WPBakery and Elementor are two of the most popular page builder plugins for WordPress. These plugins will help you to remove dull post editor in WordPress with drag and drop page builder. Though WordPress core comes with Gutenberg block editor, it is still long way for Gutenberg to catch up with these page builder plugins. If you are looking for purchasing a good page builder plugin, here is a comparison of WPBakery Vs Elementor for you to compare the features.
Related: WPBakery Page Builder review.
WPBakery Vs Elementor Page Builder
WPBakery Page Builder is a complete premium plugin you have to purchase from Codecanyon. There is no free version available for this plugin in WordPress repository. It has more than 380K sales in Codecanyon from 2011 to indicate the popularity. However, there is a big confusion with the name Visual Composer and WPBakery Page Builder. The developer was originally offering the plugin in Codecanyon with the name as Visual Composer and later changed to WPBakery Page Builder. However, still the Codecanyon item URL says, it is Visual Composer Page Builder for WordPress.
Now that you can find Visual Composer as a separate website builder plugin offered through the different website. Unfortunately, developers follow this is trick to use the popularity of plugin’s the name while avoiding commission paid to Codecanyon (Envato) marketplace.
In contrast, Elementor is available as a free plugin and you can install it through WordPress repository right from your admin panel. You can upgrade to premium version by purchasing a license from the developer’s site.
Popularity of Plugins
Besides the strong functional features, there is an additional reason for these plugins to become very popular. Many theme developers offer WPBakery and Elementor page builder as a bundled plugin with their themes. For example, Generatepress theme offers predefined Elementor templates and Highend theme needs WPBakery page builder plugin to work. This makes one of the plugins to be integral part of the theme and mandatory to use on the site. In addition, there are free and premium add-ons for these plugin to add additional elements.
However, remember that the bundled version of WPBakery and Elementor will have different features than independent version. With WPBakery, you will not have many features like template library and Elementor uses free version. In both cases, you have to purchase pro version to get all features. Therefore, do not fall into a trap of buying bundled themes that offer page builder plugins free.
Overall Features
Both plugins offer multiple elements you can drag and drop to build beautiful page layouts. Below are the notable features you will get:
WPBakery Page Builder Features:
- Frontend and backend editor
- 50+ Drag and drop elements
- Grid builder
- Shortcode mapper
- 100+ predefined templates
- Free and premium third-party elements
Elementor Page Builder Features (Pro Version):
- 50+ widgets
- Template library with 300+ pro templates
- Real drag and drop element editor
- Pop-up, Theme and WooCommerce builder
You can check out the complete features of WPBakery and Elementor on their official sites.
Related: Review of Elementor page builder.
Pricing Comparison
The premium version of WPBakery will cost you $64 while Elementor will cost you $49. Below is the comparison of what you will get with both the plugins:
| Features | WPBakery | Elementor |
|---|---|---|
| Free Version | No | Yes |
| Pricing Method | One-time | Yearly subscription |
| Price Single Site | $64 | $49 |
| Other Licenses | No | $99 for 3 sites and $199 for 1K sites |
| Support | 1 year | |
| Updates | Lifetime | 1 year |
In our opinion, both plugins are available at higher end of the price band. You can purchase the pro versions only if you plan to use the plugin throughout your site to build large number of pages. Otherwise, you can use free Elementor version for creating only few pages.
Page Builder Interface
Though both plugins are for page building, the interfaces are completely different. WPBakery offers backend and frontend editors where you can insert elements. However, Elementor offers real drag and drop editor like Weebly. After checking, we found that Visual Composer website builder (from same WPBakery team) offers similar features like Elementor. In our opinion, this is utter confusion for users and shabby business practice. At the end of the day, it is a product that stand out and not the name.
Coming back to the interface, we feel Elementor interface is superior and simple to use for new users. You can simply drag elements to content area and start building your layout. Though the number of free elements are limited, it should be sufficient to make a decent layout.
Editor Speed
Unfortunately, page builder plugins need high server resources with strong internet connection. Both WPBakery and Elementor editors take longtime to load. In addition, the editors will fail to load if you have poor internet connection. Some hosting environments will not allow using frontend editors that violate their terms of usage.
WPBakery has backend editor as a fallback option while Elementor offers Safe Mode to troubleshoot the connection. However, ensure to have solid hosting and internet connection before purchasing these page builder plugins.
Available Elements
There are two types of elements available with both the plugins:
- Around 50 free elements comes with the plugin
- Third-party add-on widgets from theme and plugin developers
In addition, you can get additional elements with Elementor pro version. Below are some of the elements or blocks you can get with these plugins that are not available in WordPress core:
- Progress bars
- Vertical and horizontal tabs
- Accordion
- Spoiler
- Star rating (Elementor free)
- Customer rating (Elementor pro)
- Call to action
- Image box
- Testimonials
- Image carousel
- Notifications like alert
- Pricing table
- Portfolio
- Countdown
Premade Templates and Blocks
The ultimate feature of page builder plugin is the ability to create reusable template. However, this is not an easy task for new users to create templates on their own. In order to eliminate the hassle, both plugins offer premade templates.
- Elementor free allows limited premade blocks and templates
- You can get exclusive blocks and template library with Elementor pro version
- WPBakery also offers grid builder and premade templates
Customer Support
WPBakery offers a free support for 6 months and you can get additional support for a year by paying $22.13. Elementor offers one-year free support with an item purchase. You have the following ways to get your queries answered with both the plugins:
- Large knowledgebase articles and video tutorials
- Support through WordPress forum (Elementor free) and Codecanyon (WPBakery)
- Priority and community support for premium users
Final Words
After started writing this comparison, we felt the comparison should be made with Visual Composer Website Builder and Elementor Page Builder and with WPBakery Page Builder. However, WPBakery and Elementor are page builder plugins to make the comparison worth. Since we use both these plugin on different sites, we recommend Elementor especially if you are a beginner to WordPress.
Warning: Page builder plugins like WPBakery will create shortcodes for each element you use on your layout. This will be real problem to remove these shortcodes when you disable and no more want to use the plugin. Hence, use the page builder only for creating pages and not for all blog posts. Though plugins like Elementor do not add shortcodes, deactivating the plugin will still affect the page’s layout.
