6 Best Drag and Drop WordPress Page Builders Compared (2019)
Looking for an easy way to build and customize your WordPress site? That’s where drag and drop WordPress page builder plugins come in handy.
WordPress page builders allow you to create, edit, and customize your website layout without writing any code. In this article, we will compare the 6 best drag and drop page builders for WordPress.
Why Use a Drag and Drop Page Builder for WordPress?
When starting a blog, many beginners find it difficult to customize their WordPress page layouts.
While a lot of premium WordPress themes come with different page layouts, most of them are extremely hard to customize for anyone who does not know code (HTML / CSS).
This is why users often ask us questions like: “how can we make WordPress drag and drop?” or “is there an easy drag and drop page builder for WordPress?”
When we talk with people who switch from Weebly to WordPress or from Wix to WordPress, their most common response is: “I wish WordPress had a drag and drop website builder”.
Well, there are several great drag and drop page builder plugins available for WordPress. They allow you to create completely custom website designs in WordPress without writing a single line of code.
Since there are so many different WordPress page builder plugins in the market, we decided to compare and rank the top WordPress page builders, so you can choose the right solution for your need.
Our criteria for comparing these WordPress page builders are: ease of use, flexibility, and the design output.
Having said that, let’s take a look at the best page builders for WordPress in the market.
1. Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is a premium drag and drop page builder plugin for WordPress. In our opinion, it is by far the best WordPress page builder in the market.
It is extremely fast and comes with a built in onboarding tour to help you quickly familiarize with their interface.
Beaver Builder comes with a live drag and drop interface. You get to see all your changes as you add them by simply dragging elements from the right sidebar and dropping them on your page. You can click on any element on a page to edit its properties.
There are modules that let you add almost everything you may want including sliders, carousel, backgrounds, content blocks, buttons, and more.
It also comes with over 30 finely designed templates for landing pages that makes it super-easy and super-fast to create stunning website layouts.
We find Beaver Builder to be very beginner friendly. Check out our tutorial on how to create custom WordPress layouts with Beaver Builder.
Wondering if it’s compatible with the new WordPress version? Yes, it is.
Beaver Builder has been updated well along the Gutenberg project. So, it works fine with your new Gutenberg editor.
Pricing: Starting from $99 for Unlimited Sites.
Our Grade: A+
Review: Beaver Builder is the easiest page builder option in the market. It comes with pre-made templates to help you get started. The ability to customize every little detail makes it the perfect solution for WordPress users.
2. Divi
Divi is a drag and drop theme and WordPress page builder plugin. It is extremely easy to use and comes with 20+ layouts/templates for different kind of websites.
Just like the Beaver Builder, the Divi Builder is a visual drag and drop page builder, a true WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get).
You can directly click on your page and start editing with the real-time preview of all changes. You don’t need to save and click preview to see your new design.
Divi comes with 46 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere in your layout. You can arrange them in 3 section types, 20 row types, and customize each element using its advanced design settings.
With Divi, you can create any type of custom page layout that you want within minutes. You can then save these Divi layouts for future use on your site. You can also export a layout from one Divi installation into another.
The Divi Builder plugin is the backbone of the Divi theme, yet it works well with any other WordPress theme.
Best of all, Divi has the best pricing out of all options in this. For a single price, you’ll get the Divi theme, the Divi page builder plugin, and all other Elegant Themes products.
This means you can use the Divi theme or install the Divi Builder plugin on any other theme.
Pricing: Starting from $89 per year
Our Grade: A
Review: Divi is a great Beaver Builder alternative. It has a powerful page builder with limitless design possibilities. Their large number of content modules allow you to create literally any type of website that you really want.
3. Visual Composer Website Builder
Visual Composer Website Builder is a user-friendly WordPress website editor that helps you create custom website layouts, fast.
It comes with a simple drag and drop builder, out of box content elements, professional templates, and a host of powerful features to make a website.
Similar to Beaver Builder and Divi, it also provides real frontend editing experience for designing a website. But there’s a lot more you can do with this plugin. Unlike other plugins in the list, Visual Composer Website Builder allows you to edit your logo, menus, headers, footers, sidebars, etc.
That’s why the team decides to call it a website builder, instead of just a page builder.
The plugin features powerful design options to customize the appearance of any element on your page. You have easy options to add stylish backgrounds including parallax, gradient, slideshow, carousel, zoom in/out, video, etc. It also comes with flexible rows and columns for creating grid layouts on your site.
Visual Composer works well with all WordPress themes. This allows you to switch your themes without losing custom layouts that you created with Visual Composer.
It also includes support for the new Gutenberg editor, Google Fonts, and Yoast SEO.
Visual Composer is designed for professionals, and it’s evident by their attention to details such as remembering your color choices, which allows you to easily use the same color palette for consistency throughout your design.
Pricing: $59 For One Site License
Our Grade: A
Review: Visual Composer is a great plugin for beginners to start a website. It provides powerful features for website making in a simple manner. Website editing is made super simple with the real frontend drag and drop editor.
4. Themify Builder
Themify is a popular WordPress theme shop that offer a built-in Themify builder with all of their WordPress themes. For other non-Themify WordPress themes, you can get the Themify Page Builder plugin.
This simple and highly intuitive page builder comes with several ready to use modules that you can add to your pages or posts. Many of these modules usually require you to install separate WordPress plugins.
The plugin includes 40+ pre-designed layouts for different industries like gym, restaurant, portfolio, music, photography as well as online shops.
You can import a layout with one click, change its content, and build an awesome landing page within minutes.
Themify Builder allows you to edit your pages from the admin area as well as from your live site. With live editing, you get to see exactly how your changes will appear on the site.
Apart from that, Themify Builder comes with ready-to-use layouts that you can quickly apply to your page.
Pricing: $39 For the Builder Addon Bundle (The core plugin is free)
Our Grade: B
Review: Themify Builder is a reliable page builder plugin for WordPress. While the builder comes with promising features, there is a learning curve that can leave a new user frustrated.
5. Elementor
Elementor is another powerful drag and drop WordPress page builder plugin.
It is a live page builder plugin which means you get to see your changes live as you edit it with Elementor. Simply start by creating sections and select the number of columns for each section.
You can then drag and drop widgets from the left panel to your section. Elementor comes with tons of widgets including most commonly used website elements.
From basic image and text widgets to advanced accordions, sliders, testimonials, icons, social media, tabs, etc. Each widget comes with its own settings.
Elementor will also let you add widgets created by other WordPress plugins.
Don’t want to build your own layout?
Elementor comes with many ready-to-use templates that you can easily insert into your pages. You can simply point and click to edit any item on the page, replace the content, and you’re done.
Pricing: Starting from $49 for single site license.
Our Grade: B
Review: Elementor is a popular page builder plugin for WordPress. It is fast, easy to use, and comes with tons of modules / templates.
The biggest thing that we don’t like about Elementor is that their license is very restrictive. If you’re a freelancer or agency looking to use Elementor on client websites, please know that their Pro version is not GPL.
You’re better off using Beaver Builder, Divi, or Visual Composer because they respect the WordPress standards and freedoms.
6. Page Builder by SiteOrigin
With more than one million active installs, Site Origin’s Page Builder is a popular free WordPress page builder on the market. One of the primary reason for its popularity is the price (free). It is available as a fully functional free plugin.
Site Origin Page Builder is a little complicated to use, and new users often struggle to get familiar with it. However we had to include in our list because of it’s popularity.
For components, Site Origin Page Builder allows you to use WordPress widgets. It comes with several widgets of its own, and you can download and install any widget.
See our list of the 25 most useful WordPress widgets because you can use all of them with this page builder.
It also comes with a history tool which allows you to switch back and forth to undo/redo changes that you made. This is a huge time saver, and it gives you a peace of mind knowing that you can revert and undo changes.
The SiteOrigin plugin and all its widgets are fully Gutenberg compatible. There’s also a new SiteOrigin layout block that you can use as a Gutenberg block.
Pricing: Free
Our Grade: C
Review: Site Origin Page Builder is a good free plugin with a drag-and-drop interface to create and customize layouts. Although the live editing is not comparable to other solutions mentioned in this comparison.
Final Thoughts: Best WordPress Page Builder Plugin
As we compared different drag and drop WordPress page builders, one thing became very clear. Beaver Builder and Divi are clearly the top choice.
Visual Composer is a close third option that offer a complete drag & drop WordPress page builder.
If you don’t mind spending a little bit money to get the best solution in the market along with guaranteed support, then go for any of these three, and you won’t regret it.
Do I still Need a Page Builder if I am Using the New WordPress Block Editor?
Recently we’re getting a lot of users asking us this question.
WordPress block editor also known as Gutenberg was officially launched as the new default WordPress editor. The new editor uses blocks which are content elements for creating pages and posts.
Superficially, the block editor looks similar to some of the WordPress page builders above.
Hence there’re hot discussions going on in WordPress about Gutenberg and page builders.
Is Gutenberg a page builder? Does the Gutenberg block editor replace the WordPress page builders? And, do I still need a page builder if I am using the new WordPress block editor?
Well, the answer to the first two questions is ‘No, not quite yet.’
And, Yes, you will need a page builder if you want an easy way to create completely custom WordPress designs.
Gutenberg in its current form is no match to the powerful features these “true” WordPress page builder plugins offer.
Having that said, you can use a plugin like CSS Hero with Gutenberg and probably get away without using a true page builder, but it entirely depends on your needs.
A lot of our readers love using CSS Hero for quick and easy website customization. Read our full CSS Hero review to see if it’s a suitable solution for your needs.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress drag and drop page builder plugins for your site. You may also want to see our comparison to find the best WordPress contact form plugins.
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