Is Elementor the best page builder for WordPress in 2022?

Considering whether Elementor is the best page builder for your WordPress website? In this practical Elementor review, we’ll explain:

How to profit from using Elementor
Who ought to utilize Elementor?
The special characteristics that set Elementor apart from the competition
Choosing between using the free version and paying for the upgraded version

What Can Elementor Provide?

A graphic, drag-and-drop page builder is Elementor. If these concepts are unfamiliar to you, this implies that you can:

As you develop your page, receive a preview of what it will actually appear like to visitors.
To create the ideal design, simply drag and drop different content and design elements.
Basically, it makes it so that anyone can create a stunning, custom site design without than requiring them to be developers.

Over four million WordPress websites are currently using Elementor, making it the most widely used WordPress page builder. Additionally, it has maintained an exceptional 4.7-star rating (out of 5), indicating that the majority of its consumers are satisfied with Elementor.

There are other WordPress page builders that provide a visual, drag-and-drop interface, so what distinguishes Elementor and accounts for its popularity?

We’ll go into more detail about this later, but some of Elementor’s most notable characteristics are as follows:

• Numerous content elements serve as the foundation of your page. You “drag-and-drop” them to create your design.
• The majority of web users use their smartphones, thus it’s critical that your designs appear fantastic on all of them. The designs created using Elementor are responsive by default, and you have a lot of control over how they operate.
• Templates: It’s unsettling to look at a blank page! You can avoid starting from scratch by using the hundreds of professionally designed templates that come with Elementor.
• Style choices – without using custom CSS, you have access to a ton of comprehensive style options to make your design pixel-perfect (though you can do that too).
• Convenience – You gain access to a variety of helpful tools, including a quick locate tool, right-click support, and others, to help you create beautiful pages more quickly.
• Theme Builder: Using Elementor’s Pro edition, you can create your own WordPress theme (though we still recommend pairing it with a quality theme).
• Dynamic content – You can use plugins like ACF, Pods, and Toolset as well as custom fields to provide dynamic material.

• Popup Builder: Using the same visual, drag-and-drop interface, you can construct all different kinds of popups with the Pro edition.
• WooCommerce Builder: If you’re setting up an online store, you may use Elementor to design your WooCommerce store and integrate products into your other designs.

Elementor Is For Whom?

Well, pretty much anyone who uses WordPress can use Elementor.

A casual user could only be searching for a means to give their blog articles a little extra flair, whereas a digital marketer may adore Elementor for its ability to help them quickly develop landing pages and popups.

The Ordinary User

Elementor is ideal for you if you’re just a casual user searching for a method to spice up your blog entries or create a stunning homepage.

Without any technical expertise, you can create some gorgeous designs using the visual interface—and you can probably do it for nothing! Later on, we’ll talk more about whether you should utilize the free or paid version.

The Internet Marketer

Because it has so many marketing components, Elementor is perfect for teams and digital marketers.

For instance, Elementor Pro’s Form widget enables you to build various lead forms and connect them to well-known email marketing providers. Additionally, it offers a Zapier integration that enables you to link to your CRM.

Additionally, you can make opt-in popups with the Popup Builder and place them wherever you like on your website. You can create your sales pages with WooCommerce Builder if you’re selling goods or services.

Last but not least, the core Elementor plugin is a fantastic tool for creating WordPress landing pages.

Elementor is a great (and well-liked) option if you’re creating websites for customers.

Elementor and a customizable theme can be combined to create completely unique client websites without the need for code. When necessary, you can also utilize Theme Builder to create a custom post type template and use dynamic data from ACF, Pods, or Toolset.

Elementor Pricing

Short answer: It’s Free.

The base version of Elementor that is available in the WordPress Plugin repository is completely free to use. There is also a pro version with a lot more flexibility and a lot more features.

Elementor is a feature-packed plugin that works for all websites. However, it is limited at certain points. 

For example, with Elementor Pro you can customize your header, footer, posts page, single posts page, or product pages. 

The Elementor base version delivers the bare minimum you need to design and customize your website. But if you want to have the freedom of redesigning the entire site, Elementor Pro is the best choice.

With Elementor Pro you can also add pop-ups, contact forms, subscription forms, global widgets, and custom CSS.

Here is a list of additional features that you get in Elementor Pro:

• 50+ additional widgets
• 300+ premium demo imports including imports for header, footer, and pop-ups
• Complete website customization through Theme Builder. This lets you change the header, footer, and posts pages
• WooCommerce Builder for editing product and category pages in eCommerce websites
• Popup Builder with advanced features like, exit intent, after scroll, and controls to display certain pop-ups on certain pages
• Visual Form Builder that can be integrated with popular email marketing tools
• You can create global widgets and use them site-wide
• Add custom CSS
• Deploy any Elementor widget pretty much anywhere you want

Elementor Pro Pricing

Elementor Pro has a 5 tier pricing plan based on the number of licenses you want.

If you are working with a single website then the Essential Plan would be best for you. If you are working on multiple websites, the Advanced plan or above plans would be more suitable.

All the plans come with an annual subscription.

Touring the Interface to Learn How Elementor Works

Let’s examine Elementor’s functionality in this application area.

Elementor must be installed and activated via the WordPress repository, just like any other plugin.

After that, you have the option of customizing Elementor’s settings or starting a design project.

We advise sticking with the default settings if you are just getting started. Open one of the pages you want to change by going to pages.

Click Edit With Elementor to start editing.

For the sake of this demonstration, we installed a theme and imported one of its demo sites built with Elementor.

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.

1. The working area or the main canvas. This is where you edit and redesign your website
2. Elementor widgets area
3. Elementor settings
4. Open Elementor widgets
5. Global settings
6. Revision history
7. Switch view (desktop, tablet, mobile)
8. Preview changes
9. Publish

Elementor Structure Hierarchy

If you are completely new to building websites, you need to understand the structure of the Elementor page builder.

Every page built with Elementor contains sections and columns.

Section. A section is essentially a row. You can add a background, change its sizing, and more. Columns and widgets go inside sections.

Column. A column divides a section into different columns. You can then control each column individually.

A page can have any number of sections in it. Sections contain columns and columns include the Elementor widgets.

Here is an illustration showing what the structure in Elementor looks like

How to Create a Page from Scratch with Elementor

You have the option of starting from scratch when creating a web page or importing an existing template. This section will explain how to use Elementor to build a page from scratch.

How to do it is as follows:

Step 1: Open a blank page and click “Edit With Elementor”.

Step 2: Click on the “+” button to add a new section.

Step 3: Pick a section with a single column or multiple ones depending on your needs.

Step 4: Drag widgets from the Elementor panel into the columns that you want to.

Once you are happy with the placement, you can adjust the finer details in the Content, Style, and Advanced Sections. 

You can play around with the options when learning to find the right styles for you.

How to Design a Pre-Existing Page in Elementor

Sometimes you might need to edit a pre-existing page with Elementor. The process is not very different 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 on the left. 

To rearrange a widget on the visual preview, you can also use drag and drop. If you want to edit text, just click and type on the visual preview:

To create the layouts for your widgets, use sections and columns.

To customize a widget, click on it. That will open the widget’s settings in the sidebar, which are divided into three tabs:

Use a similar approach to customize sections and columns:

As you change an element’s settings, you’ll instantly see those changes reflected on the visual preview.

Eight Fantastic Features Make Elementor Unique

Let’s now go through a few features that set Elementor apart from other drag-and-drop visual page builders.

Practical Editing Tools for Quicker Design

Elementor has a few practical editing capabilities that make it easier for you to create designs more rapidly.

For instance, most other page builders don’t support right-click, but Elementor does.

