Design, UI, UX, Insights, Web Development
Webflow Vs. Elementor (2024 Comparison)
Let’s dig into the differences and similarities between Webflow and Elementor in this detailed comparison review
In the ever-changing world of website building, the choice of platform can greatly influence your online presence. Two standout contenders in this arena are Webflow vs Elementor. Webflow, though newer, has over 3.5 million users, while Elementor has powered more than 8.7 million websites.
This is why, in this review, we’ll compare these platforms based on factors such as ease of use, pricing, features, templates, and other components.
We’ll explore user interfaces, template selections, workflow efficiency, integration options, customer support, and pricing structures to help you decide which platform best suits your needs.
Article Overview:
Webflow Overview
Webflow is a cloud-based platform designed for creating and managing websites without requiring coding skills. It offers a comprehensive solution where users can design, build, and host their websites in one place.
Particularly suitable for individuals who seek full control over their website’s appearance and functionality without the complexity of coding. One of the greatest things about Webflow is that it generates exceptionally clean code in the background.
👍 Pros
- Free Plan: Webflow offers a free plan with unrestricted access to its design and editing tools.
- Template Variety: Users can select from a wide range of templates, both free and paid.
- Collaboration Features: Webflow simplifies team collaboration on website projects.
- Hosting Options: Users can choose to host their websites via Webflow’s servers or self-host using exported code.
- User-Friendly CMS: Managing website content is straightforward with an intuitive CMS.
- No-Coding: Users can leverage Webflow’s design tools without needing coding expertise.
- Integration: Webflow integrates with over 1,000 different tools.
👎 Cons:
- Learning Curve: Mastery of Webflow may require some time, especially for new users.
- Limits on Free Plan: The free plan has some restrictions, such as a maximum of 1,000 monthly visitors.
- Limited Support Availability: Customer support is available only during weekdays.
- Mobile Editing Constraints: Currently, mobile editing functionality is not available.
- Smaller Community: The Webflow community is smaller compared to some other platforms, potentially impacting access to support resources.
Elementor Overview
Elementor is a WordPress plugin that makes building websites extremely easy with its drag-and-drop interface. Suitable for beginners as well as seasoned WordPress users, Elementor offers a range of features like templates, widgets, animations, and pop-ups to enhance your site’s look and feel.
Just keep in mind, though, that Elementor works exclusively within the WordPress system, so you’ll need a WordPress website to use it.
Elementor offers two plugins: the free version and Elementor Pro. The free version, available in the WordPress plugin repository, provides basic drag-and-drop functionality.
Elementor Pro, a premium extension, adds extra widgets, templates, and features like theme building. As for hosting, users have three options:
- WordPress.com for fully-hosted solutions
- WordPress.org for self-hosting with purchased hosting
- Elementor Hosting for a bundled package including Elementor Pro, WordPress software, and hosting from Elementor.com
👍 Pros:
- Easy Editing: With Elementor’s drag-and-drop editor, designing your website is as simple as dragging elements into place.
- 24/7 Support: Elementor’s support team is available around the clock to assist you.
- Plugin Variety: Since Elementor is part of the WordPress ecosystem, you can tap into thousands of plugins to add extra functionality to your site.
- Free Version: You can start using Elementor for free, thanks to its basic version available in the WordPress plugin repository.
- Community: A large community of Elementor users for support and collaboration.
👎 Cons:
- Update Issues: Sometimes, major updates might cause temporary glitches or bugs that affect your site’s performance.
- Lack of Enterprise Features: Elementor may lack certain features for big business projects.
- Speed Concerns: Since Elementor relies on WordPress, your site might run a bit slower compared to other platforms.
- Complex Pricing: Figuring out Elementor’s pricing plans could be a bit tricky due to their complexity.
- Limited Billing Options: If you prefer monthly billing, you might be out of luck since Elementor doesn’t offer it.
Webflow vs Elementor Key Comparisons
Next, we’re going to directly compare Webflow and Elementor. We’ll be looking at how easy they are to use, what design tools they offer, how customizable they are, their collaboration features, the integrations they support, the kind of support they provide, and their pricing.
1. Ease of Use
In this section, we’ll explore the ease of use aspect, comparing Webflow and Elementor to determine which platform is more beginner-friendly and easier to navigate.
🎓 Webflow Ease of Use
Getting started with Webflow is easy; you can begin right from the dashboard once you register. Templates are available and customizable, providing a solid starting point for your website. The platform offers a modern and user-friendly interface, allowing you to have complete control over your website’s design and functionality.
However, despite its powerful features, Webflow can be daunting for beginners. It uses its own terminology and concepts, which might be unfamiliar to some users. Technical knowledge is required for tasks like hosting your website, setting up domain names, and managing SSL certificates.
Compared to Elementor, Webflow is less beginner-friendly, with a more complex interface. It’s divided into several sections, each serving a specific purpose.
