Elementor

Overview: Elementor is a highly rated website-building platform with a beautiful interface, advanced customization options, and a manageable learning curve.

The drag-and-drop builder has free and paid versions.

This hands-on Elementor review will help you understand how the platform can be a plus.

Price:

• Free
• Website builder and hosting—$99/year
• Website builder:
  • Essential plan for 1 Pro website activation—$49/year
  • Advanced plan for 3 Pro website activations—$99/year
  • Expert plan for 25 Pro website activations—$199/year
  • Studio plan for 100 Pro website activations—$499/year
  • Agency plan for 1,000 Pro website activations—$999/year

Discounts Available: 40% off Studio plan for the first year

Lifetime Plan: No

Specs: 

Price:

• Free: Limited template library, export and import templates, shape divider, box shadow, text editor, and page settings.
• Website builder and hosting—$99/year: Website builder, hosting, and WordPress pre-installed
• Website builder:
  • Essential plan for 1 Pro website activation—$49/year: All Pro features, premium support, and website kits.
  • Advanced plan for 3 Pro website activations—$99/year: All Essential plan features.
  • Expert plan for 25 Pro website activations—$199/year: All Advanced plan features and Elementor Expert Profile.
  • Studio plan for 100 Pro website activations—$499/year: All Expert plan features and VIP support.
  • Agency plan for 1,000 Pro website activations—$999/year: All Studio plan features.

Compatible With Latest WordPress Version?: Compatible with WordPress 5.2 or greater

• Level of Customer Support?: The only difference between plans is the number of sites you can use Elementor Pro on and the support level.
  Essential, Advanced, and Expert users have access to support via email, while Studio and Agency customers can reach support through live chat.
• Compatible Devices: You can only edit with Elementor on desktop computers.

What We Like:

• Easy to use: Building your website with Elementor’s drag-and-drop interface is effortless.
• Multiple integrations: Elementor works well with many WordPress themes and plugins.
  Users also get many aftermarket add-ons that help enhance website functionality.
• Easy to make responsive sites: Optimize your websites for multiple devices.

What We Don’t Like:

• For WordPress sites only: Elementor is an excellent page-building tool, but it only works in WordPress.
• Slow site loading: Some users complain that Elementor increases the time it takes for a website to load.
• A limited editor: Programmers may find using the visual editor restrictive and limiting.

Do We Recommend: Yes

Budget Alternative: Divi

It wasn’t long after I started building WordPress sites that I realized how limited the customizations are.

Making a multi-column layout was difficult, and so was changing the footers and headers of any theme.

Plus, a minor change takes minutes longer than I could afford to waste.

While page builders should help without hiring expensive developers, most are hard to use, clunky, have messy codes, and hurt website performance.

Until Elementor!

This Elementor review shows why this is the best WordPress page builder I’ve used.

We’ll cover everything from history, features, and benefits to our unbiased opinion of whether we recommend the tool.

Overview of Elementor

Out of the numerous WordPress page builders out there, we decide to write an in-depth Elementor review because we use it, and the company boasts millions of installs in a few years.

Elementor provides website owners with tools to create their sites.

The company claims it’s a community-driven product thanks to the WordPress open source world.

What is Elementor?

Elementor is a visual drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress websites.

The graphical element means you can see what visitors will see when designing your website.

Such a feature means there’s never any confusion about how your page and site look once you publish it.

Drag and drop means you’re moving around several design components, such as images, buttons, and forms.

The functionality allows dragging and dropping the elements where you want—without inputting a line of code!

Elementor is a tool that helps make your WordPress website look how you want without learning code or hiring a developer.

Elementor History

In mid-2016, Yoni Lukensbag and Ariel Kliksten came together after experiencing the slow process of creating sites with WordPress.

The two came up with a site builder that replaces cumbersome coding with an intuitive and easy drag-and-drop feature for building sites.

Some popular websites and users in the WordPress community tried out the product, and most had positive things to say about the first Elementor version.

The company released the Pro version in December 2016 with even more features.

The use of Elementor has rapidly exploded from a million sites in July 2018 to over five million active installs in 2022.

Today, the page builder is the most popular plugin on the WordPress repository.

Features and Benefits of Elementor

Let’s review some things that make Elementor stand out from other drag-and-drop visual page builders.

1. A Drag-and-Drop Editor

You can move items around a page and resize rows and columns by dragging the edges using a mouse or trackpad.

Elementor has keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) that help save time when designing your site.

We find using features such as undo, redo, and revision history makes Elementor feel more like a standalone site design program than a WordPress plugin.

