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Visual page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, Thrive and WPBakery have exploded in popularity over the past couple of years. Their drag-and-drop simplicity makes it easy for website owners and developers alike to create modern, sophisticated layouts without the need to learn any code. But there are some drawbacks to using page builders that you should understand before choosing an editor for your next website. In this post, we’ll point out some important things to know about page builders—and we’ll highlight an alternative for website owners who don’t want to learn to code OR to use page builders.
These days, the terms “page builders,” “visual editors,” “block editors,” and “WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors” are often used interchangeably to describe WordPress editors that show you the page layout right on screen, allowing you to drag and drop elements into place, re-size them, rearrange them, and add the colors and styles you want, all without any coding knowledge. And that’s the big pro behind these editors—the main reason for their popularity.
PRO: Advanced layouts, without any code
Today’s visual editors let users create page layouts in nearly any configuration they can imagine. They make it simple to add columns, forms, post archives, and advanced features like tabbed sections, social media counters, media players and more—all in responsive, mobile-friendly layouts. The vast numbers of options in these editors provide an appealing shortcut for people who want to take control of their website without learning the technologies behind the scenes—and that’s what fuels the popularity of these editors. But, while the power and simplicity touted by these editors are what appeal to non-coders, you should know that the editors come with a significant learning curve of their own. And that brings us to our first big con.
CON: There’s still a learning curve
You may not have to invest your time into learning code, but if you’re going to take advantage of all of your editor’s capabilities, you may be disappointed to find that you’re going to have to spend some time learning how to use it, or you may find it to be a very frustrating experience. Many website owners opt for visual editors, thinking they will be able to modify their own page content, themselves—only to end up hiring a developer to manage their website content anyway, because of the learning curve. And that defeats the very purpose of a content management system. So, before choosing a visual editor, know that you or someone on your staff must be willing to dedicate their time to learn about it.
Beyond that, in order to bring you all of these powerful capabilities, visual editors must include a whole bunch of technology, behind the scenes. That additional code gets loaded by end-users, whether or not it’s actually used in your website. And that brings us to another con…
CON: Code bloat can lead to reduced performance
The page builders provided by today’s themes and plugins can do just about anything, which means their codebase needs to accommodate just about everything. So even if you’re not using some of the advanced features, your pages inevitably include more complex code, which can increase download time for your users, while increasing the chance for errors or conflicts with other code in your site. As the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Research your editor ahead of time, to find the right tradeoff between features and performance. You can click here to compare the performance of some of the most popular page builders.
And that brings us to the last word of warning about visual editors. Even if you find the right balance between ease of use, features, and performance, you may spend some time creating some impressive page layouts for your website, only to learn…
CON: Your content may no longer be portable
When it comes to portability, not all editors are created equal. With some editors, once you’ve laid out your content, you’re “locked in” to that editor, and you can no longer freely change themes or migrate to a different editor without manually migrating your content. These editors use shortcodes and styling instructions that tell the theme how to display your layouts, and once you deactivate the plugin or change themes, all of that gobbledygook will simply be displayed on the front end. That means, if you don’t stay with the same editor forever, you’ll have to re-create all of your page layouts and manually re-add the content to your pages in a new editor. This post, which specifically addresses “shortcode lock-in,” shows you what your pages will look like if you switch editors. In their trials, they found that the only page builders that left behind 100% clean content were Elementor and Beaver Builder.
So that’s one big pro and a few cons that you should know about before making a decision. Obviously many people find that the power and convenience of these editors outweigh the drawbacks. But if you’re not sure page builders are right for you, and you still want control over your website content, there is another good alternative.
An Alternative: Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
Last but not least, we’ll mention Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is an excellent option for website owners who want to control their site content without learning to code, and without needing to learn the ins and outs of a page builder. A theme that uses ACF can make content management as simple as copying and pasting text, and selecting what photos to use, where. All the layout and styling is handled for you on the front-end. ACF layouts may be less flexible, but if you have established page layouts for your website, then the powers of a visual page builder are irrelevant to you anyway. If you don’t need to create flexible layouts on the fly, find an ACF-based theme or hire a developer to create a custom theme that displays your content exactly as you want it—and then your content changes can be managed in the simplest way possible, while keeping your code base slim, for better performance. In terms of portability, ACF is theme-agnostic. Your ACF content will probably take a bit of extra work to re-use in a different theme in the future, but it *can* be moved, so you won’t have to worry about editor lock-in, as you would with most visual page builders.
PixelPeople specializes in building custom WordPress websites for business, and our custom solutions can incorporate any of the page builder options above. If you have questions about page builders or WordPress in general, reach out to us—we’re always happy to help.
