Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
Trying to decide if Elementor is the right page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll help you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who ought to utilize Elementor
- The unique features that help Elementor stand apart from the competitors
- Whether you need to use the totally free variation or open your wallet for the premium variation
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
We’ve developed Astra, among the most popular themes for Elementor, in addition to a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can probably think that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a positive Elementor review. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
But understanding why we like Elementor and have actually built products in the Elementor community is more vital than just the reality that we like it – that’s what we’re going to attempt and communicate in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor evaluation, you ought to have whatever that you require to make an educated choice about whether Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress website.
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not familiar with these terms, this implies that you can:
- See a sneak peek of precisely what your page will look like to visitors as you’re developing it.
- Drag and drop various material and design elements to develop the best design.
Generally, it changes creating a beautiful, customized web design from something you need to be a developer to do, to something that anybody can do. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Elementor is now actively used by over 4 million WordPress websites, which makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also preserved an impressive 4.7-star ranking (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so the majority of those users are pretty happy with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page contractors that use a visual, drag-and-drop interface, though, so what makes Elementor stick out and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter this in more depth later on, but some of Elementor’s standout functions are:
- Lots of content aspects – these are the building blocks of your page. They’re what you “drag-and-drop” to make your style.
- Responsive design – many people search the web on smartphones, so it is very important that your styles look fantastic 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 scary! Elementor includes hundreds of professionally designed templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Style alternatives – you get lots of detailed design alternatives to make your design pixel-perfect without resorting to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get lots of handy tools like right-click support, a fast discover tool, and more to assist you develop great-looking pages much faster.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro variation, you can design your entire WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still recommend pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of dynamic material from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can also create all types of popups utilizing the very same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re constructing an eCommerce store, you can create your WooCommerce store utilizing Elementor and consist of products in your other styles. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, almost anybody who’s using WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer may love Elementor for its capability to help them quickly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user might just be looking for a way to add some additional style to their article.
Let’s take a look at some specific situations:
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user looking for a method to include some style to your blog posts or build a great-looking homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll have the ability to use the visual interface to spin up some beautiful designs without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it free of charge! More on whether you must use the free or paid version later. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
The Digital Marketer
Elementor is great for digital online marketers and groups due to the fact that it includes lots of marketing components.
For example, the Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all kinds of lead kinds and connect them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM, as well.
You can also utilize the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your website. And if you’re selling products or services, you can use WooCommerce Builder to design your sales pages.
Lastly, the core Elementor plugin itself is also an excellent service for building WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re constructing websites for clients, Elementor is a perfect (and popular) option.
You can integrate Elementor with a versatile style like Astra to construct 100% custom-made client websites with no code required. You can also use Theme Builder when needed, like developing the template for a customized post type and incorporating vibrant data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
Elementor Rates
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base variation of Elementor that is available in the WordPress Plugin repository is entirely complimentary to utilize. There is likewise a professional version with a lot more versatility and a lot more functions.
Have a look at 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 sites. However, it is restricted at certain points.
With Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or item pages. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
The Elementor base version delivers the bare minimum you need to design and customize your site. But if you want to have the flexibility of redesigning the entire site, Elementor Pro is the very best option.
With Elementor Pro you can also add pop-ups, contact forms, membership forms, global widgets, and custom CSS.
Here is a list of extra features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete website modification through Theme Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing item and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with innovative functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to display specific pop-ups on certain pages
- Visual Type Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can develop worldwide widgets and use them site-wide
- Include customized CSS
- Release any Elementor widget practically anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier prices strategy based on the number of licenses you desire.
If you are dealing with a single website then the Essential Plan would be best for you. If you are dealing with numerous websites, the Advanced strategy or above strategies would be better.
All the plans feature an annual membership.
How Elementor Works: Exploring the User interface
Let’s see how Elementor works with this useful section.
Much like any other plugin, you need to install and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either select to tailor Elementor settings or dive directly into creating.
If you are just starting, we advise utilizing the default settings only. Head over to pages and open one of the pages that you wish to edit.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin editing.
For the sake of this presentation, we set up the Astra theme and imported among its demonstration websites constructed with Elementor. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard using 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 edit and revamp your site
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Revision history
- Change view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek modifications.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are totally new to building sites, you need to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page developed with Elementor consists of sections and columns.
Section. 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 an area into various columns. You can then control each column separately. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
A page can have any variety of sections in it. Areas contain columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
How to Style a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When designing 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 produce a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click on the “+” button to add a brand-new area.
Action 3: Pick a section with a single column or multiple ones depending on your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you wish to.
As soon as you enjoy with the positioning, you can change the finer information in the Material, Design, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the alternatives when discovering to find the right styles for you.
How to Style a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
In some cases you might need to modify a pre-existing page with Elementor. The procedure is not very various in this case either. In fact, it is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than starting from scratch.
Here’s how you do it.
To add a new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To rearrange a widget on the visual preview, 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 tailor a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Use a similar approach to tailor sections and columns:
As you change an element’s settings, you’ll instantly see those changes reflected on the visual sneak peek.
Eight Remarkable Features That Assist Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through a few of the important things that help Elementor stand out from other visual, drag-and-drop page home builders.
1. Convenient Modifying Features for Faster Design
Elementor features some practical editing features that assist you build designs quicker.
For instance, Elementor includes right-click support, which most other page home builders do not provide.
You can right-click on any aspect to replicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It also includes a helpful Navigator view that gives you a bought list of all the material on your page, separated by sections and columns. You can utilize this to rapidly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can also relabel elements to make them easier to discover: Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
And to help you quickly navigate in between your designs, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you leap to anything that you’ve constructed with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Substantial Widget Choice for Style Flexibility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has a definitely huge choice of widgets, which gives you a ton of versatility when constructing your styles.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that feature Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s also a big selection of widgets from third-party designers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor includes another 36+ new widgets that you can use in your designs, covering whatever from kind stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With so many options, you can almost always discover a widget that does exactly what you want it to.
3. Comprehensive Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor beats out a great deal of the competition is its style choices.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, typefaces, spacing, etc.
It also includes innovative options like:
Shape dividers
Customized positioning
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Custom-made CSS for private widgets
In other words, Elementor gives you more options to develop an unique, reliable style.
4. Big Design Template Selection to Save You Time
If you don’t wish to build your styles from scratch, Elementor comes with a huge selection of templates, divided into two classifications:
Pages – full-page templates. All you do is personalize them to meet your requirements. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Blocks – templates for particular parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to construct total styles.
As with widgets, you can likewise find templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress theme, it features heaps of pre-made starter design templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter site includes numerous Elementor templates that you can customize as needed.
5. Versatile Form Widget and Integrations
Above, I pointed out Elementor’s widget selection in general. I think it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Form widget.
The Type widget lets you create customized forms, total with as numerous fields as needed. But where this widget gets truly effective, especially when it comes to marketing executions, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it up to popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s also a Webhook alternative that lets you link to Zapier (and the thousands of apps available there), as well as chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you gain the ability to surpass posts and pages and design your entire WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can develop:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive templates
For instance, you might produce a customized post type and after that utilize Elementor to develop the template for that post type, instead of messing around with style design template files straight.
The truly effective 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 feature, you can develop really custom-made sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Just one note – while this is certainly a powerful feature, there are still some reasons you might want to select a versatile Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom-made eCommerce Styles
If you’re creating an eCommerce store, you can likewise apply Elementor Theme Builder to your shop content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to design both your single product pages and shop pages.
To assist you develop your designs, you’ll get a selection of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for everything from product images to upsells.
In one of our posts, we talked about how to create an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than just posts, pages, and theme style – you can likewise utilize it to build popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a lot of possibilities:
You might use the Type widget to develop email opt-in popups and link them directly to your e-mail marketing service of option.