2. Theme Builder

Elementor makes editing individual theme parts possible, including the footer, header, WooCommerce product page, and archives page.

Such versatility means you don’t have to deal with cookie-cutter theme designs and can decide what each of your sections looks like.

Some features we love about the theme editor are:

• Capacity to add buttons, sections, images, text, and more quickly to your pages using the theme editor after accessing the Elementor page builder
• You can create custom 404 pages in the live editor instead of coding
• Creating individual layouts for specific page types and blog posts you’ll share on your site

3. A Massive Template Library

The free Elementor version has over 150 templates, while the Pro has 300.

Elementor Pro boasts premium, high-quality templates. The templates library has:

• Pages—Full-page designs you can import and tweak to match your needs
• Blocks—Pre-made design sections you’ll add to your page
• Website kits—Ready-made collections of the entire site, so you get a consistent aesthetic design throughout

4. Responsive Design Controls

Responsive design is how your content adjusts smoothly to multiple screen sizes.

Use Elementor to ensure your site is responsive and adaptive to devices, such as mobiles, tablets, desktops, and widescreens.

The responsive design controls allow adjusting and customizing designs to display them well on any screen.

5. Other Features

Elementor Pro offers other key features, including:

• Form builder—A tool for creating basic and advanced custom forms using the drag-and-drop editor.
• Popup builder—Use the tool to build custom popups that help generate more leads from your site, including selling products or services and collecting email addresses.
• WooCommerce builder—The tool lets you customize an e-commerce store and offers access to WooCommerce-specific widgets.
• Integrations—Adaptable integrations let you take things to the next level in partnership with marketing platforms such as Drip, MailChimp, and Zapier or social networks.

Elementor Customer Service

Elementor boasts tons of resources, so it’s natural to get a little lost at times.

Plus, more amateurs are delving into the web design world and have questions.

Does Elementor Offer Customer Service?

Yes.

Elementor is always listening to our suggestions and problems.

The company not only rates itself as an excellent web design platform but also has a supportive community.

What Types of Customer Service Does Elementor Offer?

Elementor has several customer service touchpoints, including:

• Extensive documentation and guides that teach everything about the page builder plugin
• Webinars and tutorial videos
• Email for support ticket
• Thorough FAQs
• The Elementor community on social media such as GitHub and Facebook

Elementor Pro customers also get premium customer service 24/7.

The support team responds in 24 hours.

However, customers in the Agency and Studio plans can contact the Elementor VIP Support team.

These priority clients receive responses within 30 minutes.

If you need help completing a project, Elementor has a team of expert developers, marketers, and designers available.

The option is available for Elementor Pro users free of charge.

Search the professional network based on skills, services, price, language, and expertise to find, hire, and work with the right individuals.

You can also browse their portfolios to get an idea of their capabilities.

How Much Does Elementor Cost?

Elementor is free!

However, there’s a Pro version with six pricing packages, but the free version is suitable for most users.

If you have the budget, consider getting the paid version.

The Free version offers you:

• Over 40 basic widgets
• Over 30 basic templates
• About 100 block templates for the About page, testimonials, and other site basics
• Use on unlimited websites
• Complete use of the drag-and-drop page builder

The Pro version has five price points and an annual subscription.

All Pro versions have the same features, and pricing depends on the number of websites you can use Elementor on.

The versions are:

• Essential—$49/year for 1 Pro website activation
• Advanced—$99/year for 3 Pro website activations
• Expert—$199/year for 25 Pro website activations
• Studio—$499/year for 100 Pro website activations
• Agency—$999/year for 1,000 Pro website activations

Some features available in all the Pro versions are:

• Everything in the free plan
• Over 300 premium templates
• Over 50 premium widgets
• About ten website kits
• Global widgets
• Popup Builder
• Theme Builder
• WooCommerce Builder
• Integrations with email marketing platforms and social media platforms

Elementor has another plan that offers you hosting and the website builder.

At $99 a year, the plan includes:

• All Elementor Pro plugin features
• Hosting on Google Cloud Platform, SSL, Cloudflare CDN, and automatic backups daily
• Pre-installed WordPress, Theme Builder, custom code, dynamic content, and Elementor Hello theme

Is Elementor Worth the Cost?

Yes. If you’ve never used the plugin before, you can always start with the free version to evaluate if it is something you can commit to.

Switch to the premium version if you enjoy using Elementor and want to unlock unlimited access to its features.

Why Elementor is Worth the Cost

Elementor offers full control over what your WordPress website looks like without diving into coding.

The platform also makes designing a site hassle-free and more intuitive, even when you have the technical know-how to code.

Get the Elementor Pro version if you’re building sites for clients or if the website is a critical business asset.

The ability to create your theme and global widgets make Elementor Pro a relatively low investment.

Drag-and-Drop Website Builders Criteria: How We Tested Elementor

There are many site builders out there to choose from.

But evaluating a product before purchasing it is the only to find one that makes your website attractive, is affordable, and doesn’t waste your time.

Here are our test criteria for choosing the best drag-and-drop website builders:

• Ease of Use: If a site builder is not immediately user-friendly, it should be easy to learn.
• Performance & Scalability: Super-fast performance helps publish your site faster with fewer hassles, while scalability gives you control over all elements of your website.
• Compatibility With Other Plugins & Themes: A good website builder lets you run your entire business online by extending your site’s basic functionality.
• Customer Support: A website builder tool should have tutorials in text or video on how to use different features.
  You should also contact the support staff quickly when you need help.
• Developer Pool Willing to Work With Elementor: The best tool offers a talent pool of web designers to assist you if you’re struggling with the website creation workflow or platform.
• Pricing & Fees: You must figure out what you can afford and the expected Return on Investment (ROI).

Do We Recommend Elementor? Our Unbiased Opinion

We recommend Elementor.

The platform helps you add advanced designs, layouts, and styling elements to WordPress websites without writing code.

The Elementor Pro version even designs an entire WordPress site theme for you!

However, finding the perfect WordPress page builder plugin is difficult, especially if you’re new to building websites.

Comparing the pros and cons of Elementor will help determine whether it is right for you.

Plus, familiarity with Elementor makes it easier to choose the right plan, depending on your websites and requirements.

What We Like

Here are some notable advantages of using Elementor:

• Easy to use: Building your website with Elementor’s drag-and-drop interface is simple.
• Multiple integrations: Elementor works well with many WordPress themes and plugins.
  Users also get many aftermarket add-ons that help enhance website functionality.
• Easy to make responsive sites: It’s easy to optimize your websites for desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones to ensure a flawless user experience across different devices.
• Pre-made templates: The free Elementor plan has over 150 templates to jumpstart building a new site. The premium version offers access to over 300 professional templates.
• Custom CSS: People who enjoy building their WordPress themes, coding, or programming can import their Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files, depending on the theme and layout.

What We Don’t Like

While we recommend Elementor, some parts need improving, including:

• For WordPress sites only: Elementor is an excellent page-building tool, but it only works in WordPress.
• Slow site loading: Some users complain that Elementor increases the time it takes for a website to load.
  Some reasons may include intricate layouts, media-rich themes, and revisions storage.
• A limited editor: Programmers may find using the visual editor restrictive and limiting.
• The learning curve: People who have never used Elementor should invest time in learning the platform.
• A little buggy: Elementor loads slowly occasionally. However, a refresh resolves the issue.

Why We Do Recommend Elementor

As promised, this Elementor review also contains our unbiased opinions.

Here are some reasons for recommending the platform.

1. Ease of Use

Controlling Elementor options and features is easy for a smooth website-creating experience.

You don’t require a background or skills in CSS, JavaScript, PHP, or HTML to do the job.

The user-friendly interface is easy to figure out without getting lost in the process or frustrated by lines of code.

Plus, save a custom design as a template for applying to other pages or even sharing with other designers.

2. Performance & Scalability

Elementor allows you to configure how background pictures appear on mobile devices to improve performance.

The platform also loads your fonts locally to reduce external requests, while settings allow loading videos and images when the user scrolls to the section.

Use SVG and WebP formats for images to reduce file size and improve performance.

Elementor is not just for small businesses.

It is also an incredibly highly customizable and versatile platform for large online enterprises.

This kind of scalability makes the builder an attractive choice for non-technical business owners looking to build their websites.

3. Compatibility With Other Plugins & Themes

Elementor works with most themes.

However, the theme must adhere to WordPress guidelines to be compatible.

Some themes have a preloader that affects Elementor editing, and you need to deactivate it via the customizer.

The platform is also compatible with language plugins, which is useful when creating a multi-language website.

WooCommerce compatibility makes building an online store a breeze.

Unfortunately, Elementor has no way to detect plugin incompatibility to give some warning apart from this list of plugins with known conflicts.

4. Customer Support

Elementor Pro users have access to 24/7 premium customer support.

Representatives from the company can log into your dashboard to solve issues after writing a help ticket.

Elementor has an extensive help center and community for connecting to other web creators.

Users get a form to fill out when they need more help on non-support matters and pre-sale.

