11 Best WordPress Page Builders Compared – Beaver Builder vs Divi vs Elementor vs Thrive Architect
Move over Pippin, here is a current review of 11 different WordPress page builders from a users perspective. (I mean that in an endearing way for all you social justice warriors).
If you are searching for the best WordPress page builder, then this video will save you from all the research and testing.
Hear my personal experiences with 11 of the top WordPress page builders.
You really need to understand the 1 huge difference, I am a user of these page builders, not a reviewer. A reviewer will play around with a plugin for 20 minutes then let you know their impressions.
I have been using these page builders for years, I know their strengths and weaknesses, these are things you can only discover by being a user for an extended period of time.
Elementor
Elementor is a WordPress page builder that has taken WordPress web design by storm. It has the deepest feature set, yet is very easy to use and master. Elementor is the most full-featured free page builder. There is also a Pro add-on to add additional developer features.
Key Elementor Features:- Live Front End Page Editor
- Website Personalication Features
- Template & Block Library
- Extensive Mobile Responsive Options
- Most Powerful Popup Builder
- PRO Create Custom Headers / Footers
- PRO Create Post Type Layouts
Elementor is the strongest page builder currently available. They consistently release new features that are in line with current design trends. This means you will be able to keep your website relevant.
Elementor Pro is an incredible value considering all the additional modules and power features that it includes.
If I were starting a new website project today, Elementor would be the page builder that I would choose. I consider it a must have WordPress page builder that is a pleasure to use.
Check Out Elementor
Thrive Architect
Thrive Architect is a WordPress page builder from Thrive Themes. It's their next-generation page builder that replaced Thrive Content Builder. It is ideal for any website build, but also really shines for marketers because of its marketing focus.
Key Thrive Architect Features:- Over 100 Page Templates
- Pre Designed Section Templates
- Global Colors For Easy Customization
- Included Popup Engine
- Advanced Marketing Features
- Constant Updates & Improvements
- Works With Any Theme
Thrive Architect is a VERY exciting WordPress page builder. Cost-wise, you will not find a better deal because it comes with lifetime updates, but keep in mind its just 1 year of support. Extending support is very reasonably priced at only $40.
Thrive Architect lacks a theme builder. Thrive has been building a separate theme that will allow you to use Thrive Architect to create headers, footers, posts templates, but it's taking a very long time. Hopefully, we will see it in 2020.
Check Out Thrive Architect
Brizy
Brizy is a free WordPress page builder built in React. It represents a new way of building websites with WordPress what is both innovative and very easy to use.
Key Brizy Features:- Easy To Use Interface
- Global Linked Colors & Fonts
- Inline Editor
- WooCommerce Integration
- Professionally Designed Blocks
- 4k Useful Icons
Using Brizy this early in its life is a risk. However, in this case, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that they will be in it for the long haul and be able to deliver on their roadmap.
Check Out Brizy
Divi
Divi is one of the original theme & page builder combos for WordPress. It has been around for many years and because of that, it has a huge userbase of fans. It boasts many innovative features that are unique to Divi.
Key Divi Features:- Front End Page Builder
- Hundreds Of Templates
- Inline Text Editing
- Comes Bundled With A Theme
- Responsive Editing
- Global Elements
- 40+ Elements
I can see why people buy Divi. It has a lot going for it especially after the release of Divi 4 which added theme builder functionality which was lacking, but now it's here.
I will say that the pricing and the lifetime option is very attractive.
Also, the Divi team over the last 12 months has become a well-oiled machine cranking out unbelievable features and enhancements. If that wasn't enough, they also have pushed out an insane amount of free templates and a template manager for them. It's a good value all around despite the issues mentioned above.
Check Out Divi
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is a WordPress page builder that is loved by website developers and DIYers alike. It's reputations of being developer friendly, having clean code, and reliable updates have led to it being used on over one million websites.
Key Beaver Builder Features:- Fast Front End Page Builder
- Full Template & Block Library
- Modern Design Features, Gradients, Drop Shaddows
- Most Reliable Page Builder Available
- Ideal Page Builder For Agencies
- Whitelable Option On Higher Package
Beaver Builder is a fantastic page builder that I personally use. When you pair it with Beaver Themer, there is no limit as to what you can build for yourself and for your clients. This is the exact combo that I use, and simply couldn't create what I am now able to create without it.
Check Out Beaver Builder
Hi, Adam, thank you a lot for this article, I appreciate your work!
I use Elementor myself, it has a lot of essential blocks for free 🙂
Hi Adam,
I love what you do, I love all your tutorials, and I have a question for you. I’m building a directory website, I purchased listingpro theme, however I read that it’s not well coded and is not as scalable and seo friendly as geodirectory plugin. Should I go with the theme or plugin ? Thank you so much for your help.
Yea my preference is the MyListing Theme. See if you can get a refund.
Very Informative! Thanks for sharing this Adam. Cheers!
“11 Best WordPress Page Builders Compared…”
I must be mathematically challenged. I see 5, Adam, there are 5.
The content is in the video where the 11 are compared. But many of those 11 are outdated.
Adam, after days of research, this was ‘hands down’ the most clear, balanced and valuable source of advice that cut through all the one-sided reviews from others. Thank you SO much! I have decided the best product for my needs is Elementor Pro. I am very grateful for your expertise.
Adam, after days of research, this was ‘hands down’ the most clear, balanced and valuable source of advice that cut through all the one-sided reviews from others. Thank you SO much! I have decided the best product for my needs is Elementor Pro. I am very grateful for you expertise.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for all your interesting blogposts and videos. I have build my first website with the Avada theme. It is a portfolio website to show my articles and mages. It took so much work as I continuously struggled with the limitations of the theme. In the end, I also had to built every page from scratch as the templates they offer proved useless for my design.
Now I want to rebuild the website, because I am still not happy with some design parts. I was thinking of:
1. Pairing Hello Elementor with Elementor pro
2. Pairing Generate Press with Elementor pro
3. Sticking to Avada – with Elementor pro – it has already been installed and that was also difficult, so I am already scared of having to switch to a new theme.
However, Hello Elementor seems to be the theme that is the most fastest to load. But I wonder what brings a theme as Hello Elementor to the table, and what brings Generate Press to the table? Are these themes still bringing in features that Elementor pro is lacking? Like many more lettertypes?
It seems that Elementor pro has so many features, that you don’t need a theme. Is the only reason you need a theme because Wordpress demands that?
I would appreciate your feedback at this, since it is difficult to find information about it.
Many thanks,
Tessa
Many people just use Elementor Pro with their Hello Theme, but really is not a good combo today unless you are a developer. Soon Elementor Pro will have global styling and that will make it more practical for everyone else.
Hi Adam,
I am trying to build a website like Quartz digital magazine https://qz.com/ . Can I use Elementor pro for this.
Regards,
John
Yes you can, it would take some design work, but you can.
Hi Adam i wanna know which best page builder to create logistic website like this https ://www. cevalogistics .com/your-industry
with pop up page on each service. they build it with drupal i think.
so when you click its not open in new page but just pop up like that. thank you for your great wordpress course in youtube!! i really appreciated
There isn’t really anything special there. You can do that with any page builder or no page builder at all. Those are not popups, they are separate pages.
Why do you use an alt-right dog whistle in your opening paragraph?
Just read the comments here.
This is one of the most valuable 59 min videos I have watched recently and clearly comes from someone who knows his stuff. Thanks.
Thank you Scott. I do these every year with updated information. I’ll have a new one in 2 months.
Have you tried Offsprout? They’re new, but they check all of the boxes:
– inline editing
– full site editing with their Theme
– archive and 404 page creation
– no shortcodes
You said that there’s nothing that comes close to what Beaver Builder and Beaver Themer can do, but it seems like Offsprout can do pretty much the same things, plus has some other features like the Site Grower than none of the others have.
The only drawback is that it’s pretty expensive ($600 for the bundle) so it’s probably not going to be something that beginners can afford.
I’m curious if you’ve tried it?
I haven’t tried it, but I think at some point they may have reached out to me. My prediction is that it’s not going to go anywhere. I just don’t see the selling point of using a less powerful, less mature page builder, less integrations that is 3X the cost. So without them having a truly awesome marketing plan, it’s a very tough sell.
I’d like to see a top list of the best GPL licensed builders that aren’t free but paid. No matter how powerful, fast or intuitive a particular plugin is, if it isn’t GPL then it’s not an option to me. I want to support plugin vendors that do things the WordPress way rather than those thinking they know better. Obviously, the GPL works as there plenty of successful commercial examples. That’s just how things are done in the WP space.
Elementor PRO though while an excellent option hasn’t embraced the spirit of the GPL and by extension the WP community itself. With terms like theirs, why would you choose it? You probably wouldn’t unless you’re aware. Many will assume just because the free version is GPL that the PRO version is too. While that’s common, it’s not the case here. People don’t read terms and that’s on them.
Have you read these – https://elementor.com/terms/ – Scroll down to the section “3. Licenses”
These are Facebook level bad or worse IMO. However if after reading and comprehending them, you’re still ok with that compared to how their GPL competitors license their paid versions then that’s certainly your choice. While I think it’s a bad long term choice but in short term there’s probably minimal harm in choosing to be shackled voluntarily like this.
Elementor is 100% GPL. The addon they offer, Elementor Pro, which adds additional modules and some extra features, is not GPL. Anyone is free to fork Elementor or create add-ons for it. I have read what you are referencing and its hardly comparable to Facebook, that’s quite an extreme take on it. It is there to prevent all the GPL clubs from distributing it.
I totally understand why they choose this, if you are a company, with investors, if you go with a GPL license you have no intellectual property. Anyone can copy everything you have paid to develop. I see no problem with all that they have given with Elementor.
Also from this list, Thrive Architect is not GPL.
I stopped reading after the first line. Can you tell me what you mean by “move over pippin”.
That is a term of endearment.
That’s how I understood it.
Bro, I am new to building websites. I am learning by experimenting on my own websites I recently created. I also want to design websites for my Fiverr clients (I will post the gig within 10 days). So can you please recommend me the theme & page builder which is also cheap & easy to use. Remember I have to deliver it to my clients so quality is at my top priority. It can be any time of website like a woocommerce website or Matt be a landing page or may be a blog so please suggest that is usable for all purposes. Please only suggest single page builder & theme because I am totally confused till now & want your help.
Lalit from India
Bro, I am new to building websites. I am learning by experimenting on my own websites I recently created. I also want to design websites for my Fiverr clients (I will post the gig within 10 days). So can you please recommend me the theme & page builder which is also cheap & easy to use. Remember I have to deliver it to my clients so quality is at my top priority. Please only suggest single page builder & theme because I am totally confused till now & want your help.
Lalit from India
Hi Adam, Can you please check out on Themify Builder , they released a new version and it seems amazing with it’s parallax feature and the ultra theme.
Read the commenter here ( people hate it ) https://www.wpcrafter.com/review/themify-builder/
Thank you for the advice!–our website guy gave us options of only themes that use Visual Composer, but I find it so difficult to use whenever I want to update something. When I tried deactivating VC on our current theme Royal 8Theme in favor of Elementor, it caused a whole host of problems. I am hoping to convince him to let us switch over to another theme where we don’t have to use VC.
Yea I really feel for people that are stuck with Visual Composer. I like to say that no one chooses to use VC, they are stuck with it. Hopefully your web developer will make different choices on what to use in the future.
Hi Adam, great info. I also think that a lot of people would prefer a more all-in-one solution like from Themify. I think their themes include their Themify Builder, which gets pretty good reviews. One of the main problems with Elementor is it requires a separate theme. While you personally may not consider that much of an issue or hassle, it does add yet another WordPress vendor and app to have to research, become proficient in, maintain, and also pay for if you opt for the pro version.
Elementor is this way by design. They aim to eliminate the need for a theme and have EVERYTHING done in Elementor. This will be more and more evident early next year.
Thanks, that helps, sort of. I’m not sure what EVERYTHING means if it’s still based on using WordPress. Also, I didn’t get notified of your reply. Is that a bug in your commenting system?
Everything means, what you normally need a theme for. So for example, headers/footers, blog post templates, archive pages, 404 pages.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for just existing! Your videos and website have changed me thinking towards the web design business.
I see you like Elementor ( you made multiple videos about it), but the BB 2.0 isn’t bad at all.
So whats your advise when it comes to long-term commitment? Should I go will BB or elementor. To me, both offer the same features; apart from the inline editing (which I love) that doesn’t exist yet with BB.
Thanks.
I will say that inline editing will come to Beaver Builder in 2018. Dev’s have already started on it. Regarding which to choose, I feel that Elementor has a wider range of modules. You can get some of these modules with Beaver Builder if you purchase one of the addon packages like Ultimate Addons.
Hi Adam,
waht about X theme‘s cornerstone page builder. Yes its a content lock like divi. But it seems to have the maximum elements and also they have exclusive premium plugin extensions.
Whats your take on Cornerstone page builder comparing to Elementor?
They don’t have any elements that are not found in other builders. It’s more expensive because the cost is per website. From a user experience perspective, UX is not the developer’s strong suit.
Regarding the plugins they include, its really bad because you are dependent on them for updates.
Elementor is in a different league then Cornerstone. They are almost not even comparable at all. It like comparing a Linux computer to a Mac.
Hi Adam-Great Video. I am VERY new to website creation. Started out discovering Divi and Genesis Framework, but got very confused, then found your site with the video talking about the 4 top page builders. I want to develop a website, primarily blogging but with eCommerce. I’d like as much flexibility and design control as possible, but easy (newbie friendly) since I am no coder. I’d like a professional looking site that I can a grow with. Also need tutorials-definitely. So, advise? Should I even look at Genesis with a child theme?
Page Builder? Oh, and is there a theme out there that’s great for blogging that stands out. There are SO many! Also, sounds like these page builders are advancing rapidly-should that be taken into consideration? Sorry for the LONG post, but I’d appreciate your advice; hopefully you get what I’m asking and of course, think I’m asking the impossible. 😉 Thank you so much.
Happy to have you here on the site. So I would recommend avoiding Genesis and their entire product line. Reason being that anything you want to change to it will require custom code. They are very resistant to making their theme easy to use, weird. Right now the best theme available is the Astra Theme, and you can read/watch my review on it. There just isn’t anything that comes close to it.
Then pair that with Elementor, the free page builder, and there is no limit to what you can create.
Thank you so much Adam; I so appreciate your candid and quick response. You are a wealth of knowledge and a treasure chest of resources-glad I found your site.
I Was using SiteOrigin, they have limited number of widgets compared to Elementor,
This is the most informative video I have come across. Thank you.
Yea they just are in maintenance mode with SiteOrigin, there is no activity to make it modern. In fact, if you look at their widget plugin, it now supports Elementor. This should be a sign to anyone considering using SiteOrigin.
This is the most informative video I have come across. Thank you. You mentioned early in your video that you would talk about whether these page builders are theme agnostic, but I didn’t see that info later on. Is Elementor theme agnostic? Are there particular themes that it works best with?
I believed for each one I said if it was dependent on a specific theme, but sorry if I left that out. Yes, Elementor is not linked to any theme. Can be used with any theme.
Hi,
What about oxygenapp?
Do you think Oxygenapp + Thrive and no theme would be a good combination?
