Elementor vs Gutenberg - Are Page Builders Obsolete?

elementor versus wordpress.com do you even need a page building plugin anymore let's get to it so when page building plugins came out a few years ago they were truly revolutionary for wordpress because back in the day wordpress was very similar to blogger.com in a sense that was just a basic text editor and to adjust and edit your website you had to download and install themes and themes were just functionally skins and you had very limited control over the look and feel of your website unless you knew how to use html and css to design your website that all changed when elementor and beaver builder and a few other themes that had their own proprietary page building plugins came out for the first time users were actually able to like wow i can actually design my website by dragging and dropping elements into place and editing the blocks of real time and actually be able to like visually see the changes i'm making it was truly revolutionary but wordpress paid attention to all this and they eventually developed their own gutenberg editor which is a block editor that you get with your wordpress installation so in this video i'm going to break down wordpress's gutenberg editor versus the elementor page building plugin what are the pros and cons and differences of each and which one should you use so let's get to it oh and make sure to check the links in the description for timestamps so you can jump around to wherever you want in the video i'm also going to link to my two tutorial videos using elementor and the gutenberg editor so i created a website with astra and gutenberg it came out really well and i didn't use any type of like paid page building plugin and obviously i used the free version of elementor and the hello theme and it came out really well too but it does have some limitations which we're going to get to in this video price points between elementor and gutenberg well this is really no competition because gutenberg is completely free it's wordpress's default block editor and because it's wordpress you get access to all the plugins available in the wordpress ecosystem and a lot of these plugins add in additional blocks to help make designing your website quick and easy one of my favorite plugins is the stackable plugin which adds just a bunch of different blocks that look amazing one of my favorites is these product boxes that i use for affiliate marketing on all my websites elementor by contrast has a free plan but it's really limited so you can have access to the elementor page building plugin but then you can't edit your header or your footer what you can but there's a workaround which i did in my tutorial video and then you can't edit your blog roll and individual blog post pages has all these limitations to force you to upgrade and because elementor is really just a paid page building plug-in and they have various price points that you have to pay yearly for and in fact elementor just increase their prices and then reduce any of these limitations so i'm gonna have to say gutenberg wins this one limitations so to be honest with you i'm just gonna be ragging on elementor now as gutenberg is free and you can use any type of plug-in there's no real limitation with gutenberg you're not like forced to use any specific plug-in to get gutenberg to work the way you want and i really like that elementor by contrast has their free plan and their free plan is good to just try out elementor but i just don't like it i just don't understand the limitations that they bake into it because i know i understand it i get it okay it's to get you to upgrade but you can't even do basic things like you're not technically able to edit your header and your footer i mean technically you can there's a workaround which i did in my elementor tutorial video but by default you're just limited with editing your header and footer which are like two primary sections of your website in addition to that you're not able to edit your individual blog posts in your blog roll using the free version of elementor which drive me crazy because the whole reason people are drawn to wordpress and you know elementor and gutenberg etc is for content marketing and blogging et cetera so i really just don't understand these limitations that elementor has especially as they increase their prices but they didn't decrease any of these limitations so i personally think that they need to kind of reconsider some things that they're doing particularly with like limiting your blog role or your individual blog posts like just at least let me design a little bit like at least let me craft like individual blog posts that don't look terrible with the free version of elementor so that's it for limitations between gutenberg and elementor gutenberg is free open source is the default block editor so there's no real limitation you're not forced to use any specific plug-in mentor by contrast if you use the free version you have a bunch of limitations to get you to upgrade if you do upgrade then you get full access to everything learning curve between the two so i'm going to just come around and say it that gutenberg and wordpress is more easy for a beginner you can follow along with any of my tutorials using like the 2020 theme or the 2021 theme and really get up and running with a beautiful website in about an hour and 30 minutes whereas elementor is just way more complicated and has a much greater learning curve that's not to say that elementor is bad elementor is really a professional page building tool and if you're willing to really dive in and learn how to use elementor properly you have a lot of specific control over your website and you truly can design any type of website you want using the hello theme and elementor pro that said it's just not for everyone there's a lot of people who just i just want to create a website i want to create a niche website on this specific topic i want to get up and running i don't want to have to spend three hours watching youtube tutorial videos to learn how elementor works like how do i hide the page title how do i resize the font how do i change the font how do i center this how do i do this and this this this this that's why you need to make a decision going in because you are going to find that wordpress and the default block editor is just a little bit easier and more intuitive than elementor and elementor pro that again like that's not to say elementor is bad it's more feature-rich you have more specific control of your website but the learning curve is much more steep when compared to gutenberg page speed and web vitals so as adam over at wp crafter kind of alluded to page speed is becoming more and more important with regards to your search engine rankings in general a website built with elementor compared to a website built with wordpress's default block editor the