Elementor vs. WP Bakery

Having done multiple projects on each builder, we feel confident enough to express our opinion about the pros and cons of Elementor vs. WPBakery...

Joining WebDesh, soon you realize that feeling passionate in this team is not a big deal. Simply because belonging never came easier and curiosity never felt so innate. Except for being colleagues, we spend enough time to become actual friends and be perfectly aware of one another’s reason to do what we do. A common reason for us all to be in web development is the immensity of knowledge to be gained. In the hectic working days though, buried under a pile of responsibilities, tasks and expectations, we are often left to seek a sense of meaning in our competency and in our ability to meet the clients’ needs. In such days learning happens on the go – almost unconsciously, almost automatically.

Suddenly there was this new spark in our discussions that was making its way even into our friendly conversations. Whether it was a conference call, a weekly planning or a coffee break, Elementor was the new topic on the horizon and a brand-new challenge to take up on. Having completed multiple projects on each of the two builders, we now feel confident enough to express our opinion and inform our users about the pros and cons of using WPBakery vs. Elementor. You will see three comparison points aiming at objectivity and the opinions of the team aiming at sharing a personal experience.

It is no surprise that the first question we are going to ask is:

1. Which one is easier on the eye?

Well, it is up to the developer whether they prefer to work on the back-end or front-end editor of the builder. I am a bit biased already so let’s try to explain my experiences with both trying to be as objective as possible:

It seems true that Elementor’s front end is more intuitive for a non-tech person. The process is this: you enter the page builder. You have a list of all elements. You choose. You drag-and-drop. You touch the settings here and there. You enter your content. You see the result right away. Easy-peasy? Yes, for most of the cases, lets say 🙂

WP Bakery is familiar. It has been used since forever. It is easy to prefer it out of habit and mechanism to work with it freely. If we let go of these biases in our minds though, we will find that there are some disadvantages that are not to be ignored. In theory WP Bakery offers us a choice between back-end and front-end as well. In practice – the more customized and abstract we want the page to be or the more complex structure we want to create, the more obliged we are to stick with the back-end editor of WP Bakery (and not Elementor, or the Bakery’s front-end). It doesn’t look as sexy as Elementor (for non-tech people, for tech – maybe better, but whoever prefers coding – they just prefer to see code and that’s it haha), it is not as quick (it is quite heavy actually). But it does offer a lot of pre-build structures and designs which gets the job done if you are in a hurry. Sometimes when a deadline is drawing near, every click counts, doesn’t it?

Editing Mila Vladislavova‘s blog – mila.land using Elementor

2. Which one has more to offer?

Appearance and simplicity are one thing but which one of the builders is more generous when it comes to elements it offers? Both include a bit more than 50 built-in elements to use (core elements for Bakery and pro-version elements for Elementor). In our work though we are rarely making personal blogs or quick-and-easy-do-it-yourself kind of websites. More often than not we have bigger projects or requiring a lot of customization or clients who are very clear about the specific websites they would like to have. Our first priority is to create a website our clients ‘wow’ at and make it as close as possible to the website they think would represent them the best. Keeping this in mind, we need an abundance of elements to add and customize to accomplish our ambitions. Regarding add-ons WPBakery is definitely the winner here. It offers 2500+ additional elements which is way more than Elementor. With a certain plugin you can also create your own add-on. In case of a very pretentious website with lots of elements necessary, the looks of the builder can definitely be compromised at the expense of way more functionalities.

Editing our website using WPBakery

And in the end:

3. Styling – to what extend?

When it comes to styling, both page builders give options to change Margin/padding, Borders, Background, Parallax effect, Responsive design (including hiding a column on specific devices), etc. It all boils down to which one is more comfortable and intuitive. I think the winner on this one is Elementor. The reason for that is how the page you’re editing is built. Like we mentioned before, we are working directly on the front-end doing in-line editing. On the left we have a sidebar (rather than a pop-up in WP Bakery!) on which we directly change options and see their reflection right away! We can change elements, content, background, style as well as whole sections which saves a lot of time! In WPBakery when it comes to a single element we are limited to Margin/Padding, Borders and Background.

Let’s ask our colleagues several questions and see their personal experience. What we are curious about is this:

1. Which one do you prefer and for what reasons?

Although both have their pros and cons, personally I prefer WPBakery Page Builder for most cases. I am a bit biased probably since I have worked with it more. It gives me freedom to do many different structures fast and easy and also for most parts you don’t have to worry about the responsiveness – it comes naturally and rarely do you need to do too much customization for the mobile/tablet/etc. versions of the websites. It also has many pre-made elements in terms of design and more often there are more than enough for each client to fulfill their needs. Of course, some of them are not so easy to customize and this is when you need some css and js in order to make it pixel-perfect according to a ready design or client’s wants.

