The Elementor Page Builder Vs The Competition

Out of all the WordPress page builders and separate page building platforms, Elementor still sits at the top of the rankings in terms of popularity. This advanced and open-source builder is loved by many in the web developing community, largely in part to its role in helping set the standards for user-friendliness, customization and drag-and-drop functionality.

If we take a look at the WordPress plugin repository, we see there are a great deal of page building plugins that currently compete with Elementor for the throne of the best page builder. So, let’s see how Elementor compares against them.

A Little Summary of Elementor

The Elementor page builder has a lot of features that quickly turned it into one of the best plugins for designers, developers and pretty much anyone tech-savvy enough, the most important one being its quick drag-and-drop functionality, which allows users make all their edits in the front-end, providing people with a tool for faster and easier page building.

However, it doesn’t stop there. One of the other benefits Elementor comes with is its user-friendly mobile-friendly (it’s very friendly, this page builder) design. This means that you don’t have to learn anything to make your work responsive. You can just switch to the mobile view and see how everything would look on a phone.

For building landing pages, Elementor is pretty much your best friend, as you can set the page to the Elementor Canvas template and design your page without a header and a footer (two no-nos for these types of pages in the funnel).

And if it’s pricing that you’re thinking about, you don’t have to fret with Elementor, because it’s pretty much on par with other page building plugins, if it’s not better. It is one of the few most complete page building plugins with a free version, which you can turn into pro for more widgets and more functionality. The single site license costs you $49/year and they also have packages for three sites which costs $99/year and a $199/year license more suited for agencies, as it allows up to 1000 sites.

Having said all of this, let’s take a look at how Elementor matches up with other page builders.

How does Elementor stack up against Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is one of the other page builder known for its drag-and-drop functionality. The self-proclaimed “easiest WordPress page builder” is pretty similar to Elementor – and others in this list for that matter – in the sense that you can create websites with it even if your coding skills are slim to none.

As it is the case with the Elementor page builder, Beaver Builder also comes with a myriad of beautiful templates that you can choose so you don’t have to start designing from zero (we’ll have Beaver Builder templates in the future, wink wink!). You just have to choose one from the list that matches what you’re looking and put your copy and graphic materials.

Beaver Builder is priced a little bit higher than Elementor if you’re just looking to make one site, but it’s cheaper if you’re agency providing WordPress development services, as it’s starting price is $99 for unlimited sites.

These are some of the disadvantages of Beaver Builder:

• Like mentioned above, can be expensive for one site users
• You can’t undo your changes, neither with CTRL+Z nor CMD+Z
• Little to no solutions to theme limitations
• It doesn’t allow you to add your own custom CSS (for non-tech savvies, CSS is the language that describes how the elements on a website should be displayed).

How does Elementor stack up against Divi Builder

Just as with Beaver Builder, Divi Builder shares the same Elementor’s drag-and-drop functionality so sought-after by many. Both Elementor and Divi Builder are similar in a lot of ways, but their UI (user interface) is a little bit different. This builder, made by the famous WordPress related company Elegant Themes, has several advanced layouts to offer.

With all of the page builders that are listed in this post you can build any type of website, but Divi is the one that takes this to the next level, with the 20 row types and three-section types available that you can use in any way or form you want.

As far as widgets goes (the blocks you can drag-and-drop), is on the short end compared to Elementor, with only 46 available against Elementor’s 80. In both builders you can customize these widgets to better suit your needs and preferences. With Divi also, you get 140 templates you can implement in your website, a number pretty similar to the 150 that Elementor includes in its pro version.

Price wise, Divi Builder costs $89/year, and this price gets you access to website packs, their 24/7 support, yearly updates and all of their themes and updates. They also have a one-time payment package at $249 that gets you all of the aforementioned features for life.

These are some of the disadvantages of Divi Builder:

• You can’t build theme pages, like archives and single post pages
• You can’t build your own header and footer
• It has a plugin add-on for popups, but you can’t build them with Divi
• When you’re building long pages, it tends to get really slow and glitchy

How does Elementor stack up against the Themify Builder

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that the builder in this comparison all had some sort of drag-and-drop interface and the Themify Builder is no different. Just like with Elementor, you can do your edits with this builder on the front-end, previewing everything live on the spot.

With Themify, you get more than 60 prebuilt layouts and animation effects that save you a lot of time when it comes to building pages. For the implementation of the layouts, all you have to do is go to the library and importing the one you like the most, then adjusting your copy and images to your option.

In one aspect that Themify is pretty similar to Elementor is in the fact that you can download and install Themify for free, so you can start building the pages for your website without no additional investment to the domain and hosting (more on hosting and domain on this post). There is also an addon bundle that costs $39 and includes more than 25 addons so you can really boost up your designs.

