Visual page builders for WordPress sites have gotten some attention lately because they can make building a site out very easy–especially for those who don’t know code. You still need a developer to get certain functionality working, but a page builder can definitely get you up and running with a semi-custom site.
The following is a list of WordPress page builders that I’ve encountered.
Visual Composer
Massive following for WP Bakery’s Visual Composer and a favorite of mine for sites where a client wants to be able to update and adjust the design themselves. If you’re just someone looking for a drag and drop page builder, VC has a lot of powerful features and options to chose from. If you’re a developer looking to allow clients the ability to edit their own pages, and want something that will work well with or without a framework, VC is a good option. It’s not a free solution, but at $34, you are getting your money’s worth.
VelocityPage
A rapidly increasing user base around VelocityPage and for good reason. It’s a feature-rich page builder that offers even more user friendliness than Visual Composer. It’s also highly compatible with existing, pre-made themes and runs out of the box on a blank theme just fine. VelocityPage starts at $97 for a single site. I’m looking into using VelocityPage as an alternative to Visual Composer for some clients because its workflow is a bit more simple.
Page Builder
One of the free options for a page builder is, simply named, Page Builder by Site Origins. It has a nice feature set with a good sized following. It might not be as feature rich as VC or Velocity Page, but it has good community support and if you’re a dev looking for a page builder for your client that doesn’t have bulky extra bells and whistles, Page Builder is worth looking into.
Divi Builder
Another free option (you need an account to get it) is the Divi Builder, used by Elegant Themes and featuring some nice options to get your site up and running quickly and easily. It isn’t as powerful as VC or VelocityPages, but it handles simple sites like a champ. One of the nice features in Divi is the ability to save segments or components that you’ve built to quickly insert into other pages. Then edit those saved segments and have the changes reflected on all pages that they appear on. It’s a major time saver.
Themify Builder
A premium page builder with a lot of nice features, on par with VC and VelocityPage when it comes to extras and support for things such as WooCommerce. Clocks in at $39 and has some really nice parallax options built in. If you don’t see it, there’s always the add ons which has some useful features to extend your vanilla Themify Builder.
I’m still of the opinion that you need a designer to lay out a good, presentable design with optimized content and architecture whether you’re using a page builder or not. And you still need a developer to create a fully customized option that the page builders can never automate. Things like optimal user flow, accessibility and dependencies are still very much in the human domain and can’t be replaced by page builders. What page builders excel at is allowing a non-coding user to create something quick out-of-the-box. When your business grows beyond its first stepping stones, or if you want to start off a business with a good foundation, call in the designer and developer.