Elementor Review 2022: Everything You Need To Know!

Launched in 2016, Elementor is now used by over 5 million websites.

That is impressive considering the growth which happened in just four years.

The primary reason for this is that Elementor focused on a great editor interface, advanced features with constant updates. It is now a page builder, and much more than that with its popup builder and other benefits… and that is why users love Elementor.

In this Elementor review, I’m going to make you familiar with this page builder so that you can start building your website without wasting any more time…

👉 Elementor Features

To help you get an idea of what all Elementor can do and why is everybody going crazy in the WordPress world for this, let’s get an overview of all the Elementor features…

Visual Builder

The editor is the core of every page builder tool, and Elementor excels in that.

Elementor offers 100% visual drag and drop editor with live editing and a streamlined process easy for everyone to understand.

It gives you the true What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) experience, just like you get while editing in MS Office or Docs.

Simple things (some of which are not available in other page builders) like a navigator, copy/paste, copy styles, revision history, autosave/redo/undo, and editing in draft mode — makes everything smooth.

Another great feature in the editor is Finder. It is a tool designed by Elementor to give you the flexibility to move between different pages of your website and reduce the number of clicks required.

You can use the shortcut CTRL + E for Windows and CMD + E for Mac to open up the Finder window.

Once you have the Finder window, you can type anything related to the page you want to go to, and it will bring up a list of available options. So with this, you can jump between different pages without even going to the WordPress dashboard.

The important point here is that Elementor thinks of all these small features, which makes the whole website building process super easy and fun for everyone. Once you get a feel of what Elementor can do, I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to go back to any other page builder.

Template Library

While we at WPEssentials use Elementor to create everything from scratch, it’s not possible for beginners.

For that, there is a template library of Elementor with hundreds of layouts that can be installed on any website in one click.

All the templates are divided between pages and blocks.

Pages are the full-page layouts that you can import and then edit accordingly. Blocks, on the other hand, are small sections that are designed to use within Pages.

For example, you can import a full-page for the About page in your site, and you can import a block for countdown timer or contact form.

Theme Builder

One of the things I love about Elementor is its theme building capability.

Elementor Theme Builder feature gives you the ultimate design control over your website.

Before this, it was impossible to edit any part of the theme without custom coding or a premium theme.

But now with Elementor Theme Builder, you can design custom header, footer, single post, categories and tag page, search page, and all the archive pages.

You don’t need any premium theme now … all you need is any lightweight free theme like Generatepress of Astra with Elementor Pro. With this combination, you can design and set up WordPress websites’ pages without touching even a single line of code.

This is really useful if you are a beginner as you can now control all the aspects of the theme without having to invest in both a premium theme and a page builder.

WooCommerce Builder

If you have a plan to sell anything online through your website or if you are already selling something, Elementor can help you with that also.

The WooCommerce Builder is engineered by the Elementor Pro team to help you design the single products, shop pages, archive product pages, and cart pages.

You can build your online store better than your competition with Elementor and make sure you give your customers the best site experience, which will then result in increased sales for you.

If not for Elementor, editing WooCommerce product pages without coding is not possible, and you can only edit a limited set of features for which a premium theme is required.

Elementor solves this problem with its WooCommerce Builder.

I worked on the redesign of an eCommerce site a few months back, and I transferred the full site (with over 10,000 pages) to Elementor. The redesign was successful, and we recorded a double-digit of growth in the website conversions.

I’m trying to explain here that Elementor is not only for small websites, but it’s a robust page builder that can be used on large sites as well. You can scale your site with it easily.

It is the best investment you can make for your website.

Popup Builder

This is a nice addition to the Elementor Pro features collection!

Nowadays, you can find different types of popups everywhere on the Internet. They are annoying, but they are effective.

Contextual popups like banners and bars can help you grow your email list, retain visitors, collect feedback, and let the users know about your product or any discounts/offers.

Popup works, and that is why everybody uses them. But to target users effectively, proper tools are required, which costs a lot.

Elementor Popup Builder is designed precisely for this. You can use it to create unlimited popups, with unlimited page views and interactions.

And with advanced targeting in the Popup Builder, you can reach the right audience at the right time.

Advanced Widgets

Widgets are the building blocks in a page builder. You will be using these widgets to build your pages in WordPress.

Elementor has a total of around 90 widgets, 30 of which are included in the free version.

Some of the Pro widgets are posts, portfolios, sliders, form, login, navigation menu, animated headline, price table, countdown timer, share buttons, and table of contents.

Now I cannot say that you will find everything you need in Elementor widgets, but you can find a widget for most of the things, and in case you don’t find the right one, you can install any of the Elementor Addons which can help you add multiple extra custom widgets.

All the widgets are highly customizable as well and give you very fine control over each element. Like you can adjust the element content (text, images, columns, rows), and you can set exact margins, padding, and position the widget anywhere you want on a page.

You can even use Custom CSS on any page right within the Elementor editor.

More Elementor Features

There are a ton of features in Elementor, and we cannot cover all of them, but here are some of those which you should know before making your decision for this page builder…

• Inline editing: With inline editing, you can edit or add text directly in the widgets. This makes it easy to write long blog posts and edit existing content.
• Clean code: If you ever need to deactivate Elementor at some point, there will be no mess of shortcodes, and all the content will be the same (with proper HTML tags).
• Maintenance mode: You can set maintenance mode while working on your site with Elementor pre-built maintenance and coming soon layouts.
• Translation and RTL ready: Elementor is multilingual compatible in over 50 languages and offers full support for both LTR and RTL languages.
• Dynamic content: This can be used for blog posts, archive pages, categories, and tags. Dynamic content lets you pull the data from the page and use Elementor for the styling.
• Responsive design: Elementor editor supports editing for desktop, tablet, and mobile screen sizes. So you can switch to mobile view and modify every element to look perfect on all the device types.
• Style options: There are tons of styling options included with every widget to help you make the design pixel perfect without coding.
• Custom fields: Elementor supports integrations with custom fields tools like ACF, Toolset, and Pods. This is really useful for creating custom layouts with the drag and drop editor.

🛠️ Quick Elementor Tutorial

Now that you know most of the things about Elementor, let’s show you how to install it in WordPress and use the drag and drop builder…

After you have purchased the Elementor Pro, log in to your Elementor account and Download the plugin.

Note: If you have not yet purchased, then you can install the free version from the WordPress repository.

Now go to your WordPress dashboard > Plugins and upload the downloaded .zip file.

Activate the plugin on the next step, and you’re done!

To start editing, go to any page, and click on Edit with Elementor.

This is the main Elementor interface, where you’ll be spending most of your time…

To add new rows, click on the Plus icon, and for the Elemntor template library, click on the Folder icon.

You can read our tutorial to learn more about how to export and import Elementor templates.

Before adding any template from the library, click on the image to preview and then click on Insert to import the template on the page.

Now for all the settings and widgets, Elementor has a dedicated side panel. This Side Panel is where you’ll find all the content elements, their styling options, and page related settings.

To add any widget on the page, all you have to do is find the widget in the sidebar and drag and drop it into the page.

After that, you can add/modify the content and settings in the widget panel.

Settings like typography, color, animations are present in the Style panel.

And for settings like margin, padding, custom CSS, responsiveness, border, and background, you can go to Advanced Panel.

The basic hierarchy in Elementor is like…

• A page can have any number of rows in it.
• A row can have any number of columns.
• A column can have one or more widgets.
• And, a widget can be styled individually.

To start creating a page with Elementor, you can either insert a pre-built layout, edit the content and everything, or build from scratch.

If you are building on your own, the first step is to add a row and select the structure.

If you’re not sure, you can add the first full-width row and add the columns later. After adding the widget inside a column and row, the structure will look something like this.

For checking the page on different screen sizes, you can click on the computer icon and select the desktop, tablet, or mobile screen size.

And to Save draft or Publish the page, you can click on the green button in the sidebar panel.

This may look too much first, but once you start using Elementor, all this will look super easy. The workflow is easily manageable, and you can design pages very quickly with Elementor.

🤔 Elementor Free vs Pro

Before we move to the final section of Elementor pricing, let’s explain to you the difference between Elementor Free and Pro.

Elementor Free version is an amazing page builder plugin where you get the core drag and drop builder with all the basic 30 content elements like heading, image, video, text editor, tabs, and accordions.

So if you’re only looking for a solution to design some posts/pages or basic landing pages, the free version will work fine for you.

With that being said, if you chose to upgrade to Elementor Pro, you can get a ton of benefits like…

• With the Theme Builder in Pro version, you can customize every part of your theme (and you don’t even have to buy a premium theme with Elementor Pro).
• You get access to all the basic and advanced content elements to create even complex layouts and pages.
• You can build and custom design your online store with the WooCommerce Builder.
• You don’t have to install multiple plugins for a lot of things like maintenance mode, popups, forms, headers and footers, custom fonts, Custom CSS, scrolling animations, and more!
• You get access to the 24/7 support where you can ask all your page builder related questions.

These are just a few advantages of Elementor Pro.

If you are not sure, you can always start with the Elementor free plugin and see if you find it useful. Once you get used to it and if you feel limited, you can subscribe to Elementor Pro, and you will get access to all the features.

You can also refer to this comparison table for the differences between Elementor Free and Pro…

	Free	Pro
Visual Drag and Drop Builder	✔	✔
Responsive Editing for Mobile and Tablet	✔	✔
300+ Pro Templates	✘	✔
Forms (contact, login, subscription forms)	✘	✔
Theme Builder for Theme Editing	✘	✔
Popup Builder	✘	✔
WooCommerce Builder	✘	✔
24/7 Email Support	✘	✔

💰 Elementor Pricing

Elementor Pricing is fairly simple.

There are three plans of Elementor…

• Personal: License for 1 website at $49.
• Plus: License for 3 sites $99.
• Expert: License for 1,000 sites at $199.

All the plans are yearly renewable and offer 24/7 email support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you’re looking to purchase Elementor for only one website (like a blog or a business/personal site), then a Personal plan will be best for you.

But if you’re a freelancer, designer, developer, marketer, or anyone looking to build multiple sites, then Plus or Expert plan will give you the best value.

There’s a 25% renewal discount for all the active members so you can renew every year to take advantage of the discount.

🏁 Final Words…

Elementor is the best page builder you can use on your WordPress website.

There’s a reason why more than 5 million professionals are using Elementor now.

Whether you’re an absolute beginner building your first blog or running a successful site, Elementor gives you the best tools to design and develop a fantastic website capable of everything as you grow.

There are alternatives available to Elementor like Beaver Builder and Divi (read Elementor vs Divi Builder here), but Divi doesn’t give any free version, and Beaver Builder’s free plugin is minimal. As for their paid versions, Divi is based on the shortcodes-based approach, which is not good, and Beaver Builder is costlier than Elementor with a lot fewer features.

That is why, with affordable pricing, and tons of features, Elementor really stands out as the one solution that you can use to build your WordPress website.

Click here to visit the Elementor’s official website or if you’re interested in the premium templates for Elementor.

If you need any help, you can read our detailed Elementor FAQs and tutorials.