Before we get on our soapbox and share our beef with page builders, we’d like to provide some history.

About 10 years ago, website-building tools like Squarespace and Wix were growing in popularity. These platforms serve a very specific purpose: providing non-web developers with a toolkit of components – like text blocks, image carousels, social media feeds, and forms – to create websites quickly and cost-effectively, and then manage those websites themselves.

Given the rise of Squarespace and Wix, there was a push to give non-developers similar power in the WordPress realm. This, our friends, is the page builder’s origin story.

Page builders like Elementor, Divi, Avada and WPBakery were launched to empower non-developers to create WordPress websites without outside assistance. On paper, this sounds promising. But as you’re probably guessing, there are many pitfalls.

Pitfall #1: Your website is a clone of so many of others

Unless you hire a designer or developer to customize things, your website is going to have the same DNA as every other website built from that page builder. Sure, you can modify the colors and fonts yourself. But overall it’s going to feel very generic and familiar – a major problem if you’re aiming to stand out from others with similar missions.

Pitfall #2: Counter-intuitively, website management can be more challenging

Page builders present you with countless components to create each page of your website. So simple updates, like adding a new staffer to your Our Team page, can take hours as you sift through components to find the one that matches the rest of the page. This overwhelming number of options can lead to a website with an inconsistent design system, since similar content on different pages might be, accidentally, built with different-looking components.

Pitfall #3: Less speed, less security, less accessibility

As mentioned above, a gigantic number of components are available on each page of your website. Whether you’re using the components or not, their supporting code needs to load on each page of your website. Load time is a huge concern for visitors. In fact, studies show that 40% of users will abandon your website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds!

In order to do its thing, a page builder requires high-level server access. If anyone hacks into your website, they could gain full access to your server, meaning they could shut it down or even create fake pages to scam or phish your users.

Plus, the plethora of components within page builders often break best practices for accessibility. You may find yourself serving up inaccessible images or deviating from a recommended headline structure without any indication you’re doing so.

Pitfall #4: You may feel stuck

Given the number of components a page builder provides, its database, to be blunt, is a mess. This may not be noticeable when you’re in the page builder environment. But if you decide to move to a more customized WordPress website and need to migrate over hundreds of pages, that process can be a colossal effort. Trust us – we’ve done it many times.

But fear not! If you’re looking to make a quick, cost-effective website, we recommend using one of WordPress’s many well-supported themes (like these) instead. Themes help to mitigate many of the pitfalls we outlined, including issues regarding website management, speed and security.

Once you find a theme that matches your organization’s needs, you can build out a website yourself. This process will be considerably easier than the page builder route, so you can focus more attention on your site’s content. Yes, users care about how your site looks, but strong content will help set it apart and get it to appear within relevant search results.

You can also customize the theme’s appearance or functionality by hiring a cost-effective freelance designer or developer to pitch in a few hours.

Page builders have had their time and place, but ultimately they’re more difficult to manage, don’t let your brand shine through, and make your site slower and less accessible. 

If you’re ready for a new website designed from scratch with a user-friendly WordPress back-end, then look no further. At Great Believer, we work closely with organizations to create custom sites that are easy to update and maintain yourself. Connect with us to learn how we could help uplift your mission through a custom website here!