Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
Attempting to choose if Elementor is the ideal page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who ought to utilize Elementor
- The distinct features that help Elementor stand apart from the competitors
- Whether you should use the complimentary variation or open up your wallet for the premium version
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
We’ve produced Astra, among the most popular styles for Elementor, as well as a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can probably think that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor evaluation. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
But understanding why we like Elementor and have actually developed products in the Elementor community is more important than just the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and interact in this review.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you ought to have everything that you require to make an informed decision about whether Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress site.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And 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 preview of precisely what your page will look like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop different material and design components to create the ideal design.
Generally, it transforms developing a beautiful, custom-made website design from something you require to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise preserved an excellent 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so most of those users are quite delighted with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page contractors that use a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, though, so what makes Elementor stand apart and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter this in more depth later on, but some of Elementor’s standout features are:
- Great deals of content elements – these are the foundation of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive design – the majority of people browse the web on mobile phones, so it is necessary that your designs look great on all gadgets. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get lots of choices to manage how it works.
- Design templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor includes numerous expertly developed templates so that you don’t need to start from scratch.
- Design alternatives – you get lots of in-depth style alternatives to make your design pixel-perfect without turning to custom-made CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get lots of helpful tools like right-click support, a fast discover tool, and more to assist you develop beautiful pages much faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro variation, you can design your whole WordPress style using Elementor (though we still suggest matching it with a quality style).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of vibrant material from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro variation, you can also create all kinds of popups utilizing the very same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce store, you can develop your WooCommerce store using Elementor and include products in your other styles. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, nearly anyone who’s utilizing WordPress.
A digital marketer might love Elementor for its capability to help them quickly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user may just be looking for a way to add some additional style to their blog site posts.
Let’s take a look at some particular scenarios:
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user trying to find a method to include some style to your article or develop a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll have the ability to use the visual interface to spin up some great-looking styles without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably have the ability to do it for free! More on whether you must use the totally free or paid version later on. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is excellent for digital online marketers and teams due to the fact that it consists of lots of marketing elements.
For instance, the Kind widget in Elementor Pro lets you produce all kinds of lead forms and link them to popular email marketing services. It likewise has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM.
You can also utilize the Popup Builder to create opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re selling service or products, 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 constructing sites for clients, Elementor is a perfect (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a versatile style like Astra to construct 100% customized customer sites without any code needed. You can likewise utilize Style Builder when needed, like creating the template for a custom post type and incorporating vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
Elementor Pricing
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally complimentary to use. There is likewise a professional variation with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Check out our article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get a comprehensive evaluation of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. It is restricted at specific points.
For example, with Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
The Elementor base variation provides the bare minimum you require to create and tailor your site. If you want to have the liberty of upgrading the whole site, Elementor Pro is the best option.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise include pop-ups, contact kinds, membership types, global widgets, and custom-made CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete site customization through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing product and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with advanced functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to show specific pop-ups on specific pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be integrated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can produce global widgets and use them site-wide
- Include customized CSS
- Release any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier prices plan based upon the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are dealing with a single site then the Vital Strategy would be best for you. If you are dealing with multiple websites, the Advanced strategy or above strategies would be more suitable.
All the strategies include an annual membership.
How Elementor Works: Visiting the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this useful section.
Similar to 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 straight into creating.
If you are simply starting out, we advise utilizing the default settings only. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you wish to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to start editing.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra theme and imported among its demonstration sites developed with Elementor. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard using that demonstration website.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel appears like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The workspace or the main canvas. This is where you edit and upgrade your website
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Modification history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview changes.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are entirely new to constructing websites, you need to understand the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor includes areas and columns.
Section. A section is basically 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 manage each column separately. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Areas consist of columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When creating 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 utilizing Elementor. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Step 2: Click on the “+” button to include a new area.
Action 3: Pick an area with a single column or numerous ones depending on your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
As soon as you enjoy with the positioning, you can adjust the finer information in the Material, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the options when learning to find the right styles for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
In some cases you may require to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not very various in this case either. In fact, it is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than going back to square one.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a brand-new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To rearrange a widget on the visual sneak peek, you can likewise use drag and drop. If you wish to edit text, simply click and type on the visual preview:
To produce the designs for your widgets, utilize areas and columns.
To personalize a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Utilize a comparable approach to tailor sections and columns:
As you alter an element’s settings, you’ll immediately see those changes reflected on the visual sneak peek.
Eight Incredible Features That Assist Elementor Stick Out
Next, let’s go through some of the important things that assist Elementor stand apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Practical Modifying Features for Faster Style
Elementor features some practical editing functions that assist you construct styles quicker.
Elementor comes with right-click assistance, which most other page home builders do not use.
You can right-click on any component to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It also includes a beneficial Navigator view that gives you an ordered list of all the content on your page, separated by areas and columns. You can utilize this to quickly open the settings for any component on your page. You can likewise relabel aspects to make them much easier to find: How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
And to assist you rapidly navigate in between your designs, it likewise consists of a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Huge Widget Choice for Design Versatility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely huge selection of widgets, which provides you a ton of versatility when building your styles.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that feature Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s likewise a big 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 everything from form stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With so many options, you can often find a widget that does exactly what you want it to.
