Elementor Review: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
Trying to choose if Elementor is the ideal page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who must utilize Elementor
- The special functions that assist Elementor stand apart from the competition
- Whether you should use the complimentary version or open up your wallet for the premium version
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
We have actually produced Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, as well as a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can probably think that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor review. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
But understanding why we like Elementor and have actually developed items in the Elementor ecosystem is more crucial than simply the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and communicate in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor review, you ought to have everything that you require to make an educated decision about whether or not Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress website.
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not acquainted with these terms, this means that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop various content and style aspects to develop the perfect style.
Basically, it transforms developing a beautiful, customized website design from something you need to be a designer to do, to something that anybody can do. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also maintained a remarkable 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so the majority of those users are pretty pleased with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page contractors that provide a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, though, so what makes Elementor stand out and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth later, but a few of Elementor’s standout features are:
- Lots of content aspects – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive design – the majority of people search the web on smart devices, so it is essential that your styles look great on all gadgets. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get lots of alternatives to control how it works.
- Design templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor comes with hundreds of expertly developed design templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Design choices – you get lots of comprehensive style choices to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get lots of useful tools like right-click support, a fast find tool, and more to assist you construct beautiful pages faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro version, you can create your entire WordPress theme using Elementor (though we still recommend matching it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of vibrant content from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro variation, you can likewise develop all kinds of popups using the exact same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce store, you can create your WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor and include items in your other designs. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s using WordPress.
For instance, a digital online marketer may enjoy Elementor for its ability to help them quickly create landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be searching for a way to include some additional flair to their article.
Let’s look at some specific scenarios:
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user looking for a way to include some style to your article or build a great-looking homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll be able to use the visual user interface to spin up some great-looking designs without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it free of charge! More on whether you must utilize the totally free or paid variation later on. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is terrific for digital online marketers and groups due to the fact that it includes tons of marketing components.
For instance, the Form widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all types of lead forms and link them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM.
You can also use the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re offering services or products, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
Finally, the core Elementor plugin itself is also an outstanding option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re developing websites for customers, Elementor is a perfect (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible style like Astra to build 100% custom-made customer sites without any code needed. You can likewise use Theme Builder when needed, like designing the design template for a custom post type and including vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
Elementor Rates
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally totally free to utilize. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get a comprehensive evaluation of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. Nevertheless, it is limited at certain points.
For instance, with Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
The Elementor base variation delivers the bare minimum you require to develop and personalize your site. However if you want to have the freedom of redesigning the entire website, Elementor Pro is the very best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact kinds, membership types, global widgets, and custom-made CSS.
Here is a list of additional functions that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete website modification through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for modifying item and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with sophisticated functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to show certain pop-ups on specific pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create worldwide widgets and use them site-wide
- Include customized CSS
- Release any Elementor widget basically anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Pricing
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier rates plan based upon the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are working with a single site then the Vital Plan would be best for you. If you are working on multiple websites, the Advanced strategy or above strategies would be more suitable.
All the strategies come with an annual subscription.
How Elementor Works: Exploring the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor works with this practical area.
Much like any other plugin, you need to install and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to personalize Elementor settings or dive directly into creating.
If you are just beginning, we advise utilizing the default settings only. Head over to pages and open among the pages that you want to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to start modifying.
For the sake of this presentation, we set up the Astra theme and imported one of its demo sites constructed with Elementor. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel using that demo website.
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 redesign your site
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Revision history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview modifications.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely brand-new to building sites, you need to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Area. A section is essentially a row. You can include a background, alter its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides an area into different columns. You can then manage each column individually. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
A page can have any variety of sections in it. Sections include columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When developing a web page, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing template. In this area, we will cover how you can produce a page from scratch using Elementor. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click the “+” button to add a new area.
Action 3: Choose an area with a single column or numerous ones depending on your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
When you enjoy with the placement, you can adjust the finer details in the Content, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the options when learning to discover the right designs for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Style a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
In some cases you might need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not very different in this case either. It is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than beginning from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To reorganize a widget on the visual preview, you can also utilize drag and drop. If you wish to modify text, simply click and type on the visual preview:
To produce the layouts for your widgets, use areas and columns.
To customize a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Utilize a similar technique to personalize areas and columns:
As you alter an aspect’s settings, you’ll quickly see those changes reviewed the visual preview.
Eight Incredible Features That Help Elementor Stick Out
Next, let’s go through some of the things that help Elementor stand out from other visual, drag-and-drop page builders.
1. Practical Modifying Functions for Faster Design
Elementor includes some convenient editing functions that help you construct designs quicker.
Elementor comes with right-click assistance, which most other page contractors do not provide.
You can right-click on any component to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It also features a beneficial Navigator view that provides you a purchased list of all the content on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can utilize this to quickly open the settings for any element on your page. You can also relabel aspects to make them simpler to find: Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
And to help you quickly navigate in between your styles, it likewise consists of a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Huge Widget Choice for Design Versatility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely huge choice of widgets, which provides you a ton of flexibility when developing your styles.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that include Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s likewise a big choice of widgets from third-party developers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your styles, covering everything from type stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With a lot of alternatives, you can generally find a widget that does precisely what you want it to.
3. Comprehensive Design and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Designs
Another location where Elementor vanquishes a great deal of the competitors is its style choices.
Elementor lets you do all the basics – you can switch up colors, font styles, spacing, and so on.
