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WordPress page builders have revolutionized the website-building process, they allow anyone to create a stunning website without touching a single line of code.
These intuitive tools eliminate the constraints of traditional themes, offering a flexible, drag-and-drop solution. But with so many options available, finding the right page builder can be overwhelming.
This article will guide you through six top-tier free and premium WordPress page builders, highlighting their key features, ease of use, design assets, compatibility, pricing, and more. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of which page builder best suits your needs, enabling you to build your dream website effortlessly.
What is a WordPress Page Builder?
A WordPress page builder, available as a plugin, theme, or a combination of both, significantly enhances WordPress’s built-in website editing capabilities.
With this tool, you can design your website pages using a visual drag-and-drop interface directly on the front end. This intuitive method allows you to see real-time changes as you design, making the process more accessible and efficient for users of all experience levels.
Beyond just creating pages, many page builders extend their functionality to other parts of your website, such as the navigation menu, header, footer, and sidebar.
Page builders are the cornerstone of no-code design, focusing on user-friendly interfaces and pre-built templates, layouts, and design components. These features simplify the design process and enable you to achieve professional-quality results quickly and easily.
Key Features of a Good WordPress Page Builder
When choosing a WordPress page builder, certain features are essential to ensure a smooth and efficient website building experience.
Here are the key features to look for:
- Ease of Use: A good page builder should be highly intuitive and allow users to start building and customizing their site with a minimal learning curve. A simple, user-friendly interface ensures that even beginners can create professional-looking pages without frustration.
- Flexibility: While templates and pre-designed interfaces can be extremely useful, they shouldn’t limit your creativity. A quality page builder offers flexibility, allowing you to customize elements to suit your unique vision, rather than confining you to rigid frameworks.
- Premade Design Resources: Having access to a library of premade design resources, such as templates, layouts, and elements, can significantly speed up the design process. These resources provide a solid starting point and can be easily modified to fit your needs.
- Responsive Design: A top-tier page builder must support responsive design, i.e. automatically adjust the layout and elements of your site to provide an optimal viewing experience on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
- Excellent Support: No matter how user-friendly and reliable a tool is; problems can always arise. That’s why excellent support is an essential feature. Whether it’s comprehensive documentation, active community forums, or responsive customer service, solid support means you can resolve any issues quickly.
- Reasonable Price: While investing in a quality page builder can pay off in the long run, it’s important to find a tool that offers good value for money. A reasonable price means you can get the functionality and support you need without breaking the bank.
The Best WordPress Page Builders
Divi
Divi is a complete solution for creating visually appealing websites, trusted by millions of people around the world. As of October 2023, over 4 million websites have been created using Divi, with more than 2.3 million currently active, according to MyCodelessWebsite stats.
User-Friendly Drag-and-Drop Builder
With Divi, users benefit from an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, enabling them to design pages swiftly and see their changes in real time, all without needing any coding expertise. This true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) experience ensures that what you design is exactly what you get.
Vast Array of Layouts and Design Elements
Divi offers a wealth of design options, including over 2,000 layouts and more than 300 complete website packs. This allows users to quickly implement a fully designed website. Additionally, Divi provides over 200 design elements, covering everything from galleries and blog pages to email opt-ins and WooCommerce modules.
Seamless Integrations and Real-Time SEO Control
Divi supports numerous integrations with popular WordPress plugins, catering to membership sites, forms, events, email marketing, and more. With Rank Math integration, users can manage their SEO settings directly within the visual builder, ensuring optimal search engine performance as they design.
Complete Website Design Control
The Divi Theme Builder empowers users with full control over their entire site’s design. From global headers and footers to templates for blog posts and WooCommerce pages, every aspect of the site can be customized to maintain a cohesive and professional appearance.
Affordable and Comprehensive Membership
Divi offers a cost-effective membership plan at $89 per year or a one-time payment of $249 for lifetime access. This includes the Divi builder as both a theme and a plugin, along with premium plugins like Bloom for email opt-ins and lead generation, and Monarch for social media sharing.
Breakdance
Breakdance stands out as the most intuitive WordPress page builder on the market, enabling users to accomplish tasks seamlessly with minimal guidance. Its interface is designed to be navigated instinctively, allowing you to build everything from basic to complex website features effortlessly.
Renowned for its unmatched flexibility, this page builder offers a robust set of prebuilt options, while also empowering you to extend its capabilities to manage unique and sophisticated scenarios. The inclusion of built-in tools such as Form Builder, Popup Builder, and Menu Builder ensures you have comprehensive control over essential website elements, eliminating the need for multiple third-party plugins.
Its ability to integrate design seamlessly with data from the WordPress database guarantees that your site is both functional and tailored to your specific needs.
One of Breakdance’s standout features is its innovative Element Studio, which allows you to create custom builder elements visually. This is made possible through the world’s first built-in element development IDE for WordPress, giving developers and designers unprecedented creative freedom.
The WordPress page builder offers flexible pricing to accommodate various needs, ranging from a free version to Pro versions at $99.99 per year for a single site and $199.99 per year for unlimited sites. For those seeking the ultimate package, the Pro+ AI bundle is available for $249.99 per year.
Elementor Pro
Elementor Pro is considered one of the most powerful drag-and-drop WordPress page builder plugins available today. With a massive user base, it is used by over 8.8 million websites, and over 3.6 million sites use its Pro version. The Elementor’s free version alone has over 5 million active installations, a testament to its ease of use and robust functionality.
One of Elementor Pro’s main assets is its user-friendly interface, which enables anyone, regardless of coding knowledge, to create custom layouts effortlessly. The plugin comes with a plethora of widgets, catering to both basic and advanced needs. From simple image and text widgets to sophisticated accordions, sliders, testimonials, icons, social media integrations, and tabs, Elementor has it all.
Elementor’s free version provides access to essential widgets and a variety of pre-made templates, making it an excellent starting point for novice users. For those wishing to enhance their web design capabilities, the paid version offers over 300 premium templates and a set of stunning Pro widgets, including carousels, tables of contents, and Lottie animations.
Elementor Pro also includes a powerful Theme Builder add-on that makes it easy to build a complete website. This feature allows users to create custom headers and footers, archive pages, and even WooCommerce pages, offering total control over your site’s design and functionality. What’s more, Elementor offers over 100 complete website kits based on its Hello theme, enabling you to build entire websites quickly and efficiently.
With prices starting at just $59 for a single-site license, Elementor Pro is an accessible and powerful tool for anyone looking to create professional-quality websites.
Beaver Builder
Although Beaver Builder lacks the advanced design features and extensive resources of some of its competitors, it stands out as an excellent choice for beginners looking for a lightweight, user-friendly visual builder. Its simplicity and ease of use make it an excellent starting point for those new to building WordPress pages.
This page Builder includes a variety of modules that cover all the essentials you’ll need to create a modern website. You can effortlessly add sliders, carousels, backgrounds, content blocks, buttons, and much more, thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
One of Beaver Builder’s most outstanding features is its collection of over 170 beautifully designed landing page templates. These templates enable you to create stunning website layouts with incredible speed and ease, making the process both enjoyable and efficient.
The free version, Beaver Builder Lite, offers sufficient basic functionality to familiarize you with the builder. However, to fully exploit its potential and access the full range of features, you’ll need to opt for one of the paid versions. With prices starting at $99 per year, the investment is well worth it for those who want to take their website design to the next level without feeling overwhelmed by overly complex tools.
Avada Website Builder
Avada is a comprehensive website builder for WordPress, renowned for offering an extensive range of features that cater to all your web design needs. From its intuitive Drag & Drop Live Visual Builder to specialized tools like the Layout Builder, Header Builder, Footer Builder, and Avada Form Builder, this website designing tool provides everything you need to create custom websites with ease.
What sets this tool apart is its all-encompassing approach, making it a favorite among beginners, marketers, professionals, agencies, businesses, and creatives. Its intuitive visual front-end design and editing tools enable you to quickly create stunning websites without any coding knowledge.
It boasts dozens of professionally designed demos and over 100 prebuilt websites that can be imported with just a click, allowing you to jumpstart your design process and streamline your workflow.
One of Avada’s standout features is its Advanced Theme Options Network, consisting of the Fusion Theme Options and Fusion Page Options. The Fusion Theme Options control settings and options globally across your site, while the Fusion Page Options offer granular control over individual pages and posts.
Priced at $69 for a regular license, this website builder offers unparalleled value by bundling all these incredible features into one cohesive package.
WPBakery
WPBakery Page Builder is a versatile solution designed to meet the needs of professionals and individuals looking for a powerful yet easy-to-use page builder. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, combined with a vast library of customizable elements, lets you bring your creative ideas to life effortlessly.
This page builder sets itself apart by offering two types of editors: a schematic editor in the background and a live editor in the foreground. This dual editing capability lets you choose your preferred creation mode – whether you want to build your WordPress site from the backend or see your changes live as you make them.
One of the most remarkable features of WPBakery is its built-in AI assistant, which can generate text, enhance existing content, translate it into almost any language, and even create custom code. This artificial intelligence assistant adds something extra that makes your website unique.
WPBakery is one of the best-selling drag-and-drop page builder plugins on the market. It currently powers more than 5.8 million websites. Its popularity is a testament to its robustness and ease of use.
For those considering WPBakery, the investment is justified by its feature set and solid performance. Priced at $74 for a regular license, WPBakery offers tremendous value by equipping you with the features you need to create stunning, responsive websites effortlessly.
WordPress Page Builders: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the difference between a page builder and a WordPress block editor?
The primary difference between a page builder and the WordPress block editor (also known as Gutenberg) lies in their functionality and flexibility.
The WordPress block editor is an integrated feature that allows you to create content using a block-based system. Each piece of content, such as a paragraph, image, or video, is treated as an individual block that can be easily added, rearranged, and customized. The block editor provides a straightforward way to create posts and pages with a modern, clean interface, making it a great tool for basic content creation.
On the other hand, a WordPress page builder is typically a third-party plugin that offers advanced design capabilities beyond what the block editor provides. Page builders often come with a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to design complex layouts and customize every aspect of their website’s appearance.
They usually include a wide array of pre-designed templates, widgets, and elements, enabling users to create highly customized and visually appealing websites without any coding knowledge.
Do I need to use a WordPress page builder?
Whether or not you need to use a WordPress page builder depends on your specific needs and goals for your website.
If you’re looking to create a simple blog or a basic informational site, the built-in WordPress block editor might be sufficient.
However, if you aim to build a more complex, visually appealing, and highly customized website, a page builder can be a valuable asset. Page builders offer advanced design features, such as drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-designed templates, and extensive customization options, making it easier to achieve a professional look without coding skills.
Additionally, if you plan to frequently update and modify your website’s design, a page builder can save you time and effort by streamlining the process. It can also be beneficial if you prefer a visual, hands-on approach to design your website.
Do page builder plugins slow down WordPress?
WordPress Page builder plugins can potentially slow down your website, but the impact largely depends on the specific plugin you choose and how it is used.
Page builders add additional code and functionality to your website, which can increase load times and affect performance. However, modern page builders listed in this blog post are designed with performance in mind and include features to minimize their impact on your website’s speed.
What is the best free page builder for WordPress?
The best free page builder for WordPress often depends on your specific needs and preferences, but one of the most highly recommended options is Elementor. It stands out despite the limited features of the free version.
While Elementor is a standout choice, other free page builders like Breakdance free version and Beaver Builder Lite are also worth considering, each offering unique features and benefits.