Oxygen Builder Review: Thoughts After Using It For One Year As An Agency (v3.7)

hey guys this is james with isotropic and in this video i'm going to be reviewing the oxygen builder which is a page builder for wordpress um currently it's in version 3.6 there's a version 3.7 that was just released today which looks really promising so i'm going to talk about some of the features that it has to offer as well so my agency has been using oxygen builder for around a year to build websites previously we used elementor and custom themes now we really only use oxygen unless the client really wants to go with something else and the reviews are in people love oxygen i love oxygen and i'm going to kind of show you why i really enjoy this tool but also some things that you should consider before dropping 169 on the platform it's basically a platform it comes as a plug-in but it's known as a page builder alright so first let's go over our main features and just run through the website really quickly and then i'll get into the actual back end of the tool so you have basic drag and drop editing um it's it's a page builder just like other page builders so drag and drop individual elements um you can build out headers a big feature with oxygen is that you can create templates and then apply those templates to areas of your site so archives custom post type single post types stuff like that you can create a header like this by creating a catch-all template and applying it to the entire site which i'll show you in a bit the main things that i really like about this tool that set it apart from other plate page builder platforms out there is the fact that you can write php css and javascript directly into the page and then see what happens in in real time it's it's live so the ability to write php into a page is is huge for me and my developers it's really helpful and really just expands what we can do with the tool there's also the ability to create repeater elements and you can create repeater elements from a whole host of post types custom post types pages different types of content advanced custom fields there's also a deep integration with advanced custom fields which really allows you to build whatever you can think of and whatever is technically possible with anything so it's good for non-programmers and it's good for programmers as well and i'm going to try to show you that the one other thing i want to talk about is the pricing so pricing is incredible here it comes in at 169 dollars for an agency package i would recommend everybody go for this and then the the cheapest option is 99 if you notice right here it says 149 and then it says one time so this is a one-time purchase unlike other page builders like elementor where you're buying a subscription you have to pay 49 per year for as long as you use it this tool you pay one time and that's it you're done so 169 up front payment you're never paying again you get unlimited support you get unlimited updates you get it's it's really a beneficial thing all right so unlimited site license you can install it on as many websites as you want there's a 60 day money back guarantee which was the initial reason that i bought it i bought it just to try it and fell in love with it and ended up using it for the agency the one other thing i want to take a peek at on their website before we get into the back end is the alpha one which i don't think is going to be shown on the back end this incorporates css grid and it also incorporates a composite elements library so css grid is really helpful if you're trying to build out whole page layouts so this image right here kind of shows you you have a grid element you have a large grid element you have a small grid element you have three at the bottom very helpful if you're trying to build out pages really quickly and it's laid out in a way that people can understand by just clicking buttons and seeing what happens you don't need to know the theory behind it the composite elements library is new and this is in 3.7 and it adds additional widgets elements to the builder and it really makes it more competitive with elementor i'd say so you have a number counter you have a circular account you have a review box you have a switcher table of contents a bunch of things that will extend the functionality of a website and i don't know if we're going to be able to get into these i also don't haven't messed around with the composite elements yet i've messed around with css grid so i can't really speak to the elements but i'm sure it's going to be a really good and beneficial thing to oxygen all right so we're going to hop into the back end and then we're going to discuss the support and stuff like that so this is if you go to oxygenbuilder.com try you can try oxygen builder blank install or pre-built website i loaded a pre-built website so we can poke around when you create a pre-built website it gives you pages and it also gives you access to oxygen in the back end and that's about it that's really all you get so with oxygen we've installed a pre-built website you get around 10 pre-built websites let's see if we can actually go to the design library nice and slow to load you get around a little more than 10 pre-built websites and you can install these and you can manipulate the the content and the styling to create your own website or you can create it from scratch we create from scratch using our isotropic framework but you can use this and install a prebuilt website which is exactly what this shows up as and i'll show you on the front end this site is created with oxygen and it shows up with oxygen so it's a basic website i mean you have your basic website and all of this is built with oxygen and now let's go into the back end and see exactly how this page was created with oxygen and then also take a look at how the the builder works and is laid out and how easy it is to use and as this tool loads which is unfortunately slow on this humongous platform i would assume couple things to note oxygen is made for people who are a little more familiar with how websites work how they're coded i find that a lot of first-time users of oxygen might get a little worried because of this but you'll find that it really forces you to understand how basic css works and and how web pages should be laid out and i really like this approach instead of other page builders like elementor just spoon feeding you drag and drop and all this i really like the approach that oxygen takes to it like really bare bones website building because it teaches you i mean it forces you to learn how everything works and follow best practices from the start and if you're going to make your own website this is important but if you're going to sell to other people this is even more important and when you're selling other people taking advantage of the pricing model and oxygen is incredibly beneficial all right so we're in our back end oxygen builder this is the header and footer which is created in a template and applied to all pages it's still created in an oxygen but you can't edit it here you have to edit it in another template um but as you can see everything here is clickable and editable and you can navigate through your page by pointing and clicking like so but you can also navigate through your page through this structure panel so this helps you break down how the page is created you have your overall section and then contained within that section you have an icon you have your heading you have your text and then you have your div which contains two buttons or text links in this case and then each element has its own styling rules so here our styling rules are so everything centered they've applied margin to this layout they have created a flexbox layout and i will link you in a description to how flexbox works they've also applied typography rules they've centered the text you can also uncenter your text um and they have applied borders to the page and then as we dive deeper let's take a look at this text link under this text link they've applied rules such as oh maybe this is 18 pixels margin which separates the elements here and they've also applied a custom class and a custom class is something that doesn't come with other page builders and this means that you can set your styles here and then globally use this class anywhere you want so as you can see the background is made to be a global color which is another feature of oxygen you have global classes and this is applied to the class not the individual element so if i remove this class all of the styling goes away if i add the class back all the styling comes back this is another global class this is an outline class and if i take the primary button class and apply it here then look at that i get the class applied and as you if you think ahead this will save you a lot of time if you create global classes that apply global styles to individual elements and you won't have to recreate every element from scratch so another section and then the way you actually build pages is by dragging and dropping elements into the page which you may be familiar with if you're coming from another builder actually i forgot you don't drag and drop elements you simply click and it comes in below the other selected element and then you can drag this through your section panel to rearrange or once it's in your page you can drag and drop like so so our section is now in the page and then we can add our elements and really whatever else we need to the page like so by just clicking and then we go ahead and apply our styling so um let's take a look at all the elements that you get and this is 3.6 i believe because we don't have any special elements so we have our basic containers you can set up columns sections and divs columns are great because they're made to be responsive automatically to a to a smaller device screen that collapse down you have heading text rich text stuff like that you have links buttons images videos icons and your code blocks so i'm going to quickly talk about this code block because this is something that sets oxygen apart from everything else here you can add php and html php is amazing for dynamic pages you can also add css whatever you want regarding css and javascript any javascript you want this is really helpful because we can build pretty much anything you want between these three languages and including it directly on the page means that we can see in real time what happens if we add random styles or php or javascript to the page um all right back off that tangent if we go back to additional elements the composite elements you have a header builder social icons pricing boxes more complex elements that you can build by using simple containers and styling them but they're already made for you um the dynamic elements is really important so repeaters are a big part of oxygen and with a repeater you can display content in a repeating fashion so you can specify using uh say i want to display a custom post type called services and display all my services here and as i add a new service this dynamically populates with a new service that's how you do that you can also set up a manual query based on the wordpress queries um you can set up your your layout your pagnation all of that type of stuff you can also use a easy post element which is basically a repeater but it's already styled for you and it comes with presets i typically don't do that i typically just use a repeater element but easy post is easier and if you're just building a basic website it'll save you some time all right uh and then you have your additional elements and then once we get into wordpress the main thing to look at here is we have a lot of dynamic data like a title or content from your blog or page but the main thing here is that you can add short codes so if you're adding a form very easy you just type in your short code and then it would show up where this shortcode element is there's no form plugin so it's not showing up uh then you can also install additional design sets from oxygen and then use pieces of those design sets and throw it directly into the page i'm not sure why that's not working but we can go and find our sections and elements and these are pre-installed and then we can just chuck it into the page and that can save you a lot of time if you're trying to set up something that looks like this and maybe just change the content and styling around um finally let's go back we're almost done with our sections overview you can create reusable parts and this is something that you create and you can create a reusable button a reusable section anything like that and when you create a reusable part it saves it to your reusable template library and then you can use this review reusable component anywhere additionally you can this this reusable part can be edited as a standalone part so if you edit this individual part now anywhere else on the website that it is embedded that is set to be single and not editable so if you insert a reusable part anywhere on the website set to be single when you edit this reusable part in the back end of wordpress using the oxygen builder that reusable part pushes its changes across the site and of course you can disable this but it's really helpful say you have a call to action that you want to use everywhere and you insert it and you see that oh no i've had a typo in my call to action all you need to do is go into the back end and change it in the reusable part area rather than so here's your reusable component and you'd edit it with oxygen rather than go to every page and edit it like so and here's how how it would work so say experience i just wanted to change it change experience save and then publish it uh it shows up everywhere that reusable part shows up big time saver all right so here we can see our template library we're out of the back end of oxygen and there's some more um in the back end uh i recommend you try oxygen and take a look before really anything else all right so here you can see that we have a bunch of different templates and they kind of boil down so i'll show you how how these templates work the main template is the header and footer of the website the page template defines some page styling rules and i'm going to open that and then you can you can go down and style the inner content and stuff like that but this is how it works you set up your main template which is your header and your footer of your website and then you set it to be catch-all which displays in the entire website um and and it applies it to every page and post and anything on the website so this is your overall template and you can you can see that setting it to be like this means that the header and footer goes throughout the entire website the page itself the page is the template is applied to pages so every page this template is applied to and then content is populated into this template and then if you think back the main template is applied to every template so the main template applies to the page template and the page template applies to the content of a page to kind of simplify that here's your main template which is not editable here and here's your page template which just contains the inner content of the page here's your structure just inner content of the page and then everything else is either built in oxygen or dynamically populated into your template by using the dynamic elements so you can build out really complex websites like this something to keep in mind is that oxygen doesn't utilize the wordpress theme capabilities it disables themes altogether and we can actually see this if we go to appearance themes it says this completely disables the theme system and this is because of performance issues and it also is because oxygen really really is something different than anything else instead of jumping onto a theme it works by itself and you have to build the site from scratch or use a or a template site but by doing this it means that you have a lot more control over what you're building and you you can really build whatever your mind desires all right so we've looked at templates we've looked at the oxygen back end now i kind of want to discuss the ease of use as i kind of jumped into before and then the community surrounding oxygen so ease of use there's a learning curve but once you figure out how to use it you're never going to look back to anything else and that's because once you understand how oxygen works it's quicker than anything else on the market i used elementor extensively and after switching to oxygen and figuring out how it worked and creating a framework for myself this this really it improved my workflow and my development workflow and my developers workflow and was a really beneficial thing to our agency so i'm really glad that we found this but you'll you'll need to understand basic css and and how flex works and how css grid works and how these various components work to be effective with the tool and even if you don't understand how it works you can still drag and drop and move things around and visually edit but understanding how things works is a little more makes things a little better all right so the community around it because there is kind of a learning curve and we're set apart from most other wordpress communities because we don't use themes oxygen really stepped up to the plate and they create incredible tutorials and discussions and these are really detailed tutorials about how to use the platform and you can see 46 minutes and then here's like a basic blend mode thing and basically if you watched all of these tutorials you wouldn't only understand how to use oxygen you would understand how to use anything related to css and probably php and anything else like that and wordpress because it's i mean you will you will need to learn how to use oxygen use basic css and these tutorials really show you how to do that so great tutorials um amazing content it's all free it's all on youtube uh then there's also tutorials on the internet so isotropic we publish a bunch of oxygen builder content so elementor versus oxygen oxygen versus live canvas using themes with oxygen how to resolve problems with oxygen and stuff like that then there's also a massive facebook group of 18 000 members and if you have any question and i see a bunch of beginner questions all the time they'll be answered in like three seconds if your question isn't answered for any reason and i don't think i've seen a question that could be answered that never was answered in this group then you can utilize their their support which is included in your lifetime purchase for lifetime and this support actually knows what they're talking about and they'll solve your problem very easily as an agency we've built complex projects with oxygen and asked support big questions and they've they've stepped up to the plate and they've answered it and it shows that they