If you’re in the beginning stages of building your WordPress website, you might be tempted to use something called a page builder. If you don’t have a developer’s background, you want to try to make it easy on yourself. After all, code is confusing, layouts are hard to plan, and understanding website design can feel like learning a new language.
Page builders might seem like the simple solution to your problems. Trust us, they’re not. Page builders are a quick temporary fix that won’t last. Page builders for WordPress are a bad idea. Read on, and we’ll tell you why.
What Are Page Builders and Why Are They Popular?
WordPress websites are really awesome, but can come with a steep learning curve, and potentially with a big price tag to have a custom site developed. Page builders for WordPress try to minimize that steep learning curve. They allow for drag and drop building, all while promising the ease of creating, editing and customizing the layout of your website without writing any code.
Sounds great on the surface, right? Well, beauty is only skin deep, and page builders can be awfully ugly on the inside, especially when it’s time to scale your business or refresh your website. Many business owners have received the bad news that the plans they had to “refresh” their website are impossibly costly and difficult to do with their page builder site.
Website owners often have to choose between living with a site they don’t like or completely rebuilding.
Several popular page builders that we see in use include: Divi, WP Bakery, Elementor, and Beaver Builder, among others. All of these have inherent problems, and WordPress sites using page builders end up costing people time and money, as well as causing loads of frustration for all involved.
Overly Complex
The sleek layouts and supposed ease of use of page builders quickly fades away when you start building your site. You’ll often find yourself faced with too many options and no idea where to use them. Each element of the page builder comes with multiple configuration options that have a steep learning curve. What seemed like a time saver will turn into hours of looking at templates and clicking on options to make your site do what you want it to do.
You’re Stuck With It
Once you start using page builders for WordPress, you’re stuck with them. They use their own code and you will not be able to revert to editing your site in WordPress. If you decide to switch to a new page builder you have to build your site from scratch again.
Bloat and Slow Speed
Page builders for WordPress slow down the back end and the front end of your website. All the widgets, options, plugins, scripts, etc. that come with the page builder really slow down your site. Imagine that you’re packing your car for a vacation, and you don’t know what you’ll need so you pack one of everything. That’s what a page builder is like. It has a ton of stuff, most of which you will never use. All the extra baggage slows down your site. (And Google doesn’t take kindly to slow sites… so it can hurt your SEO.)
What’s the solution?
Interview potential website developers and make sure they aren’t using a page builder to create your site. WordPress is the best platform there is. They have a drag and drop feature called Gutenberg. Make sure your developer builds using that instead—you’ll have the ease of drag and drop, but none of the technical debt you’ll accrue if you use a page builder.
Houndstooth Media Group can customize a theme for your WordPress site that does everything you want it to do. A professionally built site means less stress for you now and in the future. Check out our portfolio of beautiful custom websites.
Contact us today to learn how we can make the website of your dreams a reality.