Need to choose between Elementor Free vs Pro? Is Elementor Pro worth spending your money or should you just stick with the free version? How is Elementor Pro better than its free counterpart?
I’ll be answering all these questions in this article. Choosing between Elementor and Elementor Pro can be confusing especially when you don’t know how the Pro version can help you improve your website.
In this article, I’ll go through the biggest differences between Elementor and Elementor Pro. This will help you decide whether Elementor Pro is worth your money or not.
Elementor Free vs Pro: The Main Differences
You already know that Elementor is a free page builder for WordPress that has a lot of features to help you build beautiful pages with ease.
This brings up the question:
What’s the difference between Elementor and Elementor Pro?
First of all, Elementor Pro is an additional add-on for Elementor Page Builder. To access the pro features of Elementor, you’ll have to install the Elementor Pro plugin on your website.
And yes, you need to have both Elementor AND Elementor Pro installed on your website to use the Pro version.
So, what are the pro features? And how do they help you build better websites?
There are many features in Elementor Pro and I have listed them in detail below.
Note: If you’re not familiar with Elementor’s interface and how it works, I recommend you first check our Elementor review to learn more about the page builder.
50+ Extra Widgets
The free version of Elementor comes around with 30 widgets that you can use to build your pages.
This collection of free widgets is great but lacks some very important widgets that you might need when designing pages.
Elementor Pro fulfills that need and adds over 50 extra widgets to the page builder. With these Pro widgets, you can build some advanced pages.
The 50+ extra widgets include Pro Elements that can help you design better pages, Theme Elements that you can use to design your entire website using Elementor, and WooCommerce Elements that can be used to design your WooCommerce site.
We’ll get into the Theme Elements and WooCommerce Elements later in this article. Let’s first take a look into the Pro Elements offered by Elementor Pro:
As you can see, this collection of Pro widgets can be very useful when designing pages. You can use these widgets to spice up your current pages.
For example, you can use the Posts and Portfolio widget to create beautiful archive pages using Elementor.
Furthermore, widgets like Reviews and Table of Contents can help you eliminate the need for any third-party plugins for adding reviews and table of contents in your posts. You can just directly use these widgets.
Lastly, widgets like Countdown and Animated Headline can help you bring life to your pages and make them more engaging for your readers.
These Pro widgets can be helpful if you’re looking to design more advanced pages on your website.
Pro Templates & Blocks
Elementor Pro comes with 300+ templates and blocks that you can use to design stunning pages.
What’s even better is that Elementor Pro has template kits which are basically the same template for different pages.
This way, you can use a template kit to design different pages of your website.
Besides complete page templates, Elementor Pro also adds extra block templates that you can use for certain sections on your pages.
Theme Builder
Theme Builder by Elementor Pro is perhaps their best feature to date. With the Theme Builder, you can design your entire website using Elementor.
You can design your headers, footers, archives, 404 pages, and everything else using the Theme Builder.
As I mentioned above, the Pro version of Elementor comes with extra Theme Builder widgets. These widgets are used to build the different elements of your website theme.
Here are the Theme Elements that come with Elementor Pro:
You can use these elements to design single post pages, archive pages, and more.
Besides this, the Theme Builder lets you choose where different sections or templates are displayed.
This means you can create a separate header that is displayed only on your blog pages. Or you can create a single post template and set it to display only on certain blog posts.
In a nutshell, Theme Builder gives you the ability to ditch your WordPress theme and build each and every element of your website using Elementor.
Custom CSS
If you were limited by the design options in the free version of Elementor, the pro version helps you lift that limitation using custom CSS.
Elementor Pro allows you to write custom CSS for any widget, column, or section. This way, you can create your own styles and do some advanced customization on your website.
You can even go a step further and write custom CSS that applies globally on your entire website. This is possible with Elementor’s global custom CSS that lets you write global CSS for the website.
Global Widgets
Global Widgets are a great time-saving feature in Elementor. Let me explain what Global Widgets are:
Let’s say you want to add a call-to-action section at the end of all your pages:
With the free version of Elementor, you’d have to recreate that section for each page.
And what if you want to edit the section now? Will you go and make the changes to the section on all pages?
No, right? That’d take a lot of time! There has to be a better way.
That’s where Global Widgets come into the picture.
With this feature, you can create a section and set it to Global. Once a widget has been set global, any change you make to the global widget will be applied to all the instances where that widget is added on your website.
This way, you can create and reuse widgets in Elementor and make changes to them without having to worry about applying the changes everywhere.
Popup Builder
Using a lead capture plugin on your website?
Well, Elementor Pro lets you ditch that plugin and use Elementor to create popups and opt-in forms.
With the Popup Builder, you can create different types of popups on your website and display them using advanced targeting features.
You can create welcome mats, content upgrades, exit-intent popups, announcement popups, and many other email subscription opt-ins using the Popup Builder.
The Popup Builder has advanced display conditions that let you choose on which pages and posts to show your popup.
Moreover, you can set triggers to determine when the popup is displayed. For example, you can display popups on page load, scroll, click, on inactivity, and more.
Lastly, you can set advanced rules for the popups. This way, you can decide which user the popup will be displayed to.
For example, you can choose to display a popup after a certain amount of page views, if they’re visiting from a specific device, and if the user is arriving from a specific URL.
All in all, I think the Popup Builder has almost all the features you’d want in a lead generation tool for WordPress.
Custom Fonts
Elementor integrates with Google Fonts that brings hundreds of great fonts in the page builder. But sometimes that’s not enough and you need custom fonts for certain websites or projects.
Elementor Pro brings the ability to add custom fonts to Elementor. You can upload custom fonts to your website and use them in Elementor just like any other font.
Apart from custom fonts, Elementor Pro also brings integration with Adobe Typekit. So, if you use Adobe Typekit for fonts, you will be able to use it with Elementor Pro.
Motion Effects
Fancy some advanced effects on your website?
Motion Effects by Elementor lets you take your website to the next level with the help of advanced effects.
This feature lets you add mouse and scrolling effects to your widgets, columns, and sections.
You can add mouse tracking effects and make your widgets move, tilt, grow, or shrink based on the mouse movement.
The scrolling effects let you add opacity, blur, rotate, or scale effects to your widgets.
Overall, the Motion Effects in Elementor Pro lets you bring some depth to your pages and make them more interesting to your readers.
WooCommerce Builder
Elementor Pro brings a full-blown WooCommerce Builder that lets you design your entire WooCommerce site using Elementor.
This builder brings WooCommerce Elements that you can add your to pages to build your store. Here are the WooCommerce widgets you get in Elementor Pro:
Using this, you can create product pages where you can display your product along with essential information such as price, rating, description, related products, and cart button.
You can display your products anywhere on your website using the product widgets that come with the builder.
Running a WooCommerce website is a very hectic task and the WooCommerce Builder in Elementor Pro can make it very easy for you.
Form Builder
Elementor Pro also brings an advanced Form Builder that lets you create different kinds of form with ease.
You can create contact forms, login forms, subscription forms, and what not using the Form Builder.
The Form widget in Elementor Pro lets you collect any type of data using over 10 custom fields.
Moreover, you can also create dynamic forms using advanced form fields such as file upload, data field, time field, password field, and more.
Lastly, you can make your forms even more advanced by adding ReCaptcha and HoneyPot anti-spam features to protect your forms from bots.
Over 20 Integrations
Elementor Pro comes with a complete set of integrations for your favorite third-party tools. From marketing tools to social networks, Elementor Pro has over 20 integrations.
With these integrations, you can easily connect third-party tools or apps with Elementor without any hassle.
Elementor Pro Pricing
So now you know the different features Elementor Pro brings to the builder. Let’s talk about the pricing of Elementor Pro:
As you can see, the single site license of Elementor Pro costs $49 / year. There are also plans for the 3-site and 1000-site licenses which cost $99 / year and $199 / year respectively.
Elementor Pro comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Here’s a summary of all the differences between Elementor and Elementor Pro:
Elementor Free vs Pro: Which One Is Best For Me?
Choosing between Elementor free vs Pro is actually very easy. It all depends on what all features you want to use in Elementor.
Elementor (Free) is perfect for you if:
- You want to design basic pages on your website without any advanced content.
- You already use a WordPress theme and don’t need to build your entire website using Elementor.
- You don’t need to write custom CSS for your widgets and sections.
- You don’t need more templates for Elementor.
- You already use a good WooCommerce theme and don’t use Elementor for your product pages.
Elementor Pro is perfect for you if:
- You want to build complex pages that require advanced widgets and settings.
- You want to build your complete website using Elementor and don’t want to rely on your WordPress theme.
- You are focused more on the design aspect of the page and want to add motion effect or custom CSS for your widgets and sections.
- You want to use all the different templates available in the Elementor template library.
- You want to use the WooCommerce widgets of Elementor to create more flexible product pages.
- You want to use Elementor for creating opt-in forms and popups.
Conclusion
Based on your requirements, you can easily choose whether Elementor Pro is worth your money or not.
Nevertheless, if you have never used Elementor before, you should definitely start using the free version of Elementor.
Having a hands-on experience with the page builder will help you understand it’s features and limitations. And if you feel any limitations with the free version, you’d know that you need Elementor Pro.
And upgrading to Elementor Pro is hassle-free. You just need to install the Pro plugin when you upgrade and you’ll get all the pro features in the builder.
No matter whether you use Elementor or Elementor Pro, you can always take Elementor to the next level by improving its core functionality.
How?
By using our addon Designer Powerup for Elementor, you can create advanced pages, faster in Elementor. The best part is that you don’t need to have Elementor Pro installed to use our plugin.
Learn more about Designer Powerup and why it’s the best Elementor addon for users who care about design.
