Elementor Review: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
Trying to decide if Elementor is the best page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll assist you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who must use Elementor
- The distinct features that help Elementor stick out from the competition
- Whether you need to utilize the free version or open up your wallet for the premium version
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
We have actually developed Astra, among the most popular styles for Elementor, as well as 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 evaluation. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
But understanding why we like Elementor and have actually built products in the Elementor ecosystem is more important than simply the fact that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and communicate in this review.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you should have everything that you require to make an informed decision about whether Elementor is the ideal tool for your WordPress website.
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not knowledgeable about these terms, this means that you can:
- See a sneak peek of exactly what your page will look like to visitors as you’re developing it.
- Drag and drop different material and design aspects to produce the best design.
Essentially, it changes creating a beautiful, custom web design from something you require to be a developer to do, to something that anyone can do. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over 4 million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise maintained an outstanding 4.7-star ranking (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so the majority of those users are quite happy with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page contractors that offer a visual, drag-and-drop interface, though, so what makes Elementor stick out and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll get into this in more depth in the future, however a few of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content aspects – these are the foundation of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive style – the majority of people browse the web on smartphones, so it’s important that your styles look great on all devices. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get great deals of alternatives to manage how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is frightening! Elementor features hundreds of professionally created design templates so that you do not have to go back to square one.
- Design alternatives – you get tons of comprehensive style options to make your style pixel-perfect without resorting to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get lots of handy tools like right-click support, a fast find tool, and more to help you develop great-looking pages faster.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro variation, you can design your whole WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still recommend combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of vibrant material from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro variation, you can also develop all kinds of popups utilizing the same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re constructing an eCommerce shop, you can create your WooCommerce shop using Elementor and consist of items in your other styles. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, nearly anybody who’s utilizing WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer may love Elementor for its capability to help them quickly develop landing pages and popups, while a casual user may just be looking for a method to include some extra flair to their post.
Let’s take a look at some specific scenarios:
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user looking for a way to add some design to your post or construct a great-looking homepage, Elementor is perfect for you.
You’ll be able to utilize the visual user interface to spin up some beautiful styles without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it free of charge! More on whether you should use the totally free or paid variation later on. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is terrific for digital marketers and teams because it includes tons of marketing components.
The Kind widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all types of lead kinds and link them to popular email marketing services. It likewise has a Zapier integration, which lets you connect to your CRM.
You can also use the Popup Builder to produce opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re offering service or products, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
Lastly, the core Elementor plugin itself is also an excellent option for building WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re constructing websites for customers, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) option.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible style like Astra to build 100% custom-made client websites without any code required. You can likewise utilize Style Builder when needed, like developing the template for a custom-made post type and integrating dynamic information from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
Elementor Pricing
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is available in the WordPress Plugin repository is entirely free to use. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get an in-depth review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all sites. However, it is restricted at certain points.
With Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
The Elementor base variation provides the bare minimum you need to develop and personalize your site. However if you wish to have the freedom of revamping the entire site, Elementor Pro is the very best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise include pop-ups, contact forms, membership kinds, global widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total website personalization through Theme Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing product and classification pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with innovative features like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to show particular pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Form Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create international widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Include custom-made CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget practically anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Rates
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing strategy based on the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are dealing with a single site then the Necessary Plan would be best for you. If you are dealing with numerous websites, the Advanced strategy or above plans would be preferable.
All the strategies come with an annual subscription.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How Elementor Works: Visiting the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this useful section.
Much like any other plugin, you have to install and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either choose to tailor Elementor settings or dive directly into creating.
If you are simply starting, we recommend utilizing the default settings only. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you want to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to start modifying.
For the sake of this presentation, we installed the Astra style and imported one of its demonstration sites built with Elementor. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard utilizing that demo website.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard looks like.
Here’s the label of different parts numbered.
- The working area or the main canvas. This is where you edit and upgrade your site
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Modification history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview modifications.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely brand-new to building sites, you require to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Section. An area is essentially a row. You can include a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside sections.