🎓 Elementor Ease of Use
If you are already a WordPress user, simply install it as a plugin and start designing your site using drag-and-drop tools and pre-made templates. It offers a wide range of widgets for added functionality, all without needing to know how to code.
To sum up, compared to Webflow, Elementor is more beginner-friendly, making it ideal for entrepreneurs and marketers. Just purchase a hosting plan, install WordPress, and add the Elementor plugin to get started. With live previews and easy access to settings, Elementor simplifies website creation for beginners.
2. Design Tools and Components
Next, we’ll compare Webflow and Elementor based on the tools, templates and components they offer for designers.
🛠️ Designing in Webflow
Webflow offers a huge set of tools to help you design your website. Two of the main ones are the Webflow Designer and the Webflow Editor.
- Webflow Designer: This primary design tool offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface for visually creating and customizing website layouts, styles, and interactions.
- Webflow Editor: Designed with website owners and content managers in mind, the Webflow Editor simplifies content management by enabling updates and maintenance without requiring access to backend code. Often referred to as Webflow CMS, it gives you the tools to create and manage dynamic content like blog posts, products, and portfolios. No need for external plugins.
The platform gives you extensive design freedom to create animations effortlessly. It gives you control over design elements and the ability to export designs as code. You can also build responsive websites with CSS grids, creating dynamic content with CMS, and real-time collaboration.
Despite its strengths, the tool does have limitations. Making significant changes to a website design requires creating a new website rather than making simple edits. Additionally, users cannot switch templates mid-editing, necessitating a fresh start with a new template if desired.
Webflow Templates
Webflow provides a wide range of website templates to kickstart your project. There are over 2,000 templates available, covering different industries, and can be sorted by popularity, category, price, style, language, feature, and type. For example, if you don’t like templates in a particular category, you can always filter themes based on a specific style.
Some templates are free while others range from $19 to $149. You can also filter templates based on CMS or e-commerce functionality.
All Webflow templates offer extensive customization options:
- Users can adjust colors, fonts, layouts, animations, and more.
- Users can also add their content, images, videos, forms, and other elements to personalize the templates further.
- All templates are responsive by default.
In addition to templates, Webflow also has reusable elements, like sliders, tabs, accordions, lightboxes, and modals, that can be easily added to your page. You can also create your own components and save them for future use.
🛠️ Designing in Elementor
Elementor integrates with WordPress, so users can make the most of WordPress’s tools like plugins, themes, and custom fields. It’s a handy feature for building dynamic websites using either WordPress’s built-in features or third-party plugins.
With Elementor’s animation panel, users can add eye-catching animations and interactions to various website elements, such as fades, slides, rotations, hovers, and scrolls.
To tweak and adjust elements within Elementor, users simply navigate to the control panel located on the left side of the page. From there, they can easily fine-tune appearance, content, colors, effects, and advanced settings to suit their preferences.
To sum up, as a standalone platform, Webflow offers more versatility compared to Elementor, which is dependent on WordPress. Webflow not only provides tools for website design and maintenance but also offers features to support online businesses directly through their websites.
Elementor Templates:
Elementor essentially acts as a WordPress theme but also works with any other WordPress theme you might have. It comes with its own collection of templates to help you speed up the design process. There are over 2,000 templates available for Elementor users, covering categories such as landing pages, portfolios, blogs, and more. You can also find additional templates from third-party sources.
These Elementor templates are highly customizable.
- You can easily change colors, fonts, backgrounds, images, and other design elements
- You can add your content and widgets to personalize the templates even further.
- The templates are organized into niches or categories on the Elementor website.
Elementor widgets work like pre-made elements that you can drag and drop onto your pages. There are over 30 widgets available for free users and even more for pro users. These widgets include basic elements like text, images, buttons, and headings, as well as more advanced elements like forms, testimonials, countdowns, and social media icons.
3. Collaboration Features
Now, let’s see how Webflow and Elementor support teamwork among designers, developers, and stakeholders as we examine how user-friendly and efficient they are for collaborative projects.
🤝 Collaboration in Webflow
Webflow allows multiple users to work on web designs together in real-time, making collaboration seamless. It provides tools for assigning different roles and permissions to team members, which helps manage projects effectively.
- Multi-access Collaboration: Webflow lets several users collaborate on web designs simultaneously, with changes showing up instantly for everyone.
- Real-time Updates: Any changes made by team members are immediately visible to others, keeping everyone in sync.
- Varied Access Levels: Administrators can assign different roles and permissions to team members based on their responsibilities, controlling their access to design files and resources.
- Commenting and Feedback: Although not directly integrated, Webflow supports commenting and feedback through third-party tools.
- Version Control: Webflow automatically saves backup versions of the website, allowing designers to revert to previous versions if needed.
- Shared Asset Library: Teams can easily share and reuse assets across projects.
- Page Branching: Multiple designers can work on different pages simultaneously.
