Beaver Builder Review – Best Features + Pros and Cons

Are you thinking about using the Beaver Builder page builder plugin? Our in-depth Beaver Builder review will help you decide whether or not this plugin is ideal for you.

Beaver Builder is a well-known page builder for WordPress.You can easily build great-looking designs using its visual, drag-and-drop interface without writing a single line of code.

With its Beaver Themer addon, you can also create the header, footer, single post layout, and post list layout templates for your theme and individual design pages (archive).

While there is a lot to like about Beaver Builder, it’s not perfect. It misses the features, design options, and templates that you get with other page builders such as Elementor and Divi.

Overall, Beaver Builder can be an excellent choice for some users, while others would benefit more from using those other builders.

In our Beaver Builder review, we’ll help you figure out which scenario is best for you.

Beaver Builder Review – Best Features

To start our Beaver Builder review, let’s go over how Beaver Builder works and some of its most essential features.

Visual Editor with Drag and Drop Functionality

Beaver Builder’s main attraction is its visual, drag-and-drop builder. This lets you build your own custom designs without having to write a single line of code.

When you first launch Beaver Builder, you’ll see a full-width preview of your design along with a toolbar at the top:

To add new modules or templates, click the plus icon to expand a menu. To add a module to the page, simply drag it to the desired area:

Beaver Builder, like most other page builders, includes three types of page elements:

• Rows – It allows you to divide the page into horizontal sections.
• Columns – They go inside rows and let you vertically divide a row into one or more columns.
• Modules – It allows you to add content to the page. You can place them inside rows/columns. Different types of modules are available for different types of content, such as buttons, text, images, videos, etc.

To open the settings for any element, click on it. Here you have complete control over the design, spacing, text, and much more:

Further, for text content, You don’t have to open the whole settings to edit text. You can simply click on the page and type. Beaver Builder also includes a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts to help you speed up your workflows.

Customizable Interface

One great feature of Beaver Builder is that it lets you personalize the interface layout, which not many other page builders provide.

For example, if you prefer a fixed sidebar, simply drag the options panel to either side of the screen. Beaver Builder will make it fixed and constantly displayed at that location:

Easy Layout Options

Another feature we like about Beaver Builder is how simple it is to control your layouts.

In the case of many other page builders, you must first set up your row/column layouts before you can begin adding content elements. However, with Beaver Builder, you can just drag a module next to another to create a new column:

Additionally, you can use drag-and-drop to change column widths, so you don’t have to open the whole settings to do so:

Fully Responsive Design

All Beaver Builder designs are responsive by default. This means they will change automatically depending on whether a user is browsing on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device.

However, if you want more control, Beaver Builder offers a responsive editing mode that allows you to make changes for specific devices.

While making these changes, you’ll be able to see how your design looks on various devices:

You can also change the responsive breakpoints for mobile and tablet devices.

Conditional Element Display

Beaver Builder also allows you to apply various conditional rules to control whether to display specific rows or modules.

You can show and hide content based on a user’s logged-in status. This also allows you to create a simple membership site without the need for a membership plugin like MemberPress.

Beaver Builder Templates

Beaver Builder has some pre-built templates for landing pages and content pages if you don’t want to build your designs from scratch.

However, Beaver Builder’s template library is far smaller than other page builders like Elementor and Divi. Beaver Builder’s templates are not its strongest point.

You can also save your own templates to the library to reuse them later.

CSS and JavaScript Editor

You can also add custom CSS or JavaScript to your designs via a dedicated editor that includes basic validation and suggestions:

Plus, you can also add CSS classes to specific rows or modules to apply your CSS.

Theme Builder

The Beaver Builder plugin’s main component is a page builder, so you can use it to create unique posts and pages.

With the Beaver Themer Addon, you can design your theme’s templates like the Header, Footer, Single, and Archives using the same visual builder interface.

When you build a template, you may use rules to determine where that template is applied. These rules are really flexible, which we think is something Beaver Themer does well. You can apply templates conditionally based on post details, user details (such as logged-in status or user role), author, and more.

Another feature we enjoy about Beaver Themer is the ability to create template elements and inject them into various WordPress hook places. For example, you may inject some content after the content of a blog post. This can be very handy for ads, CTAs, email opt-ins, and other purposes.

However, one disadvantage of Beaver Builder theme-building implementation is that the header and footer templates only work with limited themes. You can create single or archive templates for any theme. However, header and footer templates are only available for certain themes. In comparison, Elementor Pro’s theme builder works with any theme.

Third-Party Extensions

The main Beaver Builder plugin is expandable, which means there is a vast marketplace of third-party Beaver Builder extensions that add additional modules, templates, features, and so on.

When you require a specific feature, these can be handy. For instance, if you ever feel like Beaver Builder’s module selection is too small, you can buy PowerPack or Ultimate Addons and have access to dozens of new modules, plus many other helpful features.

