Elementor might be young compared to a few other solutions, but it’s one of the fastest-growing WordPress site builders. Once you look at its feature list, it’s apparent why. Here’s what you can find on it.
Design Options
Elementor offers a ton of capabilities in this area. You can either start with a preset template or set up your own layout on a blank page. The Pro version even lets you customize the elements like the header. Plus, its pop-up editor offers unique options for creating popups. You can design complex layouts with the editor’s block system. The system is standard, but Elementor gives users more control here than the average builder.
You can fine-tune column and section width, position, padding and margins, and create blank space between columns. You should be careful, though, since designing a complex layout may make it difficult to troubleshoot misalignments. Elementor WordPress page editor also offers a bunch of styling options. You can get into the nitty-gritty and edit individual elements.
This allows you to change backgrounds, set up shadow effects, animations, parallax scrolling, and even custom fonts. You can design photo filters, which is a rather popular feature in 2022. One thing to point out is that Elementor can, by default, override the styling of some themes. This change can be rolled back, but it is a bit of a pain if you're using a specific theme for its styles.
The Pro version also includes a live CSS editor, which is a big timesaver if you prefer making manual style changes.
Ease of Use
Despite its many features, Elementor is relatively straightforward. It features a frontend drag and drop WordPress editor, which makes things a lot easier. And that’s not all. The editor lets you preview what pages look like based on the screen size—which saves you the trouble of getting your smartphone out. Most options are in the sidebar that’s fairly straightforward to navigate. It might not be immediately obvious, but you can contract the sidebar so it’s out of the way.
The search tool provides incredible assistance with navigation. You can look up different settings instead of sifting through the options.
Elementor also includes a range of templates. These are not only for setting up entire pages, but also sections, pop ups, and even headers. They will likely save you lots of time you’d otherwise spend customizing every nook and cranny of your site. It also encourages reusing templates. You can copy over entire pages, sections, elements, or just styling. You can also set up global elements and sync changes between them.
These features can save you a great deal of time when working on a more complex project. All in all, the Elementor WordPress page builder is among the more user-friendly ones out there.
Features
Out of the box, Elementor has one of the biggest widget libraries out there. It supports all the WordPress widgets and adds plenty of its own—and they are designed for both classic WordPress and WooCommerce. One of Elementor’s prominent features is the pop-up builder. This comes with numerous settings and is one of the best ways to design a custom popup.
The possibilities include configuring welcome pop-ups, sales promotions, WooCommerce upsells, and a bunch more.
The pop-up builder integrates with various email marketing software, so you can quickly capture leads as well. Another cool feature of the WordPress site builder is versioning. Not only can you undo/redo changes, but also roll back to a previously saved version. Just keep in mind saved versions take up storage so saving dozens may affect performance.
Elementor also strives to be developer-friendly. This entails several useful options, like adding attributes to widgets, sections, or columns.
There is also a CLI integration. Elementor creates some of the leanest code among page builders, which eliminates performance loss (a huge problem with this type of software). Plus, it’s one of the few builders that don’t leave a mess of shortcodes if deactivated. This makes it easy to migrate to a different one at a later stage. Another handy feature is access controls.
You can configure what tools are accessible to others collaborating on your site, which always comes handy. It all amounts to an impressive offer. The features make Elementor an extremely advanced page builder for WordPress.
Price Overview
Elementor offers a free tier and three paid plans:
- Personal—$49/year, supports one site
- Expert—$199/year, supports 35 sites
- Studio—$499/year, supports up to a hundred sites
- Agency—$999/year, supports up to a thousand sites
Pretty much the only difference between paid plans is how many websites you can install them on. Surprisingly enough, the free tier is rather robust. It does lack some widgets, motion effects, WooCommerce support, and header editing. However, if you want a simpler custom layout for a standard site, it’s more than enough. Still, the paid tiers do offer more power and fantastic value to boot.
Verdict
Elementor’s free tier is robust and the paid ones offer excellent value. It can be a fantastic asset for both beginners and experienced coders. Overall, it might just be the best WordPress page builder you can go with.