Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
Trying to choose if Elementor is the best page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who should utilize Elementor
- The special features that assist Elementor stick out from the competition
- Whether you should utilize the complimentary version or open up your wallet for the premium variation
Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
We have actually developed Astra, among the most popular themes for Elementor, in addition to a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can probably guess that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor review. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
But understanding why we like Elementor and have constructed items in the Elementor ecosystem is more important than simply the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and communicate in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you need to have whatever that you require to make an educated decision about whether Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress site.
Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not familiar with these terms, this suggests that you can:
- See a sneak peek of precisely what your page will look like to visitors as you’re constructing it.
- Drag and drop different material and design components to produce the ideal style.
Generally, it transforms developing a great-looking, customized web design from something you require to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also preserved an outstanding 4.7-star score (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so the majority of those users are quite pleased with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page contractors that use a visual, drag-and-drop interface, however, so what makes Elementor stand apart and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll get into this in more depth later, but some of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content components – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive style – the majority of people search the web on smartphones, so it’s important that your designs look terrific on all gadgets. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get great deals of options to manage how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is frightening! Elementor features numerous professionally developed templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Style options – you get lots of in-depth design choices to make your style pixel-perfect without resorting to custom-made CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get great deals of helpful tools like right-click assistance, a fast discover tool, and more to help you develop beautiful pages much faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro version, you can design your whole WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still recommend pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic material – you can include vibrant content from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro variation, you can also design all types of popups using the same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re constructing an eCommerce shop, you can design your WooCommerce store using Elementor and consist of products in your other styles. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, nearly anyone who’s using WordPress.
For instance, a digital online marketer might enjoy Elementor for its capability to help them quickly create landing pages and popups, while a casual user may just be looking for a method to include some additional style to their article.
Let’s take a look at some particular circumstances:
Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user looking for a method to add some style to your article or develop a beautiful homepage, Elementor is perfect for you.
You’ll be able to utilize the visual user interface to spin up some great-looking styles without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it free of charge! More on whether you must utilize the complimentary or paid variation later. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is fantastic for digital marketers and groups due to the fact that it includes lots of marketing aspects.
The Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you produce all types of lead kinds and link them to popular email marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you connect to your CRM.
You can also use the Popup Builder to create opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re selling product and services, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to create your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an exceptional option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re developing sites for customers, Elementor is a perfect (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a versatile style like Astra to construct 100% customized client websites without any code needed. You can also utilize Theme Builder when needed, like designing the design template for a custom post type and integrating vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally totally free to use. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our short article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get a comprehensive review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all sites. It is restricted at certain points.
For instance, with Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
The Elementor base version provides the bare minimum you need to design and customize your website. If you desire to have the freedom of revamping the entire site, Elementor Pro is the finest option.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact kinds, subscription types, global widgets, and customized CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ additional widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total site customization through Theme Builder. This lets you alter the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing item and classification pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with sophisticated features like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to show certain pop-ups on specific pages
- Visual Form Builder that can be integrated with popular email marketing tools
- You can produce international widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Add custom CSS
- Release any Elementor widget basically anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Rates
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing plan based upon the number of licenses you desire.
If you are working with a single site then the Vital Strategy would be best for you. If you are working on numerous websites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be more suitable.
All the plans come with a yearly membership.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How Elementor Works: Touring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical area.
Just like any other plugin, you need to install and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either choose to personalize Elementor settings or dive directly into developing.
If you are just beginning, we advise using the default settings just. Head over to pages and open among the pages that you want to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to start editing.
For the sake of this demonstration, we set up the Astra style and imported among its demo websites developed with Elementor. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard utilizing that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel looks like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The workspace or the primary canvas. This is where you modify and revamp your website
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Revision history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are entirely new to developing sites, you need to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor consists of sections and columns.
Section. An area is basically a row. You can include a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides a section into different columns. You can then control each column individually. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
A page can have any variety of areas in it. Sections consist of columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
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How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When designing a websites, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this area, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Step 2: Click the “+” button to include a brand-new section.
Action 3: Select a section with a single column or numerous ones depending on your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
Once you are happy with the positioning, you can adjust the finer information in the Material, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can play around with the choices when discovering to find the right designs for you.
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you might need to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not really different in this case either. In fact, it is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To include a brand-new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the.
To reorganize a widget on the visual preview, you can also utilize drag and drop. If you wish to modify text, just click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To develop the layouts for your widgets, utilize areas and columns.
To tailor a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Utilize a comparable approach to tailor areas and columns:
As you alter an aspect’s settings, you’ll immediately see those modifications reviewed the visual sneak peek.
Eight Awesome Functions That Help Elementor Stand Apart
Next, let’s go through some of the important things that help Elementor stand apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page builders.
1. Hassle-free Modifying Functions for Faster Style
Elementor includes some practical modifying features that help you develop styles quicker.
For instance, Elementor includes right-click support, which most other page builders do not provide.
You can right-click on any aspect to duplicate it, copy and paste designs, and more:
It also includes a helpful Navigator view that offers you a bought list of all the material 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 rename elements to make them simpler to discover: Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
And to assist you rapidly 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. Big Widget Choice for Design Versatility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely enormous selection of widgets, which provides you a lots of versatility when constructing your designs.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that include Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s likewise a substantial choice of widgets from third-party developers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can utilize in your styles, covering whatever from form stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With a lot of choices, you can generally find a widget that does exactly what you want it to.
3. In-depth Style and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another location where Elementor vanquishes a lot of the competition is its design options.
Elementor lets you do all the basics – you can switch up colors, font styles, spacing, etc.
But it likewise adds advanced choices like:
Shape dividers
Customized positioning
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom-made CSS for individual widgets
Put simply, Elementor gives you more choices to develop a special, effective design.
