31 August 2022
Are you a beginner who is looking for an in-depth WordPress Elementor review? Then, you land on the right page.
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress page builder plugins on the market, and for good reason. It’s easy to use yet powerful enough to create complex and professional-looking websites.
But is Elementor really the best page builder plugin?
In this hands-on Elementor review, we’ll help you understand:
By the end of our Elementor review, you should have everything that you need to make an informed decision about whether or not Elementor is the right tool for your WordPress website.
Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress. It allows you to customize your WordPress blog posts, pages, and overall web design without writing code.
Since Elementor offers a visual drag-and-drop interface, you can see the front end of your page in real-time while dragging and dropping content and design elements to create custom page designs.
The Elementor page builder has a lot of options for customizing your WordPress site. We’ll go through these in more in detail later, but for now, here are the notable features:
Before diving deeper into our Elementor review, we’d want to discuss the types of people who will benefit the most from it.
If you’re a blogger, affiliate marketer, or SEO expert looking to design your own site, Elementor page builder is for you. Simply install any WordPress theme of your choice and use the Elementor plugin to create and customize your site however you like.
If you’re a freelance website designer looking for a perfect solution to create professional-looking websites for your clients, Elementor Pro is a great option.
Elementor is popular among digital marketers since it offers many tools for optimizing website conversions.
You may use the form builder to build lead generation forms and connect them to your email marketing service to expand your email list. Additionally, the popup builder enables you to target specific audiences with popup campaigns.
Furthermore, the landing page templates and WooCommerce builder help you create sales and product pages to increase leads and sales.
Now that you know what Elementor is good for, let’s look at how it works.
Elementor, like any other WordPress plugin, must be installed and activated on your WordPress site. You can then either configure the Elementor settings or start customizing your site.
If you’re new to Elementor, we suggest leaving the default settings.
To create a new page using Elementor, go to Pages » Add New from your WordPress dashboard. Then, click the Edit with Elementor button from inside the WordPress editor.
Elementor automatically pulls the styling from your current WordPress theme for a consistent look. In our case, we’re using the Astra theme.
The Elementor interface consists of two parts. On the right side is a live preview of your website, and on the left are elements that you can drag and drop onto your design.
When you click the plus (+) icon, you will be asked to choose a content structure for your new page. As shown in the screenshot, there are 12 different section types to choose from.
After selecting your page’s structure, you can select a section layout and drag the element into the section’s columns.
Here, you can change everything from the editor on the left side and see the changes live within the content area.
However, if you want to use pre-made templates for your page, click the Folder icon next to the Plus icon. The Elementor library has over 100+ pre-designed templates.
You may easily insert a template from the library, customize it, and publish it.
One of the things we enjoy about Elementor is that it has a lot of interface enhancements to help you work more efficiently.
First off, you have right-click support, which makes it simple to duplicate stuff, copy and paste content, or even change settings, among other things.
You may also use navigator mode to get a high-level view of your design, including the ability to give names to sections to help you keep organized.
To switch between various designs or settings areas, you have a useful “Finder” feature that allows you to find and access almost everything on your site.
Overall, we feel that the Elementor interface makes it simple to work effectively and build custom designs without coding.
Now that you understand how the Elementor interface works in general. Let’s look at some of the features that set Elementor apart from other visual, drag-and-drop page builders.
Elementor offers a huge collection of widgets across the core plugin and add-ons, giving you lots of flexibility when designing your designs.
It’s not only the 60+ widgets that come with Elementor and Elementor Pro. There’s also a vast range of widgets from third-party developers.
For example, Ultimate Addons for Elementor offers 40+ additional widgets that you can use on your design. This includes a popup model, content toggle, videos, etc.
With so many widgets available, you can easily find a widget that does the exact function you need.
Also, check out some best Elementor addons for your site.
Another notable feature of Elementor is its abundance of design options, especially with Elementor Pro.
You get more built-in styling options than most other page builders. However, Divi Builder is one of the few builders that can match Elementor’s design flexibility.
You can control colors, typography, spacing, and more. With the Elementor Pro version, you also get access to custom positioning, eye-catching motion effects, and other options to create unique designs.
Elementor allows you to adapt the style of your web pages according to the devices your visitors use. This ensures that your website is 100% responsive, which means that it will look excellent on all devices, including desktops, mobile devices, and tablets.
The plugin also has a feature that ensures responsiveness. When editing an element, look for the Responsive option under the Advanced menu. This allows you to hide a widget for a specific device. This is helpful when you don’t want to show the same piece of content on every device.
