Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – Themes Using Elementor
Trying to choose if Elementor is the right page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll assist you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who need to utilize Elementor
- The distinct features that assist Elementor stand out from the competition
- Whether you ought to use the complimentary variation or open your wallet for the premium version
Themes Using Elementor
We’ve 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. Themes Using Elementor.
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However comprehending why we like Elementor and have developed items in the Elementor ecosystem is more crucial than simply the reality that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and communicate in this review.
By the end of our Elementor review, you need to have whatever that you require to make an informed choice about whether or not Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress website.
Themes Using Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not familiar with these terms, this means that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re building it.
- Drag and drop various content and design elements to create the ideal design.
Generally, it transforms developing a great-looking, customized web design from something you require to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. Themes Using Elementor.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over 4 million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise maintained a remarkable 4.7-star score (out of 5) on over 5,900 evaluations, so most of those users are pretty pleased with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page home builders that provide a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, however, so what makes Elementor stand apart and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth later, but some of Elementor’s standout features are:
- Great deals of content aspects – these are the foundation of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your design.
- Responsive style – many people search the web on mobile phones, so it is very important that your designs look great on all devices. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get great deals of options to control how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is frightening! Elementor features hundreds of professionally developed design templates so that you do not need to start from scratch.
- Design choices – you get lots of in-depth design alternatives to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to custom-made 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 help you develop beautiful pages faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro variation, you can develop your whole WordPress style using Elementor (though we still suggest pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of vibrant content from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise design all kinds of popups using the same visual, drag-and-drop user interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re developing an eCommerce shop, you can design your WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor and include products in your other designs. Themes Using Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s using WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer might love Elementor for its capability to help them quickly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be trying to find a method to include some extra flair to their post.
Let’s take a look at some particular situations:
Themes Using Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user trying to find a method to add some style to your blog posts or build a beautiful homepage, Elementor is best for you.
You’ll be able to use the visual user interface to spin up some beautiful styles without needing any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it for free! More on whether you ought to use the free or paid version later. Themes Using Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is fantastic for digital marketers and groups because it includes lots of marketing aspects.
For example, the Form widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all types of lead types and connect them to popular email marketing services. It also has a Zapier combination, which lets you connect to your CRM, too.
You can likewise utilize the Popup Builder to produce opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re selling services or products, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an excellent service for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re constructing websites for customers, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) choice.
You can combine Elementor with a versatile style like Astra to construct 100% customized client websites with no code needed. You can also utilize Theme Builder when required, like developing the design template for a custom post type and including vibrant information from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Themes Using Elementor
Elementor Pricing
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely totally free to utilize. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
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 websites. Nevertheless, it is restricted at specific points.
With Elementor Pro you can customize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Themes Using Elementor.
The Elementor base version provides the bare minimum you need to develop and customize your website. But if you want to have the freedom of upgrading the entire site, Elementor Pro is the very best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise add pop-ups, contact types, membership types, global widgets, and customized CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ additional widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total site customization through Style Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for modifying product and category pages in eCommerce websites
- Popup Builder with innovative features like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to display certain pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be incorporated with popular email marketing tools
- You can create worldwide widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Add custom CSS
- Release any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Pricing
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier rates strategy based upon the variety of licenses you want.
If you are working with a single site then the Vital Strategy would be best for you. If you are dealing with numerous websites, the Advanced strategy or above strategies would be more suitable.
All the plans feature a yearly membership.
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How Elementor Works: Exploring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this practical section.
Similar to any other plugin, you need to install and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either select to personalize Elementor settings or dive directly into designing.
If you are just starting out, we advise utilizing the default settings just. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you wish to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to start modifying.
For the sake of this demonstration, we set up the Astra style and imported among its demo websites constructed with Elementor. Themes Using Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor control panel using that demonstration website.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard looks like.
Here’s the label of various parts numbered.