Beaver Builder Performance

In terms of performance, Beaver Builder is one of the better, lightweight alternatives available.

To test this, we’ll create a basic test page with Beaver Builder, the native editor, and a few other popular page builder plugins.

As you can see, Beaver Builder is a little “heavier” than the block editor but “lighter” than some popular page builders, such as Elementor, Divi Builder, and Brizy.

Overall, as long as you follow WordPress performance best practices, you can absolutely design a fast-loading site with Beaver Builder.

You can easily optimize Beaver Builder by pairing it with WP Rocket, which can automatically eliminate unused CSS and optimize JavaScript. For more detail, check out our WP Rocket review.

Beaver Builder Pricing

The Beaver Builder core version is available for free on WordPress.org. However, we don’t call it a free builder because it has more limited than the free versions offered by Elementor or Brizy.

However, the Beaver Builder pro version is quite reasonable unless you only need it for a single site. All of Beaver Builder’s premium plans allow you to use it on unlimited sites.

There are four plans available, but most users are happy with the cheapest $99 Standard plan. This plan gives you access to the full-featured page builder plugin:

However, choosing a higher-tier plan gives access to Beaver Builder Theme, Multisite support, and White Labeling.

To use Beaver Themer Addon, you must purchase the Ultimate Plan, which costs $546 annually. Or, you need to purchase the separate $147 Beaver Themer extension if you want to access the theme building.

So basically, unless you need Multisite support, White Labeling, or Beaver Themer Addon, we think you should stick with the $99 plan.

Beaver Builder Support

Beaver Builder provides dedicated support to all customers that have an active license.

There is also a comprehensive knowledge base for self-help, where you can find the solutions to several queries.

If you still require support, you may submit a ticket. Beaver Builder tries to respond to all queries within one business day.

Beaver Builder Pros and Cons

Now that you understand what Beaver Builder does and how it works, let’s review some of its pros and cons.

Pros

• Beaver Builder is a lightweight, high-performance tool. It is the most lightweight option among the popular page builders.
• You can change the layout of the Beaver Builder interface to match your preferences.
• All premium Beaver Builder plans offer unlimited sites.
• With the Agency plan, you may white-label the Beaver Builder interface, which is useful if you create client sites.
• Great support channels are available.
• You can save templates and customized modules to reuse them in other content.

Cons

• Compared to Elementor or Divi, it doesn’t have as many advanced design options.
• Beaver Builder’s templates are limited, and several appear outdated.
• It doesn’t offer a popup builder, unlike Elementor Pro.

Beaver Builder vs Beaver Builder Alternatives

If you’re thinking about using Beaver Builder, you should also explore some of the other popular page builder plugins. Let’s see how it compares to two prominent Beaver Builder alternatives: Elementor and Divi.

Beaver Builder vs Elementor

Here are the pros and cons of Beaver Builder vs Elementor.

Beaver Builder Pros

• Better out-of-the-box performance
• Customizable interface layout
• Very stable
• Allows unlimited sites on all licenses, making it cheaper if you use it on multiple sites
• It offers a 40% renewal discount (Elementor doesn’t offer any renewal discount)

Elementor Pros

• More design options compare to Beaver Builder
• Extra features, such as a popup builder
• More templates
• Much more functionality in the free version
• Less expensive for a single site

Beaver Builder vs Divi

Here are the pros and cons of Beaver Builder vs Divi.

Beaver Builder Pros

• Better out-of-the-box performance
• Very stable
• Offer a free version, although it’s very limited.
• Not based on shortcodes
• It offers a 40% renewal discount

Divi Pros

• More design options
• Offer more templates
• Slightly cheaper for page-building
• Lifetime license option

Final Thought: Beaver Builder Review

Overall, we believe that Beaver Builder is a superb page builder plugin created by a reputable, high-quality team. However, we believe that Beaver Builder is not the best page builder plugin for every WordPress user.

In general, we think Beaver Builder is popular among users who appreciate Beaver Builder’s lightweight approach and stability. You may not get all the bells and whistles of other page builders, but Beaver Builder delivers all of the core page-creating features.

However, some page builders, like Elementor or Divi, just provide more. More means:

• Design options, like Motion Effects or custom positioning.
• Features, like a popup builder.
• Templates.
• Content elements.

If you are the type of user who prefers having “more” in your tool, we believe Elementor Pro is the better choice. Elementor Pro offers more design options, features, templates, and content elements. You can learn further in our Elementor review.

However, it’s important to clarify that We don’t believe “more” always means “better.” It is better for many people, but it all depends on how you want to use the builder.

So, it totally depends on what you’re looking for and how you plan to use the tool. If Beaver Builder’s feature set and approach fulfill your goals, We believe it’s a high-quality tool and has no problem in recommending it – We don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

For more, check out these other helpful resources:

• Elementor vs Beaver Builder
• Divi Builder Review
• Elementor vs. Divi vs SeedProd Comparison

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