Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – How To Create An Elementor Template
Attempting to decide if Elementor is the best page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll assist you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who must use Elementor
- The distinct functions that help Elementor stick out from the competitors
- Whether you should utilize the totally free variation or open your wallet for the premium variation
How To Create An Elementor Template
We have actually produced 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 positive Elementor review. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
However understanding why we like Elementor and have developed products in the Elementor environment is more crucial than simply the reality that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor review, you must have whatever that you need to make an informed choice about whether Elementor is the best tool for your WordPress website.
How To Create An Elementor Template
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not acquainted with these terms, this suggests that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re constructing it.
- Drag and drop different content and style components to create the best style.
Essentially, it changes creating a great-looking, customized website design from something you need to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress websites, which makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise preserved an impressive 4.7-star ranking (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so the majority of those users are quite happy with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page builders that provide a visual, drag-and-drop interface, though, so what makes Elementor stand apart and why is it so effective?
Well, we’ll enter this in more depth in the future, but a few of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content elements – these are the foundation of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive style – many people browse the web on mobile phones, so it is very important that your designs look fantastic on all devices. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get great deals of choices to control how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor includes numerous professionally developed templates so that you do not have to start from scratch.
- Design choices – you get tons of in-depth design choices to make your design pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get great deals of handy tools like right-click assistance, a quick find tool, and more to assist you develop great-looking pages quicker.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro version, you can create your entire WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still advise combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic material – you can include vibrant material from customized fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise create all types of popups using the exact same visual, drag-and-drop user interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re constructing an eCommerce store, you can design your WooCommerce store using Elementor and consist of items in your other designs. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, practically anyone who’s utilizing WordPress.
A digital online marketer might love Elementor for its ability to help them rapidly develop landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be looking for a method to include some additional flair to their blog site posts.
Let’s take a look at some particular scenarios:
How To Create An Elementor Template
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user looking for a method to add some design to your article or build a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll have the ability to utilize the visual interface to spin up some great-looking designs without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably have the ability to do it totally free! More on whether you need to utilize the complimentary or paid version later. How To Create An Elementor Template.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is terrific for digital marketers and groups because it consists of tons of marketing elements.
For instance, the Kind widget in Elementor Pro lets you produce all kinds of lead forms and connect them to popular e-mail marketing services. It likewise has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM.
You can also utilize the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re offering product and services, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to design your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an outstanding option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re constructing websites for clients, Elementor is a best (and popular) option.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible theme like Astra to develop 100% customized client websites without any code required. You can likewise use Style Builder when required, like creating the design template for a customized post type and including dynamic data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
How To Create An Elementor Template
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally free to use. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more features.
Check out 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 websites. Nevertheless, it is restricted at specific points.
For instance, with Elementor Pro you can customize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. How To Create An Elementor Template.
The Elementor base version delivers the bare minimum you need to develop and customize your site. However if you want to have the liberty of redesigning the whole website, Elementor Pro is the very best option.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact kinds, subscription types, worldwide widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of extra features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports including 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 item and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with innovative functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to show certain pop-ups on certain pages
- Visual Type Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create international widgets and use them site-wide
- Include custom CSS
- Release any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Rates
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing strategy based on the variety of licenses you want.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Vital Strategy would be best for you. If you are working on several sites, the Advanced plan or above plans would be more suitable.
All the plans include a yearly subscription.
How Elementor Works: Exploring the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this useful section.
Just like any other plugin, you need to set up and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either choose to customize Elementor settings or dive directly into developing.
If you are just beginning, we recommend using the default settings just. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you want to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin editing.
For the sake of this demonstration, we set up the Astra style and imported among its demonstration sites built with Elementor. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard utilizing that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel appears like.
Here’s the label of different parts numbered.
- The working area or the primary canvas. This is where you modify and redesign your website
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Global settings
- Modification history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely brand-new to constructing sites, you require to understand the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Area. An area is essentially a row. You can include a background, alter its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides a section into various columns. You can then control each column separately. How To Create An Elementor Template.
A page can have any number of sections in it. Sections include columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
How To Create An Elementor Template
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When developing a web page, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this area, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click the “+” button to add a brand-new section.
Action 3: Choose an area with a single column or multiple ones depending upon your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
As soon as you are happy with the positioning, you can adjust the finer details in the Material, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the choices when learning to discover the right designs for you.
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Often you may need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not really different in this case either. It is much easier to modify an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To include a new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the left.
To reorganize a widget on the visual sneak peek, you can likewise utilize drag and drop. If you want to edit text, simply click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To produce the layouts for your widgets, use sections 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 method to customize sections and columns:
As you alter an aspect’s settings, you’ll quickly see those modifications reviewed the visual sneak peek.
Eight Remarkable Features That Assist Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through a few of the things that help Elementor stick out from other visual, drag-and-drop page builders.
1. Practical Modifying Features for Faster Style
Elementor features some practical editing functions that help you build styles quicker.
For example, Elementor includes right-click assistance, which most other page home builders don’t provide.
You can right-click on any component to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It likewise comes with a beneficial Navigator view that provides you an ordered list of all the content on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can use this to rapidly open the settings for any element on your page. You can also relabel elements to make them easier to find: How To Create An Elementor Template.
And to assist you quickly navigate in between your styles, it also consists of a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Big Widget Selection for Style Versatility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely massive choice of widgets, which gives you a ton of versatility when constructing your styles.
It’s not just about the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s also a big choice of widgets from third-party developers.
For instance, Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your designs, covering everything from type stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With many choices, you can generally find a widget that does precisely what you desire it to.
3. Detailed Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Designs
Another area where Elementor beats out a great deal of the competition is its style alternatives.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can switch up colors, font styles, spacing, and so on.
It likewise includes innovative options like:
Shape dividers
Custom positioning
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for specific widgets
Put simply, Elementor offers you more choices to produce a special, reliable design.
4. Substantial Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you do not wish to build your designs from scratch, Elementor comes with a substantial selection of design templates, divided into two categories:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is customize them to fulfill your needs. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Blocks – design templates for particular parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build total styles.
Just like widgets, you can likewise discover templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress theme, it includes loads of pre-made starter design templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter website includes several Elementor design templates that you can tailor as needed.
5. Flexible Form Widget and Combinations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget choice in general. But I believe it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Kind widget.
The Form widget lets you produce custom forms, complete with as numerous fields as required. However where this widget gets truly powerful, especially when it concerns marketing executions, is its integrated integrations.
You can hook it up to popular e-mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook choice that lets you link to Zapier (and the thousands of apps readily available there), as well as chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom-made WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you gain the ability to exceed posts and pages and develop your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
For instance, you could create a custom-made post type and then utilize Elementor to design the design template for that post type, rather than tampering theme design template files straight.
The truly powerful thing here is that you have the ability to generate vibrant material from customized fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can develop truly custom websites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile material management system. How To Create An Elementor Template.
Simply one note – while this is certainly a powerful function, there are still some reasons that you may want to select a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you choose to utilize Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom-made eCommerce Designs
If you’re developing an eCommerce store, you can also use Elementor Style Builder to your store material with dedicated WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to design both your single item pages and shop pages.
To assist you construct your designs, you’ll get a range of devoted WooCommerce widgets for whatever from item images to upsells.
In among our posts, we discussed how to develop 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 utilize it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the very same familiar Elementor user interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a lot of possibilities:
For example, you could use the Form widget to develop 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 kind for your website. How To Create An Elementor Template.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and trigger rules to manage precisely where and when your popup appears:
How To Create An Elementor Template
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a good chance that you think Elementor is right for your needs.
That causes the next concern – can you use the complimentary version at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is a crucial decision, so we actually composed a whole post on how to choose between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply want to design some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can most likely manage with the complimentary variation.
With that being said, there’s a great deal of worth in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, consisting of the Form widget. The Kind widget is especially effective for marketing pages.
- Style Builder. This lets you develop your entire theme and WooCommerce store utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups utilizing Elementor.
- More templates. While the complimentary version consists of some templates, you need Pro for full access.
- More style alternatives. You get access to custom positioning.
However, buying Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
For example, if you want more versatility to personalize your style, you don’t need to buy Elementor Pro. Instead, you might use a versatile style like Astra. Through its many Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to basically any use, and it’s a lot easier than attempting to design your own theme from scratch. How To Create An Elementor Template.
You can build your header and footer using Astra. Because Astra is constructed to pair with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to design the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other theme aspects.
Astra also includes tons of pre-built site design templates constructed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site using Astra and after that just modify it to match your needs using Elementor.
Or, if you want to include brand-new widgets for design flexibility, you could acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which adds 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has been a question that is just recently gaining popularity. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for adding gorgeous widgets and styles to your website. Its flexible and user friendly functions have welcomed a variety of addon plugins that let you produce extraordinary websites without having to code.
If you use too lots of plugins or have too lots of animations then it may make your entire website sluggish.
So the concern arises if Elementor slows your website down even without any of these addons. How To Create An Elementor Template.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter design template sites. 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 websites for you to take a look at.
- Gutenberg site from Starter Templates
- Elementor website from Beginner Templates
We hosted both websites on the same server and under different directory sites of the very same domain and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the outcomes.
As you can see, the performance of the Gutenberg site 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 entirely while the site made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are optimizing for SEO, you know how big of a distinction that is!
In fact, the exact same site built with Beaver Builder likewise carries out a little better than the Elementor site.
In terms of fully filled time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not indicate that it is the ideal tool for you all the time.
If you are building a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base variation, you may not be able to do it directly without integrating another contact kind plugin or a payment gateway. How To Create An Elementor Template.
In such a case you will require to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you may wish to think about a lighter plugin that loads quicker without causing 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.
How To Create An Elementor Template
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most light-weight and fast website builders since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to produce web pages with ease.
The blocks consist of whatever you may expect, including headings and subheadings as well as lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each specific website page – all from one easy interface!
Developing a website in Gutenberg is like constructing a house utilizing Lego blocks. You organize the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a lovely site. How To Create An Elementor Template.
In terms of efficiency. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and delivers what it assures. It likewise does not have the various style elements that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses performance over design, then Gutenberg is the best choice for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as flashy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). But it does offer a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that just builds individual pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style available if you desire one too! How To Create An Elementor Template.
Beaver Builder is a total page design plan that provides you with all the tools and components to develop any type of website. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact kinds, testimonials, 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 many addons constructed 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 website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s wise style system makes recycling blocks of material fast and simple by specifying color pattern which will save time when developing brand-new layouts. How To Create An Elementor Template.
It has all the blocks and functions you ‘d expect from an effective page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an alternative to quickly reroute visitors on any site map or Google Maps noting for their company place!
You can utilize SeedProd’s custom domain mapping function which will save time when handling several customer landing pages in WordPress while still keeping branding continuity throughout platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we believe that Elementor is one of the best WordPress page home builders out there, which is why we’ve usage Astra, among the most popular styles for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, among the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re likewise not alone in our positive Elementor review – over 4 million WordPress websites utilize Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can use free of charge:
Install the free Astra theme to create a flexible base for your Elementor designs.
Install the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. How To Create An Elementor Template.
If you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is right for your requirements.
Exists anything we missed out on in our Elementor evaluation that would help you make your choice? Leave a remark and we’ll attempt to assist you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro