Like Justin, me and my colleagues are slowly moving away from RW, and most of our work is Wordpress now. 6 sites are going live this week between us, 4 of them Wordpress, 1 Blocs, and 1 RW. It used to be almost 100% RW…
If you are looking into WP, Elementor is really nice, but we chose to go with Divi instead, because I really liked the “Back end” editor better, and our “designer” really liked huge “Template Library” Divi has, which we use on the small/quick projects.
Right the only difference there is that Blocs is not WordPress… maybe 10 years down the line it’ll be able to take it on… Freeform design with the power of WP behind it, is a really big selling point for us, the clients and marketeers etc.
That’s previewing AND publishing immediately by-the-way!!
Yeah understood.
@Raimo I’d love to hear more about your decision criteria to go with WP, or Blocs, or RW for a particular project. It would be quite useful for me to know.
I’ve heard many good things about Divi. I finally chose Elementor to use with students based on price, the rapid develpment, and it just seemed a good fit. But Divi was definitely my second choice. Both seem to be great products.
BTW, if @Justin still uses something besides Elementor for some projects then I’d also love to hear your decision criteria for which design product to match with a particular customer’s needs.
I am part of a “group” of people that all run “solo agencies”, we live in different geographies, we have our own clients, but also collaborate on bigger projects together.
Having said all that, it also depends on what the client needs/wants/is used to. Where a few years ago, I could choose RW for my clients, they now come to me asking for WP sites… If that’s what they want, they are paying the bills! I have a Chamber Of Commerce site going live this week that I originally pitched as a RW site, but ended going WP.
@Raimo Many thanks. All you write makes complete sense to me as decision criteria. I’ll probably give Blocs a try during the summer. I’m very happy with RW for my own work (course websites), but I need to have good options to give to my students and colleagues.
Looks interesting. But the cost is a bit steep
@alixnotes What are you referring to? Elementor Pro? Elementor? Divi?
Elementor is free. Not steep.
Elementor Pro is $50 for the first year, 25% discount on additional years. I don’t consider that steep. Much better than RW. This is for one domain only though.
Divi has very nice pricing for unlimited domains.
Even Elementor Pro for $199 per year (probably also with 25% discount in future years, but not sure about that) is quite reasonable if you have a number of clients. Remember with WP that products are priced per domain. So once Elementor Pro is installed several folks can contribute to the development. (Very unlike RW and other OS based apps.)
My criteria was - if it’s a basic brochure/html site then it was built RW. Since Elementor 2 it’s been WordPress. It’s as simple as that really. As for post launch maintenance you can always lock a WP site down with admin rules (so Joe Blogs can’t install anything). E also allows you to lock the design. Most established companies acknowledge that a website powered by WP or any-other pro cms will need maintaining - from time to time…
Hi - What’s steep, Elementor?
My criteria was - if it’s a basic brochure/html site then it was built RW. Since Elementor 2 it’s been WordPress. It’s as simple as that really.
Agreed it’s nothing really.
I looked at Divi a while back (and this was a while back so things may have changed) but the biggest no no with Divi was, if the need arises, getting out of Divi and applying say a new theme or to export to HTML. Basically you cant. It’s a huge dev nightmare. That was the nail in the coffin for that builder.
Divi is the king of bloat, seriously. Divi is meant for non-designers. If you’re serious about building a nice looking website that performs, don’t touch Divi.
Also, Divi has its own page builder so if you want to change theme later on, anything customised in Divi won’t carry over.
I don’t get why people are still designing sites that all look the same. A huge banner at the top of the page, horizontals all over, pop-ups on entry (it’s not 2005), things moving on the page with no input from the user.
All websites should be built around the content, not a page builder template. And performance and usability should be the priorities, not how many “features” can be added.
Lol I beat you by a few secs getting that Divi no no out!
Yeah, but if you are using “Divi” properly, you aren’t using a “theme”. Just like using Foundation or Foundry in RW, you can customize the layout anyway you want, so I don’t understand the “Divi is meant for non-designers” comment, have you actually used the Divi layout tools in the “blank” Divi theme? There is nothing I can do in RW that I also can’t do in Divi… in fact the css controls and fine tuning of every block is much easier in Divi…
As for bloat, exporting code, yeah probably right, which is why I still use other tools in some places. Where Divi shines is the clients really like using it when all is said and done.!
That’s the whole selling point of Divi. You need to hire a designer, so non-designers can create a “designed” website.
Hi Justin,
I am using RW as well as WP.
For WP there are several page builder plugins, you mentioned Elementar, there is as well Beaver Builder, Divi, just to name a few.
As you mentioned, depending on the project, you go for the system that is doing the job. I switched my website from WP to RW even with a blog. Less administrative work and updates, simple to use.
With WP 5, you have the Gutenberg editor and less and less a need for a page builder. Try it on a local development environment and play with it.
I see what you are saying, but I think, the difference being is its WP. I cant imagine telling a client that’s just found a theme they want to install -’ no, you can’t install it!’ I think a few heads would roll. Being tied so permanently to a single plugin at such a fundamental level just puts me off.
