When I first discovered WPBakery Page Builder and its simplicity I was blown away!
I was creating better and better-looking websites, with amazing effects and out-of-the-box design, which was a challenge even for some designer pros.
Yeah…but that was in 2017.
The sad reality is that WP Bakery fell behind and was overtaken by its competitors. If you read this in 2024, and you thinking of using (or you already use) WP Bakery Page builder for your website, you will be better off switching to Elementor or even better a Gutenberg blocks theme.
WPBakery Page Builder changed the way regular users create websites in WordPress. It comes packed with most of the themes on Theme Forest today and it’s probably the most well-recognized page builder in the game.
With the following add-ons and extensions, you can basically create anything you want.
What’s the WPBakery Page Builder downside?
In the last couple of years, everyone’s focus turned from the amazing parallax sections and animations to performance, speed, and SEO friendliness.
Visual builders are great for providing easy ways for the regular user to create custom pages, but this comes with a price – Speed.
WPBakery Page Builder and other similar page builders increase the page code size, adding lots of shortcodes, scripts, and styles.
It is now a content-driven game, everything is in the words. Мinimalist themes and lightweight code displaced the visual effects and fireworks.
Another big factor for the WPBakery Page Builder holdback was the growing number of mobile users. Smaller screens and mobile data connection require another approach to UI, which has no space for fancy sections and animated video backgrounds.
At the end of the day, results are what everyone seeks, not visual pleasure.
What’s the difference between a standard HTML page, and one built with WPBakery Page Builder?
Usually, a page designed with the Page Builder has additional code and requests, which result in slower load time compared to a clean HTML page.
These additional scripts add up to your page load time and drastically slow down your website.
You can reduce the “damage” by choosing a fast hosting plan or optimizing your website speed.
Check this article on how to use a free plugin like Asset Clean up to unload unnecessary scripts and improve your pages load time!
WPBakery Page Builder vs. Elementor Comparison Tests
Test #1 – Hepta Theme
For the purpose of this test, I tested two absolutely identical websites – One made with the WPBakery Page Builder and one with Elementor.
Both versions of the theme are absolutely identical, they use the same images with the same size, the only difference is the building blocks of the page builder.
Test information:
- Test tool used – tools.pingdom.com, Google page speed insights
- Server location – United Kingdom/ London
- Date of the test – 06/10/21
- Host- Siteground shared
- WordPress Theme – Hepta Creative Agency demo 03. Creative AgencyHeptaHepta
WP Bakery PB
Elementor
We ran the test in Pingdom and Google PI, three times and removed the best and the worst.
First, let’s be honest, the speed results are not impressive on both sides. This can be due to the lack of optimizations, caching, server settings, and so on, used for these demo showcase sites.
There is a preloader on the WPBakery version which might add to the slower load time.
However, the Google Page Insight scores are pretty similar for the desktop version of the two pages.
Test #2 xStore Theme
xStore is one of the best-selling WooCommerce themes in the last few years.
The designers from 8Theme have done an amazing job to create versatile options when it comes to choosing a page builder.
We will test two absolutely identical demo versions, the only difference will be that one is built with WPBakery Page Builder and the other with Elementor.
- Test tool used – tools.pingdom.com, Google page speed insights
- Server location – Germany/ Frankfurt
- Date of the test – 08/10/21
- Host- Hetzner
- WordPress Theme – xStore Corporate Demo
WP Bakery PB
Elementor
We ran the test in Pingdom and Google PI, three times and removed the best and the worst.
Bottom Line
WPBakery Page Builder is a great plugin. Yes, it slows down the website but that’s the price you pay for all these amazing things you can create with it.
As you can see there are no huge differences compared to Elementor when it comes to page speed.
You can make the process of building simple pages much faster and easier with WPBakery Page Builder, with no significant difference from the Gutenberg editor.
You should know your website’s purpose and style. For some blogs, the use of a page builder might be unnecessary and they will be better only with the theme’s default layouts. For others, page builders could be very useful.
What’s the deal with the Visual Composer name change to WPBakery Page Builder?
WP Bakery Page Builder is an exclusive product to the Envato market with a lifetime license. The developers changed the name when they decided to launch a brand new product – the Visual Composer Website Builder. Because of the higher development costs of the new plugin, a lifetime license would not be cost-effective. On the other side, Envato’s rules didn’t allow a product with the same name to be sold outside the marketplace.
So they changed the original Visual Composer, sold it on the Envato marketplace to WPBakery Page Builder, and called their brand new product – Visual Composer Website Builder.
Today the two have nothing in common, except they come from the same authors (and use very similar logos).
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