If you’re a no coding freak just like me but a regular and avid digital creative, web designer, blogger, author, name it. You’ve probably thought of having an online presence. A blog where you can share your skills and some of your latest works.
The two challenges creatives and professionals face in there struggle to have an online presence are costs attached and zero knowledge in coding. Well, the good news is, that was then.
With the event of content management systems like WordPress, with total or zero knowledge to programming, you’re able to launch your personal or professional website with the use of page builders powered by content management systems like WordPress.
Personally, I am a no coder but I find myself creating, designing and managing websites from day today, this blog not being an exception. In the past 4-5 years, I have worked with a digital agency in Kampala – Uganda where one of my main roles is to create websites.
The one tool that has enabled me to create number of them (websites) has been WordPress. It is from that, that I wish to share in no particular order, the best WordPress page builders.
Page builders are extensions or plugins that you have to install into the WordPress platform and these enable you to do a number of customizations installed themes wouldn’t offer. With page builders, you’re able to create and publish pages, edit and publish blog posts, create side bars, theme headers, footers among others.
Here comes the list. I will try to keep it personal and in reference to the page builders I have used in the previous period, seen them grow in the user community, make updates and disrupt the theme development industry. Yes, today its possible to just build anything using a page builder and not install or get a premium theme.
1. Elementor
Elementor is one of the leading if not the best WordPress drag and drop page builder out there today. In just two years after it’s release, it has got ooverwhelmingreviews and making it to over one millions downloads.
I have been using Elementor for a year now and I have used it to build a number of websites including this blog. Elementor is built from ground up for speed, and you’ll notice how fast and responsive it is.
With Elementor, you get to see your page as you edit and design using the tool. It being known as a live page builder plugin, you can easily create templates, column sections and set up display preferences.
The Elementor widget directory has a ton of them and you can drag and drop widgets left, right and center.
With the ready to use templates, elements make your design life easy and seamless. You’re in position to simply add a template of your choice from the template library of which, each template, widget comes with its own settings.
If you decided to choose Elementor as your page builder plugin, you’ll be only limited by your imagination.
With the possibility of creating custom headers, footers, widgets and assigning display conditions to various elements, Elementor is not just a page builder, its a theme builder for WordPress.
Pricing: Elementor comes with a free version available in the WordPress plugin directory and a starter pack from $49 for a single site license.
2. The Divi Builder
You can create and save your own Divi layouts. You can also export a layout from one Divi installation into another. Divi also comes with tons of elements that you can drag and drop anywhere in your layout.
With a ton of elements, Divi is among the best WordPress drag and drop page builders. I have used Divi before and it makes it easy to save your layouts, export and import from other Divi installation.
Like Elementor, Divis is extremly easy to use and fast. It allows you to work with number of WordPress themes and enables you to implement shortcodes anywhere.
Pricing: Starting from $69 per year
3. Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder has stood a test of time. Being a premium WordPress drag and drop page builder plugin, a number of reviews mention it as the best page builder on the market after Elementor.
For beginners, Beaver builder is easy to use and fast. There are a number modules from basic to advanced and make you customize and own your design 100%.
With the many modues available for use, you’re able to see changes you make in the live edit and by dragging elements from side to side. By simply clicking on the module, you can edit its properties there and then.
Pricing: Starting from $99 for Unlimited Sites.
4. Themify Builder
Themify Builder is a live editing drag and drop WordPress page builder that enables you not only to create and publish pages but also allows you to edit pages live when published.
Little did I know about Themify Builder until I came to write this review. It is also a drag and drop WordPress page builder that comes with a stunning interface that helps you create any layout you can imagine with ease.
There are several already built layouts, elements and animations to use.
Even when you’re able to use this builder with other WordPress themes, it comes with a feature available for themify developed themes.
A number of addons are available for purchase to enhance this page builder easily and quickly.
Pricing: Starting at $39
5. Thrive Architect
Renamed after Thrive Content Builder, Thrive Architect drag and drop page builder is well know for use by affiliate marketers and bloggers. Its new interface has more similarities with Elementor page builder.
With Thrieve Archict, you are covered if your focus is on conversion and lead generation. The smart, clean and easy to use layouts make this a reality.
One of the interesting features is the Page Events option that lets you display popup light boxes based on triggers. You can also intergrate it with Thrive leads for for sitewide opt-ins.
Pricing Starts: $67
6. WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress (formerly Visual Composer)
This is one of the most popular drag and drop page builders in the WordPress community. Formerly know as Visual Composer, it has been used on a ton of websites.
WPBarkery has been tested over a time and if you’re one looking for page builder with lifetime updates on a single purchase, then look no further than this.
It works seamless when live editing both on frontend and backend making your job way easy and fast. It is also compatible with most of other plugins and themes. It also comes with a ton of already made templates and elements.
Pricing starts at: $45, No free version.
7. Page Builder by SiteOrigin
Like Elementor, this plugin has over a million installations and rated among the best page builders and one of the most popular. It’s well known for being freely available to use and fully functional.
Site Origin Page Builder is fairly easy to use and works with any standard compliant WordPress theme. For components, Site Origin Page Builder allows you to use WordPress widgets. It comes with several widgets of its own, and you can download and install any widget.
Just like the other page builders, Site Origin is way easy to use, compatible with other WordPress themes and plugins and comes with a revision tool enabling you to redo and undo changes which greatly eases your work flow.
Pricing: Free
8. BoldGrid
BoldGrid transforms your typical WordPress dashboard into an easy to use website builder. Even if you’re an absolute beginner to WordPress, BoldGrid lets you create a beautiful website like an expert.
It’s shipped with a pool of WordPress plugins that provide an enhanced WordPress experience with an efficient workflow.
