Gutenberg vs. Elementor: An Ultimate WordPress Builder Showdown

Want to build your WordPress site and wondering which editor to use – Elementor or Gutenberg? 

Gutenberg – native WordPress editor – allows you to create complex designs, exclusively with plugins like Otter Blocks. However, Elementor offers greater flexibility in designing.   

Further, both Elementor and Gutenberg can be used on your site, instead of either/or choice.

Now that sounds like a tough decision to make, doesn’t it?

To help you make a prudent decision, this Elementor vs Gutenberg blog shares insight on the key differentiators. Let’s begin!  

What is Elementor?

Elementor is a page builder plugin for creating functional and visually attractive WordPress sites. It is primarily used for formatting website pages and blog posts, but remodelling the existing WordPress website theme can also be done.

It offers a “no code” feature hence anybody can easily design the website with available “drag and drop” editor and templates. Today, 5+ million users actively use Elementor to create websites that meet their business goals. It offers two versions – free and paid.     

Reasons to use Elementor plugin:

• No coding is required to create the website.
• Drag-and-drop features allow web designers to easily preview their website before launching it.
• Design elements like carousels can be easily added to the website to make it visually appealing. 
• Web designers can select from pre-loaded templates to streamline and progress their projects.
• It offers several widgets, and hence the website can be easily customized.

Pro Tip: Elementor offers several pre-built content widgets, hence if you intend to build a form, slider, or buttons, simply select from the widget library.

What is Gutenberg?

Gutenberg – traditional block editor for WordPress websites. Introduced in 2018, today it’s the default editor for WordPress. This editor offers several ‘blocks’ like headings, text, images, and video. Users can select from the pre-loaded block and add it to their website. Further, the “drag and drop” feature allows designers to add/remove/edit elements on the website, without the knowledge of coding.  

Reasons to use the Gutenberg plugin:

• It offers an intuitive interface and blocks for editors to easily organize the webpages.   
• Several formatting features and blocks are built for effortless designing and organizing of the WordPress website. 
• Since, it’s the default editor for WordPress, hence free to use. Alternatively, you can disable it and use other available options.  
• You can use pre-built templates and patterns for effortless editing. 
• This WordPress plugin seamlessly works with other themes and plugins.
• This mobile-friendly and responsive editor offers a better success rate for your website.

Pro Tip: With Gutenberg’s block system, you eliminate the need to use shortcodes to embed content.

Key Features

A quick comparison: Elementor vs Gutenberg 

Detailed Comparison

Now that you know the differences between Elementor and Gutenberg, let’s evaluate these two in detail. 

Performance

Website performance on your mind? Gutenberg editor is a better choice as it’s the default WordPress editor that offers performance-friendly features that make your website faster to load and respond.   

However, Elementor’s advanced style and design options can win over the performance issues.

Ease of Use

Both Elementor and Gutenberg are built for novice users with an intuitive interface. However, Elementor provides more widgets and settings that elongate the learning curve. 

Further, a separate plugin must be installed to use Elementor. However, Gutenberg is the default WordPress editor, hence it is compatible with all elements/extensions of WordPress.   

Elementor offers an active theme, with page builder features built-in. On the contrary, Gutenberg has a pre-installed theme, and its block editor enables you to easily edit web pages.

Support

Gutenberg is supported by a massive WordPress community, including the core developers. However, Elementor with its emerging community of developers and users needs to work harder to provide better support.    

Speed

Both offer equivalent speed frequency. However, page speed metrics depend on microsecond differences for site performance ranking. Hence, according to the numerous speed benchmarking tests conducted by the WordPress community, Gutenberg is slightly faster than Elementor.

SEO

Page builders that use shortcodes often have slower loading time which impacts SEO. Shortcodes or condensed code pieces expand when a web page loads for maximum functionality. It consumes time that several impacts the page loading speed. 

Both Elementor and Gutenberg understand this challenge and thus have no option for shortcodes to maintain SEO performance. 

Price

Gutenberg is the default editor for WordPress and hence it’s free to use. In contrast, Elementor offers free and paid versions.

Sometimes, Elementor’s free version is powerful enough to achieve your goals. However, you need to upgrade to a paid version, if you require more widgets and templates to succeed in your objectives.   

The company offers 4 plans ranging from $59 to $399, annually. Based on your requirements, you can select from the following plans.

Compatibility

Gutenberg being the default editor of WordPress, is highly compatible with all WordPress widgets, themes, and plugins.

On the contrary, Elementor is compatible with WordPress themes if the website operates on the WordPress 5.9 version/greater or PHP 7.4 version/greater. However, if you intend to work on older WordPress versions, the website will be exposed to bugs and security issues.  

However, the community has reported that a few WordPress plugins and themes are incompatible with Elementor.

Responsiveness

Both Elementor and Gutenberg are designed to build highly responsive and mobile-friendly WordPress websites. However, if you opt for Gutenberg, you must select themes that offer these two features; otherwise, you will be struggling with this default content editor.     

Gutenberg vs. Elementor: FAQs

Girish Panchal

Technical Architect

A Technical Architect, proficient in WordPress, Drupal, Laravel, and DevOps tasks, crafts robust IT solutions with a blend of expertise and versatility in web development and infrastructure management.

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