Column. A column divides a section into different columns. You can then control each column individually. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Areas contain columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When creating a websites, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this area, we will cover how you can produce a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click on the “+” button to add a new area.
Action 3: Select an area with a single column or several ones depending upon your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
When you more than happy with the placement, you can change the finer information in the Material, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can play around with the options when learning to find the best styles for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you may need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not extremely different in this case either. It is much simpler to modify an existing Elementor page than beginning from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To include a new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the left.
To rearrange a widget on the visual preview, you can also utilize drag and drop. If you want to edit text, just click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To create 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 3 tabs:
Utilize a comparable approach to tailor areas and columns:
As you change an element’s settings, you’ll immediately see those changes assessed the visual preview.
8 Amazing Functions That Help Elementor Stand Apart
Next, let’s go through some of the things that help Elementor stand apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page contractors.
1. Convenient Editing Functions for Faster Design
Elementor features some hassle-free editing features that assist you develop styles quicker.
For instance, Elementor features right-click support, which most other page contractors don’t provide.
You can right-click on any element to replicate it, copy and paste designs, and more:
It also comes with a helpful Navigator view that offers you a purchased list of all the material on your page, broken up by areas and columns. You can utilize this to rapidly open the settings for any element on your page. You can also relabel aspects to make them simpler to discover: Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
And to assist you quickly navigate in between your styles, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by searching for it by name:
2. Big Widget Choice for Style Flexibility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely huge selection of widgets, which gives you a lots of versatility when developing your styles.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that feature Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s also a big selection of widgets from third-party developers.
For instance, Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your styles, covering everything from kind stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With so many choices, you can usually find a widget that does precisely what you desire it to.
3. Detailed Style and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Designs
Another area where Elementor beats out a lot of the competition is its style options.
Elementor lets you do all the fundamentals – you can change up colors, typefaces, spacing, etc.
But it also includes innovative options like:
Shape dividers
Custom-made placing
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom-made CSS for individual widgets
In other words, Elementor provides you more choices to develop a special, efficient style.
4. Substantial Template Selection to Save You Time
If you do not wish to develop your designs from scratch, Elementor includes a substantial choice of design templates, divided into 2 categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is customize them to fulfill your needs. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Blocks – design templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to construct total styles.
Just like widgets, you can likewise find templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress style, it features heaps of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter website includes multiple Elementor templates that you can personalize as needed.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Integrations
Above, I discussed Elementor’s widget choice in general. But I believe it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Form widget.
The Type widget lets you produce custom-made types, total with as lots of fields as needed. However where this widget gets actually powerful, particularly when it concerns marketing executions, is its built-in integrations.
You can hook it approximately popular e-mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook choice that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps offered there), as well as chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the capability to go beyond posts and pages and develop your entire WordPress theme with Elementor. That is, you can build:
Headers
Footers
Single design templates
Archive templates
You might develop a customized post type and then utilize Elementor to design the design template for that post type, rather than messing around with style template files directly.
The really powerful thing here is that you have the ability to generate vibrant material from customized fields that you develop with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic feature, you can develop truly customized sites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile material management system. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Simply one note – while this is certainly an effective feature, there are still some reasons you may wish to select a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to utilize Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Designs
If you’re producing an eCommerce store, you can also use Elementor Theme Builder to your store content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll be able to design both your single item pages and shop pages.
To help you construct your styles, you’ll get a selection of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for everything from product images to upsells.
In one of our short articles, we discussed how to create an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Functionality, and More
Lastly, Elementor Pro can do more than simply posts, pages, and theme style – you can likewise utilize it to construct 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 lot of possibilities:
You could utilize the Form widget to produce e-mail opt-in popups and connect them straight to your e-mail marketing service of choice.
Or, you could utilize the Login widget to produce a popup login form for your website. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and trigger rules to control precisely where and when your popup appears:
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
Should You Utilize Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a good chance that you think Elementor is right for your needs.
