Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress. This plugin helps you create pages using a visual editor. The plugin is an all-in-one solution that lets you control every aspect of your website design in a single platform. The plugin is marketed as allowing people without a technical background to now design websites at a professional level.
Many positive tools can also have negative effects, in this text we will highlight a few that may be worth keeping in mind before installing Elementor. We recommend avoiding Elementor if you are interested in creating a professional and long-term website.
- Generates unnecessary code
The downside of this type of solution is that it creates more bloated and unnecessary code in the HTML part of the website’s pages. Quite often, themes and plugins already do this, so it just adds more weight to the website. It’s really a trade-off, ease of use for the exchange of page speed and quality.
- Elementor negatively impacts SEO
We all know that performance is an important factor in ranking high in organic searches, i.e. a fast website, and if you’re competing against fast websites with well-formatted code, you might struggle to climb the rankings. Even if your content is very good, it might miss out on other factors. Elementor leads to the user creating a lot of unnecessary code that is not always needed and that can also remain after editing blocks, etc.
- Previous updates have caused headaches for users
When the Elementor team rolled out some of the major updates, there have been some problems and some headaches for users. Even if you want to improve and optimize, it is important to be careful to test these beta features before they are launched to the public. Now that they have more than 5 million active installations, it is more important than ever to test, test and triple test before launching a major update.
- Customer Support
Many have complained about the slowness of support, which is probably due to the fact that previous versions have had significantly more bugs than planned.. Likewise, you need to have Elementor Pro to get better support. So if support is very important to you, you should probably think twice before installing Elementor on your WordPress website. - Slow loading time in the editor
Elementor has also been criticized for the tool’s slow loading times. However, there are some measures that can be taken to improve this, but it is still a stressful moment and there are other editing tools that are significantly faster to work with with shorter loading times.
What can you use instead of Elementor?
Elementor has previously been recommended by many, but now it is not really needed. Because WordPress launched its own block editor called Gutenberg in 2018. Every version of WordPress after 5.0 has included functions from the Gutenberg plugin, which together are called the WordPress Editor. Therefore, some people say that Elementor is “from the past” when there was no Frontend editor in WordPress.
What is Gutenberg?
Gutenberg is a plugin that is now automatically included in the editor in all WordPress versions after 5.0. Therefore, it is sometimes unnecessary to add additional block editors as it leads to more code that can affect the speed of the site. Gutenberg introduces a modular approach to modifying your entire site. You can edit individual content blocks on posts or pages, as well as add and adjust widgets. It is even possible to design headers, footers and navigation on your site with full support for site editing. Each piece of content in the editor, from a paragraph to an image gallery or a heading, is its own block. And just like physical blocks, WordPress blocks can be added, listed and rearranged, allowing users to create media-rich content and site layouts in a visual and intuitive way – and without workarounds such as shortcodes or custom HTML and PHP.
Provide it recommends
Although Elementor has a large user base, we recommend not using this plugin. Mainly because of the reasons mentioned, especially the negative aspects with SEO which is a deal breaker. We think Gutenberg is enough. If you want to know more about WordPress and Gutenberg, just shout : )