3. Detailed Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor beats out a great deal of the competitors is its design options.
Elementor lets you do all the basics – you can change up colors, font styles, spacing, and so on.
However it likewise adds advanced options like:
Forming dividers
Custom-made placing
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom CSS for specific widgets
In other words, Elementor gives you more alternatives to produce an unique, efficient design.
4. Huge Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you do not want to construct your designs from scratch, Elementor includes a huge choice of design templates, divided into 2 categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is customize them to meet your needs. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Blocks – design templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to develop complete designs.
Just like widgets, you can also discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress style, it comes with heaps of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter website includes several Elementor templates that you can tailor as needed.
5. Flexible Type Widget and Combinations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget selection in general. But I think it’s worth singling out a particular widget:
The Form widget.
The Kind widget lets you produce custom-made kinds, total with as lots of fields as required. Where this widget gets really effective, particularly when it comes 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 option that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps available there), along with chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Material for Customized WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the ability to exceed posts and pages and develop your entire WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can build:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive templates
You might develop a custom-made 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 truly effective thing here is that you have the capability to bring in vibrant material from custom fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic function, you can develop genuinely customized sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Just one note – while this is definitely an effective feature, there are still some reasons why you may want to pick a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Theme 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 design both your single item pages and shop pages.
To assist you build your designs, you’ll get an array of devoted WooCommerce widgets for everything from item images to upsells.
In among our short articles, we spoke about how to produce an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style design – you can likewise use it to construct popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the exact same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a great deal of possibilities:
For instance, you could utilize the Kind widget to create email opt-in popups and connect them directly to your e-mail marketing service of choice.
Or, you might use the Login widget to produce a popup login form for your website. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and activate rules to control precisely where and when your popup appears:
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you’ve made it this far, there’s a great chance that you believe Elementor is right for your needs.
That leads to the next concern – can you utilize the free version at WordPress.org or should you buy Elementor Pro?
This is a crucial choice, so we really wrote an entire post on how to select between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply want to develop some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can probably get by with the free version.
With that being said, there’s a lot of worth in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, including the Type widget. The Kind widget is particularly effective for marketing pages.
- Style Builder. This lets you design your whole style and WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you develop popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the totally free version includes some design templates, you need Pro for full gain access to.
- More design alternatives. For example, you get access to custom positioning.
However, acquiring Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For example, if you desire more versatility to tailor your style, you do not need to acquire Elementor Pro. Rather, you might use a versatile style like Astra. Through its lots of Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to basically any usage, and it’s a lot easier than trying to create your own style from scratch. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Since Astra is built to pair with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to develop the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other theme components.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built site design templates constructed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished website using Astra and after that simply fine-tune it to match your needs utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you wish to add new widgets for style flexibility, you could purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is recently gaining popularity. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be useful for adding lovely widgets and styles to your website. Its flexible and user friendly functions have actually welcomed a number of addon plugins that let you produce amazing websites without having to code.
If you utilize too many plugins or have too many animations then it may make your whole website sluggish.
So the concern occurs if Elementor slows your website down even with no of these addons. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter design template websites. One of them was constructed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have higher speeds in general, but by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the sites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Beginner Templates
We hosted both sites on the same server and under various directory sites of the same domain and compared their performance 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 specific loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5 s to load totally while the website made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are enhancing for SEO, you understand how big of a difference that is!
In fact, the same website developed with Beaver Builder also carries out somewhat much better than the Elementor website.
Nevertheless, in terms of fully filled time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor website to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is an excellent tool, it does not imply that it is the right tool for you all the time.
For example, if you are constructing a focused landing page with the Elementor base variation, you may not have the ability to do it straight without incorporating another contact kind plugin or a payment gateway. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
In such a case you will need to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to think about a lighter plugin that loads much faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and numerous other consider mind, we have created this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most lightweight and fast website home builders since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it simpler than ever to produce web pages with ease.
The blocks consist of whatever you might expect, consisting of headings and subheadings along with lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each specific website page – all from one simple user interface!
Constructing a website in Gutenberg resembles developing a house utilizing Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the best order to come up with a gorgeous website. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
In regards to performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and delivers what it assures. It also does not have the various style elements that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who prefers performance over style, then Gutenberg is the right option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). However it does offer a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only constructs individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme offered if you desire one too! How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a total page style package that offers you with all the tools and parts to build any kind of website. It has components such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of style and performance with Elementor. 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 been created to be as fast, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s wise design system makes reusing blocks of material quick and basic by defining color pattern which will save time when designing new layouts. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
It has all the blocks and functions you ‘d get out of a powerful page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an alternative to quickly redirect visitors on any website map or Google Maps noting for their company place!
You can use SeedProd’s customized domain mapping feature which will save time when managing numerous customer landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity 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 have actually usage 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 favorable Elementor review – over four million WordPress websites utilize Elementor and Elementor has an incredible 4.7-star score on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you wish to experience what Elementor can provide for free:
Install the free Astra theme to produce a flexible base for your Elementor styles.
Install the complimentary Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin building. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra And Elementor.
Then, if you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is right for your needs.
Exists anything we missed in our Elementor review that would help you make your decision? Leave a comment and we’ll try to help you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro