Elementor Review: Is It The Best WordPress Page Builder? – Elementor Free WordPress
Attempting to decide if Elementor is the ideal page Builder for your WordPress site? In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll help you understand:
- How Elementor can benefit you
- Who must utilize Elementor
- The special features that assist Elementor stick out from the competitors
- Whether you ought to utilize the totally free variation or open your wallet for the premium version
Elementor Free WordPress
We’ve produced Astra, one of the most popular themes for Elementor, in addition to a popular add-on for Elementor, so you can most likely guess that we’re fans of Elementor. Let’s get that out of the way – this is a favorable Elementor review. Elementor Free WordPress.
Get Started with Elementor Pro
However understanding why we like Elementor and have actually constructed items in the Elementor community is more important than simply the truth that we like it – that’s what we’re going to try and interact in this evaluation.
By the end of our Elementor review, you ought to have whatever that you need to make an informed choice about whether Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress site.
Elementor Free WordPress
What Does Elementor Offer?
Elementor is a visual, drag-and-drop page Builder. If you’re not acquainted with these terms, this indicates that you can:
- See a preview of exactly what your page will appear like to visitors as you’re constructing it.
- Drag and drop different material and design components to develop the ideal design.
Essentially, it transforms producing a beautiful, custom web design from something you require to be a designer to do, to something that anybody can do. Elementor Free WordPress.
Elementor is now actively used by over 4 million WordPress websites, that makes it the most popular WordPress page Builder. It’s likewise preserved an excellent 4.7-star score (out of 5) on over 5,900 reviews, so the majority of those users are pretty delighted with Elementor.
There are a great deal of WordPress page builders that use a visual, drag-and-drop user interface, however, so what makes Elementor stick out and why is it so successful?
Well, we’ll get into this in more depth in the future, however 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 style.
- Responsive design – the majority of people search the web on smart devices, so it’s important that your styles look terrific on all devices. Elementor’s designs are responsive by default and you get great deals of choices to control how it works.
- Templates – staring at a blank page is scary! Elementor comes with numerous expertly designed templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
- Design options – you get tons of comprehensive style alternatives to make your design pixel-perfect without turning to customized CSS (though you can do that too).
- Benefit – you get lots of useful tools like right-click assistance, a quick find tool, and more to help you develop beautiful pages much faster.
- Style Builder – with the Pro variation, you can design your whole WordPress style utilizing Elementor (though we still recommend combining it with a quality style).
- Dynamic material – you can include vibrant material from custom-made fields and plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset.
- Popup Builder – with the Pro version, you can likewise develop all types of popups utilizing the very same visual, drag-and-drop interface.
- WooCommerce Builder – if you’re building an eCommerce store, you can design your WooCommerce shop using Elementor and consist of items in your other designs. Elementor Free WordPress.
Who Is Elementor For?
Elementor is for … well, practically anybody who’s utilizing WordPress.
For example, a digital marketer may love Elementor for its ability to help them rapidly produce landing pages and popups, while a casual user may simply be trying to find a way to add some additional style to their post.
Let’s look at some particular situations:
Elementor Free WordPress
The Casual User
If you’re just a casual user searching for a way to include some design to your blog posts or construct a beautiful homepage, Elementor is perfect for you.
You’ll have the ability to use the visual user interface to spin up some great-looking styles without needing any technical knowledge … and you’ll probably be able to do it totally free! More on whether you should utilize the totally free or paid version later. Elementor Free WordPress.
The Digital Online marketer
Elementor is great for digital marketers and teams because it consists of tons of marketing elements.
The Form widget in Elementor Pro lets you develop all types of lead forms and link them to popular e-mail marketing services. It also has a Zapier integration, which lets you link to your CRM, too.
You can also use the Popup Builder to develop opt-in popups and target them anywhere on your site. And if you’re offering services or products, you can utilize WooCommerce Builder to develop your sales pages.
The core Elementor plugin itself is also an outstanding option for building WordPress landing pages.
The Website Builder
If you’re building sites for clients, Elementor is an ideal (and popular) option.
You can combine Elementor with a flexible theme like Astra to build 100% custom client sites without any code needed. You can also utilize Style Builder when needed, like developing the template for a custom post type and including vibrant information from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.
Elementor Free WordPress
Elementor Prices
Short answer: It’s Free.
The base variation of Elementor that is readily available in the WordPress Plugin repository is entirely totally free to use. There is likewise a professional variation with a lot more flexibility and a lot more functions.
Check out our short article on Elementor Vs. Elementor Pro if you wish to get an in-depth review of both.
Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all sites. Nevertheless, it is restricted at certain points.
For example, with Elementor Pro you can tailor your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. Elementor Free WordPress.
The Elementor base variation delivers the bare minimum you need to design and customize your site. If you want to have the flexibility of upgrading the entire website, Elementor Pro is the finest option.
With Elementor Pro you can also include pop-ups, contact types, subscription kinds, international widgets, and customized CSS.
Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:
- 50+ extra widgets
- 300+ premium demo imports consisting of imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
- Total site customization through Theme Builder. This lets you alter the header, footer, and posts pages
- WooCommerce Builder for editing product and category pages in eCommerce sites
- Popup Builder with innovative functions like, exit intent, after scroll, and manages to display particular pop-ups on particular pages
- Visual Type Builder that can be incorporated with popular e-mail marketing tools
- You can create global widgets and utilize them site-wide
- Add custom CSS
- Release any Elementor widget practically anywhere you desire
Elementor Pro Prices
Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing strategy based on the variety of licenses you desire.
If you are dealing with a single site then the Necessary Strategy would be best for you. If you are working on several sites, the Advanced plan or above plans would be better.
All the strategies feature a yearly subscription.
How Elementor Works: Exploring the Interface
Let’s see how Elementor deals with this useful section.
Just like any other plugin, you need to install and activate Elementor through the WordPress repository.
Next, you can either choose to personalize Elementor settings or dive directly into designing.
If you are just 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 start modifying.
For the sake of this demonstration, we set up the Astra style and imported one of its demonstration sites built with Elementor. Elementor Free WordPress.
Now, let’s go through the Elementor dashboard using that demo site.
Here’s what the Elementor dashboard 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 website
- Elementor widgets area
- Elementor settings
- Open Elementor widgets
- Worldwide settings
- Revision history
- Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile).
- Sneak peek modifications.
- Publish.
Elementor Structure Hierarchy
If you are totally brand-new to developing sites, you need to understand the structure of the Elementor page Builder.
Every page constructed with Elementor contains areas and columns.
Section. A section is basically a row. You can include a background, alter its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside areas.
Column. A column divides a section into various columns. You can then manage each column separately. Elementor Free WordPress.
A page can have any number of sections in it. Areas consist of columns and columns consist of the Elementor widgets.
Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like.
Elementor Free WordPress
How to Design a Page in Elementor from Scratch
When developing a web page, you can either begin with a blank screen or import a pre-existing design template. In this section, we will cover how you can develop a page from scratch utilizing Elementor. Elementor Free WordPress.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.
Action 2: Click on the “+” button to include a brand-new section.
Action 3: Pick a section with a single column or several ones depending upon your requirements.
Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.
As soon as you more than happy with the positioning, you can adjust the finer information in the Material, Style, and Advanced Sections.
You can play around with the choices when discovering to find the best styles for you.
How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor
Sometimes you may require to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not extremely various in this case either. In fact, it is much easier to edit an existing Elementor page than going back to square one.
Here’s how you do it.
To include a brand-new widget, drag it from the sidebar left wing.
To reorganize a widget on the visual preview, you can likewise utilize drag and drop. If you wish to edit text, simply click and type on the visual preview:
To create the layouts for your widgets, use areas and columns.
To customize a widget, click it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:
Use a comparable technique to personalize sections and columns:
As you change a component’s settings, you’ll immediately see those modifications reflected on the visual sneak peek.
8 Remarkable Functions That Help Elementor Stick 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. Convenient Modifying Functions for Faster Style
Elementor features some practical modifying features that help you build designs more quickly.
For instance, Elementor comes with right-click support, which most other page builders do not offer.
You can right-click on any component to replicate it, copy and paste styles, and more:
It likewise comes with a helpful Navigator view that gives you a purchased list of all the material on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can use this to quickly open the settings for any component on your page. You can also rename aspects to make them simpler to find: Elementor Free WordPress.
And to help you rapidly navigate in between your styles, it likewise includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve developed with Elementor by searching for it by name:
2. Huge Widget Selection for Style Flexibility
Throughout the core plugin and add-ons, Elementor has an absolutely enormous choice of widgets, which offers you a lots of versatility when constructing your designs.
It’s not just about the 60+ widgets that feature Elementor and Elementor Pro, however, there’s also a huge selection of widgets from third-party developers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor adds another 36+ brand-new widgets that you can use in your styles, covering everything from form stylers to hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.
With numerous options, you can almost always discover a widget that does precisely what you want it to.
3. Detailed Style and Positioning Guidelines for Pixel-Perfect Styles
Another area where Elementor beats out a great deal of the competitors is its style choices.
Elementor lets you do all the basics – you can switch up colors, font styles, spacing, and so on.
It also includes innovative alternatives like:
Shape dividers
Customized positioning
Animations, consisting of parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
Customized CSS for private widgets
Put simply, Elementor offers you more options to create an unique, reliable design.
4. Substantial Design Template Choice to Save You Time
If you don’t want to build your designs from scratch, Elementor features a big selection of design templates, divided into 2 classifications:
Pages – full-page design templates. All you do is personalize them to fulfill your needs. Elementor Free WordPress.
Blocks – templates for specific parts of a page, like a FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION. You can mix-and-match them like legos to develop complete styles.
Similar to widgets, you can likewise find design templates from third-party sources.
If you utilize the Astra WordPress theme, it includes stacks of pre-made starter design templates built with Elementor. Each starter site consists of several Elementor templates that you can tailor as required.
5. Flexible Type Widget and Combinations
Above, I discussed Elementor’s widget selection in general. I believe it’s worth singling out a specific widget:
The Type widget.
The Form widget lets you develop customized forms, complete with as numerous fields as needed. Where this widget gets actually powerful, specifically when it comes to marketing executions, is its built-in 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 thousands of apps available there), in addition to chat combinations for Slack and Discord.
6. Style Builder With Dynamic Material for Custom WordPress Sites
With Elementor Pro, you gain the capability to surpass posts and pages and create your whole WordPress style with Elementor. That is, you can build:
Headers
Footers
Single templates
Archive templates
For example, you could produce a custom-made post type and after that use Elementor to develop the template for that post type, instead of messing around with theme template files straight.
The truly powerful thing here is that you have the capability to bring in vibrant content from custom fields that you produce with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.
With this dynamic feature, you can construct truly custom-made websites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system. Elementor Free WordPress.
Simply one note – while this is certainly a powerful function, there are still some reasons that you might want to pick a flexible Elementor style like Astra even if you decide to use Elementor Style Builder.
7. WooCommerce Builder for Customized eCommerce Styles
If you’re developing an eCommerce store, you can likewise use Elementor Theme Builder to your shop content with devoted WooCommerce Builder widgets.
You’ll be able to design both your single item pages and shop pages.
To assist you develop your designs, you’ll get a variety of dedicated WooCommerce widgets for everything from item images to upsells.
In one of our posts, we discussed how to create an eCommerce site with Elementor.
8. Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More
Elementor Pro can do more than simply 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 exact same familiar Elementor interface and all of the widgets.
This opens up a great deal of possibilities:
You might utilize the Kind widget to create email opt-in popups and link them directly to your email marketing service of choice.
Or, you might utilize the Login widget to create a popup login form for your website. Elementor Free WordPress.
When you publish a popup, you’ll get a variety of targeting and activate rules to control precisely where and when your popup appears:
Elementor Free WordPress
Should You Use Elementor Free vs Pro?
If you have actually made it this far, there’s a great chance that you believe Elementor is right for your needs.
That leads to the next question – can you utilize the free version at WordPress.org or should you acquire Elementor Pro?
This is an essential decision, so we really composed an entire post on how to choose in between Elementor complimentary vs Pro.
In general, if you just wish to design some posts/pages or standard landing pages, you can most likely manage with the complimentary version.
With that being stated, there’s a lot of value in Elementor Pro. It adds:
- 30+ new widgets, including the Form widget. The Kind widget is particularly effective for marketing pages.
- Theme Builder. This lets you design your whole theme and WooCommerce shop using Elementor.
- Popup Builder. This lets you develop popups using Elementor.
- More design templates. While the complimentary version consists of some templates, you need Pro for full access.
- More style choices. For example, you get access to custom-made positioning.
However, buying Elementor Pro is not the only method to extend Elementor.
If you want more versatility to tailor your style, you do not need to purchase Elementor Pro. Instead, you could use a flexible style like Astra. Through its numerous Customizer settings, you can adapt Astra to pretty much any usage, and it’s a lot easier than trying to design your own style from scratch. Elementor Free WordPress.
You can develop your header and footer utilizing Astra. Because Astra is developed to match with Elementor, you can still use Elementor to develop the content that goes “between” your header, footer, and other theme components.
Astra also consists of lots of pre-built site design templates developed with Elementor. You can import an already-finished site using Astra and then simply modify it to match your requirements utilizing Elementor.
Or, if you wish to include new widgets for design flexibility, you might purchase an extension like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, which adds 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 helpful for adding lovely widgets and styles to your site. Its versatile and user friendly functions have welcomed a number of addon plugins that let you produce amazing sites without needing to code.
Nevertheless, if you use too many plugins or have too many animations then it may make your entire site slow.
The concern develops if Elementor slows your website down even without any of these addons. Elementor Free WordPress.
To discover, we compare two of our starter design template sites. 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, but by what degree?
Let’s discover.
Here are the sites for you to check out.
- Gutenberg website from Beginner Templates
- Elementor website from Starter Templates
We hosted both websites on the very same server and under various directory sites of the very same domain and compared their performance in GT Metrix.
Here are the outcomes.
As you can see, the efficiency of the Gutenberg website is much faster than the Elementor site.
In regards to precise loading time, the website 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 understand how huge of a difference that is!
The same site built with Beaver Builder also performs a little much better than the Elementor website.
However, in regards to completely packed time, it takes a 2nd longer than the Elementor site to load.
Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a fantastic tool, it does not suggest that it is the ideal tool for you all the time.
For instance, if you are developing a concentrated landing page with the Elementor base version, you might not have the ability to do it directly without integrating another contact form plugin or a payment entrance. Elementor Free WordPress.
In such a case you will need to upgrade to Elementor Pro.
For the SEOs out there, you might want to consider a lighter plugin that loads much faster without triggering any delays in page loading.
With all these and many other factors in mind, we have actually created this list of Elementor options that can assist you out.
Elementor Free WordPress
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is one of the most light-weight and quick site contractors since it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to develop websites with ease.
The blocks include whatever you might anticipate, consisting of headings and subheadings in addition to lists of products like images or videos within the content area on each individual site page – all from one simple interface!
Building a website in Gutenberg is like developing a home utilizing Lego blocks. You set up the blocks in the best order to come up with a stunning site. Elementor Free WordPress.
In terms of performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page Builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and delivers what it guarantees. It also does not have the different design aspects that Elementor brings to the table.
If you are somebody who chooses efficiency over design, then Gutenberg is the right option for you.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is not as flashy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder contrast). However it does supply a stable and constant experience with its core plugin that just develops private pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme available if you desire one too! Elementor Free WordPress.
Beaver Builder is a complete page style plan that supplies you with all the tools and elements to build any type of website. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact types, testimonials, 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 numerous 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 created to be as fast, user friendly with site speed in mind.
SeedProd’s wise design system makes recycling blocks of material quick and basic by defining color pattern which will conserve time when creating brand-new layouts. Elementor Free WordPress.
It has all the blocks and functions you ‘d expect from an effective page Builder such as opt-in kinds, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an alternative to quickly redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps listing for their company place!
You can utilize SeedProd’s customized 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, we believe that Elementor is among the best WordPress page builders out there, which is why we have actually usage 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 evaluation – over four million WordPress sites use Elementor and Elementor has a fantastic 4.7-star ranking on over 5,900 reviews.
If you want to experience what Elementor can provide free of charge:
Set up the complimentary Astra style to produce a flexible base for your Elementor styles.
Set up the totally free Elementor plugin from WordPress.org and begin building. Elementor Free WordPress.
Then, if you like what you see, consider whether Elementor Pro is right for your needs.
Is there anything we missed out on in our Elementor review that would assist you make your decision? Leave a comment and we’ll attempt to assist you decide.
Get Started with Elementor Pro