Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Elementor Portfolio Template
Trying to choose if Elementor is the best page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who need to use Elementor
- The special functions that help Elementor stick out from the competition
- Whether you must utilize the complimentary version or open up your wallet for the premium variation
Elementor Portfolio Template
We have actually created Astra, among the most popular themes for Elementor, along with a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can most likely guess that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor review. Elementor Portfolio Template.
But comprehending why we like Elementor and have developed products in the Elementor community is more vital than simply the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor review, you ought to have everything that you require to make an educated choice about whether or not Elementor is the best tool for your WordPress site.
Elementor Portfolio Template
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not acquainted with these terms, this indicates that you can:
- See a sneak peek of precisely what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop different material and design components to produce the perfect style.
Essentially, it transforms developing a beautiful, custom-made web design from something you require to be a designer to do, to something that anyone can do. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress websites, which makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise kept an outstanding 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so most of those users are pretty delighted with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page contractors that provide a visual, drag-and-drop interface, however, so what makes Elementor stick out and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth in the future, but some 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 design – many 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 options to manage how it works.
- Design templates – staring at a blank page is frightening! Elementor includes hundreds of expertly designed templates so that you don’t need to go back to square one.
- Design options – you get lots of comprehensive style alternatives to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get great deals of useful tools like right-click support, a fast discover tool, and more to assist you construct beautiful pages quicker.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro version, you can develop your entire WordPress style using Elementor (though we still advise pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic material – you can consist of vibrant content from customized fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise design all kinds of popups utilizing the exact same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re developing an eCommerce store, you can create your WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor and consist of items in your other styles. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s using WordPress.
A digital online marketer may like Elementor for its ability to assist them quickly create landing pages and popups, while a casual user might simply be looking for a way to add some extra flair to their blog site posts.
Let’s look at some particular circumstances:
Elementor Portfolio Template
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user trying to find a method to include some design to your article or construct a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll have the ability to use the visual interface to spin up some great-looking designs without needing any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it free of charge! More on whether you ought to use the free or paid version later. Elementor Portfolio Template.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is great for digital marketers and groups since it consists of lots of marketing aspects.
For instance, the Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you produce all types of lead kinds and link them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier combination, which lets you connect to your CRM, too.
You can also use the Popup Builder to create opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re offering services or products, you can use WooCommerce Builder to design your sales pages.
Finally, the core Elementor plugin itself is also an exceptional solution for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re constructing sites for clients, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a versatile theme like Astra to build 100% custom customer websites with no code required. You can likewise utilize Theme Builder when required, like developing the design template for a custom post type and incorporating vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Elementor Portfolio Template
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely totally free to utilize. There is likewise a pro version with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you want to get an in-depth review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. Nevertheless, it is limited at specific points.
For instance, with Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or item pages. Elementor Portfolio Template.
The Elementor base version provides the bare minimum you require to create and customize your site. But if you wish to have the flexibility of redesigning the whole website, Elementor Pro is the very best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise add pop-ups, contact forms, membership kinds, worldwide widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of extra features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total website customization through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for modifying product and category pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with advanced functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to display specific pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Form Builder that can be incorporated with popular email marketing tools
- You can produce worldwide widgets and use them site-wide
- Add custom CSS
- Release any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Rates
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing plan based upon the number of licenses you want.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Essential Plan would be best for you. If you are dealing with multiple websites, the Advanced strategy or above plans would be more suitable.
All the plans include a yearly subscription.
How Elementor Works: Touring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this useful section.
Much like any other plugin, you need to install and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to tailor Elementor settings or dive directly into creating.
If you are just starting, we recommend using the default settings only. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you wish to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin editing.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra theme and imported among its demonstration websites developed with Elementor. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel utilizing that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel looks like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The working area or the main canvas. This is where you modify and upgrade your website
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Revision history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview changes.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely brand-new to developing sites, you need to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page developed with Elementor includes sections and columns.
