Why Elementor is Not a Professional Solution for Your Business

Imagine you’ve invested in a sleek new website, but instead of attracting customers, it’s driving them away faster than a pop-up ad. Your pages crawl, your fancy features glitch, and you’re seeing more 500 errors than sales. Sound familiar? If you’re using Elementor, you’re not alone. But here’s the thing – your website should be your hardest-working employee, not your biggest headache. Let’s explore why Elementor might be holding your business back and what you can do about it.

While Elementor has gained popularity as a website building tool, it often falls short when businesses need a truly professional-grade solution. Let’s dive into the technical reasons why Elementor might be holding your business back.

Contrast with Professional Solutions

Here’s where Elementor struggles compared to professional solutions:

Performance and Speed:

Elementor sites often suffer from bloated code and slow load times, negatively impacting user experience and SEO rankings. This is largely due to the way Elementor generates code, adding unnecessary divs and classes that increase the overall size of the HTML and CSS. Moreover, Elementor’s reliance on JavaScript for many of its features can lead to render-blocking scripts that slow down page load times.

In contrast, professional solutions prioritise speed and efficiency through optimised code structure and minimal HTTP requests. More advanced alternatives can be built with performance in mind from the ground up that results in faster load times, better Core Web Vitals scores, and ultimately, improved search engine rankings and user satisfaction.

Customisation and Scalability:

While Elementor offers pre-made templates, they can limit your ability to truly customise your site to match your unique brand identity and functional requirements. These templates often come with unnecessary bloat and can be restrictive when you need to implement custom features or layouts. Professional solutions, on the other hand, provide tailored designs built on scalable, modular frameworks that grow with your business.

More robust alternatives allow for greater flexibility in design and functionality, ensuring that your website can adapt to your evolving business needs. Whether you need to integrate complex e-commerce features, custom APIs, or unique interactive elements, a professionally developed website can accommodate these requirements without compromise. This scalability ensures that your website remains a valuable asset for your business in the long term, rather than a limiting factor in your growth.

Support and Maintenance:

With Elementor, you’re often left to fend for yourself when issues arise. While there’s a community forum and some documentation available, getting timely, personalised support can be challenging, especially for complex problems or conflicts with other plugins. Additionally, updates to Elementor or WordPress core can sometimes break your site’s layout or functionality, requiring time-consuming troubleshooting and fixes.

Professional solutions, however, include ongoing support, regular updates, and proactive maintenance to ensure optimal performance and security. When you work with a professional web development team, you have access to experts who are intimately familiar with your site’s architecture and can quickly resolve any issues that arise. They can also perform regular security audits, implement updates in a controlled manner, and continuously optimise your site’s performance. This level of support and maintenance not only saves you time and stress but also ensures that your website remains secure, up-to-date, and performing at its best.

Under the Hood: Elementor’s Technical Shortcomings

While Elementor might seem user-friendly on the surface, it’s hiding some serious technical flaws that can cripple your website’s performance. Let’s break down the nitty-gritty issues that make Elementor a less-than-ideal choice for businesses serious about their online presence:

1. Lack of Semantic Structure Elementor doesn’t include a basic section element, which is crucial for creating semantically correct HTML. This can negatively impact accessibility and SEO.
2. DOM Bloat Elementor’s use of ‘ghost wrappers’ significantly increases the DOM size. This leads to slower parsing times and can negatively impact Core Web Vitals scores, particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and First Input Delay (FID).
3. Incorrect Attribute Placement Elementor often adds classes to parent elements instead of the selected ones. This complicates the implementation of structured data and makes custom CSS more difficult to write and maintain.
4. Limited HTML Support The inability to use custom HTML tags in Elementor restricts developers from creating semantically rich content structures, which can impact both accessibility and SEO performance.
5. Inefficient Loop Functionality Elementor’s loop feature lacks advanced query capabilities and doesn’t preview dynamic content in the builder. This makes creating and managing dynamic content more time-consuming and error-prone.
6. Inflexible Styling Options Elementor’s insistence on applying padding and margins to all sides simultaneously goes against CSS best practices and can lead to unnecessary overrides and specificity issues.
7. Problematic Width Units Elementor’s preference for percentage widths can lead to layout inconsistencies across different viewport sizes. This necessitates additional CSS overrides to ensure responsive design integrity.
8. Poor Code Output Elementor generates excessively bloated HTML and CSS, often violating the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. This leads to larger file sizes and slower load times.
9. Limited Developer Tools Unlike professional development environments, Elementor lacks robust debugging tools, version control integration, and efficient workflows for team collaboration.
10. Performance Impact The cumulative effect of these issues often results in poor Core Web Vitals scores, particularly in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Professional Alternatives: A Step in the Right Direction

While Elementor falls short in many areas, it’s worth noting that not all page builders are created equal. There are more professional alternatives on the market that address many of Elementor’s shortcomings. These advanced builders offer a middle ground between the ease of use of traditional page builders and the performance of custom-coded solutions.

Improved Code Efficiency:

Unlike Elementor’s bloated code, these professional-grade builders prioritise clean, efficient code output. They generate significantly less bloat, resulting in faster load times and better Core Web Vitals scores. For instance, while an Elementor page might generate thousands of lines of CSS, a more optimised builder could achieve the same layout with just a fraction of that code.

Enhanced Design Flexibility:

Professional alternatives often provide more granular control over design elements. They offer a true ‘class-first’ approach, allowing developers to create reusable styles that can be applied across the site. This not only improves consistency but also makes large-scale changes much easier to implement. Additionally, these builders often support custom HTML tags and provide better control over semantic structure, addressing some of Elementor’s limitations in creating accessible, SEO-friendly markup.

Developer-Friendly Features:

Unlike Elementor, which can be restrictive for developers, more advanced page builders often include features that cater to both designers and developers. They might offer direct CSS editing capabilities, custom PHP functions integration, and better support for dynamic data and custom fields. This allows for more complex, custom functionality without sacrificing the ease of visual editing.

Stability and Updates:

Professional-grade builders typically offer more stability during updates. They often have better backwards compatibility and provide more control over the update process, reducing the risk of updates breaking your site’s layout or functionality.

While these advanced builders offer significant improvements over Elementor, it’s important to note that they still can’t match the performance, flexibility, and scalability of more advanced alternatives. However, for businesses looking for a middle ground between the simplicity of Elementor and the power of professional development, these professional alternatives can be a viable option.

Many agencies choose Elementor because it allows designers to handle development tasks, thanks to its limited learning curve. However, at Pixite, we believe your website should be crafted for optimal performance and user experience, not for the convenience of the agency building it.

Ready to Grow Together?

Don’t let an underperforming website hold your business back. There are more professional options available that can truly represent your brand and drive results.

At Pixite, we specialise in creating websites that leverage cutting-edge web technologies and best practices. We can help you transition from your existing Elementor site to a more robust, professional solution, or build you a high-performing website from the ground up.

Remember, your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. Make it count with a professional, high-performing solution that truly represents your brand and delivers results.

Ready to leave Elementor behind and embrace a truly professional web solution? Contact us today for a free consultation. Let’s grow together and create a website that puts your business at the forefront of digital excellence!