When it comes to designing your WordPress website, there are plenty of ways to get viciously mauled by a cat. In this article, we’ll have a gander at some page builders, such as Elementor and Divi. We’ll look at the problems they originally sought to solve, and whether those problems still exist.
What are page builders?
Once upon a time, WordPress was a lot more rigid and simple than it is now. The process for building a WordPress site, from a designer’s point of view, was far more coding-based. From the customer’s point of view, they could add pages and blog posts only within a limited framework. This would usually consist of a content block somewhere on the page. Users could fill this in using a text editor that came with WordPress, pretty much like editing a basic Word document.
If the user wanted more control over the layout and design, however, there was a solution. Page Builders were third-party plugins that overhauled the interface for content control, replacing the editor native to WordPress. This let users manage their content in a more visual way, similar to other platforms like Wix or Squarespace. You could add columns, different sections, animating them and all sorts of other bits and bobs.
For non-developers, this was a godsend, though it wasn’t without some cost, both monetary and practical.
The Positives
Near total design freedom for non-developers: Using a page builder, you could control almost every aspect of your website’s appearance. All without needing to write a single line of code. This even extends to special page types like products, membership profiles and so on.
Project Speed: It’s quicker to achieve the end result that you’re aiming for, usually. This one’s fairly self-explanatory.
A nice thing for developers to offer their customers: It’s good to build things in a way that let’s customers take control. That’s why we use WordPress in the first place, after all.
Not Gutenberg: as we’ll come to see, page builders are not Gutenberg. Which, at least in the beginning, was a huge advantage.
The Negatives
Added complexity and learning curve: Although page builders offer a lot of options without having to take a web development course, they still give you a lot more to learn and explore. More than you otherwise would with a basic WordPress site.
Bulls in China Shops: In the hands of some customers, using a page builder can be very empowering. It can gave you a lot more control over the look and feel of your website, for better or worse. For this reason, though, any mistakes or slip-ups are likely to mess things up a lot more. There have been more than a few cases where I’ve snuck into a website to remove our credit from the footer, after a week or two of leaving it in the customer’s hands.
More risk of conflict: Page builders are complex and need to work seamlessly with the rest of your plugins. Because of their all-encompassing mass, the odds of a plugin conflict breaking your website are higher with a page builder.
Performance issues: Most importantly, the additional bulk of software that page builders add will negatively affect your page load time. They cram a lot of superfluous garbage into the front end of your website. This is so all of their widgets and gizmos, most of which you won’t even use, will work. You can mitigate this with more expensive hosting or various optimisation plugins. Some page builders will advertise themselves for their efficiency, only outputting what they need onto the page, supposedly. But you’re never going to get the performance you would have done by simply not using one in the first place.
A couple of well-known page builders
Probably the two most well-known examples of page builders are:
- Elementor: One of the best and most popular page builders out there. Elementor comes with a straight-forward front-end editor that lets you drag and drop elements, create sections and add some effects. It still requires some basic website knowledge to use. It uses a lot of HTML/CSS-specific jargon in its interface, for example, that some may find opaque. But being able to instantly see the results on the front end makes it quick to learn.
- Divi: Equally popular. Compared to Elementor, personally, I find it clunky and one of the worst for performance issues. It is, however, one of the easiest to use for non-developers. It does away with the aforementioned jargon, for the most part, and is far more visual in it’s interface. This minimalist, sleek interface might get in the way for people who do know what they’re doing, however.
What changed?
Part 1: When Gutenberg was Still Rubbish
At the end of 2018, WordPress released version 5, with some major overhauls. The most significant of these was to replace the old, TinyMCE text editor. Now WordPress came with a new, fancy block editor called Gutenberg. In theory (with a huge helping of salt) this was to fill a similar role as the page builders. It let users indulge themselves with columns, for example, and setting background images. No longer were we limited to putting things in bold or italic. The only problem was, trying to assemble something out of Gutenberg’s “blocks” felt like playing Tetris on a trampoline.