elementor website is going to load more slowly there is no advantage to designing some overly complicated big beautiful website if it's going to provide a poor user experience it's going to load slowly and it's not going to rank as well that's why here on this channel all my websites i design have a very beautiful impressive looking homepage but then the rest of the website is minimalistic and efficient so in general if page speed is important to you you're going to want to shy away from elementor design takeover so this was something i was going to put in the limitations of elementor but it really needs mention by itself because i think a lot of beginners don't understand this when you use elementor it takes over the entire design of your website when you activate elementor you're not able to use the gutenberg block editor anymore you have to pick one or the other and this drives me crazy because you can't use both so if you look at like website createpro.com you'll notice that the home page is designed with themify ultra so themifyultra comes with its own little block editor and that's how the home page is designed on that specific website but the rest of the website i'm just using gutenberg and i like that i can have my choice of using both okay so like with theme file ultra i can use both elementor it just locks your entire website so you have to use elementor as a way to get you to upgrade wordpress theme so i'm going to just come right out and say it that the only viable theme for the elementor page building plugin is the hello theme which is also developed and designed by the team behind elementor now i know a lot of you're going to say like that's not true you can use astra wp generate press etc but i'm going to just say like look you can also use those scenes with the default wordpress block editor and get the same sort of effect that you can with elementor without being limited in any annoying way like not being able to design your header your footer your individual blog posts in your blog roll so in general wordpress's default block editor is just way more functional and usable with a wide variety of themes where elementor you're just really limited okay now again you can use elementor on any specific theme that you want and get the same sort of effect but again you're going to suffer from that site takeover effect so if you use like a theme that's not really optimized to use elementor it's just going to be a clunky experience trying to design your site in general you're going to find the block editor to be way more functional with a wide variety of themes whereas if you want to use elementor i definitely suggest using the hello theme pop-ups alright so i'm going to say elementor is fantastic like this is a big selling point of elementor in my opinion their pop-up editor is just awesome like you you can really design a really nice looking pop-up using elementor and there's really nothing comparable with wordpress now again with wordpress you have to use additional plugins like opt-in monster for example if you want to add in pop-ups or if your email provider provides a specific pop-up like convertkit you know will offer some type of form that you can add but oftentimes the most effective types of pop-ups are to have a just a custom design and with elementor it's just far superior to anything that you have access to with wordpress with that said you really should shy away from pop-ups though because google has publicly stated that they don't like websites that use pop-ups because they interrupt the user experience too much that means like if you have a blog and you're trying to rank your blog post for specific keywords don't have a pop-up on your specific blog post if you want to have a pop-up on say like your homepage that's okay what i personally would do with a pop-up is make like an exit intent pop-up so that means like when the person mouses over the x then have a pop-up appear that's fine but in general i personally would shy away from pop-ups maybe just use pop-ups on the homepage maybe make an exit intent pop up maybe make something where uh you know person has to click a button and then something pops up etc totally up to you but i just want you to be aware of your options final thoughts between elementor and wordpress's default block editor gutenberg if you made this far into the video hit that like button and consider subscribing anyways my final thoughts is that personally i'm not a big fan of elementor so as you see on my channel i don't have many tutorials where i use elementor just because i find it too limiting and too expensive for beginners as well as the learning curve just makes it really difficult whereas people can follow along with my tutorials on using different themes and using the block editor and really be up and running with an effective looking you know seo friendly website within an hour and a half maybe two hours whereas elementor just has that massive learning curve you have to pay for elementor pro in order to have full access over your blog row and your individual blog post you know page speed is now becoming more important in elementor just loads more slowly makes your website load more slowly when compared to just using the block editor from wordpress overall i think elementor was really revolutionary and really important in pushing wordpress in this direction and as well as other page building plugins because wordpress was for a long time again like i said in the introduction just a basic text editor with themes and skins and you had no real control so elementor was really amazing when it came out that you're able to design your website in real time with drag and drop functionality but as the blockader from wordpress gets better and better over time i think that just decreases the usefulness of elementor in addition to that elementor increases their prices and doesn't reduce any of the limitations which just again i don't know what they're thinking in my opinion but anyways those are just my final thoughts on wordpress versus elementor alright everyone i'll leave it there for this video between wordpress's default gutenberg block editor that's a mouthful the elementor page building plug-in if you enjoyed the video consider subscribing hit that like button and again leave a comment if you disagree because i know elementor has a very vibrant community and just people are like how dare you how dare you criticize this investment i made into my website so i want to know anywhere i went wrong in this video anyways my name is david webster creativepro.com thank you very much for watching and have a good day bye [Music] you

Channel: David Utke

Views: 10,422

Rating: 4.6991153 out of 5

Keywords: elementor vs gutenberg, elementor vs wordpress, wordpress page builders, website creative pro, david utke

Id: v0DwunGqxSk

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021