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What is: Page Builder

In WordPress, page builders are plugins that let you create, edit, and customize your website layout without writing any code.

Page builder plugins add a new editor interface to your WordPress website to make customizing your page layout faster, easier, and more flexible.

They are designed to be easy to use, and often have drag and drop functionality and predesigned templates, layouts, and design elements. Page builders also typically let you preview the appearance of the final page as you edit.

What Is a Page Builder in WordPress?

Why Use a Page Builder Plugin for WordPress?

When starting a blog, many beginners find it difficult to customize their WordPress page layouts. Users who switch from Weebly to WordPress or Wix to WordPress often prefer to use a drag and drop website builder.

While a lot of premium WordPress themes come with different page layouts, many of them are hard to customize if you don’t know how to code.

For example, if you want to create a page with a different layout than normal, such as a landing page, then it would be difficult to do without using a drag and drop page builder.

Luckily, there are plenty of 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.

Many page builders include high-quality prebuilt page layouts for a wide range of projects and purposes. They often offer custom made templates for photographers, real estate agencies, medical offices, car dealerships, eCommerce and more.

What Are the Best Page Builder Plugins for WordPress?

You should look for a WordPress page builder with an intuitive, user-friendly interface and ready to use professionally designed templates. Each plugin has its own unique set of options.

There are many different WordPress page builder plugins in the market. We decided to compare and rank the top WordPress page builders to help you choose the right solution for your needs.

We tested each page builder for ease of use, flexibility and beautiful design and discovered that SeedProd, Beaver Builder and Divi are the top 3 choices.

SeedProd Page Builder

SeedProd is a premium drag and drop landing page builder plugin for WordPress. In our opinion, it is by far the best WordPress page builder in the market when it comes to speed and ease of use.

Beaver Builder best WordPress page builder plugin

Beaver Builder is another popular drag and drop page builder plugin. You can quickly familiarize yourself with its interface and get started with its built-in onboarding tour.

Divi Builder Drag and Drop WordPress Page Builder plugin

Divi is a drag and drop theme and WordPress page builder plugin. It is easy to use and comes with over 20 layouts and templates for different kinds of websites.

Visual Composer and Elementor Pro are also great alternative drag and drop WordPress page builders.

Visual Composer Website Builder comes with a simple drag and drop builder and professional templates. With the exception of SeedProd, Visual Composer is the only other plugin that allows you to edit all aspects of your landing page.

Elementor Pro is a live page builder plugin which means you get to see your changes live as you make them. Simply start by creating sections and select the number of columns for each section.

Do I Need a Page Builder if I Use the Block Editor?

WordPress has a new default block editor that uses drag and drop and block content elements for creating pages and posts. It looks a little similar to the WordPress page builders we covered above.

Gutenberg Blocks Most Used

It certainly has many benefits over the classic editor. But how does it compare to the top page builders? In its current form, it lacks many features.

For example, while it uses drag and drop to move blocks around, it won’t let you adjust their size, add blocks inside other blocks, or create complex layouts using columns and rows.

The block editor works well with your theme but doesn’t give you the option to override the theme’s style and settings. And it doesn’t give a true preview of how your page will look as you edit it.

Having that said, you could use a plugin like CSS Hero to add some page building features to the block editor.

You can learn more about the limitations of the block editor in our comparison of the differences between Gutenberg and WordPress page builders.

Do Page Builders Have any Disadvantages?

There are a few potential issues you should be aware of before choosing a page builder plugin.

First, some page builders increase the load time of a website because they need to load additional CSS and JS. Slow load times can result in poor visitor experience, increase bounce rate, and hurt your rankings in Google.

How Speed Affects Your Website

Second, some page builders may not work well with some themes or cause conflicts with other plugins. So, do a little research to be sure you choose one that doesn’t have any known compatibility issues with your theme and plugins.

Another potential problem is that there may be security issues if the plugin is not updated regularly. It’s important that you purchase a reputable page builder plugin that’s maintained and updated regularly.

Finally, the page builder plugin could possibly be abandoned by its developer, leaving you with no support. That’s another reason to purchase a well-established premium plugin that’s continually updated.

We hope this article helped you learn more about page builders in WordPress. You may also want to see our Additional Reading list below for related articles on useful WordPress tips, tricks, and ideas.

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Additional Reading

Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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