To help you decide which of these premium drag and drop page builders is right for you, let’s compare what Elementor Pro and Beaver Builder offer to WordPress website owners.
Elementor is a visual drag-and-drop page builder made for professional WordPress designers. It includes advanced design options, like custom positions, padding, margins, and global settings for colors and typographies. Beaver Builder is more developer-friendly. This front-end drag-and-drop page builder has clean code, a stable platform, and well-documented PHP, CSS, and JS options.
Elementor Pro
Elementor hit the WordPress plugin scene in 2016 and has since blown up in popularity, becoming the most popular page builder plugin by a wide margin. Elementor is active on over five million WordPress sites, which is the highest honor a plugin can receive from WordPress. This means that it’s not just the most popular “page builder plugin” but one of the most popular WordPress plugins, period.
The Elementor plugin is available for free at WordPress.org. Elementor Pro is an add-on that extends the plugin with a ton of new features. In this post, we will focus on Elementor Pro.
People are attracted to Elementor for its many advanced features and design options. The developers regularly add new features, so users are constantly getting new benefits for their website.
Elementor Pro’s advanced design options make it especially popular with web designers. With it’s inclusion of eye-catching visual effects and unique positioning options, it helps you build absolutely gorgeous websites.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder, a plugin launched in April 2014, offers an easy-to-use interface and premium features that make creating professional content simple. The plugin has proved to be very popular with developers, too, which is why Beaver Builder is held in such high regard and why they have over half a million customers.
Beaver Builder is a WordPress plugin that lets you customize your website using a front-end visual editor. The free version of the plugin is available (more on this later), but it is the premium version that everyone is familiar with.
I used to think that Beaver Builder’s interface looked outdated, but that changed when they released Beaver Builder 2.0 Hoover in 2017. The updated interface looks warm and modern.
From day one, Beaver Builder has had a user-friendly interface that is fast to load with hardly any learning curve. This is something that other drag and drop page builders have tried to match.
This website provides 35 unique content widgets, which they categorize into ten basic modules, nine media modules, seven action modules, four layout modules, two info modules, and three posts modules. You can also use default and third-party WordPress widgets.
You can save any layout you make and apply it to other pages. There are also dozens of premade landing and content pages to choose from.
The higher-priced licenses for Beaver Builder include a framework called Beaver Builder Theme.
Interface
Both Elementor and Beaver Builder are visual drag-and-drop page builders, but they have different interfaces. The interface is how you interact with the plugin, so you want to make sure it is easy to use. To help you decide which plugin is better, let’s compare their interfaces.
Elementor Interface
When you open the Elementor interface, you’ll see a live preview of your design on the right and a sidebar on the left. This sidebar is where you do pretty much everything, including adding new widgets, editing the settings for widgets, columns, and sections, and editing page-level settings.
You just need to drag a widget from the sidebar to the page to add content.
To edit a widget or section, click on it to open its settings in the sidebar.
Full-width previews can be seen by clicking the toggle option on the sidebar.
Elementor has a few other interface options in addition to the sidebar.
This plugin offers full right-click support, which Beaver Builder doesn’t currently offer. If you right-click on widgets or sections, you’ll be able to access useful options including being able to copy and paste all of the content or just the styles.
Elementor also comes with a feature called the Navigator, which allows you to see the overall layout of your design (known as the “DOM tree” in technical terms). You can add your own custom labels to sections, which can help you keep track of your work.
The last thing you get with this feature is the ability to quickly jump to other designs or Elementor settings. This can come in handy if you’re using Elementor to design your whole website.
Beaver Builder Interface
Beaver Builder’s interface is one of its strongest points. It has two big selling propositions:
- It’s very fast and glitch-free, which is very important if you’re going to be working in it a lot.
- It’s very customizable. You can choose from multiple interface layouts, which lets you customize it to match your workflows.
When you first launch the Beaver Builder interface, you’ll see a toolbar at the top with a full-screen preview of your design.
More modules and templates can be added by clicking the plus icon to expand the related list, and then dragging the desired items into the active page.
edit a row, column, or module’s settings, you can click on it to open a popup. The popup is fully resizable and you can move it to any position.
The interface for Beaver Builder is more flexible than that of Elementor Pro, something you may find valuable.
Design Options
Elementor Pro provides its users with a vast selection of design choices, something that is seen as an upside to using the plugin. In comparison to Beaver Builder (as well as many other page builder plugins), Elementor Pro gives its users more opportunities to personalize their designs. A more in-depth look at each plugin’s design choices is provided below.
Elementor Design Options
Elementor allows you to individually customize sections, columns, and widgets through three tabs of design options. The first two tabs offer basic settings like typography and colors, while the Advanced tab provides access to more complex settings.
Where Elementor Pro goes beyond Beaver Builder is that you also get access to some unique options including the following:
- Motion Effects – add cool scroll effects to create more immersive, interactive designs.
- Custom positioning – use absolute or relative positioning for pixel-perfect positioning control on your designs.
- Element-level CSS – you can add custom CSS directly to specific widgets, rather than just the entire page (though you can do that, too).
Elementor Pro also provides a sitewide design system that allows you to configure default styles for your entire website. This is really useful if you are using Elementor Pro to build your website’s theme.
Beaver Builder Design Options
Beaver Builder fails to include design options that are available with Elementor Pro. For example, Beaver Builder doesn’t offer motion effects or custom positioning.
There are design options that can be applied to individual rows, columns, and modules. These are typically divided into three tabs.
Beaver Builder does not allow you to add custom CSS to individual elements, but you can easily add custom CSS to the entire page.
Responsive Design
As an increasing number of internet users are now browsing and making purchases using mobile devices, it has become essential for websites to be responsive. In other words, they should be able to adapt to and work well on smaller screens. Let’s take a look at how different page builders can help you create a responsive website.
Elementor Pro Responsive Design
Elementor Pro’s designs are automatically responsive, so they look great on any device.
Elementor Pro provides responsive design options to give you more control.
You can easily see how your design will look on different devices by using responsive previews.
Then, you can also:
- Customize design settings based on device, e.g. using a different font size based on a user’s device.
- Hide certain elements based on a user’s device.
As of Elementor 3.4, you can also change the width at which your site will change to match different screen sizes.
Beaver Builder Responsive Design
The designs you create with Beaver Builder are responsive by default, like those created with Elementor Pro.
To see how your designs look on different devices, you can use responsive previews.
You also get the same design customization options:
- You can customize some style details based on a user’s device, such as font size.
- You can hide certain elements on different devices.
Beaver Builder gives you the ability to change the dimensions of your breakpoints to match your specific needs.
Using Elementor Pro
Once you’ve activated Elementor, you’ll see an “Edit with Elementor” link in your post and page lists. You can directly jump to the live editor by clicking on this link.
If you want to edit a post or page using Elementor, simply click on the “Edit with Elementor” button. If you’re using the WordPress block editor, you’ll see the button at the top of each page.
When you’re using the WordPress classic editor, the “Edit with Elementor” button appears above the visual editor.
The Elementor interface has all options down the left side of the page. You can move sections and widgets around by clicking on the main content area.
When looking for content widgets in Elementor, they are referred to as elements. Although it may be confusing, the search bar at the top of the panel says “Search Widget”. All elements are displayed in two columns.
The topmost section contains essential features such as text, headings, images, videos, and maps. The next section displays all professional features, followed by sections for general features and WordPress widgets. The sheer number of features available means that you need to scroll through the page to see them all.
You can add content to your page by clicking on a content element and dragging it onto the page. The left-hand side panel will then change to display the settings for that element, which are divided into three sections: Content, Style, and Advanced.
You’re able to change every aspect of a content element, including the layout, styling, colors, and more. Plus, with Elementor’s visual editor, you can see any changes you make in real-time.
The Elementor logo is at the top of the panel, with a button to the left and right.
The button on the left opens a settings box with options to change the website’s settings, theme, and user preferences.
The button on the right will take you back to the main panel where all content elements are shown.
There are a lot of options that you can change in the site settings area. This includes things like the colors and fonts, the way things are laid out, and other design details.
Even though Elementor’s interface is not as straightforward as Beaver Builder’s, you will still be able to create lovely professional layouts once you get the hang of it.
Using Beaver Builder
If you want to edit something using Beaver Builder, you have to do it on the front-end of your website. To access Beaver Builder, go to the post or page list pages and click on the “Beaver Builder” link.
If you create a new blog post or page, the WordPress block editor will be used by default. However, you will see an option to convert it to Beaver Builder.
The following text can be converted to be edited with Beaver Builder using the conversion tool: “To launch the Beaver Builder interface, go to the block editor settings list and select the option to launch Beaver Builder. With the Beaver Builder interface, you can edit your content easily and effectively.”
If you are logged in and browsing your website, you will see an option to edit your layout using Beaver Builder at the top of each page.
I have tested dozens of WordPress page builders, and Beaver Builder is the one that always loads layouts, boxes, and settings the quickest. The Beaver Builder interface is very easy to navigate and everything loads fast.
The page builder has a toolbar at the top of the page.
The note on the left-hand side shows you what post or page you are currently editing. On the right-hand side, you will see a plus sign (+) and a button that says “Done.” If you click the “Done” button, it will bring up buttons that say “Discard Changes,” “Save Draft,” “Publish Page,” or “Cancel.”
Pressing the plus icon loads the main page construction panel.
The default view shows standard content modules, but you can switch to display WordPress widgets or modules that have been saved previously (keep in mind that modules, elements, and widgets are all the same thing).
The Basic, Media, Actions, Layout, Info, and Posts content modules are all easily accessible.
In essence, if you work on WordPress by yourself and are only looking for a tool for your personal websites, Elementor Pro will likely be more affordable. However, if you construct client websites for a career, Beaver Builder will be more budget-friendly.
Furthermore, Beaver Builder has a 40% renewal discount, while Elementor Pro does not. Therefore, Beaver Builder will be cheaper in subsequent years, while Elementor Pro will not change in price.
Now that you are aware of the differences, you should be able to choose the tool that is best for you and your budget!
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