If you don’t want to start from scratch, Elementor has many templates organized into two categories: Blocks and Pages.
A block template lets you create specific sections of your website. However, a page template is a full-page template that you may apply to the entire page rather than just a specific section.
Like widgets, you can also find Elementor templates from third-party sources.
Check out some of the best Elementor themes and templates for your site.
With Elementor Pro, you have access to a Form widget, which is a form builder that you can use from within Elementor.
You can build custom forms with as many fields as you need. You may also set post-submission actions, such as sending an email or showing a confirmation message. Alternatively, you can connect your forms to popular email marketing services.
For most individuals, this eliminates the need to install a separate WordPress form plugin. It’s ideal for contact forms, lead generation forms, etc.
However, if you want more complicated forms with conditional logic, calculations, and so on, you will still require a separate form plugin.
With Elementor Pro, you can create your complete WordPress theme with Elementor rather than just posts and pages. You can create headers, footers, single templates, archive templates, and so on.
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 can bring in dynamic content from custom fields that you create with plugins like ACF.
With this dynamic feature, you can create fully custom sites and harness WordPress’ power as a flexible content management system.
Elementor Popup Builder allows you to create your own custom popups by using the Elementor interface.
Since you can use any widget or content within the popup, you can use these popups for anything. These include email opt-ins, contact forms, login forms, etc.
Furthermore, you have complete control over the “canvas” of your popup, allowing you to build many types of popups. These include lightbox popups, notification bars, slide-ins, and so on.
Furthermore, when you publish a popup, you’ll have a set of targeting and trigger rules that allow you to manage where and when your popup appears:
Overall, Elementor popup builder fully eliminates the need for a third-party popup or lead generation plugin. However, the one thing that it lacks is built-in A/B testing and Google analytics.
If you’re building a WooCommerce store, Elementor Pro offers full WooCommerce support, allowing you to create your store using Elementor’s interface.
You get a lot of WooCommerce widgets that you can use to insert your store’s content in one-off designs.
Additionally, you can create the layouts for your WooCommerce store using Theme Builder.
Elementor Pro also has its own dedicated widgets for the WooCommerce cart, checkout, and my account pages. These widgets offer various options for totally customizing all of those core pages.
Overall, Elementor Pro allows you to design every aspect of your store using the Elementor interface.
The downside to all of Elementor’s features is that it adds weight to the page. There is no way around that. It’s heavier than the native WordPress editor and slightly heavier than some of the lighter page builders, such as Beaver Builder.
First and foremost, the Elementor team understands the importance of performance. Thus, they’ve been working hard to reduce Elementor’s impact. For example, they are streamlining Elementor’s DOM tree and experimenting with dynamic asset loading to ensure that Elementor only fetches the components required for each page.
Second, the most important thing to understand here is that you can absolutely build a fast-loading site with Elementor.
If you follow WordPress performance best practices (maybe by using a plugin like WP Rocket), we are confident that you can still use Elementor to build sites that pass Core Web Vitals tests.
In Short, while Elementor’s performance is not an advantage, it also shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. If you follow best practices, you can still create fast-loading sites while using Elementor’s amazing features.
So far, we have covered Elementor as a WordPress plugin.
But what if you don’t have a WordPress website yet? Or what if you’ve built a WordPress site but are completely overwhelmed with running and maintaining it?
In those cases, you may be interested in Elementor Cloud Hosting, which is a somewhat unique service among WordPress builders.
In a word, Elementor Hosting provides everything you need to get from scratch to a running WordPress site where you can start building with Elementor.
That is, it creates and hosts your WordPress site for you. It also pre-installs all of the Elementor tools, allowing you to get started straight away.
As for price, it starts at $2.99/mo and offers 10K monthly visits, 5 GB storage, 10GB/mo bandwidth, premium SSL, and other features.
Learn more in our complete Elementor Hosting review. Or simply click the button below to get started right away.
Elementor AI is the most recent feature offered in the Elementor page builder.
Basically, it’s like having an AI assistant right in your editor. The tool allows you to generate and improve text, custom codes, and images within seconds.
Similar to ChatGPT, you only need to enter a few prompts to get most of the job done.
Here is what you can do with Elementor AI:
As for the price, it costs 3.99/mo for 24,000 credits or $8.25/mo for 50,000 credits.
Short answer: It’s Free.
The basic version of Elementor, which is available in the WordPress Plugin repository, is absolutely free to use. There is also a pro version that offers more flexibility and features.
