Pros and Cons of Four Custom Field Plugins and Their Page Builder Support

hi this is david mccann for webtng custom fields are one of the main features that moves wordpress from being just a blogging platform to being a platform that supports different types of content and functionality while you can create custom fields in code many site builders turn to one of four popular plugins that let you easily add custom fields advanced custom fields meta box pods and tool set in this video i'll share a summary about each of these plugins look at page builder support for them and share my opinions about their strengths weaknesses and when it makes sense to use them i'll be sharing a lot of information in this video and if you want a reference there's a text version of the video available on the web tng website and there's a link below in the description the first plugin i want to look at is advanced custom fields it allows you to add custom fields and field groups to the wordpress edit screens in order to capture structured inputs there's a feature-rich free version and a pro version that adds more capabilities acf is a go-to solution for creating sites with customized content here we are on wordpress.org you can see that it's regularly updated it has more than a million active installs of the free version here's a website with acf installed you get this admin item here where you create a field group and then in the field group you add fields you can see there are large number of field types available in the free version including post object a relationship field that allows you to create relationships between post types and a user relationship field here's the advanced custom fields website looking at the pro features you can see that has the repeater field which is a very convenient and powerful field the ability to create acf blocks using php that can be used in gutenberg the flexible content field options pages the gallery field and the clone field the acf pricing is for one website 49 a year for 10 websites 149 a year and for unlimited websites 249 a year some of the pros of advanced custom fields is that it's regularly updated and is gpl there's good documentation and support and there are lots of online resources acf is the most widely used plugin for adding custom fields and all major page builders support it some of the cons of advanced custom fields well it's a good example of a plugin that focuses on doing one thing very well and while this is a strength that keeps it focused all of the other options considered here combine the ability to create custom fields with additional features this is a convenience and can also be more efficient for site builders as you don't need to evaluate products from different vendors and try to make them work together another consideration is pricing acf is an excellent plugin but the annual price for unlimited sites is more expensive than other options that have additional functionality the next plugin that i want to look at is metabox metabox has been around for a while but it has a higher profile in the last few years the core plugin is freely available in the wordpress plugin directory as we can see it has more than 600 000 active installs the core plugin however has no user interface instead it serves as a base framework for all of the other features metabox allows you to create custom post types custom taxonomies custom fields and also has a large number of other features metabox was designed in a very modular fashion and there are currently 31 extensions covering the range from front-end submissions to custom database tables this means that there is a separate extension for each feature the metabox all-in-one add-on is a convenience extension that allows you to enable the ones you need without having to download each as a separate plugin metabox is very developer focused in fact you can export your custom post types and fields to code and put them in your child themes functions php file or a plugin there are more than 47 field types like advanced custom fields metabox has the ability to create gutenberg blocks using php it also has a views extension for creating templates to show the dynamic data on the front end meta box views requires working with html css javascript and the twig templating language metabox is actively developed and has good support it's gpl licensed and the team has created their own extensions for use with beaver themer and elementor pro here's a site with metabox installed and i've installed and activated the all-in-one extension this gives you these options here as sub-menus and you can see that you can enable the extensions you want to use on the site if we look at the pricing we can see that it's 99 a year for 12 of the pro extensions and unlimited sites it's 199 a year for all pro extensions and unlimited sites and it's 499 for an all-inclusive bundle with a lifetime license some of the pros of metabox are that it's under active development and the product is well coded the developers are regularly adding new features as well as supporting new things in wordpress and third-party plugins since meta box is very modular it's able to offer a lot of features while avoiding bloat it started out being very code-based but over time it's been adding more user interface options which makes it more accessible to non-developers what about metabox cons the main con is that third party support is thin it's not as well supported by third parties as acf or toolset and also there are not as many online tutorials available this might make it harder for new users to get up to speed and get started with their projects the next option is the pods framework it's a free solution for creating custom post types and custom fields it has extensive support for a range of field types it's easy to use and flexible there are some templating features and conditional logic functions available using pods templates shortcodes and pod magic tags here's pods on wordpress.org we can see it has more than a hundred thousand active installs pods is gpl here's the pod's website and there are a good number of third-party extensions mini pod users are enthusiastic and willing to help others and the project has an active slack channel for help the bi-directional relationship feature is very easy to use while the basic functionality of pods is free the lead developer of pods is offering some pro add-ons and these are the ones here with a portion of the sales going to support the pods project the pricing for the pro add-ons 79 for one year of support and updates and 119 a year for unlimited sites some of the pros of pods is that existing pod features work well it's a good free alternative to the free version of advanced custom fields for simple to moderately complex projects in many ways the ethos of the project reflects the core values and goals of wordpress itself that is to make available for free to all wordpress users the power of custom fields and custom post types some of the cons of pods well the website and documentation includes videos from four and five years ago and sometimes feels like a hodgepodge the templating ability works but it's somewhat primitive some standard features such as a repeater field are not yet available and the release schedule is inconsistent though currently it seems to be moving towards a major release that's been in the works for several years pods lost some major funding and rather than release a pro version as many organizations do the lead developer launched the premium extensions on his own website he explained that this had to do with the structure of the project but unfortunately this doesn't help with a project's coherence bring everything together on the same platform on one website the next option is tool set which is a premium only set of plugins it's been around for a while and it's used for both creating custom fields custom post types as well as for displaying dynamic content toolset is actually a full suite of plugins largely focused on custom post types in their display so it makes sense that it's the most comprehensive the main components of tool set are blocks which allows you to build your single and archive templates as well as other custom displays of content using the gutenberg editor types which allows you to create custom post types taxonomies and custom fields forms which allows you to create front-end forms access for control and custom roles management and maps for working with google or azure maps some other toolset components include woocommerce blocks for creating woocommerce sites in gutenberg and toolset views which is a legacy plugin for creating templates and dynamic content displays using html and bootstrap toolset provides a number of advanced features for working with dynamic data including conditional display options and the ability to create front-end filters toolset plugins rgpl if we look at the pricing one site all features 69 a year with a 51 a year renewal discount three sites is 149 a year for all features with 111 renewal discount and unlimited sites for all features are 299 dollars a year with a 224 dollar renewal per year after the first year here's a website with tool set installed and i just want to show you here are all of the tool set blocks that come with tool set for example a content template a view conditional buttons field and text heading image single field and so on for example here's the heading block you can turn on dynamic data either the built-in wordpress fields or custom fields that you add with tool set some of the pros of tool set are that it's very extensive and full-featured the plugins are often cited for their ability to cover a number of edge cases that simpler solutions don't address the post relationship features are well designed sophisticated and performant perhaps the most performant for large complex projects the main toolset documentation consists of courses for building different types of sites they provide practical real world examples of how to use the tools toolset also provides test sites where you can try out toolset and follow along with the tutorials before purchase support is well trained and almost always responds within one business day some of the cons of toolset are that the older toolset documentation can be difficult to find as much of it has been unlinked from the menu system while toolset handles more complex scenarios than other options edge cases will require being a power user or developer toolset used to integrate with popular page builders but there were sometimes glitches when third-party builders were updated now that toolset has its gutenberg workflow they're discouraging people from using toolset together with the theme building features of premium page builders instead pushing people to use gutenberg and tool set blocks the views plugin is an extremely powerful option for creating custom post types and dynamic data output for developers and power users who are comfortable working with code one of the criticisms of toolset was that it was too hard for non-developers so the move to gutenberg makes sense in that regards however views is now listed as legacy however it's still widely used which is a concern for some long-time users now let's talk about page builder support for these custom field plugins and to start out it's important to note that even though a page builder claims support for custom fields plugin the extent of that support varies some features like repeater fields flexible content relationship fields and advanced database storage options may not be available in the page builder so it's safe to assume that support means basic support of common field types if you need advanced features such as repeaters or relationship fields it's a good idea to check the builder documentation before starting the project as you can see from the table advanced custom fields is supported by every builder beaver builder beaver themer brix brizzy pro divi elementor oxygen and zion builder technically speaking gutenberg isn't a page builder but toolset is using it that way so i've included it in the list and there are several block add-ons for gutenberg in addition to toolset that let you use advanced custom fields in blocks metabox is officially supported by bricks brizzy pro and oxygen support has just been released there's third party support created by the metabox team themselves as extensions for beaver builder beaver themer elementor and if we count metabox views and metabox blocks that's third party support of metabox for gutenberg pods is officially supported by brix brizzy pro and elementor and there's third party support for pods using that premium add-on from the developer for beaver builder beaver themer divi and oxygen a lot of the builders have support for tool set beaver builder brizzy pro elementor and oxygen currently support it and of course toolset has their own blocks add-on for gutenberg support however while the table shows that a lot of page builders support toolset toolset itself is encouraging its users to use gutenberg so i'm not sure if i would count on this page builder support for long term okay now for my recommendations in terms of advanced custom fields all of the page builders mentioned support it and there are a ton of online resources available it's straightforward to use it's especially great choice if the free version is sufficient as you know your page builder will support it in terms of pro there may be good reasons for choosing one of the other options as we'll discuss below but basically you can't go wrong using advanced custom fields my metabox recommendations are these in terms of metabox it used to be that metabox required working with code and so it only appealed to developers and power users now most of the metabox features have a graphical user interface making them easier for non-developers to use if your tools support metabox that can be an attractive option as its lifetime all-inclusive package is about the price of two years of advanced custom fields pro oxygen is another tool that's popular with developers and now that it officially supports metabox it would seem like a natural fit if you're comfortable working with code metabox views is very performant in terms of pods the pods beaver themer extensions makes working with custom post type relations very easy when using themer to create your templates users of this combination pods and beaver builder are very pleased with how well they work together and this would be the recommended use projects where there are no budget would be another place where using pods makes sense as it covers all the basics as a free option i probably would not use pods in other circumstances due to the project's uncertainty and lack of organization toolset recommendations i wouldn't get toolset today planning to use it with a page builder because the company discourages this and encourages people to use blocks so toolset is a good option if you want to use gutenberg as your builder if you want to get all the parts of the project from the same vendor it's also a good option if the site is going to be complex and simple alternatives are not sufficient so that's my overview of acf metabox pods and tool set for custom field plugins with a look at their page builder support please let me know in the comments if you have questions or other perspectives i didn't consider there's a text version of this video available on the web tng website that has all of this information along with the table of page builder support hope you found this video helpful and interesting thank you for watching

Channel: David McCan

Views: 1,324

Keywords: meta box wordpress, pods wordpress, acf wordpress, advanced custom fields, page builder support for custom fields, toolset wordpress, custom field plugins compared, custom fields wordpress, best custom fields plugin wordpress, webtng

Id: kvKyAF5IgmY

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021