, it also consists of a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you’ve built with Elementor by searching for it by name:
2. Big Widget Selection for Design Flexibility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely massive selection of widgets, which offers you a lots of versatility when developing your designs.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s likewise a substantial choice of widgets from third-party designers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ new widgets that you can utilize in your styles, covering everything from type stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With numerous choices, you can almost always discover a widget that does precisely what you desire it to.
3. In-depth Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another location where Elementor beats out a lot of the competitors is its design choices.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, font styles, spacing, etc.
However it likewise includes sophisticated alternatives like:
Forming dividers
Custom placing
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom-made CSS for individual widgets
Simply put, Elementor offers you more alternatives to produce a special, reliable design.
4. Substantial Template Selection to Conserve You Time
If you do not wish to develop your designs from scratch, Elementor features a huge choice of design templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is personalize them to fulfill your needs. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Blocks – templates for specific parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to develop total designs.
Just like widgets, you can also find templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress theme, it features loads of pre-made starter templates developed with Elementor. Each starter website consists of several Elementor design templates that you can customize as needed.
5. Flexible Type Widget and Integrations
Above, I discussed Elementor’s widget choice in general. However I think it deserves singling out a particular widget:
The Form widget.
The Type widget lets you create custom forms, total with as many fields as needed. Where this widget gets truly effective, especially when it comes to marketing applications, is its built-in combinations.
You can hook it approximately popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook alternative that lets you connect to Zapier (and the thousands of apps offered there), in addition to chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Customized WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the ability to go beyond posts and pages and design your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
For instance, you might develop a customized post type and after that use Elementor to design the design template for that post type, instead of tampering style template files straight.
The actually powerful thing here is that you have the ability to bring in dynamic material from customized fields that you produce with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic function, you can construct truly custom-made sites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile content management system. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Simply one note – while this is definitely a powerful function, there are still some reasons why you might wish to pick a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you choose to utilize Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Designs
If you’re creating an eCommerce store, you can likewise use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll be able to create both your single product pages and shop pages.
To assist you build your designs, you’ll get a selection of devoted WooCommerce widgets for whatever from item images to upsells.
In among our articles, we talked about how to produce an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Lastly, Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style design – you can likewise utilize it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the exact same familiar Elementor user interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a great deal of possibilities:
You might use the Kind widget to produce email opt-in popups and link them straight to your email marketing service of option.
Or, you might use the Login widget to develop a popup login kind for your website. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a selection of targeting and set off rules to manage precisely where and when your popup appears:
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
Should You Utilize Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a likelihood that you think Elementor is right for your requirements.
That leads to the next question – can you utilize the free variation at WordPress.org or should you purchase Elementor Pro?
This is an essential choice, so we really wrote a whole post on how to pick in between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply wish to create some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can probably get by with the totally free version.
With that being stated, there’s a great deal of worth in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, including the Form widget. The Form widget is specifically effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your whole theme and WooCommerce shop using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the totally free variation consists of some design templates, you require Pro for full gain access to.
- More design options. You get access to customized positioning.
Nevertheless, acquiring Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
If you want more flexibility to personalize your style, you don’t need to buy Elementor Pro. Instead, you might use a flexible theme like Astra. Through its many Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to basically any usage, and it’s a lot simpler than trying to develop your own style from scratch. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer utilizing Astra. Then, because Astra is constructed to couple with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to develop the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style components.
Astra also includes lots of pre-built website design templates constructed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site utilizing Astra and then simply fine-tune it to match your requirements using Elementor.
Or, if you want to include brand-new widgets for design versatility, you might buy an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Decrease Your Site?
Now, this has been a concern that is just recently getting appeal. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for including beautiful widgets and styles to your site. Its versatile and easy-to-use features have actually invited a number of addon plugins that let you produce unbelievable sites without having to code.
If you utilize too lots of plugins or have too many animations then it might make your whole site slow.
The concern emerges if Elementor slows your website down even without any of these addons. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter design template sites. One of them was developed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have greater speeds in general, but by what degree?
Let’s learn.
Here are the sites for you to take a look at.
- Gutenberg site from Starter Templates
- Elementor website from Starter Templates
We hosted both sites on the very same server and under various directory sites of the exact same domain name and compared their efficiency in GT Metrix.
Here are the outcomes.
As you can see, the efficiency of the Gutenberg website is much faster than the Elementor website.
In regards to precise loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5 s to load completely while the website made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are optimizing for SEO, you know how huge of a distinction that is!
The exact same website built with Beaver Builder also performs somewhat better than the Elementor site.
Nevertheless, in regards to completely filled time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not imply that it is the right tool for you all the time.
For instance, if you are developing a focused landing page with the Elementor base version, you might not be able to do it straight without integrating another contact type plugin or a payment entrance. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
In such a case you will need to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you may want to think about a lighter plugin that loads much faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and numerous other consider mind, we have created this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Astra Theme WordPress Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most lightweight and quick site contractors because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it simpler than ever to develop web pages with ease.
The blocks include everything you may expect, consisting of headings and subheadings as well as lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each specific website page – all from one simple interface!
Developing a website in Gutenberg is like developing a house using Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a gorgeous site. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
In terms of performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and provides what it assures. Nevertheless, it likewise lacks the different design components that Elementor gives the table.
If you are somebody who prefers efficiency over style, then Gutenberg is the ideal option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). However it does offer a steady and constant experience with its core plugin that only builds private pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Theme readily available if you desire one too! Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a complete page style package that provides you with all the tools and elements to build any sort of website. It has aspects such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact kinds, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of style and efficiency with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as numerous addons developed for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has been created to be as quick, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s wise style system makes recycling blocks of material fast and easy by defining color schemes which will conserve time when developing brand-new designs. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d get out of a powerful page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an option to easily reroute visitors on any site map or Google Maps listing for their business area!
You can use SeedProd’s custom-made domain mapping feature which will conserve time when managing several client landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity across platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, our company believe that Elementor is one of the best WordPress page builders out there, which is why we have actually usage Astra, one of the most popular styles for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, among the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re likewise not alone in our favorable Elementor evaluation – over four million WordPress sites utilize Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can offer for free:
Set up the complimentary Astra style to create a flexible base for your Elementor designs.
Install the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. Astra Theme WordPress Elementor.
If you like what you see, believe about whether Elementor Pro is best for your needs.
Is there anything we missed out on in our Elementor evaluation that would assist you make your choice? Leave a comment and we’ll try to assist you choose.
Get Started with Elementor Pro