Elementor Review (2023) – Elementor PRO vs FREE Comparison

Elementor Page Builder

9.1

Easy to use

8.5/10

Settings

9.5/10

Price

9.2/10

Overall quality

9.2/10

Pros

• It has free version
• Impressive range of features
• Real-time preview
• Not leaving behind shortcodes if you deactivate it
• Easy undo/redo and full revision history

Cons

• Revision history isn’t always ideal
• Learning curve
• The default widget styles don’t always look good out-of-the-box
• Buggy when it comes to fonts and text in general

Learn More!

Want to design your WordPress site without hiring a developer? Then it is smart choice to use a page builder plugin like Elementor. In this Elementor review, we’ll take a look at its features, performance, and ease of use.

If you use WordPress, you’re accustomed in using different plugins and widgets that are available to help you format your site per your needs.

WordPress hasn’t always been as visually dynamic as it is today. If you had WordPress in the beginning, you will have memories of simple pages and frustrations with embedding other URLs, HTML and glitchy animations or image hosting.

WordPress has moved beyond all of this in recent years, and with many plugins available it is continuing to evolve beyond the basic formatting and embrace a range of options that allow to create unique, message-centered pages. One of these plugins is Elementor. Since it’s debut, Elementor has gained over 1 million active users.

NOTE: I have also compared Elementor vs Oxygen Builder, Elementor vs Visual Composer, Elementor vs WPBakery, Elementor vs Divi, Elementor vs Wix and Elementor vs Beaver Builder so be sure to check thoose comparisons too.

Elementor Free vs Elementor Pro

• NAME
• PRICE
• Template Library
• Export / Import Templates
• Mobile Editing
• Shape Divider
• Video Lightbox
• Box Shadow
• Text Shadow
• Background Overlay
• Hover Animation
• Entrance Animation
• Heading
• Image
• Text Editor
• Video
• Button
• Image Box
• Testimonials
• Icon
• Icon Box
• Social Icons
• Image Gallery
• Image Carousel
• Icon List
• Counter
• Progress Bar
• Tabs
• Accordion
• Toggle
• Alert
• HTML
• Shortcode
• Menu Anchor
• Sidebar
• Google Maps
• SoundCloud
• Divider
• Spacer
• Columns
• Background Gradient Effect
• Revision History
• Blank Canvas Template
• Maintenance Mode
• Page Settings
• Element Hover
• Redo / Undo
• Forms
• Slides
• Posts
• Portfolio
• Embed Anywhere
• Global Widget
• Custom CSS
• Pro Templates
• Price Table
• Price List
• Countdown
• WC Products
• WC Elements
• WC Categories
• WC Add to Cart
• Flip Box
• Masonry Layout
• Blog Pagination
• Ken Burns Effect
• Share Buttons
• Form Integrations
• Login Widget
• Animated Headline
• Facebook Widgets
• Blockquote
• Nav Menu
• Media Carousel
• Call to Action Widget
• Custom Fonts
• Header & footer builder
• Dynamic single post & archive page design
• ACF & Toolset integration

• ELEMENTOR FREE
• FREE

Learn More

• ELEMENTOR PRO
• Paid version is $49/year for one site, $99/year for three sites, $199/year for 25 sites, $499/year for 100 sites and $999/year for 1000 sites.

Learn More

Elementor Review

Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress packed with various features. When you activate Elementor on your site and visit your standard post/page editing screen in WordPress, you will see a new button that allows you to enable Elementor.

It doesn’t require you to possess any HTML or PHP knowledge or skills. Everything can be done through a handy user interface. It works on the front end, meaning it shows you the outcomes of your work right away in a ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ manner.

Available in free or paid version, Elementor enables users to either build a template of their own design for use in their webpages, or use any of several pre-made templates.

What makes Elementor so different from other page builders is that it is formatted to be a live-page builder. This means that what you see on your end, as you develop your content, is exactly what the visitor to your site will see when they land on your page.

Having the ability to see exactly what your page will be presented as, during the building stage, gives a unique insight into how it will be viewed by the website visitor.

Elementor includes several design features that allow for full customization of your graphics, such as box shadows, fonts, background overlays, hover effects, headline effects and even animations.

Elementor provides the user with over 100 templates, or 300 blocks from which you can build your own designs.

These blocks can be combined in numerous ways to create unique and eye-catching customized templates. Blocks are pre-programmed with specific intents, such as call to action, services and testimonials, which helps to take the guesswork out of how to develop your layout.

Elementor also allows real-time editing, in which you can adjust the margins of the template segments and the font size to suit your design.

It features a handy undo/redo button for quick revisions, as well as access to a list of all previously done revisions. Simply click Revisions and you’ll be presented with a complete list of every edit ever done to the current page that you are working on.

Elementor features a page builder design that removes headers, footers and any other formatting that might inhibit your creative process.

It also allows a maintenance mode that shows users a ‘coming soon’ landing page placeholder while you build your site without worries of presenting less-than-perfect end results.

If you’re interested in reaching a multi-language audience, Elementor has thought of that as well. With RTL and multi-language support built into the framework, you can easily translate and add your own developer language to your page.

Elementor supports 28 different languages, including three versions of English, two versions of Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, etc.

What Elementor Can Do?

When you’re working on your Elementor page, remember that your edits are going to be live time. When you enter something on your end, it translates to an instant change on the viewer’s end.

Let’s face it, no matter how many times we proofread, we always have a friend that notices one of our mistakes. Now, you can change it immediately, rather than having to rework the coding of your page.

Elementor also has a ‘canvas’ development mode. Earlier I discussed the custom boxes that are available for click-and-drag placement, and that’s where this feature comes in.

Canvas mode allows total artistic control over how your website looks. Elementor also allows mobile-view editing, which will allow you to see how your web page translates to mobile formats. If your audience is primarily mobile-based, this is a valuable tool to increase user engagement.

Elementor also takes things further by letting you show/hide individual widgets on certain devices. For example, if you have a huge image, you might not want to display that image on the mobile version of your site.

Elementor’s responsive design controls let you hide it on mobile devices with the click of a toggle. Because page builders eliminate the need for custom code, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little flexibility over where you position elements in order to achieve that simplicity.

What’s great about Elementor, though, is that it gives you tons of intuitive controls to make sure that you can place every widget, section, and column exactly where you want it.

Elementor Pro vs Free Comparison

The best part of all of this is that basic Elementor is free. While there are some extras that come with the paid version, the free version comes with many features and options.

You can add various widgets to conduct online sales, links to other sites you manage or videos and small animations that will catch your viewer’s attention. Further benefits include:

• Headlines: Create eye-catching headlines that encourage users to click on your content.
• Image Editing: The size, settings, margins and opacity of images can be manipulated.
• Text Editor: like the WordPress editor, Elementor has a WYSIWYG text editor.
• Video Embedding: Link a video from YouTube or Vimeo directly into your content.
• Button: Every feature of button design can be edited.
• Image Box: Include boxes that have their own image, text and headlines.

• Testimonials/Reviews: You can add social support to your site.
• Icon: over 600 icons are available for incorporation to your design.
• Icon Box: Create boxes that work like image boxes, that contain icons.
• Social Icons: Imbed and include icons to your Facebook/Twitter accounts to raise your followers across all social media platforms.
• Image Gallery: Show off your images in an aligned grid.
• Image Carousel: Add an animated slider or revolving display of select images.

• Icon List: Arrange your icons in neat, bullet pointed lists.
• Counter: Never guess how many visitors you have. See all your stats on your page.
• Progress Bar: Working on a goal? Embed the progress bar for ease in tracking.
• Tabs: Allow users to switch back and forth between select content by formatting tabs on your page.
• Accordion Display: Have information to share but don’t want to take up a lot of your page? Place it in a collapsible display.
• Toggle: Easily format FAQ pages to supply information to your readers, but don’t sacrifice on your design space.

• Alert: Colored alert box that helps to pull the visitor’s attention to what you want them to see the most.
• HTML: Insert code into the page with ease.
• Shortcode: Allows the easy insertion of shortcodes from other plugins onto your content.
• Menu Anchor: Design your own menu for your website, and place it on your page for user navigation.
• Sidebar: Develop a sidebar for unobtrusive navigation options.
• Google Maps: Let everyone know where your business is by displaying your Google Maps location and allowing GPS directions.
• SoundCloud: Embed audio directly from SoundCloud to your site.
• Divider: Divide your page into segments to cover different aspects in a neat presentation.
• Columns: You can create columns to divide your page, or you can place columns within columns to further segment information.

What Elementor Paid Version Offers?

The paid Elementor plugin for WordPress is set on a site-based fee structure. The annual plans are $49 for one site, $99 for two sites, or $199 for unlimited sites. With the paid version, you have increased access to more tools that will make your building even easier.

NOTE: Elementor has recently changed its Unlimited Plan (The change was made on 13/5/2019). The plan has been renamed ‘Expert’, and it is topped at 1,000 domain license activations.

Some of the Pro plan features include:

• Embed postings from other sites and display work portfolios inside the Elementor layouts.
• Design and format directly from the Elementor plugin while enjoying full editing capabilities to all widgets and features.
• Adapt a global widget into different areas of your site for full access.
• Include CSS into any Elementor block that you place on your page.
• Include Elementor elements into widgets and sidebars for further customization.
• Incorporate slides into your layout for moving, interactive presentations.
• WooCommerce content can be fully customized for a unique appearance.
• Access to a broader library of blocks and templates than is available with the free version.

If you want a short summary of why you should upgrade to Pro, here are the main points:

1. Theme Builder lets you customize every part of your theme With Elementor Pro Theme Builder, you are no longer restricted to your theme limitations.

You can visually design your header, footer, archive page, single posts and all other parts of your site using Elementor. This works on any WordPress theme, and requires no coding.

But to access theme builder feature, you need Elementor pro version. To avoid this, you can use Elementor theme builder alternative addons.

2. Visually design forms and integrate them 

Contact forms are an essential part of every website, since they are the engines for conversions and leads. Elementor Pro’s Forms widget is revolutionary because the entire process of managing them is visual.

Design your forms on the front end, then connect them to any automation marketing platform or CRM of your choosing with a few clicks.

3. Professional templates and blocks

Elementor Pro offers many more professionally made templates and blocks that can be easily customized to create stunning websites.

The templates and blocks integrate the Pro widgets, so you can create pages featuring slides, animated headlines, forms and other important Elementor Pro features.

4. Key professional widgets and features

Elementor Pro includes some vital widgets and features that are important for any professional web designer.

These include Animated Headlines for impressive headline design, Posts widget for an amazing display of blog posts, WooCommerce widgets, Slides, Media Carousel and custom fonts.

Do You Need Elementor Pro?

If you just want to create basic styled pages, the free version of Elementor should have enough power. In fact, Elementor probably offers the most feature-rich free version of any page builder.

With that being said, if you want to use Elementor to actually build out your core website pages (or build your entire website now, thanks to the theme builder), then Elementor Pro is a great option because of the new elements, extra controls, and other functionality.

Elementor Pros & Cons

Here’s everything I like and dislike about Elementor.

PROS:

• It’s free.
• It has an impressive range of features and is easy to use.
• It allows you to build custom page layouts and designs that may not be available in your current theme, and doesn’t require any HTML, CSS, or PHP skills.
• The real-time preview gives you true ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ editing.
• The blank canvas page template basically takes your current theme and throws it away, letting you use just the Elementor blocks and sections.
• The ability to adjust your desktop, tablet, and mobile views separately. Additionally, it allows you to even tweak the column layouts for each specific device/screen size.
• The rollback option allows you to revert back to an earlier version of Elementor on the off-chance something breaks during an update. This is something similar to what WP Rollback plugin offers for themes and plugins.
• If you ever need to deactivate Elementor at some point in the future, it’s not going to leave behind a mess of shortcodes like WPBakery Page Builder (see WPBakery review) or the Divi Builder do.
• Easy undo/redo and full revision history.
• Rather than needing to use a popup like some other page builders, Elementor lets you just click on the page and start typing.

CONS:

• It doesn’t let you style your links for some reason. Nor does it inherit the link styles properly from the current theme.
• It’s buggy when it comes to fonts and text in general. Sometimes the styles get applied correctly, sometimes they don’t.
• The default widget styles don’t always look good out-of-the-box.
• Global vs static templates can be confusing
• Lacking some marketing-oriented features
• Revision history isn’t always ideal

Elementor Addons

Because the Elementor team made it easy for developers to extend Elementor’s functionality, you can also find tons of other helpful Elementor extensions and WooCommerce Elementor addons that go beyond the official Elementor plugin.

• Addon Widgets allows you to format native WordPress widgets onto your Elementor site. These include WooCommerce Product Categories such as recent products, best-sellers, featured products and sale notices.
• Ultimate addons for Elementor provide you with a huge collection of creative Elementor widgets that support all your design needs with various customizations and combinations to build a beautiful and intuitive website.
• Elementor Addons & Templates – Sizzify Lite adds a number of elements to help Elementor work better with WooCommerce, as well as some other helpful elements.
• AnyWhere Elementor lets you save the templates that you create and embed them in other areas using shortcodes. With this add-on, you can also create multiple layouts, add post elements, or create hooks to GeneratePress and OceanWP themes.
• Elementor Addon Elements is good if you want to animate your site a bit, but you can also use it to add a professional note to your business (brand).
• Header Footer Elementor was made to let you create new headers and footers in Elementor. Basically, you can design a header or footer with Elementor and add it to your site.
• StylePress for Elementor plugin lets you create templates for both styles and arrange everything to make it look like an actual theme design. Just create a layout and assign it to a style and a page type.
• Hotel Booking & Elementor Integration is designed specifically for the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin. Its main aim is to help people edit the Hotel Booking plugin shortcodes visually in Elementor.
• The Plus Addons for Elementor is a collection of widgets, templates and UI Blocks to help you craft amazing websites using Elementor.
• Master Addons for Elementor can help you craft appealing, modern layouts for your site. The free plugin has over 30 different blocks to use. There’s also a premium version of the plugin with even more features and functions.
• Stratum Elementor extensions is a free Elementor add-on with 20+ advanced widgets that can be used to design landing pages and professional business websites.
• Element Pack Pro – Plugin ads 130+ widgets, 299+ built-in pages, 1500+ blocks, and 250+ header & footer to Elementor library.
• Ultimate Post Kit – Helps you efficiently manage website content using 40+ different widgets included.

Elementor Themes & Templates

Looking for some Elementor themes and templates to help you create a stunning WordPress site with the Elementor page builder?

They can make your life with Elementor a whole lot easier:

• Elementor themes – these are regular WordPress themes that work especially well with Elementor (check Litho theme review and Everse theme review)
• Elementor templates – these are templates that you can import via Elementor to create a design for a single page. You’ll still need a theme, but these templates can save you time versus designing a page from scratch.

Some of amazing themes, that offer Elementor integration, include Astra (check Astra pros & cons), GeneratePress (check Astra vs GeneratePress comparison), OceanWP (see OceanWP review), Deep theme (see Deep theme review), and Hestia theme.

Elementor templates are not full WordPress themes. You import them via the Elementor interface, rather than installing them as a WordPress theme at your site.

Some of great Elementor templates include Elementorism, EasyThemePacks, The Landing Factory, Katka Elementor Template Pack, and LaunchParty Section Blocks.

Elementor Pro vs Divi Builder vs Beaver Builder

• Name
• Price
• Free Version
• Visual Builder
• In-line editing
• # Of Official Elements
• Pre-made Templates
• Leaves Behind Clean Code
• Sidebar control panel
• Use WordPress Widgets
• 3rd-party Add-on Elements
• Flip Box
• Dedicated Audio Player
• Animated Headline
• Portfolio
• Social Share Buttons
• Social Follow Icons
• Login
• Facebook Comments
• Person/Team Member
• Native Comments
• Basic Styling
• Custom margins/padding
• Custom fonts/typography
• Directly add custom CSS to module
• Custom gutters
• Show/hide content based on device
• Different margins based on device
• Different font sizes based on device
• Custom breakpoints

• ELEMENTOR PRO
• $49 for one site/yearly
• 53
• 100+

Learn More

• DIVI BUILDER
• $89/yearly unlimited sites
• 46
• 42+

Learn More

• BEAVER BUILDER
• $99/year unlimited sites
• 31
• 56+

Learn More

NOTE: Above mentioned information may be incorrect because plugins get updates, new features, options, settings and changes over time so for most accurate information please check official sites.

Elementor Review Conclusion

While there’s a pro version of Elementor available, you honestly get 90% of the plugin’s awesomeness for free. When compared to other page builders like Beaver Builder (see differences between Beaver Builder free and pro versions), Divi, WPBakery, etc., the Elementor interface is one of the easier ones to grasp.

But no matter which page builder plugin you choose, there’s always going to be a learning curve before you can start creating amazing pages.

Elementor WordPress page builder plugin is truly a game changer for those who want to be able to format, design and develop their own original content but don’t know how to code.

While it will take some getting used to, Elementor does supply support via email to their paid subscribers, and the video tutorials for self-paced learning to their free subscribers.

The additional add-ons help you add even more features. And huge selection of available tempates and Elementor oriented themes make creating websites even easier.

In short, if you have a website in which you conduct business or interact with the community at large, you should give Elementor more than a first glance. It might be the tool to take your content from good, to great.

But if you need plugin that will allow you to build landing pages very quickly, with no learning curve and without messing with too much settings, then check WPOnepager WordPress landing page builder plugin.