Elementor Review: Best WordPress Page Builder Plugin?

Elementor is the most beginner-friendly page builder WordPress plugin ever released.

It became the fastest-growing WordPress start-up ever when it was first released.

People love its drag and drop page building front-end because it isn’t hard to learn and works significantly faster than its rivals like Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, and Cornerstone.

Today Elementor is currently active on over 2 million WordPress websites.

In this review, you’ll learn why Elementor is the best page builder plugin for WordPress and why you should use it.

About Elementor

Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress page builder plugins. It is super easy to use, updated regularly, and loaded with helpful features.

It helps you create website homepages, sales pages, landing pages for email list building, and almost any kind of web page you can think of. It has a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that helps you build and modify your page in real-time.

Elementor is a free WordPress plugin which means you can use it even if you have a whole new blog or a website and don’t have any money to buy premium page builders.

It has become the first choice of beginners who don’t know how to code but want to build websites. It is widely used by freelance website builders because their clients find it easy to understand and use themselves.

It also has a pro version for which you have to pay a premium to use. The pro version adds additional features, which we will discuss further in this article.

Let’s take a look at some of Elemetor’s features.

Features

Elementor comes with many helpful features to help you create any kind of webpage easily. After a significant update in 2019, it also added many conversion-focused features such as email integration with a built-in tool to create optin forms.

Drag n Drop Front-end Editor

Elementor comes with a drag and drop front-end editor, which is also called a front-end customizer. It works on WYSIWYG, meaning what you see, what you get. Any changes you make o the web page will take effect immediately on the web page in the draft mode.

This helps you see how the changes will look on your page before you make them live o your website.

Custom Widgets

Elementor allows you to add WordPress active widgets to your web pages. In addition, it comes with more than 90 custom widgets that help you add additional functionality to your pages.

You can add forms, buttons, timers, headlines, icons, social network links, shortcodes, and many more elements to your pages using these widgets.

Animation Ready

You can use Elementor to create animated widgets and elements on your pages. For example, you can add scroll effects to your headers, sweep-in effects to your headlines, etc.

Elementor Canvas

Elementor also allows you to run over your WordPress native theme settings and convert your pages into a completely white canvas without a header or footer. You can choose to leave a header, footer, or both as well.

This is very helpful if you use the Genesis framework, which has no native options, to remove headers ad-footers from the static pages.

Single Post Customization

Using Elementor, you can customize single WordPress blog posts as well. This means it allows you to customize posts as well as pages with the same elements and flexibility.

Elementor Pro allows you to add content boxes, timers, tables of content, etc., to your posts to make them look attractive.

TypeKit Integration

If you use Type Kit, Elementor has one-click integration so you can import all your fonts ad manage your branding easily. You can also use Type Kit fonts on universal Elementor text and other widgets throughout your sites.

Responsive Elements

Elementor’s every element, whether it is a text widget, an optin form, header, footer, background section, etc. is responsive. No matter if anyone accesses your page via a small screen mobile phone or a large PC screen. It automatically adjusts the height and width accordingly.

Integrations

Elementor integrates with email marketing services like GetResponse, Convertkit, Aweber, MailChimp, and MailerLite. It also integrates with CRM like HubSpot, Drip and Active Campaign. It also integrates with Slack, Zapier and many more services.

Pre-designed Templates

Each month they release a new Template Kit’s built and designed by designers at Elementor. They recently added a Digital Agency kit with 12 templates that are perfect for targeting small business owners and templates in 30+ other niches.

Custom CSS

You can add custom CSS to customize almost every widget in Elementor. If you are a developer and you develop sites for clients, this feature will help you change elements according to your client’s wish.

Role Manager

If you have a multi-author blog and wish to give Elementor access to certain people, you can do so by changing the settings in the role manager. This works only in the pro version.

Import-export

You can import or export multiple templates from one site to another site. This will help you import everything, including images, so you won’t have to manually upload them.

It also comes with features focused on e-commerce users, such as pricing lists and table widgets. WooCommerce elements such as cart and product widget.

It comes with many widgets with different functionalities, so you won’t have to depend on a custom developer to create a page with features and elements you like.

Widgets allow you to add elements like a countdown timer, testimonials, shortcodes, star ratings, image carousel, accordions, maps, and many more.

You can easily set and customize the text font, color or upload your own custom font.

Elementor is faster than any page builder plugin, and it works with any and every WordPress theme. Be it Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, Thrive Architect, or Brizy. It loads quickly and keeps your page size low. So, it won’t negatively affect your SEO.

You can check out Elements other features here.

