Beaver Builder vs Elementor: Update and Recommendations

A look at the current trends and stats and recommendations for site builders.

The full article can be found here:

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[AthloneH]

Some good points David and possibly troubling video for BB users, of which I am a dedicated user. I have to always ask though, what does Elementor have that Beaver Builder doesn't, I'm referring to core functionality? And how do you know Elementor is stable, do you use it for client sites?

[ConnorMarc]

This was good David, if I was even THINKING about going w/BB, I'm not now. I wasn't.

[DavidWaumsley]

This always comes down to what you need from your plugins. Personaly can't keep up with the BB developments, but granted they are subtle. I really have to follow the change logs and some of the more developer based discussion to understand them. I am very excited about something from Justin Busa I am testing at the moment.

I think "maintenance mode" is sometimes the right choice. History usually determines that though. Actually, Genesis (or rather Brian Gardner) did explicitly say they were not adding to the core. They were keeping as is until something appeared for it to make sense to change.

BB similarly set out to not keep adding just for the sake of popularity. Henry Ford kinda pointed out the problem of acting on popular requests with his quote "“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” I think VC had already hit 2 million installs before BB was out. People were coming from that page builder and got annoyed it did not do the same. It took a year for BB to add the most popular request (columns within columns). They wanted to do it right. That's how they are.

BB was built as their own agency needed an alternative to the much more popular but increasingly bloated Visual Composer or Divi. It is the reason I chose them. With the way I run my business I just can't have too additions that I do not want or have covered already.

Certainly I know BB are always exploring new ways. They move cautiously with what they have, but seem always to be thinking out of the box to solve the common technical debt issue most growing software has to deal with. The problem is not much of this sees the light of day and real innovation or paradigm shifts don't come often or to a schedule.

BB are good at is listening to people who will give them some insights (and argument for change) if it's based on freelancer/agencies experience. "Can we have this because another page builder has it" type arguments don't really work. That really is best for companies wanting to be everything to all.

Definitely, I agree if you want more modules, templates, tutorials and a wider community buzz Elementor is the one. They have (like BB) also stayed to true to what that set out to do.

I am surprised the lite version of BB as stayed that high in numbers as Elementor appeared. It was designed to be a tester or (with their new found love of GPL) something developers could expand on. They were always aiming at working Freelancers and Agencies who earned enough to pay for their tools. Really there is no comparison with Elementor here as you need the free version to run Elementor Pro and the opposite is true for BB where you have to remove the lite version to run the Pro. BB seem to have over a million active sites running.

Anyway it's always interesting to see the different perceptions out there. I don't really like war analogies though as it creates divisions that really don't need to be. There is room for difference.

[KayakhacksFishing]

Thank you. I need to start over and move from Drupal to WordPress on a few websites. You clarified which framework I should use.

[IvanMercadoLorberg]

Thx David for the comparison between these two contenders. However, from you point of view Which One would you recommend in order to CREATE FUNNELS in WordPress? Thx :)

[taneshasmart]

Elementor has some features I like...but there are far too many bugs. I like the stability of Beaver Builder better...especially when it comes to the mobile edits. Elementor needs major updates to keep simple edits like making a website "mobile friendly" from being so convoluted. I have had a terrible experience with that part. Also, if you are building a website with Elementor, you may be unpleasantly surprised to find that your final website may be great on a desktop, tablet and mobile phone...but when you go to a lap top, it is completely distorted. This is VERY aggravating. Elementor also causes my websites to run slower.

[vpsa]

Disclaimer: kind of hate speech.


I am not a coder and do not a bit of it. I believe many of the page builder users are like me or perhaps little better than me. When I want to build my own website, I saw DIVI and instantly liked it (perhaps due to bells and whistles what old school developers called as). the design is really elegant and really beautiful. but when I was looking for the ways to customize, people I hired had difficulty and from many youtube videos (Adam's wpcrafter and so on) found that shortcodes are a bad thing for switching to another in future. So finally I decided to go for elementor and purchased premium. When I installed on my local server I got a white screen of death. I read blogs and found that I have to increase the memory allocation for something. Those things go above my head. So I started it on my live server. It worked. I had a very basic question about (deleting a module) and posted how to do it in ELE groups on FB. most of the comments are "did you not know how to do it?" and kind of insulting. DIVI and Elementor interfaces are totally different and I was completely new to the webspace. This is the moment I decided to switch to beaver builder suit. So in a couple of months, I purchased pro licences for 3 major builders.


Experience with BB is bliss. everything is organized such that a new person can understand where to find and BB community is decent. now almost a year passed. I was keeping an eye on Elementor as it is hard to ignore.


To me, many people in the BB community seems like patriots. I am a user (kind of end-user since I own my website and did not hire a developer) LIKE MANY, want many features for less amount of money. You may call it greedy nature I disagree. I can prove everyone has that nature but it is not the point I want to discuss here. Do I want to use all of them? certainly not. But why I want them? to feel secure. Yes, like money in real life, feature in page builder features is money. I may want to build a new feature today, let say popup. As a BB suit owner, I had to pull my notes and pen start writing what are the options available, price, features I need in them, compatibility, integrations, stability, regular updates and so on. on top of that, in the first place, I have to check how many options available that are integrated into BB suit. With elemetor, the amount of work to be done and money to spend is close to 0. Yes, you may argue that BB suit has features that are not present in ELE. the situation is the same for an ele user too. but how many extra features ele and BB offer?. you knew the answer. Certainly, some are unique to BB i do not deny that. But at the same time, you must not pretend that what ele offers is bells and whistles. What you may call bells and whistles is necessary for a user. so it is relative.


With 3 m+ installations imagine how much money they gained and how much they can spend on building new features. As the customer base declining or not growing much, how long BB can sustain competition. If you pretend money is not important I can not help. look at G+ and Orkut, washed away in time without traces with FB competition. Orkut has way better user privacy compared to FB. But ultimately the winner is the one which has more user base.


More money = more development (features + stability) = more customers, is a cycle. I like BB, but without evolving, it will shrink or perish. I am not against or pro to any page builder. I am just a user who thinks about what I gain. If there is another page builder that provide more features (and as stable as ele/bb) I would switch to that.