Section. An area is basically a row. You can add 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 control each column separately. Elementor Portfolio Template.
A page can have any variety of areas in it. Sections contain columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
Elementor Portfolio Template
How to Style a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When designing a web page, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this section, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch using Elementor. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click on the “+” button to include a brand-new section.
Step 3: Pick an area with a single column or several ones depending on your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
When you enjoy with the positioning, you can change the finer information in the Content, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can play around with the options when learning to find the best designs for you.
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you may require to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not extremely different in this case either. In fact, it is a lot easier to modify an existing Elementor page than going back to square one.
Here’s how you do it.
To 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 want to modify text, simply click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To produce the layouts 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 3 tabs:
Utilize a similar technique to tailor areas and columns:
As you alter an element’s settings, you’ll quickly see those changes reflected on the visual preview.
Eight Remarkable Features That Assist Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through some of the important things that assist Elementor stand out from other visual, drag-and-drop page contractors.
1. Hassle-free Modifying Features for Faster Design
Elementor features some practical modifying functions that assist you build styles quicker.
Elementor comes with right-click assistance, which most other page builders do not offer.
You can right-click on any element to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It also comes with a helpful Navigator view that gives you an ordered list of all the material on your page, separated by areas and columns. You can use this to quickly open the settings for any component on your page. You can also rename elements to make them easier to find: Elementor Portfolio Template.
And to help you quickly browse in between your designs, it likewise consists of a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you have actually constructed with Elementor by searching for it by name:
2. Big Widget Choice for Style Flexibility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely enormous selection of widgets, which gives you a ton of versatility when developing your styles.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s also a big choice of widgets from third-party designers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your designs, covering whatever from kind stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With a lot of choices, you can generally discover a widget that does exactly what you desire it to.
3. Comprehensive Design and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another location where Elementor beats out a lot of the competitors is its style options.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can switch up colors, fonts, spacing, and so on.
It likewise adds innovative choices like:
Forming dividers
Customized placing
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for specific widgets
Simply put, Elementor provides you more choices to develop a special, effective design.
4. Big Template Selection to Conserve You Time
If you don’t wish to develop your designs from scratch, Elementor comes with a big selection of templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is tailor them to satisfy your needs. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Blocks – templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build complete styles.
Similar to widgets, you can likewise discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress style, it features stacks of pre-made starter templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter site includes numerous Elementor templates that you can personalize as needed.
5. Flexible Type Widget and Integrations
Above, I pointed out Elementor’s widget choice in general. I believe it’s worth singling out a particular widget:
The Type widget.
The Form widget lets you produce custom kinds, total with as numerous fields as required. But where this widget gets actually effective, particularly when it pertains to marketing applications, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it up to popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s also a Webhook alternative that lets you connect to Zapier (and the thousands of apps available there), as well as chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you acquire the capability to surpass posts and pages and create your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single design templates
Archive design templates
You might develop a custom-made post type and then utilize Elementor to create the design template for that post type, rather than messing around with theme template files straight.
The really effective thing here is that you have the capability to bring in vibrant material from custom fields that you develop with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can build really customized websites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile material management system. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Simply one note – while this is definitely an effective feature, there are still some reasons you might wish to choose a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to utilize Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Customized eCommerce Styles
If you’re producing an eCommerce store, you can likewise apply Elementor Theme Builder to your store material with dedicated WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll be able to design both your single product pages and shop pages.
To help you develop your designs, you’ll get a range of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for whatever from item images to upsells.
In one of our articles, we spoke about how to develop an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Lastly, Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style design – you can also use 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 lot of possibilities:
For example, you might use the Kind widget to create email opt-in popups and link them directly to your email marketing service of option.
Or, you might utilize the Login widget to produce a popup login form for your website. Elementor Portfolio Template.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a selection of targeting and set off rules to manage exactly where and when your popup appears:
Elementor Portfolio Template
Should You Use 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 concern – can you utilize the free variation at WordPress.org or should you buy Elementor Pro?
This is an essential decision, so we really wrote a whole post on how to pick between Elementor complimentary vs Pro.
In general, if you simply want to develop some posts/pages or fundamental landing pages, you can most likely get by with the totally free variation.
With that being said, there’s a lot of worth in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, consisting of the Form widget. The Kind widget is especially powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your entire style and WooCommerce store using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups using Elementor.
- More design templates. While the totally free variation consists of some templates, you need Pro for complete gain access to.
- More design options. For instance, you get access to custom positioning.
However, purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
If you want more versatility to tailor your style, you don’t need to acquire Elementor Pro. Instead, you could utilize a flexible style like Astra. Through its lots of Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to basically any use, and it’s a lot easier than trying to design your own theme from scratch. Elementor Portfolio Template.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Then, due to the fact that Astra is developed to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to develop the content that goes “in between” your header, footer, and other theme components.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built website templates constructed with Elementor. You can import an already-finished site utilizing Astra and then simply modify it to match your needs using Elementor.
Or, if you want to add brand-new widgets for style flexibility, you could acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which adds 36+ brand-new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has been a question that is recently gaining appeal. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be helpful for adding gorgeous widgets and styles to your site. Its versatile and easy-to-use features have invited a variety of addon plugins that let you create unbelievable websites without needing to code.
If you use too many plugins or have too lots of animations then it might make your whole site sluggish.
The question arises if Elementor slows your website down even without any of these addons. Elementor Portfolio Template.
To discover, we compare 2 of our starter design template sites. One of them was developed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have greater speeds in general, however by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the sites for you to have a look at.
- Gutenberg site from Beginner Templates
- Elementor site from Starter Templates
We hosted both sites on the exact same server and under various directories of the exact same domain and compared their efficiency in GT Metrix.
Here are the outcomes.
As you can see, the efficiency of the Gutenberg website is much faster than the Elementor website.
In regards to specific loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5 s to load completely while the site made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are enhancing for SEO, you know how huge of a difference that is!
The very same site constructed with Beaver Builder likewise performs somewhat better than the Elementor site.
Nevertheless, in terms of totally filled time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not suggest that it is the right tool for you all the time.
For instance, if you are building a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base variation, you might not have the ability to do it straight without integrating another contact form plugin or a payment entrance. Elementor Portfolio Template.
In such a case you will require to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might wish to think about a lighter plugin that loads much faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and many other factors in mind, we have produced this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Elementor Portfolio Template
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most lightweight and fast site builders because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to create web pages with ease.
The blocks consist of everything you might expect, consisting of headings and subheadings in addition to lists of items like images or videos within the content location on each individual site page – all from one simple user interface!
Building a website in Gutenberg resembles constructing a home using Lego blocks. You organize the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a beautiful site. Elementor Portfolio Template.
In terms of performance. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and delivers what it promises. However, it likewise lacks the various design components that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses performance over design, then Gutenberg is the ideal option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). It does provide a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only develops individual pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style offered if you desire one too! Elementor Portfolio Template.
Beaver Builder is a complete page design package that provides you with all the tools and components to construct any type of website. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact kinds, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of design and efficiency with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as lots of 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 designed to be as quick, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart style system makes recycling blocks of content quick and basic by specifying color pattern which will save time when creating new layouts. Elementor Portfolio Template.
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 likewise includes contact pages with a choice to quickly redirect visitors on any website map or Google Maps listing for their company place!
You can use SeedProd’s custom domain mapping feature which will save time when managing multiple client landing pages in WordPress while still keeping 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’ve usage Astra, among 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 favorable Elementor review – over 4 million WordPress websites use Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star rating on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can provide totally free:
Install the totally free Astra theme to create a versatile base for your Elementor designs.
Set up the complimentary Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin structure. Elementor Portfolio Template.
Then, if you like what you see, consider 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 remark and we’ll try to assist you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro