Elementor Evaluation: Is It The Very Best WordPress Page Builder? – WordPress Elementor Documentation
Trying to choose if Elementor is the ideal page Builder for your WordPress website? In this hands-on Elementor evaluation, we’ll help you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who should utilize Elementor
- The special features that help Elementor stick out from the competitors
- Whether you must utilize the totally free variation or open your wallet for the premium variation
WordPress Elementor Documentation
We’ve created Astra, among 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. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
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Comprehending why we like Elementor and have actually developed products in the Elementor environment is more essential than simply the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and interact in this review.
By the end of our Elementor review, you need to have whatever that you need to make an informed decision about whether Elementor is the best tool for your WordPress site.
WordPress Elementor Documentation
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 look like to visitors as you’re constructing it.
- Drag and drop different material and design components to produce the best design.
Essentially, it transforms developing a great-looking, custom web design from something you require to be a designer to do, to something that anyone can do. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Elementor is now actively utilized by over 4 million WordPress sites, which makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s also preserved an impressive 4.7-star rating (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so most of those users are pretty happy with Elementor.
There are a lot of WordPress page contractors that offer a visual, drag-and-drop interface, however, so what makes Elementor stand out and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll enter into this in more depth in the future, but a few 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 smart devices, so it’s important that your designs look fantastic on all devices. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get lots of alternatives to manage how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor includes hundreds of professionally developed design templates so that you don’t need to start from scratch.
- Design options – you get lots of detailed design choices to make your style pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get great deals of convenient tools like right-click assistance, a fast find tool, and more to help you build beautiful pages faster.
- Theme Builder – with the Pro version, you can develop your whole WordPress theme utilizing Elementor (though we still suggest pairing it with a quality theme).
- Dynamic content – you can consist of vibrant material from custom fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise design all kinds of popups utilizing the exact same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re constructing an eCommerce shop, you can design your WooCommerce store using Elementor and include items in your other styles. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, practically anybody who’s using WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer may like Elementor for its capability to help them rapidly develop landing pages and popups, while a casual user might just be looking for a method to add some additional style to their article.
Let’s take a look at some specific situations:
WordPress Elementor Documentation
The Casual User
If you’re simply a casual user trying to find a way to add some design to your blog posts or build a beautiful homepage, Elementor is ideal for you.
You’ll be able to utilize the visual user interface to spin up some beautiful styles without requiring any technical knowledge … and you’ll most likely be able to do it totally free! More on whether you should utilize the complimentary or paid variation later on. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is great for digital marketers and groups because it consists of lots of marketing elements.
For example, the Type widget in Elementor Pro lets you create all kinds of lead forms and link them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier combination, which lets you link to your CRM, also.
You can likewise utilize the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re selling services or products, you can use WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is likewise an exceptional option for structure WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re building websites for customers, Elementor is a best (and popular) choice.
You can integrate Elementor with a flexible style like Astra to develop 100% custom client websites with no code needed. You can also utilize Theme Builder when required, like designing the design template for a custom post type and incorporating dynamic information from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
WordPress Elementor Documentation
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base version of Elementor that is offered in the WordPress Plugin repository is totally totally free to use. There is also a pro variation with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Check out our post on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you want to get a detailed review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. However, it is restricted at certain points.
For instance, with Elementor Pro you can personalize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or item pages. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
The Elementor base variation delivers the bare minimum you require to develop and personalize your website. However if you want to have the freedom of redesigning the whole site, Elementor Pro is the best choice.
With Elementor Pro you can likewise add pop-ups, contact forms, membership forms, international widgets, and customized CSS.
Here is a list of extra functions that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demonstration imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Complete 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 sites
- Popup Builder with sophisticated features like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to display specific pop-ups on specific pages
- Visual Kind Builder that can be incorporated with popular email marketing tools
- You can produce global widgets and use them site-wide
- Include custom-made CSS
- Deploy any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you want
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing strategy based on the number of licenses you desire.
If you are working with a single site then the Necessary Strategy would be best for you. If you are dealing with several websites, the Advanced plan or above strategies would be better.
All the strategies come with a yearly subscription.
How Elementor Works: Exploring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor works with this practical section.
Similar to any other plugin, you need to set up and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either pick to personalize 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 one of the pages that you wish to modify.
Click Edit With Elementor to begin modifying.
For the sake of this demonstration, we installed the Astra style and imported one of its demo sites developed with Elementor. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard using that demonstration site.
Here’s what the Elementor control panel looks like.
Here’s the label of different parts numbered.
- The workspace or the primary canvas. This is where you edit and redesign your website
- Elementor widgets location
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- International settings
- Modification history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Preview changes.
- Release.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are completely new to constructing sites, you require to comprehend the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page built with Elementor consists of areas and columns.
Section. A section is essentially a row. You can add a background, alter 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. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
A page can have any variety of areas in it. Sections include columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration revealing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
WordPress Elementor Documentation
How to Style a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When designing a websites, you can either start with a blank screen or import a pre-existing template. In this section, we will cover how you can create a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Here’s how you do it:
Action 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click the “+” button to add a brand-new section.
Action 3: Pick a section with a single column or numerous ones depending on your needs.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
Once you enjoy with the placement, you can adjust the finer information in the Content, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can experiment with the alternatives when discovering to find the right designs for you.
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How to Style a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
In some cases you may need to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not extremely different in this case either. It is much easier to edit 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 rearrange a widget on the visual preview, you can also use drag and drop. If you want to modify text, just click and type on the visual preview:
To create the designs for your widgets, utilize areas and columns.
To tailor a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Use a similar technique to customize sections and columns:
As you alter a component’s settings, you’ll instantly see those modifications reviewed the visual preview.
8 Awesome Functions That Assist Elementor Stand Out
Next, let’s go through a few of the important things that assist Elementor stand apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page contractors.
1. Hassle-free Modifying Functions for Faster Style
Elementor comes with some practical modifying features that help you construct styles quicker.
For example, Elementor comes with right-click assistance, 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 likewise features an useful Navigator view that provides you a bought list of all the content on your page, separated by areas and columns. You can utilize this to rapidly open the settings for any aspect on your page. You can likewise relabel components to make them much easier to discover: WordPress Elementor Documentation.
And to help you rapidly navigate between your styles, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you have actually built with Elementor by looking for it by name:
2. Big Widget Selection for Design Versatility
Across the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely massive choice of widgets, which provides you a ton of versatility when developing your designs.
It’s not almost the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro, though, there’s also a substantial selection of widgets from third-party developers.
Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-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 usually discover a widget that does exactly what you want it to.
3. In-depth Style and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor vanquishes a lot of the competition is its design options.
Elementor lets you do all the essentials – you can change up colors, fonts, spacing, etc.
But it likewise adds advanced choices like:
Shape dividers
Custom placing
Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for specific widgets
In other words, Elementor provides you more alternatives to produce a special, effective style.
4. Huge Template Choice to Conserve You Time
If you don’t wish to construct your designs from scratch, Elementor comes with a substantial choice of design templates, divided into two classifications:
Pages – full-page design templates. All you do is customize them to fulfill your requirements. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Blocks – design templates for specific parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build complete designs.
Similar to widgets, you can likewise find design templates from third-party sources.
If you use the Astra WordPress style, it comes with heaps of pre-made starter design templates constructed with Elementor. Each starter website consists of several Elementor templates that you can customize as required.
5. Flexible Form Widget and Integrations
Above, I discussed Elementor’s widget selection in general. However I think it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Kind widget.
The Type widget lets you develop custom forms, total with as lots of fields as required. But where this widget gets actually effective, specifically when it concerns marketing executions, is its integrated combinations.
You can hook it approximately popular email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and more. There’s likewise a Webhook alternative that lets you link to Zapier (and the thousands of apps readily available there), along with chat integrations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Material for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you acquire the capability to exceed posts and pages and create your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can construct:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive design templates
For example, you could create a custom post type and after that utilize Elementor to create the template for that post type, instead of messing around with style template files straight.
The actually powerful thing here is that you have the capability to bring in dynamic material from custom fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this vibrant function, you can construct really custom-made sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible material management system. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Just one note – while this is certainly an effective feature, there are still some reasons why you may want to choose a versatile Elementor theme like Astra even if you choose to utilize Elementor Theme Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Designs
If you’re developing an eCommerce store, you can likewise use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop content with dedicated WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll have the ability to create both your single item pages and go shopping pages.
To assist you develop your designs, you’ll get a range of devoted WooCommerce widgets for whatever from product images to upsells.
In one of our articles, we discussed how to create an eCommerce website with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Use, and More
Lastly, Elementor Pro can do more than simply posts, pages, and theme design – you can likewise utilize it to develop popups with Elementor Popup Builder.
With Popup Builder, you get access to the same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens a great deal of possibilities:
You might use the Type widget to produce email opt-in popups and link them straight to your e-mail marketing service of choice.
Or, you could utilize the Login widget to develop a popup login form for your website. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a range of targeting and activate guidelines to manage exactly where and when your popup appears:
WordPress Elementor Documentation
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a good chance that you believe Elementor is right for your requirements.
That leads to the next concern – can you utilize the totally free version at WordPress.org or should you buy Elementor Pro?
This is an essential choice, so we actually composed a whole post on how to pick between Elementor complimentary vs Pro.
In general, if you simply want to design some posts/pages or fundamental 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 includes:
- 30+ brand-new widgets, including the Type widget. The Type widget is especially effective for marketing pages.
- Style Builder. This lets you create your entire theme and WooCommerce shop using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you construct popups using Elementor.
- More design templates. While the free version consists of some design templates, you require Pro for full access.
- More design options. You get access to custom positioning.
Purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
If you want more flexibility to personalize your theme, you do not need to purchase Elementor Pro. Rather, you might use a versatile style like Astra. Through its lots of Customizer settings, you can adjust Astra to basically any use, and it’s a lot easier than trying to design your own style from scratch. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
You can build your header and footer utilizing Astra. Because Astra is built to combine with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to create the content that goes “between” your header, footer, and other style aspects.
Astra also includes tons of pre-built site design templates built with Elementor. So you can import an already-finished site utilizing Astra and after that just fine-tune it to match your requirements using Elementor.
Or, if you wish to include new widgets for design flexibility, you might purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which includes 36+ brand-new Elementor widgets.
Does Elementor Slow Down Your Site?
Now, this has actually been a concern that is recently getting appeal. And truly so.
Elementor is a plugin that can be beneficial for including beautiful widgets and designs to your site. Its versatile and easy-to-use features have invited a number of addon plugins that let you produce incredible websites without having to code.
Nevertheless, if you utilize a lot of plugins or have too many animations then it might make your whole website sluggish.
So the question develops if Elementor slows your website down even without any of these addons. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
To learn, we compare 2 of our starter design template websites. 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, however by what degree?
Let’s learn.
Here are the sites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg site from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Starter Templates
We hosted both sites on the exact same server and under various directories of the same domain name and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the results.
As you can see, the performance of the Gutenberg website 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 entirely while the website made with Gutenberg took 2.2 s.
If you are optimizing for SEO, you know how huge of a difference that is!
The very same site developed with Beaver Builder likewise carries out somewhat much better than the Elementor website.
Nevertheless, in terms of totally packed time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Although Elementor is an excellent tool, it does not indicate that it is the right tool for you all the time.
If you are developing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you might not be able to do it directly without incorporating another contact type plugin or a payment entrance. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
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 quicker without causing any hold-ups in page loading.
With all these and numerous other factors in mind, we have developed this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.
WordPress Elementor Documentation
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most light-weight and quick website contractors because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it simpler than ever to develop web pages with ease.
The blocks consist of everything you might expect, consisting of headings and subheadings in addition to lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each private site page – all from one simple interface!
Building a website in Gutenberg resembles developing a home utilizing Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the right order to come up with a beautiful website. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
In regards to performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and provides what it guarantees. It also lacks the various design elements that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who prefers performance over design, then Gutenberg is the ideal choice 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 stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only constructs individual pieces of material. There is the Beaver Builder Style offered if you want one too! WordPress Elementor Documentation.
Beaver Builder is a total page style bundle that provides you with all the tools and elements to develop any type of site. It has aspects such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact kinds, reviews, 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 constructed for itself as Elementor does.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page Builder plugin for WordPress. It has actually been created to be as quickly, easy-to-use with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s smart style system makes recycling blocks of content fast and basic by defining color schemes which will conserve time when developing new designs. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
It has all the blocks and features you ‘d anticipate from a powerful page Builder such as opt-in types, social profiles, countdown timers. It likewise consists of contact pages with a choice to quickly redirect visitors on any website map or Google Maps listing for their organization area!
You can utilize SeedProd’s custom domain mapping feature which will save time when handling multiple client landing pages in WordPress while still keeping 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’ve use Astra, among the most popular styles for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor, one of the most popular Elementor widget collections.
We’re likewise not alone in our favorable Elementor evaluation – over 4 million WordPress sites use Elementor and Elementor has a remarkable 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 evaluations.
If you want to experience what Elementor can provide totally free:
Install the free Astra style to develop a versatile base for your Elementor styles.
Install the complimentary Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin building. WordPress Elementor Documentation.
If you like what you see, think about whether Elementor Pro is right for your requirements.
Exists anything we missed in our Elementor evaluation that would assist you make your decision? Leave a remark and we’ll attempt to help you choose.
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