Elementor review: is it any good?

Lucy
November 10, 2021

Review summary of Elementor

Elementor is easily the best page builder plugin available for WordPress. It is easy to use and suitable for many people, whether you’re designing your own websites, or you’re a full-time web designer. It is the very plugin we use ourselves when designing all our WordPress websites.

Product brand: Elementor

Product URL: Elementor.com

Editor’s rating: 4.5

 4.5/5

Pros

Cons

We are big fans of WordPress because of the freedom and flexibility it provides for both us and our clients, but when it comes to frontend page building, it leaves a lot to be desired. That is where Elementor comes in.

Elementor is a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to design pretty much all elements of your website, from headers and footers, to blog archives and popups. Meaning you can wave goodbye to those clunky free WordPress themes, and say hello to your own code-free custom build website! So, let’s get into the nitty gritty…

Elementor Pricing

Elementor offers both free and paid options. The free version gives you access to their popular drag and drop live editor with 40+ widgets and 30+ page design templates.

Their paid version comes with even more widgets and templates, as well as it’s ‘industry leading’ Theme Builder, Popup Builder, Form Builder, Dynamic Content capabilities, WooCommerce Template Builder, and much, much more!

The pricing of their paid version is based on license use, so on the cheaper end of the scale you can get Elementor Pro for $49 for use on 1 website, perfect for business owners and/or bloggers. For 25 websites, you can get Elementor Pro for just $199 per year, perfect for freelance web designers and marketers.

They also have studio and agency offerings, with 100 Elementor Pro websites for $499 per year and 1000 Elementor Pro websites for $999 per year.

Here is an overview of their most popular offerings:

$ 0 forever

Drag & Drop Builder
40+ Widgets
30+ Templates
Responsive

$ 49 per year

1 Website License
90+ Widgets
300+ Templates
Theme Builder

$ 199 per year

25 Website Licenses
90+ Widgets
300+ Templates
Theme Builder

Is Elementor Pro worth it?

Whilst the free version of Elementor may provide you with all you need to build a basic custom-build WordPress website, the design flexibility you get with Elementor Pro makes the cost worth every penny.

It acts as an all-in-one plugin, with site-wide setting capabilities, drag & drop builder, theme builder, popup builder, form builder, and much more. Meaning you can ditch those millions of other plugins that you have downloaded on WordPress slowing down your website.

If you have just the one website, $49 per year is a small price to pay to build a beautiful website, especially when you consider that WordPress is free to use and the amount that other website builders may charge you to use their more rigid theme templates, like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify.

Features of Elementor

As you will see above, Elementor has many features for you to enjoy. But it is worth noting that many of these are only available on the Pro plans.

For those looking at the free version, you can enjoy the use of their drag & drop page builder alongside some basic widgets and templates.

Elementor becomes incredibly useful when you have signed up for one of their Pro plans. The features allow you to custom build your whole website and access their amazing library of pre-built templates and widgets.

So, let’s dig into the features of Elementor Pro.

Drag & Drop Page Builder

Elementor is incredibly easy to use thanks to its intuitive drag & drop editor. You edit your pages, templates, and blog as it would look once it is live on the website, dragging and dropping widgets on to the page to then edit.

This instinctive way of editing allows you to see how your content will look once it is published. Meaning, you no longer have to go back and forth previewing your updates from the back end.

We find it works seamlessly and smoothly, unlike other page builder plugins (like WPBakery).

Theme Builder

One of the biggest reasons we love Elementor is because of their theme builder. It allows you to edit global areas of your website that were once only accessible to those who could code. Meaning you had to rely heavily on what the theme you downloaded provided for you.

These areas include your blog page, blog archives, WooCommerce product page, WooCommerce product archives, header, footer, 404 page, search results page, and single page templates.

Whilst editing your theme you can utilise Elementor’s large library of templates to provide you with inspiration for your website.

Responsive Editing

Want to know how your design looks on mobile, tablets, and desktops? Well, good, because you really should.

Loads of people are using mobiles to do their internet browsing now, so your website should be responsive for all devices. Luckily, Elementor has a handy responsive designer mode which allows you to edit your work for all 3 devices (and custom size screens as well!)

90+ Widgets

Widgets are essentially the building blocks of your WordPress website. They allow you to add content into your pages, templates, and blogs.

For free Elementor users you will have access to a basic library of widgets, including headings, text editors, images and videos (YouTube & Vimeo embed). Elementor Pro users will get access to many more widgets including countdowns, hotspots, social share buttons, and more!

Their widgets are easy to edit using Elementor’s drag & drop editor.

300+ Templates

Instead of starting from scratch with your design you can use one of Elementor’s 300+ pre built templates. These include sections of a page, like a contact form area, or full page designs, like about pages, portfolios, and much more.

You can even save your own sections and pages that you’ve designed as templates for future use. This is particularly useful when you are using the same design in different areas across the site.

On top of this, you can save and export your own templates to use on other websites with Elementor.

Website Kits

Whether you lack the eye for design, or you are slammed for time, Elementor’s Website Kits are here to help!

These beautifully designed pre-built website templates are quick to download on to your site and will bring you closer to your website goals, much sooner.

Make sure to customise it with your own branding so that it still sticks out from the crowd. Luckily, this can be done easily from site-wide settings.

Site-Wide Settings

This feature is going to help you save a LOT of time.

Picture this, you finish building a custom website and decide that the font selection is all wrong, or the colouring of some elements (like the buttons and icons) isn’t quite right. Bum. Well, that’s going to take a look of unnecessary time going through and changing it up.

Oh wait, no, we have Elementor. Pop over to site wide settings (accessible directly from Elementor’s live editor) and change your global typography and see your whole website transform in an instant. Cool, right?

All with zero coding.

You can change your logo, site favicon, image styles, buttons, forms, the whole website’s background, and much much more.

This is particularly great for you web designers who have indecisive clients… you can thank us later.

Pop Up Builder

Thanks to Elementor, building pop ups on your WordPress website no longer means downloading another slow and clunky third party plugin.

The Elementor Pop Up builder is very simple to use and gives you a lot of flexibility with both the design and the display rules of your pop up.

You can add a background, change the shape and size of the pop up, include forms and call to actions. After designing you’ll be prompted to select where it will be displayed and when. This includes exit intent, percentage page scroll, and time spent on website.

Custom Code Injection

Got some analytics codes or marketing pixels to add onto your WordPress website?

Then you’ll probably have battled with the issue of whether it is best to add this directly into the theme code (risking losing the code upon next update), setting up a child theme (more tricky for beginners), or downloading a plugin to inject it in without touching any code (slowing down your website, even more).

Once again, Elementor have saved the day. No editing code, nor downloading even more plugins. Just use their custom code tool to add in any analytics or pixels. Simple!

Custom Fonts

With an ever growing number of online businesses popping up, brands are fighting even harder to become more unique. Which means moving away from the default fonts provided to you by your CMS.

With Elementor you can easily upload a custom font file and begin using it on your website, with no coding involved.

Plugin Compatibility

And if all the above wasn’t already enough, Elementor syncs beautifully with dozens of other plugins. From LMS plugins like LearnDash, to WooCommerce and Recipe Maker plugins.

Meaning it is likely that Elementor will sync easily with any existing plugins you have downloaded on your website. If not, then you can use their shortcode widget to inject any sections in that can’t be done directly from the drag & drop builder.

How to Use Elementor

Using Elementor is simple. Start by downloading the free version as a plugin on your WordPress website. This can be done directly from the plugins section in the backend of your website.

Upon purchase of Elementor Pro you’ll be able to download the pro plugin from your Elementor account page. You need to upload this as well as the free one. Then you are all set to start using Elementor.

We recommend using their lightweight theme Hello so you can keep your website quick and the initial design basic. Many themes you get are clunky and full of unnecessary code, plus they may conflict with Elementor’s theme builder.

Some people start by setting up their site settings with their logo, fonts and colours. Some may start by designing each page and changing the site settings later. This is down to you.

Either way, we’d recommend building out the theme design in the Theme Builder first, including your header & footer, blog page, archives, product pages, etc.

Then get on to creating individual pages, like your home, about, and contact pages.

In the meantime, make the most of Elementor’s maintenance mode (found in the ‘tools’ section of the plugin) to stop people from landing on an unfinished website.

Speed all of this process up by browsing their web kits which will download a pre-built design for your whole website in minutes. You can then go in and edit as you like.

If you get stuck at any point visit Elementor’s help centre, where they have the answer for pretty much everything.

Alternatives to Elementor

There are a few alternatives to Elementor that are worth mentioning here.

WPBakery has a large library of useful widgets, but their front end builder is clunky and slow.

Divi builder is probably the most similar to Elementor but we didn’t find their editor as smooth to use, plus they aren’t as close to being an all-in-one plugin like Elementor.

We’d recommend avoiding other builders like Beaver Builder due to their inflexibility and clunkiness.

Who should use Elementor?

Many, many people, in our opinon. Including, but not limited to:

WordPress users who want more flexibility with their design than what is offered in clunky themes
E-Commerce (WooCommerce users) looking to have more flexibility with their shop design
Small business owners looking for a quick build website (using web kits)
Freelance web designers (looking to be able to make site wide setting changes per client request)

Buy Elementor

Elementor helps to provide those with little to none coding experience to create custom build websites. Hurrah! So yep, we are certain you will love it.

Great designers no longer also need to be great coders.

And even if you yourself don’t have a flare for design, Elementor will provide you with the inspiration and tools you need to build something fit for your brand.

This is why we believe that Elementor is the best plugin purchase you can make on WordPress. Plus the cost is relatively cheap considering how many other plugins you can get rid of because of it.

Try out Elementor here

Elementor FAQs

Let us answer those burning questions you still have about Elementor…

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