Elementor Review: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Layers Theme Elementor
Trying to decide if Elementor is the best page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you comprehend:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who should utilize Elementor
- The special features that help Elementor stand apart from the competition
- Whether you should utilize the complimentary version or open your wallet for the premium variation
Layers Theme Elementor
We have actually created Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, along with 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. Layers Theme Elementor.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
However understanding why we like Elementor and have developed products in the Elementor environment is more crucial than just the fact that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and communicate in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor review, you need to have whatever that you require to make an informed decision about whether Elementor is the ideal tool for your WordPress website.
Layers Theme Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not knowledgeable about these terms, this suggests that you can:
- See a preview of precisely what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop different material and style elements to develop the ideal style.
Essentially, it changes developing a great-looking, custom website design from something you need to be a developer to do, to something that anyone can do. Layers Theme Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over four million WordPress sites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also kept an outstanding 4.7-star score (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so the majority of those users are pretty delighted with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page contractors that use a visual, drag-and-drop interface, though, so what makes Elementor stand out 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:
- Great deals of content aspects – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive style – most people browse the web on mobile phones, so it’s important that your styles look excellent on all gadgets. Elementor’s styles are responsive by default and you get great deals of choices to manage how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor features hundreds of expertly developed templates so that you do not need to go back to square one.
- Style options – you get tons of comprehensive design options to make your design pixel-perfect without turning to custom CSS (though you can do that too).
- Convenience – you get lots of convenient tools like right-click support, a quick find tool, and more to assist you develop great-looking pages quicker.
- Style Builder – with the Pro variation, you can design your entire WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still recommend combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic material – you can include vibrant material from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise develop all types of popups using the same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce shop, you can develop your WooCommerce store using Elementor and consist of items in your other styles. Layers Theme Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, practically anybody who’s utilizing WordPress.
A digital marketer may like Elementor for its ability to assist them rapidly create landing pages and popups, while a casual user might just be looking for a method to add some additional flair to their blog site posts.
Let’s take a look at some particular situations:
Layers Theme Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user looking for a way to add some style to your post or construct a beautiful homepage, Elementor is best for you.
You’ll have the ability to utilize the visual user interface to spin up some great-looking styles without needing any technical knowledge … and you’ll most likely be able to do it for free! More on whether you should utilize the totally free or paid variation in the future. Layers Theme Elementor.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is excellent for digital marketers and teams due to the fact that it includes lots of marketing components.
The Kind widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all types of lead forms and connect them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you connect to your CRM.
You can likewise use the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re selling services or products, you can use WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an exceptional solution for building WordPress landing pages.
The Site Builder
If you’re building sites for clients, Elementor is a best (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible theme like Astra to build 100% custom client sites with no code required. You can likewise use Theme Builder when required, like developing the template for a customized post type and integrating dynamic data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Layers Theme Elementor
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base variation of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely totally free to utilize. There is also a pro version with a lot more versatility and a lot more features.
Take a look at our post on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you want to get a comprehensive review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all sites. It is limited at specific points.
With Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Layers Theme Elementor.
The Elementor base variation delivers the bare minimum you require to create and tailor your site. But if you want to have the liberty of upgrading the entire website, Elementor Pro is the best option.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise add pop-ups, contact types, subscription kinds, international widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of extra features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ additional widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total website modification through Style Builder. This lets you alter the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing item and category pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with innovative functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to show specific pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Form Builder that can be integrated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create international widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Include custom-made CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget basically anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing plan based on the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are working with a single website then the Essential Strategy would be best for you. If you are dealing with multiple sites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be preferable.
All the plans come with a yearly subscription.
How Elementor Works: Visiting the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical section.
Just like any other plugin, you need to install and trigger Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either select to customize Elementor settings or dive directly into designing.
If you are simply beginning, we recommend utilizing the default settings only. Head over to pages and open among the pages that you wish to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin editing.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra theme and imported among its demonstration sites constructed with Elementor. Layers Theme Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel using that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel looks like.