Theme Builder

Elementor’s main attraction is the Theme Builder. Elementor comes with a functionality called Theme Builder, which allows you to create a completely new WordPress theme from the ground up without touching a single line of code.

You can create a new header and a new footer with the functions you want. It can be a sticky header, a transparent header, or a scroll-to-hide header. You can create footers with links, images and optin forms with ease.

If your theme doesn’t have a good footer, you can create it with Elementor and set it universal so it shows up below every page of your WordPress site.

You can also customize your 404 pages, search pages, and archive pages to match your brand, even if your theme doesn’t allow you to.

Elementor works with every WordPress theme. The changes happen over the theme, so even if you change your theme, all your customization remains as it is.

It also comes with display conditions using which you can set where your footer, headers, optin forms, and other widgets appear and where they are hidden.

You can set to show or hide some widgets to particular visitors based on their location, device, and what page, category or tag they are currently browsing on your site.

The beauty is that you can create a theme with all the elements you want and then export and reuse it on a new site.

Popup Optin Form Builder

When Elementor was first released, internet marketers weren’t too interested in using it over page builders like Thrive Architect or Leadpages.

Why?

Because at the time of its launch, it didn’t have many conversion-focused features and you couldn’t add basic marketing elements such as timers and popup optin forms that integrate with email marketing services.

That changed when Elementor was released, with its updated version in 2019. The massive update now allows you to create optin forms, including static, inline, and popup forms, quickly from the Elementor’s front-end editor.

You can easily integrate major and popular email marketing services with popup forms such as Aweber, GetResponse, and ConvertKit.

You can create popup banners, login forms, a welcome mat, content upgrades, and coupon or upsell/downsell popups using Elementor’s popup builder.

It also comes with an exit-intent targeting option which enables you to show an optin form and collect email right before a visitor leaves your website.

Pricing

Elementor was initially a free plugin and is a full-featured page builder plugin even in its free version. The free version comes with plenty of features that you’d want in a page builder.

However, if you are serious about building pages for your site that stand out and want elements like the blog post widget, featured image widget, and post navigation universal widgets. You’ll have to buy the Pro version.

You also don’t get a theme builder in the free version, and you can’t create headers and footers in the free version. PopUp builder, universal widgets, and custom CSS options are only available in the Pro version.

Elementor is priced at $49/year for a single-site license. You can also choose between a $99/year plan for 3 sites and a $199/year plan for 1000 sites.

Each plan comes with 1 year of Pro updates and 1 year of ticket support. Every plan includes a popup builder, WooCommerce builder, and theme builder, too.

If for some reason, you don’t like Elementor Pro, you can ask for a complete refund within 30 days as part of their money-back guarantee. They accept PayPal as a payment option as well.

Support

Good support for any WordPress plugin is very important, and this is something you will only understand when you need it. Elementor comes in two versions free and premium versions.

The free version of Elementor will allow you to get free support from WordPress forum threads dedicated to Elementor. You’ll also get a knowledge base with thorough documentation, video tutorials, and a get started guide on their support page over here.

You won’t be able to get email support in the free version.

When you buy the premium version, Elementor Pro, you will get priority support from email tickets. You can ask their support team for help via email 24×7.

Add-Ons

One of the best parts of Elementor is its integration with third-party add-ons. There are a number of add-ons available for Elementor. Some add-ons come free and some are premium.

You can find many add-ons for Elementor in your WordPress plugin repo. You can also click here to find them.

One of my favorite Elementor add-ons is:

Essential Add-ons for Elementor

This is one of the most popular and feature-rich add-ons for Elementor. It allows you to add blog post widgets, image comparisons and product grids to your Elementor page.

This is something Elementor’s free version doesn’t offer. So, if you’re planning to use the free version of Elementor, make sure you install Essential Add-ons for Elementor.

It adds many more advanced features you’ll not find in Elementor.

Conclusion

It wasn’t like Elementor revolutionized page building, or introduced dynamic editing in WordPress. OptimizePress did that – but they didn’t keep improving at a pace and Elementor was relentless in their updates.

You can see it happening right now, take a look at Asana and ClickUp – they are direct competitors; Asana came in first, but ClickUp will beat them. That’s sure.

Elementor is no doubt the most efficient and feature-rich WordPress page builder. It comes with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop front-end editor and a neatly coded backend.

Elementor doesn’t make your site slow and is super easy to use, making it the perfect choice for beginners. Its newly added features make it a better competition for page builders that many internet marketers use.

Install Elementor

It is so user-friendly that you won’t use its rivals after using it, and all of them don’t offer you the same level of features as well.

You should give Elementor a try and you will be amazed by its flexibility and features.

Do you use Elementor? Share your experience in the comments.