Elementor Review: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
Trying to choose if Elementor is the right page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll help you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who need to use Elementor
- The special features that assist Elementor stick out from the competition
- Whether you should utilize the free version or open your wallet for the premium version
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
We’ve produced Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, along with a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can most likely think that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a positive Elementor review. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
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Comprehending why we like Elementor and have developed products in the Elementor ecosystem is more crucial than simply the truth 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 should have everything that you need to make an informed choice about whether or not Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress website.
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not knowledgeable about these terms, this means that you can:
- See a sneak peek of precisely what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re developing it.
- Drag and drop different content and style components to produce the perfect style.
Basically, it transforms developing a great-looking, custom website design from something you need to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With 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 reviews, so most of those users are quite delighted with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page builders that offer a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, though, so what makes Elementor stick out and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth in the future, however some of Elementor’s standout features are:
- Great deals of content elements – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive style – the majority of people browse the web on smartphones, so it is essential that your styles look fantastic on all gadgets. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get lots of options to control how it works.
- Design templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor includes numerous expertly designed design templates so that you do not have to go back to square one.
- Style choices – you get tons of in-depth design choices to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to custom-made CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get great deals of helpful tools like right-click support, a fast discover tool, and more to help you develop beautiful pages much faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro version, you can design your entire WordPress style using Elementor (though we still suggest combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic content – you can include vibrant material from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can also develop all kinds of popups utilizing the very same visual, drag-and-drop user interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re developing an eCommerce store, you can develop your WooCommerce shop using Elementor and include products in your other designs. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, nearly anyone who’s utilizing WordPress.
A digital marketer may enjoy Elementor for its capability to assist them quickly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be looking for a way to add some additional flair to their blog posts.
Let’s look at some specific circumstances:
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user searching for a way to add some design to your post or develop a great-looking homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll be able to utilize the visual user interface to spin up some beautiful designs without needing any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably have the ability to do it totally free! More on whether you must utilize the free or paid version later. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is excellent for digital online marketers and groups due to the fact that it consists of tons of marketing components.
For instance, the Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all kinds of lead kinds and connect them to popular email marketing services. It likewise has a Zapier combination, which lets you link to your CRM, as well.
You can also utilize the Popup Builder to produce opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re offering products or services, you can use WooCommerce Builder to create your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an outstanding option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re developing websites for clients, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) option.
You can combine Elementor with a versatile theme like Astra to construct 100% customized client websites without any code needed. You can likewise utilize Theme Builder when required, like designing the design template for a customized post type and including vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
Elementor Rates
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally complimentary to use. There is also a pro version with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Take a look at our short 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 limited at certain points.
For example, with Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
The Elementor base version provides the bare minimum you require to create and personalize your website. If you want to have the freedom of upgrading the whole website, Elementor Pro is the finest option.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact types, membership kinds, global widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of extra functions that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ additional widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete site modification through Theme Builder. This lets you alter the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing product and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with sophisticated functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to show specific pop-ups on certain pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be integrated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create global widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Add customized CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget basically anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Rates
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier prices plan based upon the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are working with a single website then the Essential Plan would be best for you. If you are dealing with several sites, the Advanced strategy or above plans would be better.
All the strategies include a yearly membership.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How Elementor Works: Touring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical section.
Much like any other plugin, you need 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 suggest using the default settings just. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you want to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin modifying.
For the sake of this presentation, we installed the Astra style and imported among its demo sites constructed with Elementor. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel using that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard appears like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The working area or the main canvas. This is where you edit and upgrade your website
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Modification history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely new to building websites, you require to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor includes sections and columns.
Area. An area is basically a row. You can include a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides a section into different columns. You can then manage each column individually. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Areas include columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration revealing what the structure in Elementor appears like.
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
How to Style a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When developing a web page, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing template. In this section, we will cover how you can develop a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click the “+” button to add a brand-new area.
Action 3: Select an area with a single column or multiple ones depending upon your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
Once you are happy with the placement, you can change the finer details in the Material, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the alternatives when discovering to find the right styles for you.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Often you might require to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not very various in this case either. It is much simpler to modify an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the left.
To rearrange a widget on the visual preview, you can likewise utilize drag and drop. If you want to modify text, just click and type on the visual preview:
To develop the layouts for your widgets, use sections and columns.
To personalize a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into 3 tabs:
Utilize a comparable method to customize areas and columns:
As you alter a component’s settings, you’ll instantly see those changes reflected on the visual sneak peek.
8 Incredible Functions That Assist Elementor Stick Out
Next, let’s go through some of the things that help Elementor stand out from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Convenient Modifying Functions for Faster Design
Elementor includes some hassle-free editing features that assist you construct styles quicker.
Elementor comes with right-click support, which most other page contractors do not use.
You can right-click on any element to duplicate it, copy and paste designs, and more:
It also comes with a helpful Navigator view that provides you a purchased list of all the material on your page, separated by areas and columns. You can utilize this to quickly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can also rename elements to make them much easier to find: How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
And to help you rapidly browse between your styles, it also includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Substantial Widget Choice for Design Versatility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely enormous selection of widgets, which offers you a lots of flexibility when developing your styles.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that include Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s also a substantial choice of widgets from third-party developers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ new widgets that you can utilize in your styles, covering whatever from kind stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With many options, you can usually discover a widget that does precisely what you want it to.
3. Detailed Design and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Designs
Another area where Elementor vanquishes a lot of the competition is its style choices.
Elementor lets you do all the fundamentals – you can switch up colors, font styles, spacing, etc.
It also includes sophisticated options like:
Shape dividers
Custom-made positioning
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom CSS for specific widgets
In other words, Elementor provides you more alternatives to create a distinct, effective style.
4. Huge Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you don’t wish to build your styles from scratch, Elementor comes with a big choice of templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is personalize them to fulfill your requirements. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Blocks – design templates for specific parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build total designs.
Just like widgets, you can also discover design templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress style, it comes with heaps of pre-made starter templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter site consists of several Elementor design templates that you can tailor as required.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Combinations
Above, I discussed Elementor’s widget choice in general. I believe it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Form widget.
The Type widget lets you develop customized forms, complete with as numerous fields as needed. But where this widget gets actually powerful, specifically when it concerns marketing implementations, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it approximately popular e-mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook choice that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps offered there), as well as chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you gain the capability to surpass posts and pages and design your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single design templates
Archive templates
For example, you might create a customized post type and then use Elementor to design the template for that post type, instead of messing around with style design template files directly.
The really effective thing here is that you have the ability to generate dynamic content from customized fields that you produce with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic function, you can develop genuinely custom websites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Simply one note – while this is certainly an effective feature, there are still some reasons you might want to select a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Designs
If you’re producing an eCommerce shop, you can likewise use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop material with dedicated WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to design both your single item pages and go shopping pages.
To assist you construct your styles, you’ll get a range of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for everything from item images to upsells.
In one of our posts, we discussed how to create an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Functionality, and More
Lastly, Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style design – you can also utilize it to build popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the exact same familiar Elementor user interface and all of the widgets.
This opens a great deal of possibilities:
You could utilize the Type widget to develop email opt-in popups and link them directly to your e-mail marketing service of option.
Or, you might use the Login widget to produce a popup login kind for your site. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and trigger rules to control precisely where and when your popup appears:
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
Should You Utilize 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 requirements.
That causes the next question – can you use the totally free variation at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is an important choice, so we really wrote a whole post on how to pick between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you just wish to develop some posts/pages or fundamental landing pages, you can probably get by with the free version.
With that being said, there’s a lot of value in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ new widgets, consisting of the Form widget. The Type widget is specifically powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your whole style and WooCommerce store utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you build popups using Elementor.
- More design templates. While the totally free variation consists of some templates, you require Pro for complete gain access to.
- More design choices. You get access to customized positioning.
Nevertheless, acquiring Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.
For example, if you want more flexibility to tailor your theme, you do not need to purchase Elementor Pro. Instead, you could utilize a flexible style like Astra. Through its many Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to practically any usage, and it’s a lot easier than attempting to create your own style from scratch. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Since Astra is developed to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to design the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style components.
Astra likewise includes lots of pre-built website design templates developed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site using Astra and after that simply tweak it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you wish to include brand-new widgets for design flexibility, you might purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
Does Elementor Decrease Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is just recently gaining appeal. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for including stunning widgets and styles to your site. Its flexible and user friendly functions have invited a variety of addon plugins that let you produce amazing sites without having to code.
However, if you utilize a lot of plugins or have a lot of animations then it may make your whole website slow.
The question develops if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter template sites. One of 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 learn.
Here are the sites for you to take a look at.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Beginner Templates
We hosted both sites on the very same server and under various directories of the exact same domain name and compared their efficiency in GT Metrix.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the performance 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 totally 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 same site built with Beaver Builder also performs somewhat better than the Elementor site.
In terms of totally loaded time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Although Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not suggest that it is the best tool for you all the time.
If you are constructing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you may not be able to do it directly without integrating another contact type plugin or a payment gateway. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
In such a case you will need to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might wish to consider a lighter plugin that loads quicker without causing any hold-ups in page loading.
With all these and lots of other consider mind, we have created this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.
How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most light-weight 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 location on each specific site page – all from one easy interface!
Constructing a website in Gutenberg is like building a home utilizing Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the right order to come up with a stunning site. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
In regards to performance. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and provides what it guarantees. It also does not have the various style elements that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who prefers efficiency 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 contrast). It does offer a stable and constant experience with its core plugin that just constructs individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme readily available if you desire one too! How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a complete page style bundle that provides you with all the tools and components to construct any type of site. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in regards to design and performance with Elementor. However, Beaver Builder does not have as lots of 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 quick, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart design system makes recycling blocks of content fast and basic by specifying color pattern which will save time when creating new designs. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d expect from an effective page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an option to quickly redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps listing for their company area!
You can use SeedProd’s customized domain mapping function which will conserve time when handling several client landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity across platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, our company believe that Elementor is one of the best WordPress page builders out there, which is why we have actually use 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 positive Elementor review – over four million WordPress sites use Elementor and Elementor has an incredible 4.7-star score on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can use free of charge:
Set up the complimentary Astra theme to create a flexible base for your Elementor designs.
Set up the totally free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start building. How To Speed Up WordPress Site With Elementor.
If you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is ideal for your needs.
Is there anything we missed in our Elementor evaluation that would help you make your decision? Leave a comment and we’ll try to assist you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro