7 Reasons to Not Use Elementor: Key Elementor Disadvanges
If you’ve been around the WordPress community for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of Elementor. It’s one of the more popular page builders out there, and it promises beautiful, custom websites with a drag-and-drop interface; no coding required!
While Elementor might seem like the perfect solution at first glance, it comes with some significant disadvantages that can hurt your website (and your business). Before you commit, here are eight reasons to not use Elementor.
TLDR: While Elementor used to be a great option, it isn’t anymore. Elementor is bloated, clumsy, and prone to breakage. Unless you want your hobby to be reading Reddit threads about fixing your broken site, I recommend you select another WordPress theme and site builder. In our web design service, we migrate more sites from Elementor than from any other platform.
Why Trust Bryan? I have been designing websites since 2007. And I’ve developed sites in Dreamweaver, WordPress, and proprietary content management systems (CMS). I hand-coded my first websites and worked with many WordPress themes, including Pageslines, Thesis, Trellis, Elementor, KadenceWP, OceanWP, and Astra. And I ran WP Built, a popular WordPress tutorial site focused on Elementor.
Reasons to Not Use Elementor: 7 Disadvantages
Here are my specific concerns about building your business website with Elementor. Of course, there are exceptions and maybe this tool will be great for you. But from my 18 years of experience, I suggest that you should look elsewhere.
1. Elementor Performance and Speed Issues
One of the biggest problems with Elementor is its impact on your website’s performance. When you use Elementor to build your pages, it generates a lot of extra code, including CSS and JavaScript files that need to load every single time someone visits your site.
- Bloated code and excessive CSS/JavaScript loading means your pages take longer to render and send to users. Think of it like packing for a trip: Elementor throws everything into the suitcase, whether you need it or not. This impacts page load times and Core Web Vitals. Tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights consistently show that websites built with Elementor perform poorly compared to modern themes.
- Why does this matter? Because server resource consumption increases dramatically when your site has to process all that unnecessary code. Your mobile performance concerns become even more pronounced since mobile devices typically have less processing power and slower connections than desktop computers.
Here’s the kicker: Google has explicitly stated that page speed is a ranking factor for search results. And poor page speed kills website conversions – costing you real dollars. While professional, modern themes routinely achieve PageSpeed scores of 90 or higher, Elementor sites often struggle to break 60. That means all the time you spend on SEO could be undermined by the very tool you’re using to build your site.
2. Over-Reliance and Vendor Lock-In
Let’s talk about something that doesn’t get mentioned enough: what happens when you want to move away from Elementor?
- The difficulty migrating away from Elementor is real and frustrating. Your content is trapped in proprietary shortcodes and structures, which means you can’t simply export it to another platform or page builder. There’s no straightforward way to convert your content to a more portable format.
- This loss of content formatting, if you switch builders, can be devastating. Imagine spending months (or years) creating content, only to discover that changing platforms means essentially starting over. From my experience, you’ll likely need a whole site rebuild once you hit a wall with Elementor.
We’ve had many small businesses reach out to ask how to migrate away from Elementor. And it’s not a question of “if” but “when” these limitations become apparent.
3. Elementor Code Quality and Technical Debt
When you peek under the hood of an Elementor-built site, things get messy fast.
- The non-semantic HTML output that Elementor generates is far from ideal. Instead of clean, meaningful HTML that search engines and accessibility tools can easily understand, you get nested divs wrapped in more divs, with classes that only Elementor understands. The inline styles and redundant code add to the bloat we discussed earlier. SEO implications of poor code structure: Search engines prefer clean, semantic HTML that clearly communicates the structure and hierarchy of your content. Elementor’s output doesn’t do this well.
- For developers, the maintenance challenges are significant. Trying to troubleshoot or customize an Elementor site means wading through layers of auto-generated code.
- The feature bloat leading to unnecessary code weight is another issue. Elementor comes packed with widgets and features, many of which you’ll never use. But the code for all those features still loads on your site, slowing things down even if you’re only using a fraction of what’s available.
4. Elementor Cost Considerations
While Elementor offers a free version, most serious websites need the Pro version to access essential features. And the additional costs for add-ons and extensions can quickly add up. Many users discover they need premium add-ons to achieve the functionality they want, turning what seemed like a cost-effective solution into an ongoing expense.
The hidden costs of performance optimization are often overlooked. You might need to invest in premium hosting, caching plugins, and developers to optimize your Elementor site just to get it running at an acceptable speed. When you factor in these costs, a new site building will probably be more economical, even during year one.