4. Substantial Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you don’t wish to develop your styles from scratch, Elementor features a huge selection of templates, divided into two categories:
Pages – full-page design templates. All you do is tailor them to fulfill your requirements. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Blocks – templates for particular parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to develop total styles.
Similar to widgets, you can also discover templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress style, it features heaps of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter site consists of numerous Elementor templates that you can customize as needed.
5. Flexible Type Widget and Integrations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget choice in general. But I believe it deserves singling out a particular widget:
The Type widget.
The Form widget lets you create customized types, total with as numerous fields as needed. However where this widget gets really effective, particularly when it pertains to marketing applications, is its built-in combinations.
You can hook it as much as popular e-mail 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), as well as chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom-made WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the ability to surpass posts and pages and create your entire WordPress theme with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single design templates
Archive design templates
You might create a customized post type and then utilize Elementor to design the template for that post type, rather than messing around with theme template files directly.
The truly effective thing here is that you have the ability to generate vibrant material from custom fields that you develop with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can develop really custom sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Simply one note – while this is definitely a powerful function, there are still some reasons that you might want to select a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you choose to use Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Styles
If you’re producing an eCommerce store, you can also apply Elementor Theme Builder to your store material with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll be able to develop both your single product pages and go shopping pages.
To help you develop your styles, you’ll get a range of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for whatever from product images to upsells.
In one of our articles, we talked about how to develop an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than simply posts, pages, and style design – you can likewise use it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the very same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a great deal of possibilities:
For instance, you might use the Type widget to produce email opt-in popups and link them straight to your e-mail marketing service of option.
Or, you might use the Login widget to develop a popup login form for your website. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get an array of targeting and set off guidelines to manage exactly where and when your popup appears:
Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a likelihood that you believe Elementor is right for your needs.
That causes the next concern – can you utilize the free variation at WordPress.org or should you purchase Elementor Pro?
This is a crucial choice, so we in fact composed a whole post on how to pick between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply wish to develop some posts/pages or fundamental landing pages, you can probably manage with the totally free version.
With that being said, there’s a lot of worth in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ new widgets, including the Form widget. The Form widget is especially powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you create your whole theme and WooCommerce store utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you develop popups utilizing Elementor.
- More templates. While the totally free version includes some design templates, you require Pro for full gain access to.
- More style options. You get access to custom positioning.
Buying Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For instance, if you desire more flexibility to customize your theme, you don’t require to acquire Elementor Pro. Rather, you could utilize a versatile style like Astra. Through its numerous Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to basically any use, and it’s a lot easier than attempting to develop your own theme from scratch. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
You can build your header and footer using Astra. Then, since Astra is built to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to design the material that goes “in between” your header, footer, and other theme components.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built website design templates constructed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished website utilizing Astra and then simply modify it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you want to include new widgets for style versatility, you could acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ brand-new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has been a question that is just recently getting appeal. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for including gorgeous widgets and designs to your site. Its versatile and user friendly features have invited a number of addon plugins that let you produce unbelievable sites without needing to code.
If you utilize too numerous plugins or have too many animations then it may make your whole website slow.
So the question occurs if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter template sites. One of them was built with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have greater speeds in general, however by what degree?
Let’s learn.
Here are the sites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg site from Beginner Templates
- Elementor site from Starter Templates
We hosted both sites on the same server and under different directory sites of the very same domain name and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the performance of the Gutenberg site is much faster than the Elementor site.
In terms of precise loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5 s to load entirely while the site made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are optimizing for SEO, you understand how huge of a distinction that is!
The exact same site constructed with Beaver Builder likewise carries out slightly much better than the Elementor website.
However, in regards to totally packed time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is an excellent 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 variation, you might not be able to do it straight without incorporating another contact type plugin or a payment entrance. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
In such a case you will need to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to consider a lighter plugin that loads quicker without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and lots of other factors in mind, we have created this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.
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Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most light-weight and quick site builders due to the fact that it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it much easier than ever to create websites with ease.
The blocks consist of whatever you may anticipate, including headings and subheadings as well as lists of products like images or videos within the content area on each specific website page – all from one simple user interface!
Building a site in Gutenberg is like developing a house utilizing Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the right order to come up with a gorgeous website. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
In regards to efficiency. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and provides what it guarantees. Nevertheless, it likewise does not have the various style elements that Elementor gives the table.
If you are somebody who prefers performance over design, then Gutenberg is the ideal option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as flashy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). But it does provide a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only develops individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme offered if you desire one too! Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a total page design package that supplies you with all the tools and elements to construct any kind of site. It has components such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, reviews, and more all in one place.
It stands head to head in regards to style and efficiency with Elementor. Nevertheless, 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 actually been created to be as quickly, easy-to-use with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s clever style system makes recycling blocks of content quick and basic by specifying color design which will save time when designing brand-new layouts. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d get out of an effective page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It likewise consists of contact pages with a choice to quickly redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps noting for their organization place!
You can utilize SeedProd’s custom-made domain mapping function which will conserve time when managing numerous customer landing pages in WordPress while still preserving branding connection across platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we believe that Elementor is one of the very best WordPress page contractors out there, which is why we’ve usage Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, one of the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re likewise not alone in our positive Elementor evaluation – over four million WordPress websites utilize Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star rating on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you wish to experience what Elementor can use free of charge:
Install the totally free Astra style to produce a flexible base for your Elementor styles.
Install the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. Best Lightweight Theme For Elementor.
Then, if you like what you see, think of whether Elementor Pro is right for your requirements.
Is there anything we missed out on in our Elementor review that would assist you make your choice? Leave a remark and we’ll attempt to assist you decide.