- The workspace or the primary canvas. This is where you edit and revamp your site
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Modification history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek changes.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are entirely brand-new to constructing sites, you need to understand the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page constructed with Elementor contains sections and columns.
Section. A section is basically 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 manage each column individually. Themes Using Elementor.
A page can have any variety 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.
Themes Using Elementor
How to Style a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When creating a web page, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing template. In this area, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch using Elementor. Themes Using Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Step 2: Click the “+” button to add a brand-new section.
Step 3: Choose an area with a single column or several ones depending on your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
As soon as you enjoy with the placement, you can change the finer information in the Material, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can play around with the alternatives when discovering to find the right designs for you.
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How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Often you may need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not really different 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 include a brand-new widget, drag it from the sidebar on the left.
To reorganize a widget on the visual sneak peek, 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, use sections and columns.
To tailor a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into 3 tabs:
Use a similar technique to personalize areas and columns:
As you change an element’s settings, you’ll instantly see those changes assessed the visual preview.
8 Incredible Functions That Help Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through a few of the important things that help Elementor stand apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Convenient Editing Features for Faster Design
Elementor features some convenient modifying features that assist you build designs more quickly.
Elementor comes with right-click support, which most other page builders don’t offer.
You can right-click on any element to duplicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It likewise includes a beneficial Navigator view that offers you a bought list of all the material on your page, broken up by areas and columns. You can utilize this to rapidly open the settings for any component on your page. You can also rename aspects to make them easier to discover: Themes Using Elementor.
And to help you rapidly browse in between your styles, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Huge Widget Choice for Style Versatility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely enormous choice of widgets, which offers you a ton of flexibility when developing your designs.
It’s not practically the 60+ widgets that include Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s also a huge choice of widgets from third-party designers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor includes another 36+ new widgets that you can use in your designs, covering everything from type stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With many alternatives, you can almost always discover a widget that does exactly what you desire it to.
3. Comprehensive Style and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor vanquishes a lot of the competition is its style alternatives.
Elementor lets you do all the basics – you can change up colors, typefaces, spacing, and so on.
It likewise includes sophisticated choices like:
Shape dividers
Custom positioning
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom CSS for individual widgets
Simply put, Elementor provides you more choices to develop an unique, efficient design.
4. Big Design Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you do not want to build your designs from scratch, Elementor comes with a huge selection of templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page design templates. All you do is personalize them to meet your requirements. Themes Using Elementor.
Blocks – design templates for particular parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to develop complete styles.
Just like widgets, you can likewise find templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress theme, it comes with loads of pre-made starter design templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter site includes numerous Elementor design templates that you can personalize as needed.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Integrations
Above, I mentioned Elementor’s widget choice in general. I think it’s worth singling out a particular widget:
The Type widget.
The Form widget lets you create custom-made forms, total with as numerous fields as needed. But where this widget gets actually powerful, especially when it concerns marketing applications, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it as much as popular e-mail marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook alternative that lets you connect to Zapier (and the countless apps readily available there), in addition to chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Material for Custom-made WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you get the ability to surpass posts and pages and develop your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive templates
For instance, you might produce a custom-made post type and then utilize Elementor to design the design template for that post type, rather than tampering style design template files directly.
The really powerful thing here is that you have the capability to generate dynamic material from customized fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant feature, you can develop truly customized sites and harness WordPress’ power as a versatile content management system. Themes Using Elementor.
Just one note – while this is definitely an effective function, there are still some reasons you may want to select a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom-made eCommerce Designs
If you’re producing an eCommerce store, you can also apply Elementor Theme Builder to your shop material with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to design both your single product pages and go shopping pages.
To assist you build your styles, you’ll get a range of devoted WooCommerce widgets for whatever from item images to upsells.
In among our articles, we spoke about how to develop an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Finally, Elementor Pro can do more than simply posts, pages, and theme design – you can likewise use it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the same familiar Elementor user interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a lot of possibilities:
For example, you might utilize the Form widget to create e-mail opt-in popups and connect them straight to your email marketing service of choice.