Any element can be copied and pasted, styles can be copied and pasted, and more by right-clicking it:

It also comes with a useful Navigator view that gives you an ordered list of all the content on your page, broken up by sections and columns. You can use this to quickly open the settings for any element on your page. You can also rename elements to make them easier to find:

And to help you quickly navigate between your designs, it also includes a Finder tool that lets you jump to anything that you’ve built with Elementor by searching for it by name:

Large Widget Selection for Flexibility in Design

You have a ton of versatility when creating your designs thanks to Elementor’s enormous array of widgets throughout its core plugin and add-ons.

There is a vast variety of widgets created by outside developers in addition to the 60+ widgets that are included with Elementor and Elementor Pro.

The Ultimate Addons for Elementor, for instance, includes an additional 36+ new widgets that you can utilize in your designs, including form stylers, hotspots, content toggles, videos, and more.

With so many alternatives, it’s usually always possible to locate a widget that does the exact function you need.

Detailed Style and Positioning Rules for Pixel-Perfect Designs

Another area where Elementor beats out a lot of the competition is its design options.

Elementor lets you do all the basics — you can switch up colors, fonts, spacing, etc.

But it also adds advanced options like:

• Shape dividers
• Custom positioning
• Animations, including parallax scrolling, mouse tracking, 3D tilt, and more
• Custom CSS for individual widgets

Put simply, Elementor gives you more options to create a unique, effective design.

4. Huge Template Selection to Save You Time

If you don’t want to build your designs from scratch, Elementor comes with a huge selection of templates, divided into two categories:

• Pages — full-page templates. All you do is customize them to meet your needs.
• Blocks — templates for specific parts of a page, like a FAQ. You can mix-and-match them like legos to build complete designs.

As with widgets, you can also find templates from third-party sources.

Widget for Flexible Forms and Integrations

I made general reference of Elementor’s widget selection above. But I believe it’s worthwhile to single out a particular widget:

The widget for forms.

You can build custom forms with as many fields as necessary with the Form widget. But it’s the built-in integrations that make this widget extremely potent, especially when it comes to marketing applications.

It can be connected to a variety of well-known email marketing platforms, including ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and others. Additionally, there are chat integrations for Slack and Discord as well as a Webhook option that enables you to connect to Zapier (and the tens of thousands of apps that are available there).

Theme Builder With Dynamic Content for Custom WordPress Sites

With Elementor Pro, you gain the ability to go beyond posts and pages and design your entire WordPress theme with Elementor. That is, you can build:

• Headers
• Footers
• Single templates
• Archive templates

For example, you could create a custom post type and then use Elementor to design the template for that post type, rather than messing around with theme template files directly.

The really powerful thing here is that you have the ability to bring in dynamic content from custom fields that you create with plugins like ACF, Toolset, and Pods.

With this dynamic feature, you can build truly custom sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system.

Just one note — while this is certainly a powerful feature, there are still some reasons why you might want to choose a flexible Elementor theme even if you decide to use Elementor Theme Builder.

WooCommerce Builder for Custom eCommerce Designs

If you’re building an eCommerce site, you can also use specific WooCommerce Builder widgets to apply Elementor Theme Builder to the content of your store.

Both your shop pages and individual product pages can be designed.

You’ll receive a variety of specific WooCommerce widgets to aid in the development of your designs, covering everything from upsells to product pictures.

We discussed how to use Elementor to build an eCommerce website in one of our posts.

Popup Builder for Marketing, Usability, and More

Finally, Elementor Pro is capable of creating popups with its Elementor Popup Builder, in addition to posts, pages, and theme design.

You may use all of the widgets and the same comfortable Elementor interface with Popup Builder.

This creates a wide range of opportunities:

For instance, you could construct email opt-in popups with the Form widget and link them directly to your preferred email marketing service.

Alternately, you may design a pop-up login form for your website using the Login widget.

You can choose from a variety of targeting and trigger rules when you publish a popup to determine where and when it will appear:

Which Should You Use: Free or Pro Elementor?

If you’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance that you think Elementor is right for your needs.

That leads to the next question — can you use the free version at WordPress.org or should you purchase Elementor Pro?

In general, if you just want to design some posts/pages or basic landing pages, you can probably get by with the free version.

