Stop using Elementor for building websites!

When we start out as website designers and developers we usually have a tech stack that we cut our teeth on. Some of us move on from that as we get more experienced. Others stick with the same trusty software that’s worked for them so far.

That is, until it stops working…..

If you’ve been relying solely on this software in your website design business, it’s time to make some changes.

Listen to find out more….

In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about Elementor. Love it or hate it. You’re gonna get the inside scoop on it here.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple. I am Holly Christie. I am a website designer, a founder, a mentor to website designers, and I’m here to help you have the best website design career that you can have.

So today I feel like I might get a little bit lynched for this one because there are a lot of website designers out there who are using Element or as their WordPress software, page builder framework, whatever you want to call it, and it’s, I’ve seen the rise of popularity. I’ve been around since the days before.

Elementor were was a thing. So trust me, I do have some inside scoop on this one. So. If you’re a website designer who is using Elementor, I’m not here to tell you that you are doing it wrong because there are so many different components to website design, as you’ll know, you know, with the SEO, with the way you handle clients, with the way your contracts are, um, set up, all that sort of thing.

So it’s not to say that you’re doing it wrong, but it is to say that you could be using a lot better software. Then element or, and I wanted to tackle some of the things that irritate me the most about this particular software. And the first thing I’m going to talk about is licensing because. A lot of reasons that people use Elementor is they joined in the very, very early days, and most people who are launching new software, they will launch a lifetime subscription to it.

So for $249, Elementor offered that people could. Buy it and license as many websites as they liked with it forever evermore. And so a lot of developers jumped on, they bought that license, and the more that they used Elementor, the more they got to know it and the more they thought, yep, this is quick.

This is easy. It’s cheap, it’s cost effective. This is going to be the path that I go down. That’s great. Divvy does the same with licensing. I know that when Bricks launched, they did the same as well, but I think there’s also that catch 22 with it because it means you get sucked into that software. You end up knowing that software so well that you then feel that you can’t really work in any other software as quickly.

So it means that it’s not as cost effective or time efficient for you to do that. The next thing that really bothers me with Elementor is actually the code isn’t very good. Elementor is built on top of open source software. Now, I am not going to sit here and slate open source, soft, uh, open source software because yeah, I run a MacBook Max, a runoff open source.

I use WordPress, their runoff open source, but there is open source software that then gets, goes on to be developed really well. And there’s open source software that isn’t developed quite so well, and I would say that Elementor falls into this camp. A lot of the code there is AI generated, and if you’ve used AI generated code, like you’ve put something into chat GPT, and you’ve said, can you write me the code for this?

You will know that what looks good. I want to say on paper, but we are completely in the digital world here. But you know, humor me, what looks good on paper isn’t necessarily good in practice. And that is one of the issues that I have with Elementor. And all you have to do is have a rogue bit of code and it can throw out the rest of the website.

And I believe it’s. Because of this, which is why Elementor has so many updates all of the time. I have one website in my list that is built using Elementor. It was when I was using a white labeler ’cause I was really busy. He said, please, could I build it in Elementor? We have had no end of trouble with this website.

But it is only the one that I’ve got right now. I’ve worked on a lot of Elementor websites. I’ve had a lot of people bring their websites into me for hosting maintenance, for taking it over, saying I cannot work with this. And usually the website’s been built in Elementor. It’s not never. Not necessarily being built very well.

And one of the other issues with it as well is you can apply the Elementor plugin to pretty much any framework and not all themes are created equal. I mean, I had a website that I brought in for a client. She had been judged at Fortune for it. It was built using the Neve theme and the. Elementor page builder, and I know they’re marketed as compatible.

They really, really weren’t. And every single thing that we ever needed to do on this website, we had to find a workaround for it because Elementor just didn’t like the theme. The theme didn’t like it. And you know, the client didn’t really want to go to the expense of rebuilding. And I find this a lot within website design.

I find a lot that people have used, uh. Really crappy frame, uh, framework for it. There’s also the thing with elements or changing things on a global level, so it’s like really hard sometimes to drill down into. You think, oh, I just want to change this heading size in this one place and suddenly it’s changed your heading place sizes everywhere, and that’s not very.

Friendly for the client. You know, I’m all about clients being able to manage their websites themselves, about them having a website that they love, but they also feel that they are able, I won’t say empowered, but I know that people hate the word empowered, so feel that they are able to then be able to go on and update and make changes.

And it will also depend on your audience as to your audience, your ideal client as to how often they are changing. Um. They’re changing their software, so, or pages, if you’re working with coaches or something like that, they’re likely to be reshaping and reworking their offers a lot. If you are building a website for a trades person, they’re more likely to be a little bit more one and done with it.

And so you can kind of get away with them not changing the website quite so often. Um, but I would say. It is not massively intuitive software and I don’t think any software is massively intuitive and I appreciate that. It’s probably easier to teach than software. Uh, some software and yeah, I sometimes work in divvy.

I sometimes get websites come in from Divvy and I think, oh gosh, trying to teach a client this while it seems easy, and it was the leading software quite a few years ago. And so people did learn it. It feels like there is a lot of steps with that software, whereas I get that with Elementor. There aren’t as many steps with it, but it doesn’t mean that it should then go on to be something that you choose because of that, because in the same way that clients did manage to learn divvy, they will learn to manage more complicated software or you know, software that has more options or just looks a little bit different with the right teaching as well.

So. Something that really gets me with Elementor or going back to about the code not being very good and the code being AI generated. And I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that I am the world’s best coder because I’m not. Um, but I do work with some really incredible coders, uh, who really kind of grind into Elementor, um, on like the open source level.

And they repeatedly come back to me and they say, under the hood. Codes are load of junk. And I think that’s really important because I do believe it’s one of the reasons that every couple of days elements are releasing updates because they’re having to fix these AI codes, they’re having to patch things, and every time you need to update a website or there’s technical update there, it means that that website’s not secure.

And if you are just handing clients over. They’re not going to be managing their updates every couple of days. And even if you have website maintenance and hosting contracts, you are not going to be on top of it every couple of days because it then makes the, um, the contracts really kind of not cost effective.

They’re not time efficient and it’s just a real headache all rounds. I would say the other thing with Elementor is, unless you’re going through all the pro versions and the layered plugins and stuff like that is actually. Look quite limited and some of the things that I see that are recommended for using with it or kind of come instilled with it are really old bits of kit right now.

Like, you know, things like contact form seven and things when they’re much better. Much better kind of bits of software out there as well. And I am all about having very streamlined websites. I mean, I don’t believe in totally coding in a website because I want something that a client can update and they can adapt and yeah, if they’re paying a fortune for a website as well, they shouldn’t be looking at rebuilding it every year.

They should be looking at rebuilds kind of every three to four years. And in that time they need to be able to. Update it themselves. So I definitely think that they should have that level of control, and I do think that page builders are a good way to give them that control. But if you are building a website that’s quite limited because it’s using Elementor, and then you are layering plugin after plugin after plugin, you’ve got, uh, you know, Rocco blocks and you know, different kind of ones all on there.

It’s a going to bloat to the website. It’s b going to make the website more vulnerable. Because it means that, you know, there’s more things to update, there’s more things to go wrong, there’s more things to break on there. Um, but it’s just not that. Good streamlined solution. And my final reason that I don’t think you should be using Elementor, and I don’t normally get political on here, but it is an Israeli owned company as well.

And you know, wherever you stand with that, I think sometimes it’s easier just to sit in the more neutral territories of things as well. So I am guessing this episode might give me. A bit of backlash and a bit of stick, but I’m gonna push through and put it out there anyway. And I would love to hear your thoughts around using Elementor.

I have had some chats with some people on LinkedIn, and you can find me on LinkedIn at Holly c Christie. And you can see where developers are chatting on my threads, where I’m chatting on other people’s threads. And I think the. General consensus. There is a lot of coders aren’t using Elementor.

A couple are saying, oh yeah, it’s kind of quite quick to use as a framework, but we just code into it. Um, but there’s. A big influx of newer designers who have come into the world of website design by using and learning element or, but because they’ve done it that way, there are some gaps in their knowledge around SEO around framework and that sort of thing.

If you are one of them and you feel like I’m, I’m good with the software, but my knowledge isn’t so great. You can come look me up. Come find me At websitesmadesimple.co.uk. I have some courses, especially for designers. They’re all low cost as well. They’re just there. The idea is that they kind of boost your skills, enhance your skills, and they will help plug those gaps where you feel not quite as confident.

That’s all for today. Thanks so much for listening, and I will be back with you in the next episode soon.