Elementor Review: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
Trying to choose if Elementor is the ideal page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll assist you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who must utilize Elementor
- The distinct features that help Elementor stand apart from the competitors
- Whether you need to utilize the complimentary version or open up your wallet for the premium variation
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
We’ve created Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, in addition to a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can probably guess that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor review. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Comprehending why we like Elementor and have actually built products in the Elementor ecosystem is more essential than just the reality that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you need to have everything that you require to make an educated choice about whether or not Elementor is the ideal tool for your WordPress site.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not knowledgeable about these terms, this implies that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop different content and design elements to develop the perfect design.
Basically, it transforms creating a great-looking, customized web design from something you need to be a designer to do, to something that anyone can do. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over 4 million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also preserved an impressive 4.7-star ranking (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so most of those users are quite happy with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page home builders that offer a visual, drag-and-drop interface, however, so what makes Elementor stand apart and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth later on, but a few of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content aspects – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive design – most people search the web on mobile phones, so it’s important that your designs look excellent on all gadgets. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get great deals of choices to manage how it works.
- Design templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor comes with numerous expertly designed design templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Style choices – you get lots of comprehensive style choices to make your design pixel-perfect without resorting to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get lots of helpful tools like right-click assistance, a quick find tool, and more to assist you construct great-looking pages faster.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro version, you can develop your whole WordPress theme using Elementor (though we still suggest pairing it with a quality style).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of dynamic material from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can also develop all types of popups utilizing the very same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce shop, you can develop your WooCommerce store using Elementor and include products in your other styles. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s utilizing WordPress.
A digital online marketer may like Elementor for its capability to help them quickly develop landing pages and popups, while a casual user might just be looking for a method to include some additional flair to their blog posts.
Let’s look at some specific situations:
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user searching for a way to include some style to your blog posts or construct a great-looking homepage, Elementor is best for you.
You’ll have the ability to utilize 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 free of charge! More on whether you need to utilize the totally free or paid variation later. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is fantastic for digital marketers and groups due to the fact that it includes lots of marketing components.
The Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you develop all types of lead types and link them to popular email marketing services. It also has a Zapier combination, which lets you link 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 selling products or services, you can use WooCommerce Builder to create your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is likewise an exceptional service for building WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re constructing websites for clients, Elementor is a perfect (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible theme like Astra to build 100% customized customer websites with no code required. You can likewise utilize Style Builder when needed, like developing the design template for a custom post type and incorporating vibrant information from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
Elementor Rates
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base variation of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely complimentary to use. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more features.
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 sites. Nevertheless, it is restricted at certain points.
With Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or item pages. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
The Elementor base version delivers the bare minimum you need to create and personalize your website. However if you want to have the flexibility of upgrading the entire website, Elementor Pro is the best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise add pop-ups, contact forms, subscription types, international widgets, and customized 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
- Complete site personalization through Style Builder. This lets you alter the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing item and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with advanced features like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to display particular pop-ups on specific pages
- Visual Type Builder that can be integrated with popular email marketing tools
- You can create international widgets and use them site-wide
- Add customized CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget practically anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Pricing
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier rates strategy based upon the number of licenses you want.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Essential Strategy would be best for you. If you are working on numerous websites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be better.
All the strategies feature a yearly subscription.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How Elementor Works: Visiting the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical section.
Much like any other plugin, you have to set up and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to tailor Elementor settings or dive directly into developing.
If you are simply starting out, we recommend using the default settings only. Head over to pages and open among the pages that you wish to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin modifying.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra theme and imported among its demo websites constructed with Elementor. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard utilizing that demonstration website.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard appears like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The workspace or the primary canvas. This is where you edit and revamp your website
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Revision history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview modifications.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are entirely brand-new to developing sites, you need to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Section. A section is essentially a row. You can add a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside sections.
Column. A column divides an area into different columns. You can then control each column individually. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Areas consist of columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration revealing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
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 develop a page from scratch using Elementor. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click on the “+” button to add a new section.
Step 3: Select a section with a single column or several ones depending upon your needs.
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 adjust the finer information in the Content, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the choices when finding out to find the best designs for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you might need to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not very various in this case either. It is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a brand-new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the.
To rearrange a widget on the visual preview, you can also use drag and drop. If you wish to modify text, just click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To develop the layouts for your widgets, utilize sections and columns.
To customize a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Use a similar approach to customize areas and columns:
As you alter an aspect’s settings, you’ll instantly see those modifications reflected on the visual preview.
Eight Incredible Features That Help Elementor Stand Apart
Next, let’s go through a few of the things that help Elementor stand out from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Convenient Modifying Functions for Faster Style
Elementor comes with some hassle-free modifying features that assist you build designs quicker.
Elementor comes with right-click support, which most other page contractors do not use.
You can right-click on any component to replicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It likewise features a helpful Navigator view that offers you a purchased list of all the content on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can use this to quickly open the settings for any component on your page. You can likewise rename elements to make them easier to discover: How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
And to help you rapidly browse in between your styles, it also consists of a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you have actually developed with Elementor by searching for it by name:
2. Huge Widget Selection for Design Versatility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely massive choice of widgets, which gives you a lots of versatility when building your styles.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s likewise a substantial selection of widgets from third-party designers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor includes another 36+ new widgets that you can utilize in your styles, covering everything from type stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With a lot of options, you can often 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 great deal of the competition is its style alternatives.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, typefaces, spacing, and so on.