Unlike other page builder plugins, the design workflow of BoldGrid is comprised of two major phases – inspiration and customization phases.
The inspiration phase allows you to explore different website designs and content styles that fit your industry. In this phase, powered by the inspiration plugin, you can explore different content, and themes that are tailored to your industry.
You can easily discover 200+ responsive BoldGrid themes and content for every industry which can be imported into your site. Every theme includes various page templates that allow you to add pre-populated pages with just a single click.
Pricing: $60
9. Brizy
Brizy has everything you need to get started designing without having to know any code. Everything is either a single click or drag away.
Brizy has just been launched this year April 2018 but comes in from a well known developer – ThemeFuse – and has quickly racked up 9,000 active installs.
Additionally, it plain just offers a unique approach to some parts of page building, which makes it an interesting offering.
Brizy is exclusively a frontend visual page builder. To build your page, you first have to add a block. You can use a blank block, or you can choose from the pre-built section blocks:
Brizy might be one of the newest page builder plugins on the market, but it’s developed by the team over at ThemeFuse, who have been creating WordPress themes for many years. They focus on making it as easy as possible to design pages for your website.
Pricing: $231 One time + updates.
10. Visual Page Builder from MotoPress
Visual Page Builder from MotoPress doesn’t have the same exposure as some of the more popular page builders on this list. It combines with the WordPress editor to create a fully visual frontend editing experience. Not to mention, the plugin is WordPress multisite compatible if you have a network of sites.
The standard plugin offers several pre-made themes and a multilingual interface to change your site text for everyone to understand. Even if you’re only interested in the full Woo-commerce support or the included Google Web Fonts, the Visual Page Builder from MotoPress is worth a look.
Pricing: $29
11. Live Composer
Live Composer is another free, open-source WordPress page builder, so you can navigate to the site and download the plugin by typing in your email address and name.
It offers a frontend drag and drop interface so you don’t need to know anything about coding. The editor makes a responsive design and it comes with over 40 content modules for quick and easy development.
Live Composer has two themes for you to get started with your design, and it provides a specific WooCommerce integration that you can buy for $69. This delivers full customization for everything from product pages to cart pages.
Live Composer plugin is a basic, yet intuitive, builder for all skill levels. I would like to see a more comprehensive list of modules with the free version, but you can take advantage of the extensions if needed.
Pricing: free
12. Oxygen
The Oxygen app is a little different than your average WordPress page builder since it works through a separate sandbox module–that’s still connected to WordPress–but it’s actually what I would consider separate.
One aspect I really enjoy about Oxygen is that it cuts out most of the main tabs and toolbars you would typically see from WordPress and focuses only on the page builder options like buttons for making containers, paragraphs, and text blocks.
The point of Oxygen is to make sites within minutes, and the prebuilt components allow you to generate your own designs in a rapid fashion. HTML elements are also included in case you’d like to build your site in a more traditional manner.
Oxygen has an import/export feature to quickly move designs from one site to another. In addition, you can use Oxygen alongside other page builders like Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, and Elementor. This is a strong advantage if you find certain features in each WordPress page builder that you like.
Pricing: $99
13. Page Builder Sandwich
Page Builder Sandwich mainly works as a free plugin, but there is the option to upgrade to Page Builder Premium, which gets you over 1,700 more vector icons, a customized version of Google Maps, hundreds of shortcodes and plugins, along with the ability to add your own CSS.
I like Page Builder sandwich for beginners since it relies primarily on a frontend visual page builder. Therefore, you don’t have to think about any backend designing, removing the need to know anything about code.
The drag and drop elements are pretty basic, with simple text boxes and images. You can customize colors and sizes with your mouse and see all of your changes rendered in real-time.
Although there isn’t a backend drag and drop editor, Page Builder Sandwich integrates nicely with the default WordPress content editor. Therefore, you can jump back to that editor to adjust images or text, yet the code from the visual editor won’t get messed up.
This WordPress page builder is a somewhat watered down version of options like Divi and Elementor, but it works wonders if you’d like to clear out the clutter. For example, the 10 full page templates are nice as a starting point, but other page builders have larger libraries.
Pricing: free
14. WP Page Builder
This is a sleek and simple design of this page builder will help you understand it faster, even if you never used any page builder before. The toolbar is very easy to understand making the use of rows and columns even easier. The add-ons are created to perform a specific set of tasks and are able to execute them with perfection.
The library section allows you to save any row consisting of a set of add-ons at any time of your work. This feature lets you reuse your work which results in saving a great deal of time.
The predesigned blocks and layouts of WP Page Builder are pretty useful elements. Just by taking advantage of the simple drag and drop feature you can create a single page with one click. These blocks are very rich in contents and offer a great design.
The layout packs are a great tool to create a ready-made page in seconds. The packs contain one or more pages making it possible to use just one page from a bundle.
Pricing: free
15. GeneratePress with Sections
GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme, but we like to consider it as a simplistic page builder solution, perfect for beginner webmasters, bloggers, and developers who want an uncomplicated, rapid visual builder.
In addition, you can add the handy premium Sections add-on to incorporate drag and drop functionality to your GeneratePress interface.
Let’s start with the theme itself. GeneratePress is a simple, lightweight, and free WordPress theme with rave reviews and a beautiful layout for landing pages, blogs, business websites, and sales pages.
It’s hard to figure out a market where you couldn’t utilize the GeneratePress theme since it’s so modern and clean. Needless to say, if you’re tired of clunky, slow themes, it’s worth checking out GeneratePress.
Most of the editing is done through the WordPress live editor when working with the free theme, but you gain access to all modules (add-ons) including Sections, when you opt for the premium version of the theme.
Pricing: Free
