Thanks to the fearless WordPress developers, website building has come a long way and it is now possible to fully use the drag-and-drop visual interface to create a website design, which almost completely replaces the need to choose and use a WordPress page and theme for a long time.
But developing an entire WordPress site from scratch is a lot of work. Website Builder & WordPress Page Builder
First, let’s talk about the difference between a WordPress site builder and a WordPress page builder.
The WordPress page builder allows you to create content that sits inside the WordPress editor. For example, you can style the text of a blog post or the text of a page.
Some page builders also come with templates that allow you to disable parts of your WordPress theme, such as the header (or you can use a page-building-friendly theme). With features like this, you can use page builders to create landing pages.
However, you have to design everything piece by piece. That is, you create one page, then you create another, and so on. You cannot design a template that applies to all of your blog posts.
The WordPress site builder, also known as the WordPress theme builder, changes that.
With the WordPress website builder plugin, you can build your entire website. This eliminates the need for a theme. That is, you will be able to create templates for your WordPress site:
- title,
- footer,
- archived pages (for example, a list of your blog posts),
- separate pages (for example, the design of one blog post),
- WooCommerce store.
You can create one template for your blog posts using the website builder, and then each individual blog will automatically follow this template. Or you can create a header for your website and apply it to each page (or conditionally apply it to individual pages).
Plus, a good WordPress theme builder will help you include dynamic content from custom fields – a feature that all the plugins on this list offer.
Most of these plugins are both page builders and theme builders, giving you more options.
1. Elementor Pro
The free version of Elementor is the most popular WordPress page builder plugin on WordPress.org. But with Elementor Pro, a premium add-on, you can turn Elementor into a complete WordPress website builder and create all the parts of your theme.
The basic Elementor interface is a visual drag-and-drop builder that includes widgets and styling options to help you create truly beautiful and unique designs. For example, in addition to many basic styles, you get custom positioning and motion effects.
With Elementor Pro, you can apply this interface to template parts of your theme:
- header,
- footer,
- archive of records,
- individual posts.
It includes dedicated WooCommerce integration. If you run an e-commerce store, the plugin allows you to create pages for both your store and individual products.
Another powerful feature is the dynamic Elementor Pro tool. With this feature, you can dynamically insert information from custom fields added using a toolbox, advanced custom fields, or modules.
For example, if you are building a real estate website, you can create a template for house listings and dynamically populate the details of each house with information from custom fields.
Apart from theme templates, Elementor Pro is great for creating pop-ups that can appear anywhere on your site.
Finally, if you don’t want to design your entire website from scratch, Elementor Pro includes importable site collection templates. You can quickly import templates for all the most important pages of your site and customize them to suit your brand.
Elementor Pro is a great option for casual users and designers who need access to many design options in one convenient package. For the average WordPress user, Elementor Pro is going to be the best WordPress theme builder.
Price: Elementor Pro starts at $ 49 per site.
2. Oxygen
Oxygen is the best WordPress website builder for developers and other technical users. It places more emphasis on clean and light code than other tools.
To accomplish the goal, it isn’t nearly as beginner-friendly as the Elementor Pro, especially when it comes to design options. For example, Oxygen still uses an <div> in the interface, which many other front-end developers have dropped.
Overall, Oxygen is popular with freelancers and agencies who know how to use their own code to achieve their goals but are just looking for a tool to help them speed up their workflows and make it easier to create custom websites with WordPress.
Oxygen provides a drag-and-drop visual interface for designing your templates. You will have full access to the underlying code, which makes Oxygen popular with developers.
Oxygen adds some extra features to the interface. For example, you can insert dynamic content into just about any element (like custom fields or regular WordPress content). You can create your own repetition loops, which are handy for displaying post lists or custom post types.
Another powerful feature is the integration of Gutenberg blocks into Oxygen. With this tool, you can create your own reusable blocks using the Oxygen visual interface by dragging and dropping. You (or your clients) will be able to use these blocks in the regular block editor, which gives you more customization options without having to always use the Oxygen interface.
If you are building client sites, it will help you make it harder for you to accidentally hack your sites.
However, if you are a regular user, you will need to put in a lot of effort to make the most of it.
Pricing: Starting at $ 99 for unlimited sites and lifetime updates. For WooCommerce support and the Gutenberg blocking feature, you need to upgrade to a higher pricing tier.
3. Divi
Divi is another popular WordPress page builder plugin. It, like Elementor, provides a ton of design options, which makes it especially popular with designers.
You get a visual drag and drop interface that gives you complete control over your projects.
In the latest version, Divi 4.0 includes a new theme creation feature.
With Divi Theme Builder, you have access to full options for Divi-based theme templates. You will be able to create headers, footers, archives, and individual posts.
When you publish a portion of a template, you can use conditional rules to specify exactly where to display that template.
As with other tools, here you get a dynamic content feature that allows you to include dynamic content from your WordPress site or custom fields. And if you’re using Divi to develop your eCommerce store, it includes full WooCommerce integration, allowing you to create all of your store’s pages.
Finally, Divi includes several ready-made website template packages that you can import. This way you can quickly get started on your website.
Overall, Divi is sort of an alternative to Elementor Pro as it has many of the same strengths. The choice is yours.
Price: Divi is available as part of the $ 89 Elegant themes membership. This price gives you unlimited websites and access to all Elegant Themes plugins and themes.
4. Baever Builder + Builder Themer
Beaver Builder is a popular WordPress page builder with a good reputation for clean code and stability. Like the others, it provides an easy-to-use visual drag and drop interface.
With the official Beaver Themer extension, you can add full theme building support to the main Beaver Builder plugin.
Beaver Themer lets you create all parts of a WordPress theme including headers, footers, archives, and single posts.
To get data from your WordPress site or from custom fields, you can use Beaver Themer’s field connections feature to insert information dynamically.
You get conditional rendering rules to control where and when each template should be used.
If you own a WooCommerce store, Beaver Themer includes its own set of WooCommerce modules to help you set up your store and individual product pages.
Overall, Beaver Builder and Beaver Themer are a kind of compromise between Elementor and Oxygen. Beaver Builder retains much of the ease-of-use of Elementor and also outputs fairly clean code.
Note. To use Beaver Themer you need the Pro version of Beaver Builder. Beaver Builder includes a limited free version at WordPress.org, but this free version does not work with Beaver Themer.
Price: Beaver Builder starts at $ 99. Beaver Themer costs $ 149. Both can be used on unlimited websites.
5. Brizy Pro
Brizy is a groundbreaking WordPress page builder that is rapidly growing in popularity due to its fast interface.
Like other tools, Brizy offers a visual drag and drop interface. But the reason it is said to be “fast” is that Brizy tried to tweak as many settings as possible. For example, instead of using the sidebar to customize a button, you can access most of the button customization options from your design.
While this may seem like a small thing, it speeds up the editing process a bit, especially when creating a large number of sites.
You will be able to use Brizy’s drag and drop interface to design your headers, footers, archives, and individual templates.
Like the other plugins on the list, it allows you to insert dynamic content with integrations for custom field plugins like Toolset, Advanced Custom Fields, Pods, and Meta Box.
Like Elementor Pro, Brizy Pro includes the ability to create pop-ups and display them anywhere on your site.
Finally, Brizy Pro includes its own Brizy Cloud feature that lets you create websites and landing pages hosted in the cloud (instead of using a WordPress plugin). Those. you can use it as a toolkit outside of your WordPress site. This is a pretty unique feature that other WordPress theme builders don’t offer yet.
Overall, the Brizy Pro is another good option for designers. Its interface is quite unique compared to other theme builders on this list. We encourage you to play around with the free version at WordPress.org to see if you like Brizy’s approach. However, the free version does not include theme creation.
Price: Brizy Pro starts at $ 49 for use across three sites.
