Elementor Review 2023 – The Good, Ugly and Bad

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
elementor-review

Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commision if you click through and make a purchase.

If you’re anything like me, you must be already familiar with WordPress. It’s hands down the best website building platform. Be it your personal blog, a company website, or anything in between, WordPress is your answer.

But it’s not the platform that makes it incredible. It’s the third-party plugins.

Plugins save you from writing code for every small thing like adding a button. This makes WordPress a perfect choice for someone with no prior experience in coding.

Today we’re going to review one such incredible plugin – Elementor Page Builder. This plugin alone has over 3 million active installs. This makes it one of the most popular WordPress plugins.

But that doesn’t mean you should download it.

This article aims to show the different features and reasons why you should pick Elementor.

Let us dive right into the Elementor Review. 

ELEMENTOR PAGE BUILDER REVIEW

Elementor is one of the best landing page builders for WordPress. With an active community, great support, advanced features and hundreds of add-ons, it’s the perfect plugin for your WordPress website.

Elementor PRO starts at 49$ per year

WHO IT'S FOR?

Elementor is perfect for  bloggers, freelancers and development agencies. 

PROS & CONS

Table of Contents

Who should use a Page Builder? 

If I had to put it in one line – Elementor is built for anyone looking to build stunning websites without the help of a designer or a developer.

elementor-review

Let’s break it down to see which type of people can benefit :

1. Freelancers – Build stunning portfolio websites to drive leads.
2. Bloggers – Create visually appealing blogs posts to attract and retain more readers.
3. Agencies – Build websites for your clients like a boss.

How to install Elementor ? 

Before starting the installation, just keep in mind that there are two versions of the tool – 

1. Elementor (free) 

2. Elementor Pro (paid)

If you’re looking to install the free version of the tool, then you can simply search for Elementor in plugins tab and install it. Just ensure you download “Elementor Page Builder”. Don’t mistake it with other add-ons available (as shown below). 

 


For the pro version, you need to first purchase a paid plan on the Elementor website. Once you make a purchase, you’ll be provided with a zip file. You just need to upload it as a plugin. For activation, just authenticate it with your Elementor account. 

NOTE

Don’t uninstall the free version when installing the pro version. Both the plugins are important to run Elementor Pro.

Get Started with Elementor

After installation, you just need to click on “Edit with Elementor” button to start using it. You can use it to edit both pages and posts. For pages, you can even choose a different page layout (blank canvas or a full width)


Once you’re in the editing mode, you’ll be able to see all the elements on the left-hand side. You can always hide it by clicking on the arrow, as shown below. 

PRO TIP

Before clicking on the “Edit with Elementor” button ensure to save the post as a draft first to avoid any problem.

Layouts and options

Let’s look at the different layout options available on Elementor –

Page Layout

Depending upon your requirement you can either choose a blank canvas (no header or footer) or Elementor full width layout (removes the sidebar) .

Blank canvas are useful in creating conversion focused landing pages. 

 

Content Structure

In order to create a section on Elementor, you need to choose a structure first. You can either start from scratch or use a premade template. To help you Elementor provides you with twelve different variations. Alternatively you can  directly drag an element to get started.
 


Even if you choose a structure you can always change the column width and customise it according to your needs. In addition to this you can always drag an element, or section to another structure
.

 

Editing Structure

Elementor also allows you to easily copy/paste a particular style. Just right click on any structure and you’ll see a drop down menu with the additional options. In case you feel you’ll require a layout in future articles, you can save it as a template. So that you can easily add the section from the template section rather than creating it again.

 

Templates 

For someone completely new to design, templates can be a lifesaver. Elementor has a neat collection of 100+ templates. You can either use page template or separate blocks. All are categorised into categories like Header, Hero etc. If you’re still not able to find the right one, just use the search box

 


Elementor keeps adding new templates, so just keep an eye on the “New” templates. Obviously all these templates are fully customisable.

Bottom Menu Bar

These are the six most used buttons on Elementor. Let us see what are the functions of each of them – 


Settings
 

Access general settings of the page like the title, featured images, custom CSS, etc.

Global Style – You can use is to set parameters like colors, fonts, and the theme style.

Finder – If you’ve used a Mac, you must already familiar with Finder. You can use it to quickly search and jump to any page, templates, elements, and more. 

Navigator  

Navigate through all the sections in the page using a small movable popup. Just click on an element on the page to go to that particular section. This is especially useful for long pages.


History

Shows all the changes you’ve made in the past. In case you need to undo some change, just click on that particular revision.
 

Responsive mode


Allows you to see the website in different layouts, including Web, Tablet, and Mobile. Keep in mind any changes made to a layout is independent of other layouts.


Preview changes
 

Lets you visit the preview the live version of the page. 

Publish

Use it to publish a page once you’re done with the changes. You can use it to manually save a draft even. 

PRO TIP

Elementor has an inbuilt saving feature. This removes the need for manually saving a page.

Features 

Now let’s cover some important and popular elements in Elementor –

Heading

As the name suggests this element allows you to quickly add a heading to your content. To customise it you can always play around with the font, colour or shadows. 

Animated Headline


Want your headline to stand out? You can use this element to add animations to your headline. You can use different shapes like circle, zig-zag and underline.

Text Editor 

This is by far the most element on Elementor. But there’s nothing special here. You get a normal wordpress editor with additional customisation features. For example – you can easily change margins, padding and background. You can easily change the font of the text by either choosing the existing fonts or uploading a custom one.


While you can also edit directly by double clicking directly on an element, I’ve faced a lot of issues with that. To share you an example, just adding a HTML embed can broke the complete text layout. Thrive Architect is way better at handling text.

The worst part is that you can’t add any element in between the text. This sucks. In order to do this I’ll need divide it into two separate text elements to add an extra element. I hope they solve it in the future updates.
 

Inner Section

If you’re planning to quickly add two columns to your page, you can use this element. By default the widths are fixed at 50% but you can always customise it according to your needs.

Image

Images are crucial in making a page/post visually appealing. Elementor allows you do a lot when it comes to images –

1. You can add custom borders to your image.

2. Play around with the opacity to use the image as a background.

3. You can even play around with parameters like blur, brightness, contrast etc

4. Add custom scrolling and mouse motion effects to your image. This is a lifesaver when you want to add animations to symbols or icons on your page. 

Button

This is by far my favourite element. It allows me to effortlessly add buttons to my page and more – 

  1. Change the layout and size of the button
  2. Trigger dynamic content like a popup or a lightbox
  3. Easily add an icon to my button
  4. Mouse and scroll effects to add intent and increase click through rates.

Divider 


Easily add custom dividers to your page. You can choose from 15+ different styles including my favourite zig-zag.
  

Spacer

Want to add spaces between two elements? Use a spacer to accomplish that. 

PRO TIP

You can also play around with padding under advanced to add a spacing between two elements.

Video

Easily add videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion by just entering the URL of the video to your page. No need to play around with the HTML code to add a video.  Alternatively, you can also upload a video and add it to a page. 

To make video work for you can – 

  1. Set a start and end time 
  2. Provide your users a better experience by disabling things like autoplay, mute, loop, player controls, suggested video etc. 
  3. Add an image overlay over the video. 
  4. Change the aspect ratio of the word and parameters like contrast, blur and saturation.

     

Forms 

 


Forms are another element I love to use. You can use it to either add a contact form or a subscription box to your page. In terms of customisation you can –


1. Add multiple fields depending upon your requirements. 

2. Easily choose whether a field is mandatory or not.

3. Seamlessly integrate with email services like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Drip etc. You can select multiple platforms too. 

4. You can choose to redirect it to a different URL (for example a Thank You page) after successful completion. 

5. Trigger custom emails when a form is filled.

6. Easily customise a form according to width, button or size of the fields. 

HTML 

Easily add HTML code to your page to embed any element like a Twitter or a LinkedIn post.

Special Elements

You might not use these elements everyday but they’re still a live saver –

Testimonial 


Easily add stunning customer testimonials to your page and customise it according to your website.

Tabs 

Add and customise a tabbed navigation to your page with support for both horizontal and vertical layouts. 

Social Media plugins 


Easily add custom social media icons in your content. No need to install a different plugin to add social media buttons to your page. 

Share buttons 

Easily add beautiful share buttons in your content for different social media channels. 

Progress 

Animate your data by using custom progress bars on your website. For example, Freelancers can show their proficiency at different skills using progress bars. 

Toggle 

Easily add FAQs sections to your page.

Blockquote

Highlight a tip, a testimonial or a quote using the blockquote plugin.
 

Star Rating 

Add custom ratings to your review articles easily using this element with option to use a different symbol. 

