Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie.

I'm a web designer, founder, and mentor dedicated to empowering website professionals in their careers.

In this episode, I'm risking some backlash. And it's a topic that’s sure to get a lot of my peers riled up.

Drawing from years of experience with one specific tool, I'm explaining why Elementor needs to get in the bin, why its initial appeal sucks people in, and the frustrations I've faced with its licensing, code quality, frequent updates, and compatibility issues.

I said what I said.

And now you can hear it.

Links referenced in this episode:

• linkedin.com/in/hollycchristie
• websitesmadesimple.co.uk

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Crocoblocks
• Elementor
• Divi
• Neve

Timestamped summary

00:00 "Boost Your Design: Ditch Elementor"

06:34 "Client Needs and Software Flexibility"

08:32 Elementor Updates: Challenges and Limitations

11:06 Elementor Usage Insights on LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

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Under the hood, code's a load of junk.

Plugin after plugin after plugin.

You've got Crocoblocks and different kind of ones all on there.

You think, oh, I just want to change this heading size in this one place, and suddenly it's changed.

Your heading size is everywhere.

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.

It's just not that good.

Streamlined.

Sol.

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 am 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 Elementor as their WordPress software, page builder framework, whatever you want to call it.

And I've seen the rise of popularity.

I've been around since the days before Elementor was a thing.

So trust me, I do have some inside scoop on this one.

If you're a website designer who is using Elementor, I'm not here to tell you that you're 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 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 than Elementor.

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 lifetime subscriptions for it.

So for $249, Elementor offered that people could buy it and license as many websites as they liked with it forevermore.

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.

Divi 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 software because I run a MacBook, Macs are run off open source, I use WordPress, they run off Open Source.

But there is Open Source software that then 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 ChatGPT 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're 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.

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 labeller because I was really busy.

He said, please could I build it in Elementor.

We have had no end of trouble with this website.

It's 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 and maintenance, for taking it over, saying, I cannot work with this.

Usually the website's been built in Elementor.

It's not necessarily being built very well.

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 a 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.

Every single thing that we ever needed to do on this website, we had to find a workaround for it because Elemental just didn't like the theme.

The theme didn't like it.

And I find this a lot within website design.

I find a lot that people have used a really crappy framework for it.

There's also the thing with Elementor 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 size is everywhere.

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 ideal client as to how often they are changing their software 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're 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.

But I would say it's 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 some software.

Yeah, I sometimes work in Divi.

I sometimes get websites come in from Divi 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, 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 Divi, 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.

Something that really gets me with Elementor, going back to about the code not being very good and the code being AI generated.

And I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I am the world's best coder, because I'm not.

But I do work with some, some really incredible coders who really kind of grind into Elementor on like the open source level.

And they repeatedly come back to me and they say, under the hood, code's a 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 Elementor 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're 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're not going to be on top of it every couple of days because it then makes the contracts really kind of not cost effective, they're not time efficient and it's just a real headache all round.

I say the other thing with Elementor is, unless you're going through all the pro versions and the layered plugins and stuff like that, it's actually quite limited.

And some of the things that I see that are recommended for using with it or kind of come installed with it are really old bits of kit right now, like, you know, things like contact form 7 and things when there are much better kind of bits of stuff, software out there as well.

And I'm 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're building a website that's quite limited because it's using Elementor and then you're layering plugin after plugin after plugin, you've got crocoblocks and different kind of ones all on there.

It's A going to bloat the website, it's B going to make the website 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, but it's just not that good.

Streamlined solution.

I'm guessing this episode might give me a bit of backlash and a bit of stick.

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 HollycChristie 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.

But there's a big influx of newer designers who have come into the world of website design by using and learning Elementor.

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're one of them and you feel like 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.

The idea is that they kind of boost your skills, enhance your skills.

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 next episode soon.