really understand how wordpress works how oxygen works how they have a great understanding of php they have a great understanding of css i mean they're professional developers who are supporting you in everything that you do um another thing to think about aside from oxygen and everything like that is the third-party ecosystem surrounding the platform so uh comparing to elementor elementor has a ton of add-ons and advanced features and stuff like that um that come in third-party plug-ins so are there third-party plug-ins for oxygen and the answer is yes and i mean you can see we publish content all the time this video is being published a couple days after this big post came up but you can see that there are a lot of add-ons not as many as some other ones out there but here's a directory that we wrote of all the add-ons that work with oxygen and i'll put a few links in the description of this video in relation to the add-ons that i really like but you can see that they're a bunch of add-ons and this i think these add-ons are different than other add-ons out there because these add-ons allow you they really find the the pain points that anybody who actually uses oxygen will see with the tool and offer you time saving time saving utilities and functionalities and add-ons and additional capabilities that are really you can see that these plug-in developers are integrated into the oxygen community and listening to what people actually want and then developing tools to to make things easier for you so the main example here i would say is hydrogen pack hydrogen pack is a must-have plug-in for oxygen in my opinion and this is a pack of missing features for oxygen so you can copy and paste you get right click with this a better structure panel a sandbox mode a bunch of things that don't come with oxygen but if you purchase this pack then you can add those to oxygen so i think the add-ons are great um the ecosystem is great and they're they're a lot more connected to the community and i think you'll see this throughout the your your time researching oxygen you'll see that the community is a lot more close-knit than pretty much anything else i've ever seen out there because we're kind of in our own boat we there's no other page builder that disables themes and gives you complete control and php integration into pages and stuff like that and then another thing about this is that oxygen is a lifetime purchase so most other plug-ins out there that have anything to do with oxygen are also billed as a lifetime purchase so this is a sixty dollar plug-in but it never rev renews and you get lifetime updates lifetime support about the community a lot of tools and and templates and stuff like that they're all build once and and then you're done so to sum things up i think oxygen is a great page builder it's probably the most advanced page builder out there i didn't even touch upon this is going to be a long video so i don't want to but i didn't touch upon the conditions the dynamic data that you can insert directly into text there's a lot out there and i recommend that you watch the associated youtube videos and tutorials to to kind of get a better understanding of what you can really do with oxygen i mean you can build anything we've built major um digital magazines i've built a car dealership website i've built a ton of different websites with this tool and do maybe uh not a hundred but ninety-five percent of my projects on oxygen because of everything i've said in this video um it's a great tool uh you will need to spend some time learning how to use it um you'll probably be asking questions in the community which is really welcome and people like me are in that facebook group and responding to questions you might want to take a look at third party add-ons that add additional functionality to the tool but if you're thinking about buying this the one thing that you should consider is that it's a lifetime purchase so you buy it once you own it spend the time to figure it out you'll be a lot quicker than anything else on the on the top on the market i know for a fact that the code output is a lot cleaner um and less bloated than elementor and everything else out there so the pages that you'll build with this tool will look equally as good as anything else that you would be using but they'd be twice as fast so really good platform take the time to learn it incredibly powerful it will inspire you to learn php and to learn javascript if you don't already and if you do it will give you the tools to utilize those to the fullest in wordpress and and it's just really it's the best page builder out there for anybody i'd say specifically an agency our workflow went up like crazy when we when we got this we've been developing our own frameworks our own templates um and using the reusable parts library and using all these libraries um really just speeds things up so that is the video that's uh my thoughts on oxygen it's a positive review really nothing negative which each new version of oxygen new features come out and i'm sure they're going to probably increase the pricing at some point so you might want to take a look at it now make use of the 60 day money back guarantee one more thing these guys don't have an affiliate program so everything i said here was not motivated by money they simply don't have an affiliate program if they did i would love to to get an affiliate link but they don't so everything i write about oxygen i mean it's 100 true at least in my opinion everything's my opinion you'll find somebody else out there who has something else but uh hopefully this was a good video beneficial to you if you're looking to buy oxygen jump into the facebook group and say hello before you buy it and see the community and see the platform and try it out on the back end and just give it a go i highly recommend the tool and that's that's the review if you like the video uh drop a like below subscribe ask any questions you may have in the comments section also this is a sister video to a blog post reviewing oxygen so i'll link that in the description below too

Channel: Isotropic Design

Views: 13,635

Keywords: oxygen, oxygen builder, oxygen builder review, wordpress, wordpress page builder, page builder

Id: l5hvePukXeU

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020