5. Developer Pool Willing to Work With Elementor

One of the reasons Elementor is becoming more popular is because of a growing community of users, designers, and developers willing to connect.

There is the option of Facebook groups which ease communication between members, access to tutorials, and showcase designs.

The solid community is ready to back you up when you need advice, ideas, help, and suggestions while creating a winning site.

6. Pricing & Fees

The nucleus Elementor web page builder plugin is free and downloadable at WordPress.org.

Alone, the free version is powerful and will help you create excellent websites and pages.

With prices starting at $49 a year, Elementor Pro is a good value option.

The Essential plan gives you access to many widgets, templates, and tools like the popup builder.

Choose the Expert plan if you have more than one site to create, while Studio and Agency plans are excellent for agencies and developers.

Why Should You Trust Us?

We value your trust above everything else.

BloggingTips.com is a reliable blog for everyone, and our team knows your trust is a reward for an excellent job.

Over the years, we’ve created many WordPress sites, and our go-to builder is Elementor.

We continually modify BloggingTips.com and client sites using the builder.

We don’t recommend what we haven’t used before.

What Elementor Users are Saying

We scoured the internet and found some user reviews that seemed positive, including:

• “Elementor is an easy, adaptable tool for website building.
  The platform allows formatting each section how we want with a drag-and-drop approach at a reasonable cost.
  We also love integrations with several other tools, easy installation, and it has been around long enough to prove its efficiency.” on G2.
• “Elementor offers easy access to many fantastic features for free.
  We get a lot done within Elementor and create beautiful sites easily.
  Creating my agency website with the platform and navigation was easy and fast.” on GetApp.
• “Elementor is an excellent page builder with an amazing team behind it.
  I’ve sought help from the support team twice, and their prompt responses are always impressive while their expertise makes finding solutions easy.” on Trustpilot.

The Problem Elementor Solves

Elementor is a WordPress website builder plugin that replaces the basic WordPress editor by offering a live frontend editor to create complex visual layouts and design sites live.

The intuitive and beginner-friendly user interface lets you start minutes after installing the builder.

Plus, you can insert one of the hundreds of professional templates, saving you time while customizing it with simple controls.

Why Would Somebody Want to Use Elementor?

The drag-and-drop Elementor plugin allows you to effectively and painlessly add multiple elements to your website.

You get useful blocks (content widgets) customized to work on the live page builder, and applying them is as simple as dragging and dropping them to your page.

The widgets include testimonials, galleries, text, videos, images, headlines, carousels, and more.

Elementor is also compatible with multiple third-party widgets, so you get a complete site for a positive online experience.

The plugin works on the front end, which means instant results as you put your page together.

An impressive array of templates at your fingertips means you can create a unique website in minutes.

Elementor also lets you smart-scale a website so it’s accessible and content compatible for smartphone, tablet, or desktop viewing.

Who is Elementor Best For?

It’s best for anyone building a website, including a web designer working on a client’s site, an entrepreneur setting up their e-commerce store, a blogger, and a marketer.

Why Elementor is Best for Web Designers

When building sites for clients, everything we discuss above is doubly true.

The Elementor Pro version offers good extra perks for web designers, including:

• Easy pricing—Access many features for a single price, which can help streamline project pricing.
  For instance, you still make one payment when you want to apply a slider plugin to a client’s website.
• Simple updates—Elementor Pro comes as a package and not as a bunch of separate plugins.
  The structure means there are fewer chances things will break after applying updates.

If clients breaking things is a worry, you have an option of not allowing access to the Elementor plugin.

Instead, create dynamic content to insert content from custom fields your clients can edit from the WordPress backend.

Who Should NOT Use Elementor?

While Elementor boasts beginner-friendly features, it’s not suitable for inexperienced website owners.

Why Inexperienced Website Owners Should Not Use Elementor

Elementor has many options and features, which make it a complex plugin.

There’s going to be a learning curve if you’re an inexperienced website owner before you can start creating beautiful pages.

The plugin has a guided walkthrough to help familiarize yourself with navigation, widgets, and tools.

Elementor also has a YouTube channel with tutorials.

But the best way to become an Elementor professional is by importing a pre-built template and deconstructing it to see when the designer put the page together.

What to Think About Before Buying Elementor

Using Elementor means you don’t need complex website design skills.

However, you need to consider a few things before purchasing the website builder.

1. Your Budget

Consider how much purchasing a domain name and hosting costs, depending on the company you’re working with.

You also need to invest in things such as images.

If the budget is limited, take advantage of the free Elementor core plan to test the builder before upgrading to the Pro version.

