Elementor

#1 Free WordPress Website Builder

Elementor is one of the most popular page builders among WordPress developers for numerous reasons. Its visual drag-and-drop design makes it easy to use. But the number of widgets and three levels of customization options are difficult to master.

What’s it really like to use Elementor?

The Essentials

What sets Elementor apart

Page builders used to be unwieldy, hard to learn, and lacking in customization options. Some still are. But, although Elementor is powerful enough to meet the needs of professional web developers and marketers, it’s still simple and intuitive enough for a beginner with no HTML or CSS skills.

Like to talk shop with other Elementor users, see what they’re building, and show off your design work? The Expert, Studio, and Agency plans give you access to the Elementor Experts Network.

The Experts Network is an online community for Elementor developers to share project portfolios, find clients, and collaborate with each other.

These are the reasons Elementor is loved:

It offers expansive customization options.
It produces clean code, resulting in faster page loads.
It’s an all-in-one design platform, meaning you can do all your work in one environment.
It’s open-source, developer-friendly, and extendable.
It integrates with the most popular marketing and analytics plugins
Access to an impressive library of icons from ElementsKit Lite
Access to hundreds of professionally designed templates

It gives you fine-grained control over every aspect of design. You get three types of settings to adjust:

Content settings. This is where you define HTML elements like icons/images, titles and descriptions, headings, paragraph text, and links.
Styles settings. CSS settings, like color and typography, image border-radius, opacity, and hover animation.
Advanced settings. Margins and padding, z-index values, responsiveness, motion effects, etc.

Free plan limitations

You don’t get to schmooze with potential clients or collaborators in the Experts Network. Maybe you have plenty of ways to network and don’t care about that. Nor will you have access to phone or email support.

But anyone can join the Elementor Forum, the unofficial support community. Just register for a free account using Twitter or your email address.

The free version has no theme or form builders, and no design-oriented popup builder. No WooCommerce builder or widgets, or motion effects.

The Details

Free plan features

The Elementor page builder itself and 40+ basic widgets. Everything you need to build a fully responsive website. Including the obvious:

Heading
Image
Text editor
Video
Button
Divider
Spacer
Google maps
Icon
WPForms

You also get this cool widget called an inner section, a container you can drag into a section to nest other elements inside of. We think that’s a surprisingly advanced feature for a free version.

Pro features

The list is long, so I’ve broken it down into widget categories.

Text editing. Animated headline, blockquote, table of contents, code highlight, and share buttons.
Media. Posts, portfolio, slides, gallery, and media carousel.
Functional. Login, form, nav menu, countdown, and Lottie integration.
Facebook. Comments, page, button, and embed.
Business. Price list, price table, call to action, testimonial carousel, and reviews.

The z-index settings are essential if you use sticky elements. By using the z-index values to prioritize elements’ stack order, you can eliminate that annoying overlap problem.

Pricing

Elementor Pro comes in five tiers.

Essential

$49/year
1 pro site
Premium support for 1 member

Advanced

$99/year
3 pro sites
Premium support for 1 member

Expert

$199/year
25 pro sites
Premium support for 1 member
Elementor Experts Network Profile

Studio

$499/year
100 pro sites
VIP support for 5 members
Elementor Experts Network Profile

Agency

$999/year
1,000 pro sites
VIP support for 10 members
Elementor Experts Network Profile

Customers with Premium support can expect an average response time of one day. VIP support gives you a live chat option, which is nice if there’s an emergency.

Conclusion/takeaways

This much design power does not often come in such a user-friendly interface. You can tweak almost any setting of any element block to make your site look exactly the way you want it to. And the controls are all in one dock, organized by tab.

A word of caution, though.

Elementor makes it so simple and fun to build professional pages and posts that it’s easy to forget it’s a tool, not a robot designer.

You’ll still have to plan, create, and format your content first. You’ll still need design skills. You’ll still need to know (or learn) what style and advanced settings actually do to use them well.

Because even if you’re using the most powerful and intuitive page builder in the world, it’s still possible to build an ugly page with user experience problems.

So don’t let its power and simplicity tempt you to take shortcuts. You’ll get the best results from Elementor by digging in and learning it inside and out.

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Reviews

Elementor Review by CatsWhoCode

https://catswhocode.com/elementor-review/

This review is by CatsWhoCode, it's actually a reasonable review, offering legitimate criticisms of the product rather than an entirely glowing endorsement.

Elementor Review by Themeisle

https://themeisle.com/blog/elementor-review/

This review from Themeisle spends most of the time explaining how to use Elementor, and finishes up with a recommendation to head over to Elementor's site and give it a try.

Elementor Review by Website Planet

https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/elementor-review-can-really-build-wordpress-website-alone/

This review from Website Planet reads a bit more like a sales page than a critical review, along with a glowing endorsement and plenty of calls to action.

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Comparisons

Elementor vs Divi by CollectiveRay

https://www.collectiveray.com/elementor-vs-divi

This is a really good comparison between Divi and Elementor from CollectiveRay. The author clearly has been developing sites in WordPress for a long time, and has a lot of experience using both themes. Ultimately they conclude that the functionality offered by the two plugins is very similar, and the decision on whether to buy boils down to pricing - if you're an agency with a lot of sites, go for Divi, if you're just using it on one site or need a free builder, then Elementor is the way to go.

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Articles

Virtual WordPress Page Builder Summit Kicks Off October 5

https://wptavern.com/virtual-wordpress-page-builder-summit-kicks-off-october-5

The first virtual WordPress Page Builder summit kicks off on October the 5th, through to the 9th. Offering a platform to discuss the wide range of tools available for freelancers and agencies to build client sites.

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Courses

Create A WordPress Website 2020 | Elementor PRO Tutorial

https://www.udemy.com/course/create-a-wordpress-website-2020-elementor-pro-tutorial/

How To Make a Wordpress Website -Elementor Page Builder

https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-make-a-wordpress-website-2017-elementor-builder/

A course hosted by Udemy about how to build WordPress websites using the Elementor Page Builder

How To Make A Wordpress Website with Elementor Page Builder

https://www.skillshare.com/classes/How-To-Make-A-Wordpress-Website-Elementor-Page-Builder/1710629438

A course that covers the basics of building a website using WordPress and Elementor. The videos are of a good quality, the instruction is clear, and the examples are easy to follow through.

Elementor Essentials - WPCrafter

https://www.wpcrafter.com/course/elementor-essentials/

A course by Adam Preiser of WPCrafter that aims to cover building a complete website with WordPress and Elementor.

Learn Elementor - WordPress Front-End Development Course

https://www.udemy.com/course/wordpress-front-end-development-elementor/

Another Udemy course covering Elementor in a good amount of detail. Coming in at 6.5 hours, the course spends most of the time detailing how to use Elementor with sections covering settings, the Elementor interface, page structure, how to use templates and the theme builder, before finishing off with a hands on section detailing how to build a complete site.

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Guides

Alternatives

Divi Theme

https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/

Frequently compared to Elementor, The Divi Builder is a little older but offers much of the same functionality.

The Divi Builder is a page builder plugin that comes bundled with the Divi Theme - this is one of the two primary distinguishing factors: The Divi Builder comes with a theme, Elementor doesn't.

The other distinguishing point between the two builders is that Divi's license is a little pricier, but a lifetime deal, whereas Elementor is a yearly subscription so you would likely end up spending far more on Elementor than Divi unless you just use Elementor's generous free plan.

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