Or, you could utilize the Login widget to create a popup login kind for your site. Themes Using Elementor.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a selection of targeting and trigger guidelines to control exactly where and when your popup appears:
Themes Using Elementor
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 requirements.
That causes the next concern – can you utilize the free variation at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is an important decision, so we really composed an entire post on how to choose between Elementor free vs Pro.
In general, if you just want to design some posts/pages or basic landing pages, you can probably get by with the free variation.
With that being stated, there’s a great deal of value in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, including the Kind widget. The Type widget is specifically effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your entire theme and WooCommerce shop utilizing Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the totally free version consists of some templates, you require Pro for full gain access to.
- More style choices. You get access to customized positioning.
Nevertheless, purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For instance, if you want more versatility to tailor your theme, you don’t require to purchase Elementor Pro. Rather, you might utilize a versatile style like Astra. Through its many Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to basically any usage, and it’s a lot easier than trying to develop your own theme from scratch. Themes Using Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer using Astra. Then, due to the fact that Astra is constructed to couple with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to develop the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style elements.
Astra also consists of tons of pre-built site design templates built with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site using Astra and then simply fine-tune it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you wish to add new widgets for style versatility, you might acquire an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Decrease Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a question that is just recently acquiring appeal. And rightfully so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for adding beautiful widgets and designs to your site. Its versatile and user friendly functions have actually invited a variety of addon plugins that let you create incredible sites without having to code.
If you use too lots of plugins or have too lots of animations then it might make your entire website sluggish.
So the concern occurs if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. Themes Using Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter design template websites. One of them was developed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have higher speeds in general, but by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the sites for you to have a look at.
- Gutenberg site from Starter Templates
- Elementor site from Beginner Templates
We hosted both websites on the exact same server and under various directory sites of the exact same domain name and compared their efficiency 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 totally while the site made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are enhancing for SEO, you know how huge of a distinction that is!
The very same website constructed with Beaver Builder likewise performs a little better than the Elementor website.
In terms of completely filled time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a terrific tool, it does not indicate that it is the right 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 form plugin or a payment entrance. Themes Using Elementor.
In such a case you will need to update to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to consider a lighter plugin that loads much faster without causing any hold-ups in page loading.
With all these and lots of other consider mind, we have developed this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.
Themes Using Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most lightweight and quick website builders since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it much easier than ever to develop websites with ease.
The blocks include whatever you may anticipate, consisting of headings and subheadings along with lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each private site page – all from one easy interface!
Developing a website in Gutenberg resembles developing a home using Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the best order to come up with a gorgeous website. Themes Using Elementor.
In regards to performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and provides what it promises. It also does not have the various style aspects that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are someone who chooses efficiency over design, then Gutenberg is the right choice for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as flashy 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 builds individual pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style offered if you want one too! Themes Using Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a total page style bundle that supplies you with all the tools and components to construct any type of website. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, reviews, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of style and performance with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as many addons developed for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has actually been developed to be as quickly, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart style system makes reusing blocks of material fast and basic by defining color pattern which will conserve time when designing brand-new designs. Themes Using Elementor.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d expect from an effective page Builder such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers. It also consists of contact pages with an option to easily redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps noting for their business place!
You can use SeedProd’s customized domain mapping feature which will conserve time when handling multiple customer landing pages in WordPress while still keeping branding continuity across platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, we believe that Elementor is among the best WordPress page home builders out there, which is why we have actually 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 evaluation – over four million WordPress websites use Elementor and Elementor has an amazing 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 reviews.
If you wish to experience what Elementor can use free of charge:
Set up the complimentary Astra style to develop a versatile base for your Elementor designs.
Set up the free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin structure. Themes Using Elementor.
Then, if you like what you see, think of whether Elementor Pro is right for your needs.
Is there anything we missed in our Elementor review that would help you make your choice? Leave a remark and we’ll attempt to assist you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro