WordPress Page Builders: The Complete Guide 2020 Style
How To Find The Best WordPress Page Builder
To the new WordPress user, it can be confusing to begin designing a website because of the limited design options in stock WordPress. It can be easy to discount WordPress as a not as good as other options going only off the basic install. That’s where page builders come in. Page builders are plugins that add intuitive design tools to your website to allow you to create pages and content the way you want them to look without having to hire a developer or use CSS.
Default Gutenberg Builder
WordPress comes with the Gutenberg block editor which debuted in v5.0. (Prior versions only included a rich text editor and shortcodes.) The block editor includes many common “blocks” that are included in other website builders and WordPress page builders. The available blocks include everything from media players and embeds to formating options such as custom HTML and tables. The default WordPress editor is perfect for creating blog posts (what I use) and if you’re new to building websites plus it’s free and preinstalled in WordPress.
Gutenberg has come along way since it’s initial release and is now more than capable of creating a great website.
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Elegant Themes’ Divi Builder
The next option we are going to discuss is the Divi theme and page builder. Divi is a highly versatile page and theme builder that allows you to customize virtually every part of your site. Divi features a fast and easy visual drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to create pages while viewing them the same way your viewers will see them. I use Divi for all my sites because it allows me to do nearly anything I can imagine.
For churches, Divi includes pre-built layout templates designed to get you started building your church site. Having dedicated church presets really helps you to get started quickly and skip all the hard and boring parts of building a page. Many church plugins and tools also integrate with Divi which is a huge plus. If you use Divi for your church or want to learn more about Divi I suggest joining the Divi for Churches Facebook Group.
Divi currently costs $89/year or $249 one-time however they frequently run promotions and sales. That includes unlimited site, updates, support, and hundreds of preset designs to get you started.
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Elementor Builder
Elementor, like Divi, features a visual editor that allows you to build your site by seeing what your users see, however, unlike Divi it relies on a sidebar for all controls which makes previewing designs a little more difficult. For more advanced building blocks Elementor relies on 3rd party add-ons which, depending on the ones you need, could add up in price.
One standout feature of Elementor is Envato Element’s plugin that provides access to hundreds of layouts through an Envato Elements subscription. This plugin also allows you to bring in stock photo’s from Envato’s extensive stock photo library.
Elementor currently costs $49/year for a single site or $200/year for unlimited* sites. Unfortunately, they do not offer a lifetime price which makes the long term cost of ownership much higher than say Divi. It’s worth noting that there is a free version of Elementor but it’s practically useless for creating live sites.
*1000
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Beaver Builder
Beaver is much older and not as user friendly or feature-packed as some of the other options available but has been around for a while.
If you use Beaver and Series Engine (a popular sermon plugin) you may want to check out this layout template from WP for Church.
Beaver currently costs $99-$399/year and offers renewals at a discounted rate. Unfortunately, they do not offer a lifetime price which makes the long term cost of ownership much higher than say Divi.
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Recap
In this post we compared 4 different page builder options for you church: Gutenberg, Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder. All have their strengths and weaknesses, but at the end of the day, can all be used to create an amazing church site. If you need any help deciding which theme is best for your church let me know in the comments!
Cover Image: @Mehaniq via Twenty20
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