Elementor on the other hand gives you many options to change settings, customize and play with different options, which is great for a more custom website, but for an easy-going client (someone that doesn’t have a very strict idea, but is flexible, open-minded and trusts us to do our job, also doesn’t mind to use a theme demo as it is), it makes working on the website slower and more demanding because it requires too much customization, even when the client doesn’t need it. And also it is lighter for the website on the speed side, I must admit.

2. Which one was easier for you to get used to?

For me it was WPBakery. I see a lot of people prefer Elementor and it makes sense. It’s also easier to start creating websites when you don’t have a lot of tech knowledge and experience. I believe that they made it much more comprehensible for the “regular folk” so that you don’t need any tech know-how in order to start using it.

3. What are your personal pros for your choice?

I would say it really depends on the case. Lately, I recommend Elementor, just because it’s better for the website speed which is a “below the line” factor for a website. So far for most of our projects we used WP Bakery and yes, we customized a lot and made big projects, but the cost for the website speed is always there.

So few things about WP Bakery:

Gives you the opportunity to create and work with complex structures
Gives you pre-made designs that you can implement with a few clicks and move along
Gives you organized places to write your css & js for the whole website AND for each page/post/other element individually
The posts grid elements are beautifully made with no need to hustle to make them look nice
It provides you with many elements that you can set up generally and then reuse automatically on many places around the website. It makes sense it provides times more elements than Elementor, since there are many pre-build designs, but still not 100% customizable, lets say – 70-80%.
Many times it’s pre-built to be so responsive, rarely do you need to make too many changes for different resolutions
You have the option to provide “desktop version image” and “mobile image” for background images in order to make your website look better and be lighter on mobile

So I would choose WP Bakery if I need to create a complex structure of a page on a website, that I know if it gets too complex, it will be responsive enough right away than with Elementor. If it is a big website, but not too heavy on design elements and the clients like the pre-made demos that the builder can offer. Also if the client has a very short deadline to start and finish the project, WP Bakery would be my choice.

Few pros about Elementor:

Easy to start with and perfect for non-tech people
Less elements than WP Bakery with much more customizable options, so for example you can create your old grid for posts and so many types of it, while WP Bakery gives you few, but fully ready to use and fully responsive ones
Fast and lighter on the website, so its better for overall website speed
You see what you change while you change it

If the client is very specific about the design and it doesn’t match the pre-made Bakery elements, then I would suggest Elementor. It will take more time, it will be a lot of work to customize it and make it fully responsive, but the client would be happy at the end. If our clients are also very keen on making the website as fast as possible but also hand in hand with being easy to support by themselves after the launch – Elementor is our go-to-strategy.

1. Which one do you prefer and for what reasons?

Personally, I prefer WP Bakery because it allows more customization to certain elements and the structure is easier to play around with without messing up the responsiveness of the elements on different devices. For example, Elementor relies too much on the separate settings for padding and margin on desktop, tablet and mobile, whereas WP Bakery relies on good structure that works on all devices. Not only that, but if you did wish to set different settings for other devices in WPBakery you can choose from more options than in Elementor.

2. Which one was easier for you to get used to?

It’s hard to say because from my experience it all comes down to which one you were introduced to first. For me the workflow with WP Bakery and its usage were easier to get used to. However, people who started out with Elementor find it more intuitive because immediately you can see any changes you’ve made.

3. What are your personal pros for your choice?

I feel more comfortable using WP Bakery because I’m more familiar with its features and I don’t have to worry much if it will look okay on different devices because there are less settings based on exact pixels which gives it more flexibility.

1. Which one do you prefer and for what reasons?

When I started developing websites, I first got introduced to Elementor and it was all I wanted to hear for quite a long time. And it’s natural – the frontend editor does its job quite well. When I had to work with WPBakery it was always “meh” for me, because I had gotten used to the comfort of being able to make a change while looking at the website and its design.

My fascination with Elementor faded quickly though, since I started gaining more knowledge and understanding things from a much deeper perspective than just “making it pretty”. WPBakery surely helps a lot more with responsiveness, which is a huge plus. Most times you only have to change a few things to make it look good on different devices. Don’t get me wrong – Elementor has all of the same features. Sometimes though, gullible people like me don’t realise that “well, I’ll only add 10px here, cause I really like it” comes with a great cost when it comes to responsiveness. And since Elementor is more than willing to put a custom spacing to any section, row, column and element, you just get lost in doing so. Endless possibilities often strike disaster! 😀

Overall, I like working with both editors and I think Elementor has a lot of potential to become the greatest builder, since it’s much easier for the general user.

2. Which one was easier for you to get used to?

Elementor is definitely easier to get used to if you have zero experience in this business. For the longest time I even wondered what were people doing before this precious gift was given to us. So yes, I think that if you can’t picture the elements and their placement in your head, it would be easier to hit it off with Elementor and get a purely visual idea of how things work.

3. What are your personal pros for your choice?

As I said, I like working with both editors, so I’ll just go ahead and list a few pros for each of them.

WPBakery: