Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
Attempting to decide if Elementor is the right page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll assist you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who should utilize Elementor
- The unique features that help Elementor stand out from the competitors
- Whether you must use the complimentary variation or open your wallet for the premium version
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
We have actually developed Astra, among the most popular themes 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 review. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
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But understanding why we like Elementor and have built products in the Elementor community is more vital than simply the fact that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you should have everything that you require to make an educated decision about whether Elementor is the ideal tool for your WordPress website.
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
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 precisely what your page will look like to visitors as you’re developing it.
- Drag and drop different content and style elements to develop the ideal style.
Essentially, it changes creating a beautiful, custom website design from something you need to be a designer to do, to something that anybody can do. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Elementor is now actively used by over four million WordPress sites, which makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise preserved an impressive 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so the majority of those users are pretty happy with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page contractors that provide a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, however, so what makes Elementor stand out and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll get into this in more depth later, however a few of Elementor’s standout features are:
- Great deals of content aspects – these are the foundation of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive design – many people search the web on mobile phones, so it is essential that your styles look excellent on all gadgets. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get lots of choices to control how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor includes hundreds of professionally designed design templates so that you do not have to start from scratch.
- Design options – you get lots of in-depth style alternatives to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get great deals of useful tools like right-click assistance, a quick find tool, and more to help you build beautiful pages much faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro variation, you can develop your whole WordPress theme utilizing Elementor (though we still advise pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic content – you can include vibrant content from customized fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can also develop all types of popups utilizing the same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce shop, you can develop your WooCommerce store using Elementor and consist of products in your other styles. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s using WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer might like Elementor for its capability to help them rapidly create landing pages and popups, while a casual user may just be trying to find a method to add some additional style to their post.
Let’s take a look at some particular situations:
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user searching for a method to include some design to your article or construct a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll be able to utilize the visual 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 should utilize the free or paid version later on. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is fantastic for digital online marketers and groups due to the fact that it consists of tons of marketing elements.
The Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you produce all types of lead kinds and connect them to popular email marketing services. It likewise has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM.
You can likewise utilize the Popup Builder to produce opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re selling product and services, you can use WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is likewise an outstanding service for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re developing websites for customers, Elementor is a best (and popular) option.
You can combine Elementor with a flexible theme like Astra to build 100% customized client sites without any code needed. You can also utilize Style Builder when needed, like designing the template for a custom post type and integrating vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
Elementor Rates
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is available in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely complimentary to use. There is also a pro variation with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our short article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you want to get a detailed evaluation of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all sites. It is restricted at particular points.
With Elementor Pro you can customize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
The Elementor base variation delivers the bare minimum you require to design and personalize your site. If you want to have the flexibility of upgrading the entire website, Elementor Pro is the finest option.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact kinds, membership types, worldwide widgets, and custom-made CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ additional widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete site personalization through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing product and category pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with sophisticated functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to display specific pop-ups on certain pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can develop global widgets and use them site-wide
- Include customized CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier rates plan based on the variety of licenses you want.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Necessary Strategy would be best for you. If you are dealing with numerous sites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be preferable.
All the plans come with an annual membership.
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How Elementor Works: Visiting the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor works with this practical section.
Just like any other plugin, you have to set up and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to customize Elementor settings or dive directly into developing.
If you are just starting, we advise utilizing the default settings just. Head over to pages and open among the pages that you wish to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to start modifying.
For the sake of this presentation, we installed the Astra style and imported among its demonstration websites developed with Elementor. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard using that demo website.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard looks like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The workspace or the primary canvas. This is where you edit and redesign your website
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Revision history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely new to building sites, you require to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page constructed with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Area. 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 various columns. You can then manage each column individually. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Areas contain columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When creating a websites, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing template. In this section, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch using Elementor. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
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 brand-new section.
Action 3: Pick a section 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 are happy with the placement, you can change the finer details in the Material, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the alternatives when finding out to find the right designs for you.
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How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
In some cases you might require to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not extremely various 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 new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To rearrange a widget on the visual sneak peek, you can also use drag and drop. If you want to edit text, just click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To create the designs for your widgets, use sections 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 technique to tailor sections and columns:
As you alter a component’s settings, you’ll quickly see those changes assessed the visual sneak peek.
8 Remarkable Features That Assist Elementor Stand Apart
Next, let’s go through a few of the things that help Elementor stick out from other visual, drag-and-drop page contractors.
1. Hassle-free Modifying Features for Faster Style
Elementor features some hassle-free editing features that help you build designs faster.
For instance, Elementor comes with right-click assistance, which most other page home builders do not use.
You can right-click on any element to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It likewise features a beneficial Navigator view that offers you a bought list of all the material on your page, separated by sections and columns. You can use this to rapidly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can likewise rename elements to make them much easier to find: Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
And to assist you quickly navigate between your styles, it also consists of a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you have actually constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Big Widget Selection for Style Flexibility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely enormous selection of widgets, which provides you a ton of flexibility when building your designs.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that feature Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s also a big choice of widgets from third-party developers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your styles, covering whatever from form stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With a lot of options, you can generally discover a widget that does exactly what you desire it to.
3. In-depth Design and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Designs
Another location where Elementor beats out a lot of the competition is its style options.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, fonts, spacing, and so on.
However it likewise adds sophisticated alternatives like:
Forming dividers
Custom-made positioning
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for private widgets
Simply put, Elementor provides you more options to create an unique, efficient design.