2. Templates

Elementor is famous for quality designed templates.

But the selection in the free plan is limited, while Pro versions give you access to premium, high-quality templates.

Some templates are stunning, but others are confusing.

3. When to Choose Free Elementor

The free version is perfect if you’re designing a basic but beautiful website without advanced widgets such as forms or tables.

Elementor free is also suitable when you don’t work with custom CSS files often or already have a flexible theme with some built-in customization functionality.

4. When to Choose Elementor Pro

Pay for Elementor Pro when building complex content and landing pages that require extra widgets.

WooCommerce site owners also benefit from the Pro plans.

These plans let you create an entire website using the Elementor interface but pick a quality theme.

Global widgets are your best friends when you want to reuse the same widget across several pages.

5. Social Share Functionality

The next thing to consider is promoting the website once it is up and running.

Elementor has several social sharing features that help push out content to your social media networks.

This functionality helps expand your audience, increase brand awareness, and improve engagement.

Elementor Alternatives

The best creators and website owners don’t settle on the first tool they come across.

So, here’s a list of three alternatives on par with the features Elementor offers.

1. Divi

The Divi interface boasts tons of style or design rules and a powerful set of workflow features, such as find/replace and copy/paste.

This platform comes with a WordPress theme and a standalone page builder plugin.

Divi is only available as part of the Elegant Themes membership at $89 (basic plan) for unlimited personal and client websites.

How Does Divi Differ From Elementor?

Like Elementor, you can use the Divi Builder on any WordPress theme, but you get better results using it on the Divi theme.

The builder comes with only 38 design elements (modules) and gets more by installing extensions.

Elegant Themes has an official marketplace where you’ll find the extensions.

Who is Divi Best For?

Divi is a better fit for marketers and developers.

The built-in A/B testing advanced feature lets you test the effectiveness of different modules before publishing them.

Divi also has a lifetime plan for a one-off $249 fee, one of the best deals on the WordPress page builder market.

2. GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a high-performance WordPress theme that integrates with the Elementor Page Builder.

The theme is freemium, so you have free and premium versions.

The free version is downloadable from the WordPress.Org website but contains fewer customization options than the premium version.

How Does GeneratePress Differ From Elementor?

GeneratePress allows thorough customization to look very different from its base appearance, rivaling pages made using builders such as Elementor and Divi.

However, the builder takes longer to create beautiful pages because it lacks drag-and-drop features, but the result is a lighter, code-compliant website.

A site-library module in GeneratePress lets you select and import pre-built templates to speed up website building.

The builder’s customer is built into the WordPress default customizer, so you don’t deal with new user interface terms.

Users also get built-in schema support, which may help improve website SEO performance.

Who is GeneratePress Best For?

GeneratePress is the best WordPress theme for bloggers.

Using the theme will help you get higher conversions, high search rankings, get better user engagement, and increased sales.

The GeneratePress free version has limited customized options, while the premium plugin lets you change anything on your website—from the header and footer to 404 pages.

If you’re looking to get more out of your blog, consider GeneratePress!

3. Squarespace

Squarespace is a site-building platform that also hosts your website and lets you purchase a domain name.

Creating a new site with the platform involves choosing a template, customizing the site using a quick start guide, and then publishing it.

You can edit pages in real time with the live preview and theme options.

Some templates are customizable by hovering over a section and tapping the Edit button.

How Does Squarespace Differ From Elementor?

Squarespace allows editing your site using a phone.

The platform has an app for Android and iOS devices that allows making changes to a website on the go.

This feature is useful for people who are always on the move and use their mobiles as personal computers or prefer managing their sites at any time.

However, Squarespace has a deeper learning curve than Elementor.

Use the built-in assistant to get started, but it will still take longer to get used to the editor.

Who is Squarespace Best For?

Squarespace is perfect for anyone unfamiliar with WordPress or wants an all-in-one site platform with email, domain, and hosting.

Further, it offers a simpler way to start websites and is perfect for building an online store using integrated e-commerce features—but at an additional cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some common questions we come across about Elementor.

Wrapping Up

Creating an easy-to-use, modern, and beautiful WordPress site doesn’t require years of programming training or bringing in professionals.

This Elementor review proves anyone can build the website of their dreams from scratch with the plugin.

Users get a user-friendly interface and endless customization options.

Plus, the website builder is open source, so you won’t pay to use it for basic but beautiful websites.

Whether you’re looking to showcase your art, build a personal blog, or create a thriving online store, Elementor delivers!

Make sure you check out Elementor today.