Brendan Tully0 Comments
April 11, 2022
Time moves fast in the world of technology – a smartphone can become obsolete in a year, and our computers update their software along with third-party programs on an almost daily basis. But advancements in technology make things that were once only accessible to the “select few” available to the broader public. That includes you.
While in the early 90s no one without coding knowledge could build a website, today, just about anyone can thanks to the countless WordPress page builders you can find online. WordPress page builders allow users to create anything from an ecommerce store to a landing page without ever encountering HTML or CSS. The trick is that rather than using coding, these drag and drop page builders allow the creator – you – to build a website solely by manipulating visual elements, i.e. selecting them, dragging them, and dropping them where you want them to be.
In other words, WordPress page builders allow you to create a professional-looking website with less time, money, and effort.
So, if you’re looking to build and customize your very own website, you’ll be needing one of the best page builders for WordPress to get the job done. And to help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite WordPress drag and drop page builders. Our top picks are versatile, easy to use, and often come in both free and paid versions – meaning, there’s something here for every budget.
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Before we go over the best WordPress page builders, where you’ll find one that’s just right for your needs, let’s take a look at why these builders are worth looking into.
Page builders are cost-effective. For startups, blogs, and small businesses, hiring a professional developer and web designer can cost a small fortune. Although this may be something you’d consider investing in once your company picks up speed, creating a website yourself with a page builder is a great way to get started.
Page builders are easy to use. The whole thing about drag and drop page builders is that they’re as easy to use as dragging and dropping elements to where you want them to be. After initially familiarizing yourself with the builder’s interface, you’ll be able to create contact forms, online shops, forums, and much more for your website without any technical know-how. You can choose a template and work off it, or start from scratch and project your own vision onto a blank canvas.
Page builders show you exactly what your website will look like. When developers code pages, they have to check what the website looks like once they’ve completed a portion of code. Drag and drop page builders allow you to see what your website would look like to the end user as you’re building it. In other words, you can see your edits in real time. You won’t have to stop and click preview every few minutes to check if things are working.
Page builders offer plenty of versatile features. Creating galleries, moving blocks, adding blogs, widgets, videos, products pages, navigation menus, checkout carts, social sharing buttons, add to cart buttons and sliders are only some of the features you can include in your website with a page builder. You won’t need to prepare anything on your own – these features come right out-of-the-box. All you’ll need to worry about is repositioning, resizing, and playing with color to make sure each element complements the layout and theme of your website.
Great for beginners, great for professionals. Yes, page builders are super easy to use – but that doesn’t mean they’re only suitable for beginners. Lots of professional web developers use page builders to get more done in less time. If you’re a web designer, you may find that choosing a web builder that’s to your taste can help you take on more clients without extra stress.
Your website will be automatically optimized for mobile. In 2020, smartphones accounted for half of all web traffic. Needless to say, your website will have to be optimized for mobile in order to draw in visitors and keep them around. Drag and drop builders do this automatically – so it’s one less thing to worry about :).
Before we delve into the details of each page builder, here’s a quick overview of our favorites:
We did the diligent nitpicking to come up with this definitive list of the five best page builders for WordPress in 2024, because something good should come out of this year, right? Make sure to read what each builder has to offer, so you can decide which one is the right choice for you. If you’re short on time, you can read the feature overview at the end of each builder review, where we also tell you who we recommend that particular tool for.
Although we love all the builders on this list, we had to start off with Elementor, a WordPress page builder that is versatile, user-friendly, and incredibly powerful. The core version of Elementor is free and open-source. You can get it as a plugin for your WordPress website. If you want more features, we highly recommend Elementor Pro, which costs between $49/year (for one site) and $199/year (for unlimited sites). Keep in mind that the free version has a lot to offer, so if you’re on a limited budget, it’s an excellent place to start.
The free version of Elementor is a straightforward, intuitive, and powerful drag and drop page builder which is compatible with most WordPress themes. You get to view your edits live, create a site from scratch by playing with hundreds of available blocks, or choose from over 100 stylish templates and customize them using tools such as box shadows, overlays, hover effects, animations, gradients, and so on. The blocks come predesigned for various purposes – calls-to-action, testimonials, services offered, etc.
The free version also offers more than 40 free widgets, including custom buttons (social media sharing, shopping), image and video, galleries, headings, text editor, testimonials, icons, advanced tabbing options to choose from like accordions, sliders, and carousels, and much more. If you feel like the builder is missing something you need, you can also add a shortcode to any other plugin you want to include and view in the page builder. The Elementor plugin will automatically optimize your site for mobile.
The pro version of Elementor offers even more in the way of tools, so it’s well worth the additional cost for those in need of advanced features. With Pro, you can get access to over 90 (global) widgets and more than 300 beautiful templates. It also offers advanced theme builder and customization options for your header, footer, blog, fonts, and icons. It’s also quite resourceful if you want to create a dynamic website with lots of fast-loading motion effects.
We especially recommend the Pro version for ecommerce websites, as it features marketing automation with CRM (customer relationship management) integration, a WooCommerce builder, a popup builder, and a form builder. It’s also translated into 56 languages, so it’s ready for your global audience out of the box.
Note: Comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Best for: startups (free), ecommerce stores (pro), freelancers.
Beaver Builder is a highly customizable drag and drop page builder that can be fun for both beginners and professional creatives, as it combines ease of use with flexible design. Beginners will be able to build pretty websites without much effort, and professionals will be able to have enough creative control to bring their vision to the screen.
Similar to Elementor, you can also get Beaver Builder as a free, lite WordPress plugin, or choose from several premium versions with more advanced features. There are three paid plans that cost $99, $199, and $399. All plans are available for an unlimited number of websites, and the most expensive plan, intended for agencies, enables white labeling, which means you’ll be able to modify all the core templates and replace the words Page Builder or Beaver Builder on your WordPress admin page.
Beaver Builder lite, the free WordPress plugin, is an intuitive, user-friendly page builder that comes with several modules such as HTML, sidebar, text editor, photo, video, and audio (a lot more modules are available with the pro version, and we’ll go over them in a bit). The layouts are full-width and column based, and all sites are optimized for mobile and fast page loading speed. You can also play around with the backgrounds of photos, video rows, and color patterns. Like Elementor, Beaver Builder allows you to add shortcodes for other plugins, and integrate other widgets to this builder.
However, the free version of Beaver Builder is quite a bit more limited than the free version of Elementor. Luckily, the premium versions come with a lot of advanced features and many more modules, including modules for tabs, sliders, pricing tables, contact and subscribe forms, maps, blog posts, social icons, etc.
These paid versions also come with lots of stylish templates, fully-customizable modules, multisite network settings, and support from the Beaver Builder team. We especially recommend Beaver Builder if you’re a creative professional or if you are the owner of multiple related websites. The multisite network settings allow you to enable changes across all your sites at once.
Best for: professional creatives, design agencies, and enterprises.
SeedProd is another popular favorite drag and drop page builder, and not for nothing – it’s super easy to use, full of versatile, customizable templates for different types of pages, optimized for mobile, and – something we quite appreciate – features bloat-free code that will make your website fast, which is great because visitors do not like waiting for a site to load. Unlike Elementor and Beaver Builder, you can only get a paid version of SeedProd. They offer four plans that range from about $40 to about $240 per year, depending on how many websites you’ll be using the builder for (one, three, five, or unlimited). The pricier plans also come with 2 million free stock photos, domain mapping, and priority support.
SeedProd allows you to choose from over a hundred beautiful templates or create your own layouts from scratch. It features templates for different types of landing pages (sales, maintenance, webinar, login, thank you, optin page, etc.) as well as specific blocks you can use to build these different types of landing pages. There’s also built-in coming soon, 404 error, and under maintenance pages. Sections for things like calls to action and headers are also bre-built and ready to go, so you can easily put together something that looks professional and stylish.
We especially recommend SeedProd to bigger, more dynamic sites with customers and subscribers, as it features resourceful subscriber management tools and integrations for email marketing services such as MailChimp, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign.
SeedProd, like our previous two builders, automatically optimizes your website for mobile. It also comes with spam protection via reCaptcha. If you’re considering SeedProd, make sure to take a look at their full list of features.
Note: comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Best for: ecommerce stores, email marketing, subscriber-heavy sites.
Divi is both a WordPress theme and a visual drag and drop page builder that comes to us from the folks at Elegant Themes. There’s no free version of Divi, and if you want access to this real-time visual page builder you’ll need to purchase access to all Elegant Themes products, which is not a bad idea at all. They offer lots of useful WordPress themes and plugins, including Bloom, an email marketing and lead generation plugin, and Monarch, a social media marketing plugin.
All in all, purchasing access to all the Elegant Themes products can be a well-rounded solution for the various needs of your business website. Plus, you can use Divi on an unlimited number of websites! You can either buy a yearly subscription of $89, or pay $249 for a lifetime access to all Elegant Themes products.
As with the other builders we’ve talked about, Divi is also a largely visual builder that allows you to see what your site would look like as you create it in real time. The websites built with Divi are automatically mobile responsive, but you get control over how your website should look on mobile devices. The builder also allows you to implement global elements and styles across your entire website, which is quite useful if you’re managing a site with lots of pages.
Divi is a great choice for beginners and pros. It offers over a hundred well-designed full-website layout packs that are suitable for different types of sites. They also offer over 800 premade page designs. So, if you want to jump-start your website, Divi can make it easy for you – you’ll just need to make some small tweaks in the builder to make the premade layouts suit your brand. Professionals will enjoy the custom CSS control that Divi provides, which allows users to combine their own custom CSS with the existing visual design builder.
You can build literally any type of website you want, as Divi features over 40 website modules including sliders, blogs, calls to action, buttons, galleries, forms (subscribe, contact), pricing tables, audio players, and testimonials. It also comes with all the cosmetics options you’d want from a professional (yet easy to use) page builder – like background images, color gradients, shadows, animations, videos… You can also copy-paste elements from one place to another as easily as you would in Microsoft Word.
We especially recommend Divi for websites that have ecommerce stores because of Divi’s powerful WooCommerce modules. As you’d also be getting access to all Elegant Themes premade templates, you’ll be able to take advantage of some beautiful, product-specific online shop layouts. Plus, the interactive page features and buttons you can add to your site with Divi will make for an engaging user experience.
All in all, Divi combines the right amount of premade anything with flexible customization controls, so you can make any design your own.
Note: Divi offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on both plans.
Best for: ecommerce stores & online businesses, website owners, freelance designers.
Themify Builder is another drag and drop builder that is free in its core WordPress plugin version. The core plugin offers plenty of basic features that can help you get you started with a website. If you want more advanced options, you may wish to consider Themefy’s Builder Pro, which includes more customization options and modules. Builder Pro combined with over 25 addons by Themify, including advanced modules for WooCommerce, maps, sliders, custom buttons, etc., costs $69. You can also just get the free plugin with the same addon bundle for $39.
The core Themify Builder is a straightforward and intuitive drag and drop builder, so it’s an excellent choice for newbies to site making. It offers over 40 stylish pre-designed layouts for an entire website. This means that you can import a layout you like, edit the images and text content, and have your landing page ready (and looking good) in no time. The live preview features will allow you to view your design changes while you’re making the edits.
Themify offers some traditional and much-needed features that will speed up your work in an intuitive way. For instance, you can duplicate elements, modules, and rows if you want to work off the prototypes in different parts of your website. You can also copy/paste, import/export, and, for the trigger-happy, undo/redo changes with the click of a button.
Even though it’s free, Themify Builder brings a lot to the table in terms of style, customization, and modules. You can make any arrangement of rows and columns you like, and still expect a mobile-responsive design. You can also play around with over 60 types of animation effects that come right out of the box, in order to engage your site visitors.
Customization options abound. Even if you’ve picked a premade template, you can change the background type (image, video, slider), color, overlay, position… You can also change and import custom fonts to make the site seem like a clear extension of your brand. You can use Themify Builder on as many websites as you like, and even take advantage of its multi-site network support.
Last but certainly not least, Themify Builder has some features that will help your website rank higher in the SERPs. It arrives with its own cache system, which is meant to take pressure off the server and speed up your page loading speed. If you don’t already know, page loading speed is a ranking factor for Google. Plus, sites built using this builder are fully indexable by search engines, which is always good for SEO.
Best for: beginners, multiple website owners, small businesses, bloggers.
Our favorite WordPress page builders may offer different specifics, but they do have one thing in common: intuitive, visual interface. Having a live preview of your website as you build it and user-friendly tools at your disposal can really help beginners and professionals alike to realize their vision. Whichever builder you end up choosing, you won’t go wrong.
In the end, which WordPress page builder is best depends on what’s right for you. Personal preference, skill level, the number of sites you’re managing, needs of your website, and budget are only a few of the factors that will play a role in your decision making process. If you’re on a tight budget, opt for one of the options that offer free core WordPress plugin builders, like Elementor, Beaver Builder, or Themify Builder.
If you do have some cash to spare, however, you should really look into the premium versions of these page builders. At least in time, as your site, agency, or freelance business grows, you’ll find that the advanced tools are well-worth the investment. And, if you’re not completely sure about your choice, take advantage of the grace periods these builders offer. Elementor and Divi give you an entire 30-day window in which you can decide whether you like the builder. Most other options offer 14-day money-back guarantees.
One last piece of advice we can give you is to revise our recommendations for each builder. Some are best suited for creatives, while others are perfect for building powerful ecommerce stores. Or for instance, you may need to create and launch a website as soon as possible, in which case you could take advantage of Divi’s library of premade, full website layouts. Of course, nothing is set in stone, so consider our recommendations more as general guidelines and less as strict rules.
Happy page building!
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