I’ve found that the robust network of Elementor plugin developers is a drawback. Because Elementor doesn’t do everything you’ll need, you’ll likely install many 3rd party plugins. Many of these don’t get updated regularly, some get abandoned, and others were never built well to begin with. Imagine having 10, even 20, of these plugins running fundamental site features. When one breaks, your whole site comes down. I’ve had clients come to us with a site that couldn’t be updated because it would crash, but the current version of plugins was insecure, and they were getting hacked.
Using Elementor plugins is a gamble. They might work for a few months, a year, maybe longer. But it will break. And then your site will need more duct tape and developer work until the next breakage. These messy plugins are one of the top reasons to not use Elementor.
5. Update and Compatibility Issues in Elementor
If you’ve used WordPress for any length of time, you know that updates are a fact of life. Unfortunately, Elementor adds another layer of complexity to this process.
- Frequent updates causing site breaks are a common complaint. When Elementor releases an update, there’s always a chance it could conflict with your theme, another plugin, or even WordPress core. The plugin conflicts and theme compatibility problems can be time-consuming to diagnose and fix.
- WordPress core version dependencies mean you’re at the mercy of multiple update schedules. You need to ensure Elementor is compatible with the latest WordPress version, that your theme works with Elementor, and that all your other plugins play nicely together. It’s a juggling act that can become exhausting.
From my experience, these plugin, theme, and builder conflicts happen more with Elementor than with the other builders combined. The fact is that some themes and plugins don’t play well with Elementor.
6. Design and Customization Limitations in Elementor
Here’s something that surprises many new Elementor users: despite all the customization options, there are significant limitations, especially for mobile devices.
- The limited customization options for mobile devices are a real pain point. While you can adjust layouts for mobile, you cannot hide specific elements on mobile the way you might want to. Some widgets may not display correctly on smaller screens, leading to a poor experience for mobile users. And mobile traffic has exceeded desktop traffic for many years.
- Many users find that designs lack the professional polish of more modern site builders. The time spent fiddling with the tool vs. the quality of the output often doesn’t add up.
The restrictions on achieving brand-specific visual requirements mean that truly unique, on-brand designs are difficult or impossible to achieve. You end up with a website that looks somewhat generic, because it’s constrained by Elementor’s templates and structure.
Beyond design limitations, Elementor restricts your control over important technical elements of your site.
- Restricted access to website data through WordPress dashboard can make site management difficult. Some data isn’t accessible through the standard WordPress interface when you’re using Elementor, which creates problems down the line. The nested design structure is frustrating and unnecessary.
- The limited control over SEO elements (title tags, meta descriptions, schema markup) is particularly concerning. From my experience, even if you use an SEO plugin (RankMath or Yoast) to help, Elementor’s fundamental limitations will impact your SEO.
7. Security Concerns in Elementor
Any plugin increases your site’s attack surface, but Elementor’s complexity makes security considerations especially important.
The need to use third-party plugins to fill gaps in Elementor’s design means more potential vulnerabilities. And while Elementor’s past security vulnerabilities are a matter of public record, the team does address them. But Elementor doesn’t control the countless plugins that every Elementor developer uses, and this creates security issues that need patching.
Third-party add-on risks multiply when you’re using Elementor extensions from various developers. Each add-on is another potential security hole. The update urgency and maintenance burden means you need to stay on top of security updates for Elementor, all its add-ons, your theme, and WordPress core, missing an update could leave your site vulnerable.
Elementor Alternatives to Consider
So what should you use instead of Elementor? Fortunately, there are several better alternative WordPress page builders.
The native WordPress Gutenberg editor with custom themes has evolved significantly since its launch. It offers a block-based approach that’s built right into WordPress core, with no plugin required. When combined with a custom-coded theme, Gutenberg provides full creative freedom without the performance penalties.
Custom-coded themes offering full design freedom are the gold standard. A professional developer can create exactly what you need without the constraints of a page builder. The benefits of custom development include PageSpeed scores of 90+ being routinely achievable, content stored in portable HTML format, and complete creative control over every aspect of your design.
Lightweight alternatives like GeneratePress, Kadence, and Bricks offer much better performance than Elementor while still providing visual customization options. These themes work seamlessly with Gutenberg and are designed with speed and efficiency in mind. We build primarily in Kadence and client sites run faster and more stable after migrating from Elementor.
Need help with your Elementor migration? Book a free discovery call and see how we can help modernize your website.
Your website is the face and foundation of your business online. Don’t let an outdated page builder hold it back.