Check out our article on Elementor Free vs Pro if you want to get a detailed review of both.
Elementor is a feature-rich plugin that works on all websites. However, there are certain limitations.
Elementor Pro, for example, allows you to customize your header, footer, posts page, single post page, and product pages.
The Elementor basic version gives you the basics for designing and customizing your website. However, if you want the flexibility of building the entire site, Elementor Pro is the ideal option.
Let’s see what the pricing options are for Elementor Pro.
The Elementor website offers four pricing plans for Elementor Pro:
As we reach the end of our Elementor review, let’s go through some of the pros and cons of using Elementor.
Let’s look at user ratings from popular review sites.
On G2, Elementor got 4.5 out of 5 stars from more than 340+ reviews.
On TrustRadius, Elementor got 8.6 out of 10-star ratings from more than 100+ reviews.
On Capterra, Elementor got 4.7 out of 5-star ratings from more than 800+ reviews.
Elementor is a powerful page-building tool, but it is not for everyone. Usually, if you need more than one license, Elementor Pro plans can be expensive.
Furthermore, it might not be optimized for speed. When these issues arise, it might be good to look for alternatives to Elementor.
Beaver Builder isn’t as flashy or feature-rich as Elementor. However, its core plugin, which only creates individual pieces of content, offers a solid and consistent experience.
Beaver Builder is a full-page design suite that includes all of the tools and components needed to create any type of website. It has elements like headings, buttons, sliders, contact forms, testimonials, etc.
In terms of design and performance, it competes with Elementor. However, Beaver Builder doesn’t have as many addons as Elementor.
A free version is available, while a premium plan starts from $99 per year for unlimited sites.
Divi is one of the best Elementor alternatives. This page builder offers a complete design framework that you can use to design your whole website. Divi’s drag-and-drop interface is suitable for website owners of all skill levels.
In comparison to Elementor, Divi offers similar design components, such as pre-made templates. You may, however, access over 800 templates and 100 layout bundles. This can give you more options if you don’t want to build your own layout from scratch.
Furthermore, Divi may be a better solution for developers and marketers. It has built-in A/B testing, whereas Elementor does not. Divi’s advanced functionality allows you to assess the effectiveness of various modules before publishing them.
Divi costs $89 per year for unlimited sites. This may be a better alternative to Elementor because there are no site limits.
Although SeedProd began as a page builder for Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode sites. However, it now has enough functionality to help you build a whole website. SeedProd is still one of the best landing page builders, but you can also use it to customize any aspect of your WordPress theme.
SeedProd allows you to edit headers, footers, pages, and articles without using any code. To save time, you may even use a pre-built theme that is responsive, fast, and SEO-optimized. When you need website maintenance, you may simply enable SeedProd’s built-in Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon, or 404 error pages.
A free version is available, while a premium plan starts from $39.50 per year for a single site.
Overall, we think that Elementor is the best WordPress builder plugin for most people.
We have covered these reasons above, but let us quickly recap what we think are the most persuasive reasons to choose Elementor:
If you already have a WordPress site, you can try the free version and then upgrade to Elementor Pro for extra features.
And if you haven’t launched your site yet, we recommend looking at the Elementor Hosting service. It not only simplifies things, but it also provides fantastic value, with only $120/year for hosting and access to all Elementor Pro features.
For more on Elementor, check out these helpful resources:
Lastly, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay updated on the latest WordPress and blogging-related articles.
Elementor is perfect for beginners who want to create a WordPress website.
Like any other page builder, Elementor adds some weight in addition to using the built-in WordPress editor. However, you can still create fast-loading sites using Elementor if you use it correctly and follow WordPress performance best practices.
Yes, Elementor is SEO-friendly in the same way that any other WordPress editor is. Just make sure you’re using a WordPress SEO plugin.
If you plan to use the theme-building features in Elementor Pro, you should choose the free Elementor Hello theme. Otherwise, we recommend using it in pairing with themes such as GeneratePress (our review) or Astra (our review).
Elementor Pro does not offer a free trial, although a free version is available with limited features. However, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for new Elementor Pro customers.
Elementor’s free version provides basic features that allow you to customize your site with a page builder. Even their free version comes with a number of essential tools, such as a live editor and basic widgets for customizing your site.
Elementor Pro comes with the industry-leading Theme Builder, a visual form widget, custom CSS, a number of premium widgets, social media integrations, customer support, and more features.
No, you don’t. That is the best quality of Elementor.