However it also includes advanced options like:
Shape dividers
Custom 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, effective style.
4. Huge Template Choice to Save You Time
If you don’t want to build your designs from scratch, Elementor includes a huge selection of design templates, divided into two categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is personalize them to meet your requirements. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Blocks – templates for specific parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to construct total styles.
Just like widgets, you can also discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress style, it features stacks of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter site includes numerous Elementor templates that you can customize as required.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Combinations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget selection in general. I believe it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Form widget.
The Kind widget lets you produce custom-made kinds, total with as many fields as needed. Where this widget gets truly powerful, specifically when it comes to marketing implementations, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it approximately popular e-mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s also a Webhook option that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps offered there), along with chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you acquire the capability to go beyond posts and pages and create your whole WordPress theme with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
You might produce a custom-made post type and then use Elementor to create the design template for that post type, rather than messing around with theme template files straight.
The truly powerful thing here is that you have the capability to generate dynamic material from customized fields that you develop with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can develop really custom-made sites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile content management system. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Simply one note – while this is definitely a powerful feature, there are still some reasons that you might wish to pick a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom-made eCommerce Styles
If you’re developing an eCommerce shop, you can also use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to develop both your single product pages and shop pages.
To help you build your designs, you’ll get an array of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for everything from product images to upsells.
In one of our posts, we talked about how to create an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style 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 great deal of possibilities:
For example, you could utilize the Type widget to create email opt-in popups and link them directly to your e-mail marketing service of choice.
Or, you might use the Login widget to create a popup login form for your site. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a range of targeting and set off rules to manage exactly where and when your popup appears:
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a great chance that you believe Elementor is right for your requirements.
That causes the next concern – can you use the free variation at WordPress.org or should you purchase Elementor Pro?
This is an essential decision, so we actually composed an entire post on how to select in between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply wish to develop some posts/pages or basic landing pages, you can most likely manage with the complimentary variation.
With that being stated, there’s a lot of value in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, including the Kind widget. The Form widget is especially powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you develop your entire theme and WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you build popups using Elementor.
- More design templates. While the totally free version includes some design templates, you need Pro for full gain access to.
- More design choices. You get access to custom positioning.
Purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For instance, if you want more flexibility to tailor your theme, you do not require to buy Elementor Pro. Rather, you could use a flexible theme like Astra. Through its numerous Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to pretty much any usage, and it’s a lot simpler than trying to create your own style from scratch. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
You can build your header and footer using Astra. Then, since Astra is developed to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to develop the content that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style components.
Astra likewise consists of tons of pre-built website design templates built with Elementor. You can import an already-finished site utilizing Astra and then just tweak it to match your needs using Elementor.
Or, if you want to include brand-new widgets for design versatility, you might purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is just recently acquiring popularity. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be helpful for adding beautiful widgets and styles to your website. Its versatile and user friendly features have welcomed a number of addon plugins that let you produce unbelievable websites without having to code.
If you use too many plugins or have too many animations then it may make your whole website slow.
The concern arises if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
To learn, we compare two of our starter design template sites. Among them was constructed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have greater speeds in general, but by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the websites for you to take a look at.
- Gutenberg site from Beginner Templates
- Elementor site from Beginner Templates
We hosted both websites on the very same server and under different directories of the exact same domain name 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 site.
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 enhancing for SEO, you understand how huge of a difference that is!
The very same website constructed with Beaver Builder also performs somewhat better than the Elementor site.
Nevertheless, in regards to totally packed time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Although Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not mean that it is the ideal tool for you all the time.
For example, if you are developing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base variation, you may not be able to do it straight without integrating another contact form plugin or a payment gateway. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
In such a case you will require to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to consider a lighter plugin that loads faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and many other consider mind, we have actually produced this list of Elementor options that can help you out.
How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most light-weight and quick website contractors since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to produce web pages 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 individual site page – all from one easy user interface!
Building a site in Gutenberg resembles building a house utilizing Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a lovely website. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
In terms of efficiency. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and delivers what it guarantees. Nevertheless, it likewise lacks the various design components that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who prefers performance over design, then Gutenberg is the ideal option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as flashy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). It does offer a steady and consistent experience with its core plugin that only constructs specific pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Style offered if you want one too! How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a total page style bundle that provides you with all the tools and parts to build any sort of website. It has aspects such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact kinds, testimonials, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in regards to design and efficiency 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 developed to be as quick, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart design system makes recycling blocks of material quick and easy by defining color pattern which will save time when developing new layouts. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d expect from a powerful page Builder such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers. It likewise consists of contact pages with an alternative to easily redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps noting for their company place!
You can use SeedProd’s custom-made domain mapping function which will conserve time when handling several client landing pages in WordPress while still keeping branding connection throughout platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, our company believe that Elementor is among the best WordPress page home builders out there, which is why we’ve usage Astra, one of the most popular styles 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 an amazing 4.7-star score on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can provide free of charge:
Set up the free Astra style to create a versatile base for your Elementor designs.
Set up the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin building. How To Build WordPress Website With Astra & Elementor.
If you like what you see, believe about whether Elementor Pro is best for your requirements.
Exists anything we missed out on in our Elementor review that would help you make your choice? Leave a remark and we’ll attempt to help you decide.