Timer
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds

Example of an Evergreen Timer

Timers are great to promote a limited offer, deal or event. It can easily help you increase your sales. Overall it’s a very effective scarcity marketing technique. 

Pricing Table 

Easily create a customise pricing page for your product or service. Customise the columns, fonts and colours to match your website style. No need to use any additional plugin.

Theme Builder

Even when there are thousands of themes avaialable in the market, finding a good theme is really hard. After even finding, the right one, you need to work a lot to customise it according to your taste.

 


But with Theme Builder by Elementor you can literally build your personal theme including a custom header and footer. The possibilities are endless.


To get started go to Templates menu and select Theme Builder. The next step is to enter the template type (for example – header) and give it a name. Now you can design it. If you face problems in designing you can always choose a premade template and customise it. Once you’re done, just click on publish and the template it saved. 

You can follow the same steps for different elements of your theme, including a blog layout design.

Popup Builder

Want to add stunning popups to your website? Popups by Elementor is the perfect tool for you.

You can find it under the Templates section. Just click on Popups and give it a name to get started.

There are over 100+ different popup templates to choose from. If you’re using it for the first time, I’d highly recommend you to start with a template. It makes everything a lot easier. Apart from lead generation, you can also create popups for logins. 

 


You can find following popup styles –


1. Lightbox

2. Slide-in

3. Hello-bar

4. Full-page

5. Bottom bar

The popups are fully customisable including the cross button. But the best part are the publishing settings. In addition to this you can customise according to – 

Display conditions – Exactly choose which pages you want the popup to be displayed on. You just select the pages from the dropdown menu.

Triggers – This helps you ensure your popup is shown at the right time. You can set it according to certain conditions like the scroll, time, inactivity etc. Triggering popups at the right time can help a lot in improving your conversion rates.

Advanced Rules – You can also customise the number of times you want the popup to shown or  hide it for certain devices.

Drawbacks

Even though Elementor is packed with great features, it’s not perfect. There are few drawbacks. Here’s what I hate about Elementor –

1. Marketing features 

Inability to track any metrics is something I really hate. If I’m displaying a popup, I would like to know the number of times it was viewed, conversion rate etc.

2. Text Editor 

I hoped for a better text editor. I personally prefer the Thrive Architect’s text editor over Elementor’s any day. 

3, Animations

The animations still need a lot more work especially when it comes to customisations. 

4. Integrations

Elementor supports a lot of integrations from the start but I still think it’s needs a lot of catching up to do when compared to Webflow and Wix. 

Elementor Free vs Elementor Pro (Comparison) 

Elementor Free is great way to get a taste of the different features. But once you get used to it, you’ll consider opting for the Pro version. Let’s look what features are exclusive to the Pro version –

1. Theme Builder – Lets you customise the header, footer or blog layout of your website

2. Popup Builder – Increase lead generation by easily adding popups to your site.

3. WooCommerce Builder – This is critical to anyone who’s planning to create an E-commerce site.

4. Widgets – Get access to 50+ exclusive widgets like motion and mouse effects.

5. Templates – More than 100+ templates across different categories.

6. Support – Get 24×7 support from Elementor.

Pricing breakdown

Let’s look at the different plans Elementor has to offer. The best part about Elementor is that you get all the features irrespective of any plan you choose. The difference is just on the number of sites you use it on.


Personal (starts at 49$ a year)

Personal is lowest plan you can opt on Elementor. It allows you to add a single site.

RECOMMENDED FOR

Plus (starts at 99$ a year)

The Plus plan allows you to add Elementor to 3 sites. The plan is best suited for professional bloggers who want to use it across their online properties.

RECOMMENDED FOR

Expert (starts at 199$ a year)

The Expert plan allows us to add over 1000 sites. This is best suited for Agencies who want to use Elementor on their client sites.

RECOMMENDED FOR

NOTE

Elementor offers a 25% renewal discount to all active members and a 30 days money back guarantee for new users

Conclusion

I’ve been using Elementor for two years now and I think it’s an incredible tool. It really easy to use and can transform the design of your website quickly. At a really affordable price point of 49$, I think it’s a steal. You should definitely give it a try. You’ll love it. 

Hope this Elementor review helps you make a better choice. 

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Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu is the founder of ContentZeal. He's been blogging for the better part of 7 years now. Follow him as he shares his experiences as a content marketer (currently at Skit.ai) through his in-depth blogs, stories and guides.

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