It was almost universally unpopular. It fulfilled the worst of both worlds by being both very limited and equally difficult to use. The Classic Editor plugin, which reverted WordPress back to the text editor, exploded on the plugins page. It remains the most popular plugin today with millions of active installations, even beating Akismet, which comes pre-installed on WordPress.
For many web developers and designers, regression to the previous version was the answer. For others, myself included, third party page builders were now a necessary evil. If we had to use one anyway, we figured, then we might as well use a good one. Plus, web hosting technology and internet speeds are always improving. What was once too much is now a lot more manageable on modern devices.
And so it went. Quietly, meanwhile, Gutenberg went through a couple more years worth of updates.
Part 2: When Gutenberg was Less Rubbish
Eventually, slowly, painfully, and unbeknownst to designers that were busy tinkering with Divi or good old-fashioned template files, Gutenberg changed. Apparently, it hadn’t just been a fad. The people behind WordPress were very invested in building it deeper into the core of WordPress as a whole. This was, like it or not, the way things were going. The various ways that designers were avoiding Gutenberg seemed increasingly futile and silly.
On top of this, Gutenberg had undeniably improved. By 2021, it no longer felt like pin the tail on the donkey to make things go where you wanted them to. And while it was still basic compared to the likes of Elementor, the gap was narrower and narrowing. On the other hand, the trade-off on performance from using page builders wasn’t getting any better. They still added as much bulk as they ever had, both slowing websites down and increasing the likelihood of plugin conflicts. On top of all this, web designers were simply learning the software better.
Conclusion
In general, though it is largely a matter of opinion, page builders are no longer worth what they cost. It’s also worth remembering that good websites are simple, quick to update and straight-forward to navigate. Anything that can’t be done in Gutenberg without coding knowledge often isn’t necessary, and will only get in the way of user experience.
It’ll be interesting to see how things develop from here and where WordPress is going to take Gutenberg next. As for page builders like Elementor and Divi, there will always be some place for them. I don’t think they’ll die off completely, at least, not for a long time. Whole web design agencies and ecosystems have been developed off their backs at this point.
Interesting read! The article presents a balanced view of page builders and highlights their pros and cons. The detailed analysis on the impact of page builders on website speed and performance is particularly helpful. This is a great resource for those who are considering using a page builder for their WordPress site.
Interesting article. It is now 2025, and I am in the process of writing a similar publication with comparable thoughts, two years later. For some reason, despite serving thousands of clients including agencies, we have come to the same conclusions. Slower websites, too many choices for the client, and oversimplified web development from agencies are leading to less effective websites and reduced user control.
That is why we decided to rebuild our themes rather than go all in on bloated, overly flexible setups. I am also curious to see how this plays out, especially since we are not focused solely on Gutenberg. It is hard to ignore the 10 million users still on the Classic Editor.
Back in the day, some builders pitched us to integrate their solutions, and we did not expect things to evolve this way. Clients now often have to spend more time setting things up, and without a designer or developer’s help, they end up confused. That impacts performance, time management, and more; there are many ripple effects.
That said, I do believe there is a place for builders, but they should not become the default standard.
Thanks for the comment. It does depend a lot on the client, of course, and what they’ll be doing with the site. If its something simple that they need to do pretty regularly (adding new guest artists to a gallery or new products to a catalogue say) then even the gutenberg blocks may be surplus to requirements, only going to slow them down and make the site look inconsistent and messy in the long run, and a few custom fields for a templated layout would be better! I used to think I was restricting clients too much by doing things like that but actually, if they don’t need or want to be designing layouts, then why let that get in their way.
Back, in the ancient past – before web themes, we used to serve NGOs in the past and local gov for a while. I remember nightmare in requirements and ‘flexibility’ demands, multiple roles and access points across several departments, months work. Too many decision makers and too much flexibility ended up like a Christmas tree after a while 🙂 We ended up doing another project for as they stopped liking it. Ha ha, I went on tangent here. My point I guess – sometimes less is more and ‘restrictive’ means more tailored and boutique solution.