Divi is a drag and drop page builder. It doesn’t require any coding or programming knowledge and it can be used to build simple websites, as well as more complex sites.
However, it is more complicated than a simple page builder needs to be. You can also find a lot of bloat in Divi-designed sites, which slows page load speeds down and can result in ordinary website performance.
Fortunately, Divi isn’t the only page builder out there. Below are ten alternative WordPress page builders that you can use to develop a site, rather than relying on the Divi platform.
Best Divi Alternatives
1. Elementor
Price: Free – $199
Elementor is affordable for use on a single site, and the page builder, which has approximately one million installations on WordPress websites, offers drag-and-drop editing.
Inline editing means that you see the exact layout and design that website visitors will see, and it updates as you do, minimizing the chance of odd transcription and publication errors.
The interface has a single, static sidebar design. This isn’t as dynamic as Divi’s floating buttons that pop in and out of existence when needed. It is more uniform and consistent, though, and it makes it easier to remember where everything is when you want to repeat a task.
There are a dozen different layout styles as well as more than 300 Elementor templates that you can use and modify to your own end. More than 80 types of content elements can be added.
Incorporate headlines, content blocks, images, and other standard content to create your overall theme. Add icons, carousels, and accordions to further enhance the look. Use spacers and dividers to ensure the finish is optimal and displays perfectly.
Site design requires a lot of optimization and an ongoing series of tweaks and changes. As well as a full revision history that allows you to see the changes you made, Elementor also lets you quickly revert to a previous iteration of your website.
Other features include eCommerce widgets, integration of apps like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign, and the capability to edit footers, headers, and nav menus, as well as the main content sections.
There is a free Elementor plan, which does offer decent functions, but for anything more than a very simple site, you will want one of the Elementor Pro plans: Basic for a single site, Business for three sites, or Unlimited for any number of sites.
The Basic Elementor plan permits its use on a single site and if you only have one site, it is a good price.
However, it starts to get more expensive if you have multiple sites. A portfolio of more than three sites means that you will be paying for the Unlimited Plan, which is at the top end of the scale.
Unlike most Elementor alternatives, it is worth the money. It has comprehensive layout options, a wealth of additional and third-party plugins, and a massive community of content creators producing add-ins as well as videos and other tutorials.
Also Read: Best Sliders For Elementor
2. Beaver
Price: $99 – $399
Beaver is another popular entry in the WordPress page builder category. It purports to offer the same kind of functionality and boasts greater ease of use.
In reality, it is more expensive and although its lack of features makes it simpler to use, it may not offer the templates, themes, and design options that you require.
The company’s page builder plugin will work with your existing website, in most cases, so that you can wrest control of your page design from theme authors.
It has dozens of templates, which is less than both Elementor and Divi. It also has fewer content elements, at just 31, but the somewhat limited features and portfolio of Beaver Builder do help keep it very simple.
In fact, Beaver is easier to use than either of its main competitors.
It doesn’t offer in-line editing, so you may find occasions where you need to hit publish, update your site to check results, and then head back to the editor to make any last-minute alterations or optimization.
It has the fixed and stable sidebar menu layout of Elementor, rather than the floating button style of Divi. Some people will prefer this, others would rather have floating buttons. It’s just a matter of personal preference.
Where Beaver is lacking is in the limited range of dynamic elements. There is no audio player or portfolio display. There are no social follow icons, no login section, and you can’t easily incorporate Facebook comments.
You can mess with the code and plugins to install features like these, but it takes a lot more effort and you run the risk of causing untold damage to your page design, especially considering you could just opt for a different page builder.
Beaver is best suited to sites with static pages that require minimal functionality. If you want greater customization or more dynamic website features, you should consider either of its main competitors.
All plans allow use on multiple websites, but if you want all of the multisite functionality and page building features, you will need to pay for at least the Pro plan.
Interesting Comparison: Beaver Builder Vs Avada
Beaver Builder helps you create beautiful pages in Wordpress, that too in quick time. It's SEO friendly, compatible with most plugins and easy to use. Try it today!
3. Thrive
Price: $67 – $147
Thrive compares favourably to Divi in many ways. It has more than 100 mobile-friendly website templates and it can be used to build anything from homepages to landing pages and sales pages.
It has a dedicated table builder, too, which highlights its preferred use for conversion pages. It is likely to be most popular with people looking to develop a raft of sales pages for their site. It will also be popular with affiliate site owners.
To support its use for sales and lead generation pages, Thrive includes:
- Customizable buttons to improve CTA.
- Testimonials to share positive customer experiences.
- A countdown timer, promoting a sense of urgency that has been proven to help increase conversions on certain types of products.
- Customizable lead generation forms to make sales or harvest user and subscriber data.
All of this can be done without having to have any previous experience of HTML, CSS, or any coding or programming knowledge.
Thrive Optimize is a feature that sets it apart as a sales page builder. It is a split testing dashboard. Using Optimize, you can determine which of two or more versions of a page performs better.
Have you written two pages of sales copy and want to know which has the better conversion? This is where A/B Split Testing comes in and, with Thrive, it doesn’t have to be confusing or prohibitively expensive.
All sites should be conducting split testing, but it isn’t always practical and it is rarely easy.
In terms of pure numbers, Thrive has almost 300 custom homepage templates to choose from. It does have fewer elements than the likes of Divi, but the elements that it offers are good quality.
Membership fees are reasonable, too, and you only have to pay for the more expensive packages if you have a lot of websites in your portfolio.
Thrive is your best option among its competitors, especially if you’re into making a lot of landing pages and sales pages.
It is a competitive price and the split testing element along with the landing page and home page templates, make it a good value for the money.
4. SiteOrigin Page Builder
Price: $29 – $99
SiteOrigin’s Page Builder is primarily a back-end editor, although it does have a lightweight front-end editor, too.
The back-end editor offers you greater control and allows for the dragging and dropping of content elements until you get the design and finish that you want.
You will also see a live preview, but you will need to save your work and refresh the site to see the changes live and ensure that nothing untoward has happened between editing and publication.
The live preview is very basic. It doesn’t offer drag and drop, so you can view the page on one side of the screen but will have to make changes on the other side.
Page Builder does not offer the same level of design customization as Divi. With Divi, you can edit sections and columns and it enables you to edit every individual element.
SiteOrigin works with columns and rows, and it allows the reshaping and resizing of both, but it does not allow you to make changes to individual columns.
With a portfolio of 26 elements, SiteOrigin has some good-quality, complementary elements that can be added to a website.
This includes elements like Google Maps, which is a useful feature for a local business or shop, and features like carousels and sliders.
With a little extra digging, you will also be able to add features like price tables, which is another great addition for local businesses and service providers.
You can incorporate hero images and an image grid, video player, and customer testimonials, among other options.
One area where Page Builder excels when compared to Divi is in the adding of custom CSS. Divi allows CSS to be added to individual elements, but SiteOrigin enables you to add your style attributes to individual rows or specific widgets.
If you do have CSS knowledge, this can prove an effective way of creating exactly the design you want. It gives you near-total control.
Prices for SiteOrigin are reasonable, although you do pay more if you want to use the software on a portfolio consisting of multiple sites.
Check Out: Beaver Builder Vs Elementor
5. Themify
Price: Free – $69
The Themify Builder comes with most Themify themes. It is a point-and-click editor with minimal backend and frontend interfaces.
If you are looking for a quick launch for your site, use the one-click demo installer, change the basic details to that of your site, and publish. It won’t be perfect, but it will be quick and relatively effective.
The builder includes 42 themes, all of which can be customized using the editor. There are 11 plugins and 30 add-ons, allowing for the customization of your site.
The builder has a flexible grid system, offers responsive design, and it includes features such as parallax scrolling. Addons include a ton of animator styles and they allow the expansion of your site to include features like Google Maps.
The Post Type Builder lets users create new post types, beyond the very basic page and post options that are part of WordPress.
For instance, if you’re setting up a local portal and intend to include restaurant reviews, you can create a customized restaurant review post type.
Whenever you want to add a critique of a local restaurant, you can use this custom post type, ensuring that you include all relevant information and that the posts are uniform, even across multiple authors and publishers on your site.
Themify is limited compared to Divi, but it effectively comes bundled with Themify themes. The Builder PlugIn is free but the Addon Bundle does cost a little extra for some expansive features while BuilderPro offers more features and everything in the Addon Bundle for a competitively low fee.
Explore how Themify performs against Elementor.
6. Motopress
Price: Free – $249
Motopress is a drag and drop editor with front-end editing features. Modules are added via a panel on the left while the menu appears at the top of the page.
Choose from more than 30 modules to customize the layout of the page and add widgets, menus, and incorporate WordPress widgets that you have already installed.
It does load quickly and the front-end editor is easy to use, but it is limited in its functionality and it does not offer the same range of features as Divi.
Motopress does include a Booking plugin. This enables you to set your site up to show hotel or other information, take bookings, and offer vacancy and booking details directly via your WordPress website.
Paying for the full booking package also includes an autoresponder email series and email templates, payment system, and checkout fields. It is one of several powerful template collections, and its appearance can be modified using the Motopress builder software.
You will also find several templates and themes built by Motopress for use with Elementor, and the company makes other plugins.
The Getwid plugin, for example, is a plugin for use with the Gutenberg editor and is a collection of more than 40 blocks to customize the appearance of a Gutenberg-built website.
Motopress is best when combined with another editor or builder, such as the Gutenberg editor or Elementor, but if they offer templates and plugins for your website style or business type, you could access powerful and beneficial tools to build out your site.
Also Read: Elementor Vs Thrive Architect
7. Brizy
Price: $49 – $299
Brizy is quite new but poses stiff competition to established players like Elementor and others. It offers two versions: a WordPress plugin that you install yourself and use on an existing site, and a cloud version that lets you build a site template on their servers before uploading it to your domain.
The interface is similar to that of Divi with collapsing menus and buttons that move out of the way when not in use. Some people will like this but others will prefer the more static design that software like Elementor offers.
Like other builders, Brizy offers a range of design assets to accompany its page builder. Layout packs are templates that you can add and then customize to your requirements.
There are several dozen of these available. There are also page blocks, which are sections of a page or template design, and they can include elements like hero headers, featured content sections, and contact and other forms.
Brizy’s builder includes a global editor. If you have used one color in multiple areas of a site design, and you decide it isn’t quite the right shade of red, or you want to change it to coincide with a new offer or seasonal change, you can change all instances of that color in a single click.
Similarly, you can change all instances of a particular font and text size combination.
These global changes make editing a site quicker, and they help ensure uniformity of design across a site.
Explore: Elementor Vs Wix
8. Visual Composer
Price: Free – $349
Visual Composer and WPBakery are made by the same team, but where Bakery uses shortcode and only allows for the development of on-page content, Visual Composer offers a drag and drop editor that allows you to edit all elements of a webpage design.
This means that you can change the page layout, altering where your main content goes, and you can adjust headers and footers, menus, and more.
The static menu design of Visual Composer means that it is easier to find your way around this software than it is Divi, but it also means that your design is a little cramped on the page.
There is a free version of the software available and this includes access to 12 content modules by standard with an additional 23 from the Hub.
There are also nine free templates and a starter theme, but if you want access to more then you will need to pay for the full version of the software.
Visual Composer is one of the better priced Divi alternatives, although there are some very high-priced developer packages, and once you have a fully paid-up subscription, you will get access to nearly 200 content modules along with additional templates and other elements.
Visual Composer does operate differently from other software in this class. When you first download it, you get the bare bones of content blocks, and you will need to visit the Hub to install additional elements if you want them. This can be time-consuming and a little annoying if you use heavy customization options.
Check out more Visual Composer-like tools here.
9. WPBakery
Price: $45 – $245
Even the team behind WPBakery and Visual Composer have all but said that the Composer software is better because WPBakery’s use of shortcodes and the fact that it only really enables the editing of on-page content means that it is limited in its use.
The authors even point out that WPBakery suffers performance issues caused by the use of shortcode technology.
WPBakery does still find use with website owners that want to edit and customize only the content area of their site. It negates the need to have to install and use a full website builder if you simply want to manage one sales page.
WPBakery does boast a library of design elements to enhance page content, but while Visual Composer offers add-ons made by the team behind the software, WPBakery relies on third-party developers.
The developers of the two plugins still support both iterations, but it is apparent that they believe the Visual Composer to be the better software, designed for the future.
If you only want to create a limited number of pages and are willing to run the risk of too many shortcodes slowing your page load speeds, WPBakery is still a good quality plugin.
Interesting Comparison: Elementor Vs WPBakery
10. GeneratePress
Price: Free – $249
GeneratePress offers free and premium versions of their software. In either case, it has limited features because, unlike Divi, it is not designed as a page builder but as a means of customizing its own templates.
It does have a front-end editor that is easy to use, however, and offers 40 templates, 14 premium modules, and responsive layouts.
It lacks newsletters, pop-ups, and a social media plugin, so if you want these features you will have to find a third-party plugin that offers them.
Lightweight and lightning-quick, GeneratePress is not powerful but it is effective at what it does, which is to offer the opportunity to customize and change a limited number of themes and templates. Be prepared to incorporate third-party plugins to get the most from your site, though.
Interesting Comparison: Divi Vs Astra
Conclusion
Divi is a powerful and popular page builder, but it can become bloated and not everybody likes its design or integration.
The 10 tools and programs above are viable alternatives that offer some benefits over Divi.
While we found Elementor to be the most powerful, Beaver is worthy of note because it is easy to use while still offering a strong selection of features.