It also includes advanced choices like:
Forming dividers
Custom positioning
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for specific widgets
In other words, Elementor offers you more choices to produce a special, efficient style.
4. Huge Template Choice to Save You Time
If you don’t want to construct your designs from scratch, Elementor includes a big choice of templates, divided into two categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is tailor them to fulfill your requirements. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Blocks – design templates for specific parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to construct complete styles.
Similar to widgets, you can also discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress style, it features stacks of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter site consists of multiple Elementor design templates that you can customize as needed.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Combinations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget choice in general. However I think it’s worth singling out a particular widget:
The Type widget.
The Form widget lets you develop customized types, total with as numerous fields as needed. Where this widget gets truly effective, specifically when it comes to marketing executions, is its built-in integrations.
You can hook it as much as popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook alternative that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps readily available there), in addition to chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you acquire the ability to exceed posts and pages and develop your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
For example, you could create a custom post type and then use Elementor to design the design template for that post type, instead of messing around with theme template files straight.
The really powerful thing here is that you have the ability to generate dynamic content from customized fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can build really custom-made sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible material management system. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Just one note – while this is definitely a powerful function, there are still some reasons you might want to select a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom-made eCommerce Styles
If you’re creating an eCommerce shop, you can likewise use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop material with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to create both your single item pages and shop pages.
To help you construct your designs, you’ll get a variety of devoted WooCommerce widgets for whatever from product images to upsells.
In among our short articles, we spoke about how to develop an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Functionality, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and theme style – you can also utilize it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the exact same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a great deal of possibilities:
For example, you could utilize the Form widget to develop email opt-in popups and link them straight to your e-mail marketing service of option.
Or, you could use the Login widget to create a popup login type for your website. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and set off rules to manage precisely where and when your popup appears:
Best Free WordPress Themes With 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 needs.
That results in the next question – can you utilize the complimentary variation at WordPress.org or should you buy Elementor Pro?
This is an essential choice, so we actually wrote a whole post on how to select in between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply wish to create some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can most likely get by with the free version.
With that being said, there’s a lot of worth in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ new widgets, including the Type widget. The Kind widget is particularly effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your entire theme and WooCommerce store using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the free variation consists of some templates, you need Pro for full gain access to.
- More design options. You get access to custom positioning.
Acquiring Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
If you desire more versatility to tailor your theme, you don’t need to purchase Elementor Pro. Rather, you could use a flexible theme like Astra. Through its numerous Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to pretty much any use, and it’s a lot simpler than attempting to create your own style from scratch. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
You can build your header and footer using Astra. Due to the fact that Astra is constructed to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to create the content that goes “in between” your header, footer, and other style components.
Astra also consists of lots of pre-built site design templates constructed with Elementor. You can import an already-finished website using Astra and then just modify it to match your needs using Elementor.
Or, if you want to add brand-new widgets for style versatility, you could acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has actually been a question that is recently gaining popularity. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be useful for including lovely widgets and designs to your website. Its versatile and user friendly functions have invited a number of addon plugins that let you create incredible sites without needing to code.
If you use too lots of plugins or have too many animations then it may make your whole website slow.
The question occurs if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
To find out, we compare two of our starter design template websites. Among them was built 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 check out.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Starter Templates
We hosted both websites on the exact same server and under different directory sites of the very same domain name and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the outcomes.
As you can see, the performance of the Gutenberg site is much faster than the Elementor website.
In terms of specific loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5 s to load totally while the website made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are optimizing for SEO, you understand how big of a distinction that is!
The same site built with Beaver Builder likewise performs somewhat better than the Elementor website.
Nevertheless, in terms of totally filled time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a great tool, it does not mean that it is the best tool for you all the time.
If you are building a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you may not be able to do it straight without incorporating another contact form plugin or a payment entrance. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
In such a case you will require to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to think about a lighter plugin that loads quicker without causing any hold-ups in page loading.
With all these and lots of other factors in mind, we have developed this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most lightweight and quick website contractors because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it much easier than ever to produce web pages with ease.
The blocks consist of whatever you may expect, consisting of headings and subheadings as well as lists of products like images or videos within the content location on each private website page – all from one easy interface!
Developing a site in Gutenberg is like developing a house using Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a lovely website. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
In regards to efficiency. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and provides what it guarantees. It likewise lacks the different design aspects that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses efficiency over design, then Gutenberg is the ideal choice for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). It does supply a stable and constant experience with its core plugin that only builds individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Style available if you want one too! Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a total page style package that provides you with all the tools and components to develop any type of site. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of design and performance with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as many addons developed for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has been developed to be as quickly, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart style system makes recycling blocks of content quick and easy by defining color design which will conserve time when designing brand-new layouts. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d anticipate from an effective page Builder such as opt-in kinds, social profiles, countdown timers. It also consists of contact pages with an alternative to quickly reroute visitors on any website map or Google Maps listing for their business area!
You can utilize SeedProd’s customized domain mapping feature which will save time when managing several client landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding connection throughout platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we 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 positive Elementor review – over four million WordPress websites utilize Elementor and Elementor has a fantastic 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can offer totally free:
Install the totally free Astra style to produce a versatile base for your Elementor styles.
Install the complimentary Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. Best Free WordPress Themes With Elementor.
If you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is right for your needs.
Is there anything we missed in our Elementor review that would assist you make your decision? Leave a remark and we’ll try to assist you choose.
Get Started with Elementor Pro