These are some of the disadvantages of the Themify Builder:

• Its interface lacks intuitiveness
• You can’t build theme pages
• You can’t build your own customized header and footer

How does Elementor stack up against Thrive Architect

When the developers of Thrive Architect were coming up with this builder, they had something in mind: conversion. And this is kind of what sets it apart of Elementor, the fact that you can build specific pages for visitors to take actions like subscribing to your email list, contacting you about a service or buying a course. Conversion is actually their main offer, so if what’s on your mind is building highly efficient landing pages, choosing this page builder is no bad decision.

One of the more positives aspects of Thrive Architect – asides the already talked about conversion side – is their template library that comes with more than 270+ prebuilt templates with which you can create literally all kinds of pages.

Its price just a little bit higher than Elementor’s at $67/year for a single site, with the monthly price being at $19.

Putting price aside, Thrive Architect does have a drawback compared to the Elementor page builder, and that is their theme building features. There are some stuff you can do with Thrive theme-wise, but it’s not as complete as Elementor’s.

How does Elementor stack up against SiteOrigin

In this list, I’ve usually set price for last, but with SiteOrigin, I have to talk about that first, because it is one of the advantages it has to other page builders. Like Elementor, you can download and install it for free, giving you a variety of good features (there’s reason why it’s popular!). And even their pro version is a lot less than Elementor’s, sitting at only $29/year for just one site.

On this page builder, you can both edit on the front-end and the back-end (front-end editing is pretty much you doing the changes and seeing them instantly, whereas back-end editing is doing everything on the dashboard then previewing to see how it looks). However, one of the features it faults to Elementor is that it doesn’t have inline editing.

On the widget side of things, Elementor has 28 widgets on the free version while SiteOrigin has 26 (not too much of a difference, to be honest). However, when we talk about the templates on the free version, Elementor does win the battle Elementor with its 36 compared to SiteOrigin’s 26.

1. In terms of code lock-in though, Elementor leaves behind clean HTML while some widgets leave behind shortcodes on SiteOrigin.

These are some of the disadvantages of SiteOrigin:

• Its UI (user interface) is really basic and plain.
• You must have the widget bundle which is additional.
• Doesn’t give you that much control over the page layout
• Elementor writes clean HTML, whereas SiteOrigin sometimes writes shortcodes.

How does Elementor stack up against WPBakery

The only page builder on this list known in the community for its two names; WPBakery Page Builder and Visual Composer. Seriously, if you ask people, some will say they have Visual Composer and others will say they WPBakery, but it’s pretty much the same.

While the fact that it was developed by CodeCanyon has made it popular (a lot of people just buy a theme from said marketplace that already comes with this builder), their functionality for creating your own single page template or archive page template is not as smooth as Elementor’s. This page builder, however, has several external themes that are completely compatible with it.

This plugin is actually very confusing, in part because of what I said above about the two names. There is actually a website with pricing for Visual Composer, which lists it at $59/year for a single site license, and there is also a website for a WPBakery license, listed at $45. But the plugins are really the same, so I’ll let you be the judge of how confusing it is.

These are some of the disadvantages of the WPBakery Page Builder/Visual Composer:

• It’s less user-friendly than the others
• Tends to have more conflicts with other plugins than the rest of the page builders
• If you end up deactivating it for whatever reason, you can still find shortcodes on your pages

Final words

If you read closely this article, you will have noticed that most of the page builders come with a front-end editor for you to make changes live and the drag-and-drop functionality to insert the blocks (widgets) when you’re doing your front-end editing. These two features are what makes the whole designing and building process fast and convenient.

Having tried them all and really assessing all of their features, I gotta say that the top three are Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi Builder – in no particular order – though I favor Elementor.

These page builders are a lot alike in their customization options, with some of the differences being the amount of templates and widgets they have available overall and the pricing. Of the three mentioned, Divi is the only one that has a lifetime plan, which just simply sounds amazing, but you can end up losing money if it’s not what you like. Elementor and Beaver Builder, on the other hand, can be downloaded for free to test out.

One of the things that Divi has been criticized about is the code. Now, you may not necessarily care so much about this, but when you’re trying to optimize a website, the fact that you don’t have the same clean code with Divi as you’d have with Elementor and Beaver Builder is one downside.

Beaver Builder, on the other hand, doesn’t have those extremely useful features which you do see on the other two. And compared to Elementor and even Divi to some extent, Beaver doesn’t have as much official elements and modules.

Additionaly, the page builder Elementor stands out as more functional and corresponding than the other. In all honesty, Elementor seems to be designed for users of all types of skills and experience. And even on pricing, Elementor is known for not being too cheap with few elements nor too expensive for exclusivity or whatever reason. This can actually help explain why it’s one of the more downloaded and used page builders out there, with more than 500,000 active users, compared to Divi’s 440,000 and Beaver Builder’s 400,000.

Feel free to give Elementor a test run so you can check out all of its features and see if it works for you! And if it does, make sure to take a look at the templates on this website so you can make the design process even more faster.