Here’s the label of different parts numbered.
- The working area or the primary canvas. This is where you modify and upgrade your site
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Modification history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek modifications.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are totally new to constructing websites, you require to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor includes 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 sections.
Column. A column divides a section into different columns. You can then control each column separately. Layers Theme Elementor.
A page can have any number of areas in it. Sections contain columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration revealing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Layers Theme Elementor
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When developing a websites, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this section, we will cover how you can produce a page from scratch using Elementor. Layers Theme 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 brand-new section.
Step 3: Pick a section with a single column or several ones depending on your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
When you more than happy with the placement, you can adjust the finer details in the Content, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the alternatives when finding out to discover the best designs for you.
How to Style a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you may require to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not really different in this case either. It is much simpler to edit an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To include a new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To reorganize a widget on the visual preview, you can likewise use drag and drop. If you wish to edit text, simply click and type on the visual sneak peek:
To create the layouts for your widgets, utilize sections and columns.
To customize a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Utilize a similar method to personalize sections and columns:
As you alter a component’s settings, you’ll instantly see those modifications assessed the visual sneak peek.
Eight Amazing Functions That Help Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through some of the things that assist Elementor stick out from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Practical Modifying Functions for Faster Style
Elementor comes with some hassle-free editing features that help you develop styles quicker.
For example, Elementor includes right-click support, which most other page builders do not use.
You can right-click on any component to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It also comes with a helpful Navigator view that gives you a bought list of all the content on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can utilize this to rapidly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can likewise rename elements to make them easier to find: Layers Theme Elementor.
And to help you rapidly navigate in between your designs, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you have actually built with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Big Widget Selection for Design Flexibility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely huge choice of widgets, which gives you a lots of flexibility when developing your styles.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that include Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s likewise a substantial choice of widgets from third-party designers.
For instance, Ultimate Addons for Elementor includes another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can utilize in your designs, covering everything from form stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With many alternatives, you can almost always find a widget that does precisely what you desire it to.
3. In-depth Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor vanquishes a great deal of the competition is its design alternatives.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, typefaces, spacing, etc.
However it likewise adds innovative options like:
Shape dividers
Customized placing
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for individual widgets
Simply put, Elementor gives you more choices to produce a special, efficient style.
4. Substantial Design Template Selection to Save You Time
If you do not want to develop your styles from scratch, Elementor features a huge selection of templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is personalize them to fulfill your requirements. Layers Theme Elementor.
Blocks – design templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build total designs.
As with widgets, you can likewise find templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress style, it includes loads of pre-made starter templates built with Elementor. Each starter site includes several Elementor templates that you can personalize as required.
5. Flexible Kind Widget and Combinations
Above, I pointed out Elementor’s widget choice in general. But I think it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Kind widget.
The Kind widget lets you produce customized forms, complete with as many fields as needed. Where this widget gets truly powerful, especially when it comes to marketing implementations, 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 countless apps available there), in addition to chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Material for Custom-made WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you gain the capability to go beyond posts and pages and create your entire WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
You could create a customized post type and then utilize Elementor to develop the design template for that post type, rather than messing around with style design template files directly.
The actually powerful thing here is that you have the capability to generate dynamic material from custom-made fields that you produce with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic function, you can construct truly custom websites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile material management system. Layers Theme Elementor.
Simply one note – while this is certainly an effective feature, there are still some reasons that you might want to pick a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you choose to utilize Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Styles
If you’re creating an eCommerce shop, you can also apply Elementor Style Builder to your store content with dedicated WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to design both your single item pages and go shopping pages.
To help you build your styles, you’ll get a range of devoted WooCommerce widgets for everything from item images to upsells.
In among our posts, we talked about how to develop an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Use, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and style design – you can likewise utilize it to build 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 great deal of possibilities:
For instance, you could utilize the Form widget to create e-mail opt-in popups and link them straight to your email marketing service of choice.
