Is Elementor Pro Worth It? Elementor Free vs Pro

While it’s no secret that we’re fans of using the Elementor page builder on many of our WordPress builds, we do have plenty of sites that aren’t using it. So is Elementor Pro worth it and is it right for your project?

Before you read on, we already mentioned it once, but we are an affiliate marketer for Elementor. If you decide to purchase Elementor after reading through our article and click through to their official website via one of our links, we’ll earn a commission for your purchase. We also use Elementor for some of our clients – this isn’t a sales article, it’s an honest comparison between the free and paid versions of Elementor for WordPress.

Elementor Free vs Pro: What You Get For Free

I’m going to start by talking about the free version of Elementor simply because the Pro version runs alongside it and before we talk about what the Pro version can do, we need to quickly go over what comes with the free version first.

The Free Elementor WordPress plugin can be downloaded right from the WordPress.org plugin repository.

Think of the free version of Elementor as the core plugin because ultimately, the Pro version is an add-on. Even if you have Elementor Pro, you’ll still need the free version of Elementor installed & activated.

In the free version of Elementor, you get the core drag & drop editor, 100+ templates, & 30 different widgets. Elementor turns your WordPress site into a canvas that you can do pretty much anything with. In the video below, made by the actual developers, you can see how quick the interface works. There are some nuances to using Elementor but it really is as easy as they make it look once you get used to where each menu item is.

One really great feature with Elementor is the ability to edit different sizes in order to make your site truly responsive. Each page has features that can easily be modified based on screen size.

Elementor also comes with access to over 300 pre-designed blocks that you can drop into any page in to build your perfect layout.

What You Get with Elementor Pro

As with most plugins that come with free and paid flavors, Elementor packs a ton of great stuff into their paid Pro version.

Header & Footer Builder

Elementor Pro includes the ability to override your theme’s default header & footer with ones you create using the Elementor drag & drop builder. This feature was one that drove my initial purchasing decision for Elementor Pro last year and it’s still my #1 reason for buying it.

Elementor Theme Builder

While the free version of Elementor is limited to single pages, Elementor Pro allows you to build templates for your entire WordPress site, effectively allowing you to create your own theme.

You can build templates for single posts, single pages, archives, search pages, 404 pages, and even WooCommerce. To provide even more flexibility you can create multiple templates of the same type and apply them to different situations. For example you could have one post template that applies to just one specific category of posts on your site. Almost no WordPress theme does that. The same is true for headers, footers, and any other type of template you create.

Advanced Custom Fields Integration

Elementor offers one of the few platforms that allow you to integrate custom fields into your templates without having to write code. Using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, you can create custom fields in posts or pages and use Elementor to call those fields into your template. The possibilities are truly endless.

More Templates & Entire Site Templates

Along with the Pro version of Elementor, you get access to their library of professionally designed templates. It works just like the free templates, except there are a lot more of them to choose from, and they look great.

More Widgets

With Elementor Pro, you get a bunch more widgets including these:

All of these widgets look amazing, and if you really look at them you can see each widget has the potential to eliminate other plugins you might already have installed on your site.

Contact Forms

Do you have a separate contact form plugin on your website? With Elementor Pro, you can get rid of it because they have their own incredibly flexible contact form widget. It’s got all the great features you’d expect from a contact form including honeypots and Google reCAPTCHA integration for spam control.

Integrations

Whether it’s MailChimp, HubSpot, or a host of other marketing tools, Elementor Pro has you covered. It also has built-in integrations for popular social networks and other 3rd party plugins. See the full list of Elementor Pro Integrations here.

Popup Builder

They’re the bane of the Internet, but undeniably amazing marketing tools. While we don’t use popups to advertise on our site, you may have noticed our cookie consent slide in at the bottom of this site when first got here? That’s built with the Elementor Pro popup builder. If you’re currently using another plugin, you can wipe it out once you get Elementor.

So Is Elementor Pro Worth It?

Elementor Pro (as of the most recent update of this article) costs just $49/year for a single site license. You can bump that up to $199/year for 25 sites. If you run an agency, or plan to, $499/year will get you enough licenses for 100 sites and $999/year will get you a whopping 1000 sites.

For all the development effort that goes into Elementor Pro and the number of other plugins it can replace on your site, the price is a tremendous bargain – but only if you need the additional features. Single premium themes regularly cost more than a single site license for Elementor and it works with just about any theme.

But is Elementor Pro worth it for your specific project? Well, every site has a different set of needs and we’re not going to tell you it’s a slam dunk purchase for every WordPress site. Here are some situations in which you might benefit from purchasing Elementor Pro:

• You’re paying for a premium theme for a feature Elementor Pro can replace such as customizable headers and footers.
• You’re paying for a premium plugin for a feature Elementor Pro can replace such as contact forms or popups.
• You’re building a site for a client where their desired layout isn’t available with existing themes.
• You’re currently building custom layouts with code and want to speed up your workflow.
• You’re trying to lower the number of plugins on a site and remove redundant features.

Elementor Pro Discount

Fortunately, Elementor offers regular discounts on Elementor Professional that you can take advantage of. In addition, they generally discount the autorenewals each year as well (at least as of the most recent update of this article). All of the current discounts are listed on their website (they don’t use hidden coupon codes) so any visit to their updated pricing page will show you the best deals currently available.

There are lots of other reasons you might want to buy Elementor Pro and make it part of your web design arsenal. Ultimately it is up to you and there have been numerous discussions about it online. The best part is that you can try the free version first and make use of its variety of features before you make your purchasing decision.