Or, you might utilize the Login widget to develop a popup login kind for your website. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
When you release a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and set off rules to manage exactly where and when your popup appears:
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
Should You Utilize Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you’ve made it this far, there’s a great chance that you believe Elementor is right for your requirements.
That leads to the next question – can you utilize the totally free version at WordPress.org or should you purchase Elementor Pro?
This is an important choice, so we really composed an entire post on how to choose in between Elementor free vs Pro.
In general, if you just want to create some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can most likely get by with the totally free version.
With that being stated, there’s a great deal of worth in Elementor Pro. It includes:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, including the Kind widget. The Kind widget is especially effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you create your entire theme and WooCommerce shop using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you build popups using Elementor.
- More templates. While the complimentary variation includes some design templates, you need Pro for complete gain access to.
- More style options. For example, you get access to customized positioning.
Acquiring Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
For example, if you want more versatility to customize your style, you don’t need to acquire Elementor Pro. Instead, you could use a versatile style like Astra. Through its numerous Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to pretty much any use, and it’s a lot simpler than trying to develop your own theme from scratch. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
You can develop your header and footer utilizing Astra. Then, because Astra is constructed to couple with Elementor, you can still utilize Elementor to develop the material that goes “between” your header, footer, and other theme aspects.
Astra likewise includes tons of pre-built website templates constructed with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site utilizing Astra and after that simply modify it to match your needs utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you wish to add brand-new widgets for style flexibility, you could purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which adds 36+ new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is just recently acquiring popularity. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be helpful for including lovely widgets and styles to your website. Its flexible and easy-to-use functions have invited a number of addon plugins that let you develop amazing websites without having to code.
If you utilize too numerous plugins or have too numerous animations then it might make your entire website slow.
So the concern develops if Elementor slows your site down even without any of these addons. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
To find out, we compare 2 of our starter template websites. Among them was developed with Gutenberg and the other with Elementor. Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and should have higher speeds in general, however by what degree?
Let’s find out.
Here are the websites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg site from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Starter 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 results.
As you can see, the efficiency of the Gutenberg site is much faster than the Elementor site.
In regards to precise 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 huge of a difference that is!
In fact, the very same site developed with Beaver Builder likewise carries out a little much better than the Elementor website.
Nevertheless, in terms of completely packed time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor website to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Although Elementor is a terrific tool, it does not mean that it is the right 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 straight without incorporating another contact form plugin or a payment gateway. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
In such a case you will require to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you may want to think about a lighter plugin that loads faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and many other consider mind, we have actually created this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.
Which Themes Work Best With Elementor
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is among the most lightweight and quick site home builders since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to produce websites with ease.
The blocks include everything you may expect, consisting of headings and subheadings along with lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each specific website page – all from one easy user interface!
Developing a website in Gutenberg is like developing a house utilizing Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the ideal order to come up with a stunning site. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
In regards to efficiency. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is enhanced for WordPress users and provides what it promises. It also does not have the various design aspects that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who chooses performance over style, then Gutenberg is the ideal option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as fancy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). It does offer a stable and constant experience with its core plugin that only develops private pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style offered if you want one too! Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Beaver Builder is a complete page design bundle that offers you with all the tools and parts to develop any sort of site. It has aspects such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, testimonials, and more all in one location.
It stands head to head in terms of design and performance with Elementor. Beaver Builder does not have as lots of addons built 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 quickly, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart style system makes recycling blocks of content fast and basic by defining color pattern which will save time when developing brand-new designs. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
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 a choice to easily redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps noting for their business location!
You can utilize SeedProd’s custom domain mapping function which will conserve time when handling numerous client landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity throughout platforms.
Any Lingering Questions?
As you can see, our company believe that Elementor is one of the very best WordPress page contractors 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 also not alone in our favorable Elementor review – over 4 million WordPress websites use Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star score on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can offer for free:
Set up the totally free Astra theme to create a flexible base for your Elementor designs.
Install the totally free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and start structure. Which Themes Work Best With Elementor.
Then, if you like what you see, consider 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 comment and we’ll attempt to help you decide.