Or, you might use the Login widget to develop a popup login type for your website. Layers Theme Elementor.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a range of targeting and trigger guidelines to control exactly where and when your popup appears:
Layers Theme Elementor
Should You Utilize Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance that you believe Elementor is right for your requirements.
That results in the next concern – can you use the totally free variation at WordPress.org or should you buy Elementor Pro?
This is a crucial decision, so we actually composed an entire post on how to select between Elementor totally free vs Pro.
In general, if you simply wish to design some posts/pages or basic landing pages, you can most likely get by with the complimentary version.
With that being said, there’s a great deal of value in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, consisting of the Form widget. The Type widget is particularly powerful for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your whole style and WooCommerce shop using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you build popups utilizing Elementor.
- More templates. While the complimentary variation includes some design templates, you require Pro for complete access.
- More style alternatives. You get access to custom positioning.
However, buying Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For example, if you want more versatility to tailor your theme, you do not require to buy Elementor Pro. Instead, you could use a versatile style like Astra. Through its lots of Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to pretty much any use, and it’s a lot simpler than trying to design your own theme from scratch. Layers Theme Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Then, because Astra is developed to pair with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to create the content that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style components.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built website templates developed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished website utilizing Astra and after that just tweak it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you want to include brand-new widgets for design flexibility, you could buy an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Decrease Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is recently getting popularity. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be useful for adding stunning widgets and styles to your website. Its versatile and user friendly features have actually invited a number of addon plugins that let you create incredible sites without having to code.
However, if you utilize too many plugins or have too many animations then it might make your entire website slow.
So the question emerges if Elementor slows your website down even with no of these addons. Layers Theme Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter design template websites. 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, however by what degree?
Let’s learn.
Here are the websites for you to have a look at.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Starter Templates
We hosted both sites on the same server and under different directories of the very 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 regards to specific loading time, the site 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 difference that is!
The same site built with Beaver Builder also performs slightly better than the Elementor website.
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 indicate that it is the ideal tool for you all the time.
If you are constructing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base variation, you may not be able to do it directly without incorporating another contact kind plugin or a payment gateway. Layers Theme Elementor.
In such a case you will need to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might wish to consider a lighter plugin that loads quicker without triggering any hold-ups in page loading.
With all these and many other consider mind, we have actually produced this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Layers Theme Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most light-weight and quick site home builders because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it much easier than ever to develop websites with ease.
The blocks consist of whatever you may expect, consisting of headings and subheadings along with lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each individual website page – all from one simple interface!
Constructing a website in Gutenberg resembles developing a house utilizing Lego blocks. You organize the blocks in the best order to come up with a beautiful site. Layers Theme Elementor.
In terms of performance. Gutenberg works way much better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and provides what it promises. It also lacks the different style components that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses performance over design, then Gutenberg is the best option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). But it does supply a steady and constant experience with its core plugin that just constructs individual pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Theme offered if you want one too! Layers Theme Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a complete page style bundle that provides you with all the tools and components to build any type of website. It has aspects such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact types, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of design and efficiency with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as 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 fast, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s clever design system makes reusing blocks of content fast and basic by defining color schemes which will conserve time when developing new designs. Layers Theme 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 likewise includes contact pages with an option to easily redirect visitors on any website map or Google Maps listing for their company place!
You can use SeedProd’s customized domain mapping feature which will conserve time when managing multiple customer landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity throughout platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we believe that Elementor is one of the very best WordPress page home builders out there, which is why we have actually use Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, one of the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re also not alone in our positive Elementor review – over four million WordPress websites utilize Elementor and Elementor has an amazing 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can provide for free:
Install the totally free Astra style to develop a versatile base for your Elementor designs.
Set up the totally free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start structure. Layers Theme Elementor.
If you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is best for your requirements.
Is there anything we missed in our Elementor evaluation that would assist you make your decision? Leave a remark and we’ll try to help you decide.