Vijay
If you see my review on Oxygen App, there are many signs that development has stopped. I wouldn’t recommend anyone use it at this point and if you are in a refund period, that you should request it. As far as a theme, I would recommend Astra. Realistically, at some point next year Thrive will have a new theme with deep integration, but for now, I would suggest Astra.
Hi ADAM
I’m a fresh website designer and I’m planning to work as a freelance.
I found this video is really useful and Contain a lot of comparisons, but why you didn’t talk about [The Ark ], do you have any recommendation about it?
Thanks in Advance
One of the most important things with choosing which tool to use is the long-term viability. The Ark is a small time theme with its own page builder built in. They do have a respectable 5,300 sales, but that is over the course of 10 months. This video is comparing page builders that are active on 300k – 1million websites. Active installs = revenue = long-term viability. Sadly, as soon as The Ark sales start to slow down, they will have no revenue, and it will stop being developed. It’s just how it works. I wouldn’t base my website on a tool that doesn’t have long-term viability.
Thank you very much, you are Analyst Genius, relied on my case which page builder you recommend that it have a lot of functionality, animated widgets and support responsive and parrallx effects and without content lock, that I can Relied upon to present a lot of design options for various customers?
As I said I am a fresh web designer and in the present time I don’t have enough time to learn scripts and coding languages and I plan to use what you will recommend for long time.
waiting for your reply.
I would say Elementor, but it doesn’t have parallax at the moment. There is an add-on package that adds it, but I am sure it will be added in the future.
My workflow for the last few months has been OceanWP w/ Core Extensions, Elementor PRO & Elementor Extras by Namogo (I like that it gives you the ability to make any element ‘sticky’ within it’s parent container’) as well as button groups, image comparisons and a few other things Elementor PRO lacks. I’ve built 40 sites anywhere from 1 page to 65 pages and it really makes life easy. Now I have my own OceanWP child theme w/ all my standard plugins install with one click using TGMPA. Go from a blank slate to a fully loaded development environment in 30 seconds. Excellent videos & content Adam!
Wow, you are killing it there! Yes, that is a great development stack. Never even considered using TGMPA in a child theme like that.
Adam, Levi you people are awesome… I read every line written on this page & i am very grateful to Adam! Also Levi I am going to try that TGMPA for sure. Its awesome.. Currently i have many websites in OceanWP & its the best theme I have ever used.
But i use SiteOrigin. I know they have limited number of widgets compared to Elementor but i have observed many issues while using embedded images in Elementor Editor. Also one VIMP thing is you cant use Elementor in sidebars, which is possible in SO. So it gives you huge power in sidebar also. It has good caching also & you can transfer entire code in page. So even if you un-install the plugin, everything will just work perfect…
Any thoughts about it??
Yes, I am going to make a video on the TGMPA tool because of his comment. Great idea indeed.
You can use Elementor Pro in any widget area. Also, you can use the free one as well, but you need to add a 3rd party plugin to make it work.
Are you familiar with Make Plus by Theme Foundry? Thoughts?
Yes I am, it’s ok, but I would never recommend it to anyone. It’s way overpriced and relies on its own weird back end page builder.
Came across you on Youtube. I have had used WP for 14 years or so but let the site wither and grow old. I jumped on Avada without doing a lot of research. I am a minister in the UK and time is of a premium to spend on my site which I really need to re-do. I saw your comment of Elementor. Would that still hold in your opinion? I also noted you didn’t mention Avada at all. Is there a particular reason for that?
I think I did mention Avada in my video, it was the part in the beginning. Avada is not anything I would ever use. The theme is very bloated and will be very slow for your website visitors. Also, it is a back end page builder, so you don’t really get to see what your are building. Lastly, there is content lock in, so if you ever want to stop using Avada, you can’t.
Tired of seeing the word bloated without any real substance or backup.
On my Avada review page, there is a video where I clearly go through and “backup” the statement.