🤝 Collaboration in Elementor
With the introduction of Elementor 3.7 Pro, a new feature called Notes allows WordPress users to access Notes Mode for collaborative work. You can create Notes to collaborate with various stakeholders, including clients, designers, developers, content writers, and SEO managers. This way users can provide feedback or assign tasks effectively by mentioning the relevant stakeholder with the @ symbol.
Additionally, Elementor provides visual indicators, marked with an eye icon, to ensure stakeholders are informed about the Notes assigned to them and who has viewed each Note, thus improving collaboration efforts.
4. Integrations
Next, we’ll see how Webflow and Elementor stack up in terms of the other tools and services they can easily connect with.
➕ Webflow Integrations
Webflow offers quite a lot of built-in features such as SEO tools and analytics, alongside integrations with popular marketing and eCommerce platforms.
Notable integrations include: Google Analytics, Shopify, Mailchimp, and Stripe, as well as managing DNS through Google Domains and Cloudflare. Additionally, Webflow supports integrations for e-commerce, content management, analytics, and marketing.
➕ Elementor Integrations
Elementor is designed to collaborate smoothly with a variety of plugins and themes, including widely used ones like WooCommerce and WPML. However, there can be compatibility issues with certain plugins and themes, such as other page builders like WPBakery Page Builder or Divi, which might not mesh well with Elementor and could lead to conflicts.
Nevertheless, Elementor still offers extensive integration capabilities, including connections to social networks and email marketing software, aligning with the standard options found in WordPress.
5. Support and Community
Next, we’ll compare the customer support, community engagement, FAQ sections, and available resources to Webflow and Elementor users.
☎️ Webflow Support
Webflow provides support on weekdays from 6 am to 6 pm, which may be limited for some users. However, the platform compensates for this with an active and supportive community forum where users can seek advice and interact with fellow designers.
- Detailed help center with troubleshooting guides
- Direct support from the Webflow team
- Active user forums and community events
- Webflow University with video tutorials and courses
- Webflow Showcase further inspires users by showcasing impressive websites built using the platform, offering design ideas and best practices.
☎️ Elementor Support
Elementor’s support primarily operates through a ticket system, catering mainly to paid users. They’re known for their quick and helpful responses, plus there’s a live chat option accessible 24/7. However, these perks aren’t available for free users.
To make up for it, Elementor offers:
- Community Forum: An active space for users to discuss, seek advice, and share their experiences.
- Knowledge Base: A hub of articles, tutorials, and guides to help users navigate Elementor’s features.
- Third-party Resources: Many video tutorials, blog posts, and online courses created by users and educators further enhance learning opportunities.
6. Pricing
Lastly, let’s break down the cost structures of Webflow and Elementor, comparing their features and plans to help you make an informed decision based on your budget and needs.
💲 Webflow Pricing
Webflow offers two main categories of plans: site plans and workspaces.
Site plans cater to hosting needs, with options for standard marketing sites and e-commerce sites.
- Basic Plan: Starting from $14 per month for hosting a standard marketing website.
- E-commerce Plans: Starting from $29 per month for hosting an e-commerce website with 500 items and a 2% transaction fee. Advanced plans are available up to $212 per month for larger ecommerce needs.
Workspace plans are designed for designers and developers, offering tailored options for in-house teams and freelancers/agencies, with custom pricing and features.
💲 Elementor Pricing
Elementor offers different pricing plans to fit various needs:
- Free Plan: Gives you basic Elementor features for one website.
- Essential Plan: Costs $59 annually, unlocking pro features for one website.
- Expert Plan: Priced at $199 annually, it provides pro features for up to 25 websites.
- Agency Plan: Allows you to build up to 1,000 websites with pro features for $399 per month.
Pro features include over 300 templates, 50 widgets, theme builder, popup builder, WooCommerce builder, motion effects, custom fonts, custom CSS, dynamic content, role manager, and 24/7 premium support. Elementor also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all paid plans.
Additionally, Elementor offers all-in-one solutions that include WordPress hosting, ranging from $9.99 to $49.99.
To sum up, Elementor is generally more budget-friendly than Webflow, however, Webflow’s pricing structure may better suit specific needs, including custom enterprise packages.
Alrighty, folks, that’s a wrap!
In summary, Webflow and Elementor are both great tools for building websites without needing to know how to code. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, so it depends on what you’re looking for.
Webflow is fantastic if you want complete control over your site’s design and functionality. It’s a bit more complex, but it offers a lot of flexibility.
Elementor is simpler and easier to use, especially if you’re familiar with WordPress. It’s perfect for beginners or those who want to get a website up and running quickly.
In our comparison, Webflow edges out slightly due to its advanced features and customization options. However, Elementor is still a solid choice for many users.
Ultimately, it boils down to your preferences and needs. Both Webflow and Elementor are powerful tools that can help you create impressive websites without touching a single line of code.
Hey, before you go, don’t forget to check out our other awesome articles on UI/UX design! We’ve got loads of tips and inspiration to help you create stunning designs that will blow your mind.