If you’re thinking about using Elementor to construct your WordPress site, we’re here to assist you in determining if it’s the appropriate tool for your needs in our comprehensive Elementor review.

Elementor, like other page builders, provides a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface for designing your WordPress site without requiring any coding or technical expertise.

Elementor Pro is much more than just a page builder plugin, which is why it has become the most widely used WordPress builder plugin. It includes a variety of advanced features, such as a theme builder, popup builder, WooCommerce builder, dynamic content support, and more. It even provides a cloud-hosted website solution that handles hosting for you, allowing you to concentrate on constructing your site without worrying about the technical aspects.

What is Elementor Pro?

Elementor Pro is a premium version of the Elementor page builder, a popular WordPress plugin used for creating custom websites. It includes additional features and functionality beyond the free version, such as advanced design options, custom fonts and icons, WooCommerce integration, and advanced marketing tools. With Elementor Pro, users can design and customize every aspect of their website, from the header and footer to the individual page layouts. The plugin is designed to be user-friendly, even for those with little or no coding experience, and includes a visual drag-and-drop editor that allows users to create custom page layouts and designs without needing to write any code.

Who Is Elementor For?

Elementor is designed for anyone who wants to create a custom WordPress website, regardless of their level of experience with web design or development. It is particularly popular among freelancers, small businesses and website designers who want a user-friendly tool to create high-quality, professional-looking websites quickly, and easily. Elementor’s drag & drop interface and pre-built templates make it easy for beginners to get started and while its advanced design options, integration with popular plugins like WooCommerce make it suitable for more advanced users as well. Elementor is a versatile tool that can be used by anyone who wants to create a custom WordPress website without needing to know how to code.

Bloggers and content creators can use Elementor to design & create unique and engaging blog layouts, including custom post templates, and landing pages. Marketers can use Elementor to create high-converting landing pages, and sales funnels, complete with advanced marketing integrations & tracking tools. Business owners can use Elementor to create a professional & modern website for their company or online store, without needing to hire a developer.

Developers can also benefit from using Elementor as it provides a streamlined development process and ability to create custom widgets, add-ons and templates. Elementor is a flexible and powerful tool that can be used by anyone who wants to create a custom website with ease.

Seven Key Elementor Features That Help Make it Great

Now that you know how the Elementor interface works in general, I want to delve into some of the most noteworthy features in Elementor. All of these features are built on the same visual, drag-and-drop interface. So whether you’re designing a blog post, a popup, or a theme template, you’ll be utilizing the same foundational interface.

Responsive Design

All of the designs you create with Elementor are responsive by default, meaning they’ll automatically adjust to different devices such as desktops, tablets and mobile phones.

There may be situations where you want to tailor your design according to a user’s device. For instance, you may want to alter the text size or conceal an image for mobile visitors.

To achieve this Elementor does a few things:

• You can enable a responsive preview in the editor.

• Many settings come with a responsive control icon that allows you to customize that setting for specific devices rather than all visitors.
• There’s an option in the Advanced tab to hide content for specific devices.

Design and Style

Another remarkable aspect of Elementor is that it offers an extensive range of design choices – particularly with Elementor Pro.

You receive a more comprehensive set of built-in design options than most other builders, with Divi Builder being one of the few builders that can equal Elementor’s design flexibility.

You can manage colors, typography, spacing, and other elements. With Elementor Pro, you also gain access to personalized positioning, captivating motion effects, and other options to produce distinctive designs.

Theme Builder

With the standard Elementor builder, you can create a distinctive design for a single post or page. Elementor Theme Builder, you can design your real theme templates, including the following:

>> Header <<
>> Footer <<
>> Single (the template that displays a single blog post or page) <<
>> Archive (the template that lists your blog posts) <<

Essentially, this eliminates the need to choose a theme entirely because you can create every aspect of your theme using Elementor’s visual interface.

For instance, you can create the template that all of your blog posts will automatically use. You can specify “put the post title there”, “place the featured image there”, “show the author bio there”, and so forth.

When you publish a post, it will automatically insert all of the content from the native WordPress editor into your design.

You can also use conditional rules to apply different templates to different content. For example, you could use one template for posts in the “Reviews” category and a different template for posts in the “News” category.

If you’re creating custom content sites, Elementor Theme Builder also enables you to dynamically insert content into your designs from custom fields or other WordPress data. This includes integrations for Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Pods, Toolset, and more.

If you’re using the theme builder, Elementor also offers its own official Elementor Hello theme to provide a blank canvas for your designs.

WooCommerce Builder

If you’re building a WooCommerce store, Elementor Pro provides complete support for WooCommerce, allowing you to design your store using Elementor’s interface.

Firstly, you get an abundance of WooCommerce widgets that you can utilize to insert your store’s content in unique designs.

You can also use Theme Builder to create templates for your WooCommerce store.

Conditional display rules can be extremely helpful because you can generate different templates for various types of products:

In early 2022, Elementor Pro added its own specialized widgets for the WooCommerce cart, checkout, and my account pages.

These widgets offer a plethora of options to completely customize all of those primary pages, fixing what was previously a disadvantage of using Elementor for a WooCommerce store.

Essentially, as of 2023, Elementor Pro enables you to design every aspect of your store using Elementor’s interface.

Form Builder with Integrations

With Elementor Pro, you can use the Form widget, which is essentially a form builder that you can utilize from within Elementor.

You can create bespoke forms with as many fields as required. You can configure after-submit actions such as sending an email or displaying a confirmation message. Alternatively, you can integrate your forms with popular email marketing services and CRMs, as well as Zapier.

For the majority of users, this eradicates the need to use a separate WordPress form plugin. It’s an excellent option for contact forms, lead gen forms, and more.

If you require more advanced forms with features like conditional logic, calculations, etc., then you will still need to use a separate form plugin. Fortunately, many form plugins provide dedicated Elementor widgets, or you can find third-party extensions that do. We will discuss these later.

Colors and Typography

Another helpful feature in Elementor is global colors. These allow you to set your default colors and typography for the entire site. Your designs will automatically adopt these choices, which saves time.

But the most beneficial part is this:

If you modify your global site settings at any time, those changes will automatically apply to all designs that use the default, saving you the hassle of manually updating each one.

Of course, you can still override these defaults as needed, so you are not bound by them.

Popup Builder

Elementor Popup Builder enables you to design personalized popups using Elementor’s interface and widgets. As you can add any widget or content into the popup, you can utilize these popups for different purposes such as email sign-ups, announcements, contact forms, login forms, and more.

You have complete control over the popup’s “canvas”, which allows you to create different types of popups, such as lightbox popups, notification bars, slide-ins, and full-screen fillers.

>> Lightbox popup <<
>> Notification bar <<
>> Slide-in <<
>> Full-screen filler <<

One of its most robust features is its numerous advanced targeting and trigger rules.

For most users, Elementor Popup Builder can entirely replace the need for a separate popup or lead generation plugin. The only feature that some marketers may miss is the absence of built-in analytics and A/B testing. You can still set these up using Google Analytics and Google Optimize if necessary; it just requires a little extra work.

Elementor Speed and Performance

The tradeoff for all of Elementor’s features is that Elementor does add weight to the page. There’s no way around that. It’s heavier than the native WordPress editor and it’s also a little bit heavier than some of the more lightweight page builders like Beaver Builder.

For example, here’s a quick test where I created a simple design with all three builders. Here’s the full weight of the page (including my theme).

But there’s also good news, which is why I think this discussion needs some perspective.

Firstly, the Elementor team knows that performance is important, so they’ve been doing (and are continuing to do) a good job of reducing Elementor’s impact. For example, they’re simplifying Elementor’s DOM tree and they’re also experimenting with dynamic asset loading so that Elementor only loads the minimum assets needed for each page.

Secondly, the important thing to understand here is that you can absolutely still build fast-loading sites with Elementor.

If you’re following WordPress performance best practices (maybe by using a plugin like WP Rocket), I’m 100% confident in saying that you can still build sites with Elementor that pass Core Web Vitals. I know this because I’ve done it myself.

A Largest Contentful Paint time under 0.5 seconds for an Elementor site – not too shabby, right?

Basically, while performance isn’t an advantage of Elementor, it’s also not something that should be a dealbreaker. If you follow best practices, you can still create fast-loading sites while enjoying all those awesome features in Elementor.

Elementor Setup and Usage

To set up and use Elementor, follow these steps:

Install Elementor: Go to your WordPress dashboard, click on “Plugins” in the sidebar menu, and then click “Add New.” Search for “Elementor” and click “Install Now.” Once the plugin is installed, click “Activate.”

Create a New Page: To create a new page using Elementor, go to “Pages” in the sidebar menu and click “Add New.” Give your page a title and click “Edit with Elementor.”

Choose a Template: Elementor comes with many pre-designed templates that you can use to get started quickly. To choose a template, click on the “Folder” icon at the bottom of the left sidebar menu, and select “Blocks” or “Pages.” Browse through the templates and choose one that fits your needs.

Edit Your Page: Once you have chosen a template or created a new page, you can start editing it using Elementor’s drag-and-drop editor. You can add new elements to your page by dragging them from the left sidebar menu and dropping them onto the page. You can also edit existing elements by clicking on them and using the options that appear.

Customize Your Design: Elementor provides many customization options that allow you to change the look and feel of your website. You can change colors, fonts, and backgrounds, and adjust the layout of your page.

Preview and Publish: Once you have finished designing your page, click the “Preview” button at the bottom of the screen to see how it looks. If you are satisfied with your design, click “Publish” to make it live on your website.

Third-Party Elementor Extensions: New World of Features

Up to this point in our Elementor review, I have exclusively focused on “core” Elementor features and offerings. That is, products that come directly from the Elementor team.

One of the great things about Elementor is that you are not restricted to only using the developer’s tools. Instead, the Elementor team created Elementor in an open way with many APIs so that other developers can build on top of Elementor.

There are two significant ways that this helps you and makes Elementor more useful:

Third-party developers can code extensions specifically for Elementor. Typically, these will add new widgets, templates, design options, features, and so on.
Developers can add Elementor support to their plugin, even if their plugin isn’t specifically built for Elementor. For example, a donation plugin might create a special Elementor widget to add a donation form to your designs. Or, a membership plugin might add a new option to Elementor that lets you restrict access to a section or widget.
And here’s the key detail to understand:

Due to Elementor’s popularity, Elementor has by far the largest extension marketplace and the largest number of integrations.

Elementor Pricing

Next, let’s go over everything you need to know about Elementor pricing.

Free Version

Free version of Elementor is a robust page builder plugin for WordPress that allows users to create custom designs for their website pages using a visual drag-and-drop interface. It includes a variety of features such as:

>> Elementor’s live editing feature allows users to see changes to their website design in real-time as they make them.

>> Free version of Elementor comes with a range of pre-designed templates that users can customize to fit their website’s look and feel.

>> Free version of Elementor includes a variety of basic widgets such as text, image, and button widgets that users can drag and drop onto their pages.

>> Elementor’s designs are mobile-responsive, ensuring that they look great on any device.

>> Elementor integrates seamlessly with WordPress, allowing users to easily add their designs to their existing WordPress websites.

While the free version of Elementor is powerful, it does not include all of the features and functionality of Elementor Pro. It is a great way to get started with website design without incurring any costs.

Elementor Pro Paid Version

Elementor Pro is the paid version of the Elementor page builder plugin for WordPress. It includes additional features and functionality beyond the free version, such as:

>> Elementor Pro includes a powerful theme builder that allows users to design and customize every aspect of their WordPress website, including the header, footer, and archive pages.

>> Elementor Pro includes a WooCommerce builder that enables users to create custom product pages, category pages, and checkout pages for their online stores.

>> With Elementor Pro, users can create custom pop-ups to display on their website pages to grab users’ attention and increase conversions.

>> Elementor Pro includes additional advanced widgets, such as price lists, post grids, and testimonials.

With Elementor Pro, users can upload and use custom fonts and icons, giving them even greater design flexibility.

>> Elementor Pro includes integrations with popular marketing tools such as Mailchimp, Hubspot, and ConvertKit.

Elementor Pro is available in three pricing plans, as mentioned in the previous answer, and is a great option for those who need more advanced features and functionality for their website design.

Elementor Pros and Cons

Elementor is a popular WordPress page builder plugin that offers a range of features and functionality for website design. Like any tool, it has its pros and cons. Here are some of the main pros and cons of using Elementor:

Elementor is a powerful and flexible tool for website design, and its benefits outweigh its limitations. It’s important to consider the cons before deciding if it’s the right tool for your needs.