With that being said, there’s a lot of value in Elementor Pro. It adds:

• 30+ new widgets, including the Form widget. The Form widget is especially powerful for marketing pages.
• Theme Builder. This lets you design your entire theme and WooCommerce store using Elementor.
• Popup Builder. This lets you build popups using Elementor.
• More templates. While the free version includes some templates, you need Pro for full access.
• More design options. For example, you get access to custom positioning.

However, purchasing Elementor Pro is not the only way to extend Elementor.

Does Elementor Slow Down Your Website?

Now, this is a query that has recently been more well-liked. And with good reason.

A plugin called Elementor might be helpful for including lovely widgets and styles on your website. Its adaptable and user-friendly qualities have attracted a lot of add-on plugins that enable you to build amazing websites without knowing how to code.

However, if you overuse plugins or have too many animations, your entire website may become sluggish.

Therefore, the topic of whether Elementor slows down your website even without any of these add-ons is raised.

We contrast two of our beginning template websites to find out. Using Gutenberg for one and Elementor for the other, respectively. WordPress’s default editor, Gutenberg, should operate more quickly than in general, but by what degree?

Let’s find out.

Here are the websites for you to check out.

• Gutenberg website from Starter Templates
• Elementor website from Starter Templates

We hosted both sites on the same server and under different 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 website.

In terms of exact loading time, the website made with Elementor took about 5.5s to load completely while the website made with Gutenberg took 2.2s.

If you are optimizing for SEO, you know how big of a difference that is!

In fact, the same website built with Beaver Builder also performs slightly better than the Elementor website. 

However, in terms of fully loaded time, it takes a second longer than the Elementor website to load.

Elementor Alternatives

Although Elementor is a great tool, it does not mean that it is the right tool for you all the time. 

For example, if you are building a focused landing page with the Elementor base version, you may not be able to do it directly without integrating another contact form plugin or a payment gateway. 

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 faster without causing any delays in page loading.

With all these and many other factors in mind, we have created this list of Elementor alternatives that can help you out.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg is one of the most lightweight and fast website builders because it is WordPress default editor. Gutenburg makes it easier than ever to create web pages with ease.

The blocks include everything you might expect, including headings and subheadings as well as lists of items like images or videos within the content area on each individual site page – all from one easy interface!

Building a website in Gutenberg is like building a house using Lego blocks. You arrange the blocks in the right order to come up with a beautiful website.

In terms of performance. Gutenberg works way better than any other page builder. It is optimized for WordPress users and delivers what it promises. However, it also lacks the different design elements that Elementor brings to the table. 

If you are someone who prefers performance over design, then Gutenberg is the right choice for you.

Pricing: Gutenberg is completely free to use.

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is not as flashy or feature-rich compared to Elementor (Elementor Vs Beaver Builder comparison). But it does provide a stable and consistent experience with its core plugin that only builds individual pieces of content. There is the Beaver Builder Theme available if you want one too!

Beaver Builder is a complete page design package that provides you with all the tools and components to build any kind of site. It has elements such as headings, buttons, maps, sliders, contact forms, testimonials, and more all in one place.

It stands head to head in terms of design and performance with Elementor. However, Beaver Builder does not have as many addons built for itself as Elementor does. 

Pricing: The premium version starts with $99 for Unlimited Sites for the first year then renews at a 40% discounted rate 

SeedProd

SeedProd is a premium drag-and-drop landing page builder plugin for WordPress. It has been designed to be as fast, easy-to-use with website speed in mind.

SeedProd’s smart design system makes reusing blocks of content quick and simple by defining color schemes which will save time when designing new layouts.

It has all the blocks and features you’d expect from a powerful page builder such as opt-in forms, social profiles, countdown timers. It also includes contact pages with an option to easily redirect visitors on any site map or Google Maps listing for their business location! 

You can use SeedProd’s custom domain mapping feature which will save time when managing multiple client landing pages in WordPress while still maintaining branding continuity across platforms.

Pricing: Starts from $39.50 for a single site license.