That results in the next concern – can you utilize the totally free variation at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is a crucial decision, so we in fact composed an entire post on how to pick in between Elementor complimentary vs Pro.
In general, if you just want to develop some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can probably get by with the free variation.
With that being stated, there’s a lot of worth in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, consisting of the Kind widget. The Form widget is specifically powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you develop your whole theme and WooCommerce store utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you develop popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the totally free variation consists of some templates, you need Pro for full gain access to.
- More design options. For instance, you get access to customized positioning.
Nevertheless, purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
For example, if you desire more versatility to customize your style, you do not require to buy Elementor Pro. Instead, you might utilize a versatile 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 theme from scratch. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Since Astra is developed to match with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to design the material that goes “in between” your header, footer, and other theme components.
Astra likewise includes tons of pre-built site design templates built with Elementor. You can import an already-finished site using Astra and then just fine-tune it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you want to include new widgets for design versatility, you could acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which adds 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is just recently acquiring appeal. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for including beautiful widgets and designs to your site. Its versatile and easy-to-use features have actually welcomed a number of addon plugins that let you produce unbelievable websites without needing to code.
Nevertheless, if you utilize too many plugins or have a lot of animations then it may make your whole website sluggish.
So the concern develops if Elementor slows your website down even with no of these addons. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
To learn, we compare two of our starter template sites. Among them was constructed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have higher speeds in general, however by what degree?
Let’s discover.
Here are the websites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg website from Starter Templates
- Elementor site from Beginner Templates
We hosted both websites on the exact same server and under different directories of the same domain and compared their efficiency in GT Metrix.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the performance of the Gutenberg website 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 enhancing for SEO, you understand how huge of a distinction that is!
In fact, the exact same site constructed with Beaver Builder likewise carries out somewhat better than the Elementor website.
In terms of completely packed time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor website to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Although Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not indicate that it is the best tool for you all the time.
If you are constructing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you might not be able to do it straight without incorporating another contact kind plugin or a payment gateway. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
In such a case you will require to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might wish to think about a lighter plugin that loads quicker without causing any delays in page loading.
With all these and many other consider mind, we have produced this list of Elementor options that can help you out.
Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most light-weight and quick website home builders since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it simpler than ever to develop websites with ease.
The blocks include whatever you may expect, consisting of headings and subheadings as well as lists of products like images or videos within the content area on each individual site page – all from one simple user interface!
Developing a website in Gutenberg is like developing a house using Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the best order to come up with a beautiful website. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
In regards to performance. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and provides what it assures. It likewise lacks the various design aspects that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who prefers performance over style, then Gutenberg is the right choice for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). It does provide a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only builds private pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style available if you desire one too! Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Beaver Builder is a complete page design package that supplies you with all the tools and elements to build any sort of website. It has components such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact types, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of design and efficiency with Elementor. However, Beaver Builder does not have as numerous addons built for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has actually been developed to be as quick, user friendly with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s clever design system makes recycling blocks of material quick and basic by specifying color pattern which will save time when creating brand-new designs. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
It has all the blocks and functions you ‘d get out of a powerful page Builder such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an option to quickly redirect visitors on any website map or Google Maps listing for their service location!
You can use SeedProd’s customized domain mapping feature which will conserve time when handling multiple customer landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding connection across platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we believe that Elementor is one of the best WordPress page contractors out there, which is why we have actually use Astra, among the most popular themes for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, one of the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re also not alone in our positive Elementor evaluation – over 4 million WordPress sites use Elementor and Elementor has a fantastic 4.7-star rating on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can offer for free:
Set up the totally free Astra style to create a versatile base for your Elementor styles.
Install the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. Can You Use Elementor Without A Theme.
Then, if you like what you see, consider whether Elementor Pro is right for your needs.
Is there anything we missed in our Elementor evaluation that would help you make your choice? Leave a comment and we’ll attempt to assist you decide.