4. Huge Design Template Selection to Conserve You Time
If you don’t wish to develop your designs from scratch, Elementor features a substantial selection of design templates, divided into 2 categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is tailor them to satisfy your requirements. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Blocks – templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build total designs.
As with widgets, you can likewise discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress theme, it comes with stacks of pre-made starter templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter website includes several Elementor design templates that you can personalize as needed.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Combinations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget choice in general. But I think it deserves singling out a specific widget:
The Type widget.
The Kind widget lets you develop custom forms, complete with as many fields as needed. But where this widget gets truly powerful, particularly when it pertains to marketing implementations, is its built-in combinations.
You can hook it as much as popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s also a Webhook alternative that lets you link to Zapier (and the thousands of apps readily available there), along with chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom-made WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the capability to surpass posts and pages and design your entire WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
You could produce a custom-made post type and then use Elementor to design the design 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 bring in vibrant material from customized fields that you develop with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic function, you can construct truly custom-made websites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible material management system. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Simply one note – while this is definitely an effective feature, there are still some reasons you might want to choose a flexible Elementor theme like Astra even if you choose to utilize Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Customized eCommerce Designs
If you’re producing an eCommerce store, you can likewise use Elementor Style Builder to your store content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to develop both your single product pages and shop pages.
To assist you build your styles, you’ll get a variety of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for whatever from product images to upsells.
In among our short articles, we talked about how to develop an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Use, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and theme style – you can also use it to build 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:
For example, you could utilize the Form widget to develop email opt-in popups and connect them directly to your email marketing service of choice.
Or, you might utilize the Login widget to create a popup login form for your website. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a range of targeting and activate guidelines to control exactly where and when your popup appears:
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
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 causes the next concern – can you utilize the free version at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is an important decision, so we in fact composed a whole post on how to choose in between Elementor complimentary vs Pro.
In general, if you simply want to create some posts/pages or fundamental landing pages, you can probably manage with the complimentary variation.
With that being said, there’s a great deal of worth in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, consisting of the Form widget. The Form widget is particularly effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your entire style and WooCommerce store using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups utilizing Elementor.
- More templates. While the free version consists of some templates, you need Pro for complete gain access to.
- More design options. For instance, you get access to custom-made positioning.
However, purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
For example, if you desire more flexibility to customize your style, you don’t need to buy Elementor Pro. Rather, you could use a flexible theme like Astra. Through its lots of Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to pretty much any usage, and it’s a lot simpler than attempting to develop your own theme from scratch. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
You can construct your header and footer using Astra. Then, due to the fact that Astra is developed to pair with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to create the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other theme elements.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built site templates developed with Elementor. You can import an already-finished website using Astra and then just tweak it to match your needs utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you want to include new widgets for style flexibility, you might buy an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ brand-new Elementor widgets.
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Does Elementor Slow Down Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a question that is recently getting popularity. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for adding lovely widgets and styles to your website. Its versatile and easy-to-use features have welcomed a number of addon plugins that let you produce amazing sites without having to code.
However, if you use too many plugins or have too many animations then it might make your whole website slow.
The question develops if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
To learn, we compare 2 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, however by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the sites for you to have a look at.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Beginner Templates
We hosted both sites on the exact same server and under various directories of the very same domain and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the efficiency of the Gutenberg site is much faster than the Elementor website.
In terms of exact 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 difference that is!
The very same website built with Beaver Builder likewise carries out slightly much better than the Elementor website.
In terms of completely filled time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a terrific tool, it does not suggest that it is the right tool for you all the time.
For instance, if you are constructing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you may not have the ability to do it directly without incorporating another contact kind plugin or a payment gateway. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
In such a case you will need to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you may want to consider a lighter plugin that loads much faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and numerous other factors in mind, we have created this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Elementor Build Theme From Scratch
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most lightweight and fast site contractors because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it much easier than ever to create websites with ease.
The blocks consist of everything you may anticipate, consisting of headings and subheadings as well as lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each private website page – all from one simple interface!
Constructing a website in Gutenberg resembles building a house using Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the best order to come up with a stunning website. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
In regards to efficiency. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and delivers what it assures. It likewise does not have the various style components that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses performance over style, then Gutenberg is the best choice for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). It does provide a steady and constant experience with its core plugin that only builds individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme available if you desire one too! Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Beaver Builder is a complete page design package that supplies you with all the tools and elements to build any sort of site. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact types, reviews, and more all in one place.
It stands head to head in terms of design and efficiency with Elementor. Nevertheless, Beaver Builder does not have as numerous addons constructed for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has been designed to be as fast, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s wise design system makes recycling blocks of content fast and simple by defining color schemes which will conserve time when developing brand-new layouts. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
It has all the blocks and functions you ‘d expect from a powerful page Builder such as opt-in kinds, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with a choice to quickly reroute visitors on any website map or Google Maps noting for their organization place!
You can utilize SeedProd’s custom-made domain mapping feature which will save time when handling several 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 best WordPress page builders out there, which is why we have actually use Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, among the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re also not alone in our positive Elementor review – over 4 million WordPress sites utilize Elementor and Elementor has a fantastic 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can use free of charge:
Set up the totally free Astra style to develop a versatile base for your Elementor designs.
Install the complimentary Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin structure. Elementor Build Theme From Scratch.
Then, if you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is right for your requirements.
Exists anything we missed in our Elementor evaluation that would assist you make your choice? Leave a comment and we’ll try to help you decide.
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