Developing an amazing website that shares all the features of a fully coded website without the need to code by hand is a dream come true for many people. There are many web-development tools available across the internet but there are only two of them which stand out as the best. These two popular options are Webflow and Elementor.
In this blog, we will break down each point of these two tools and discuss which one is better. We will discuss advantages, disadvantages, pricing plans, similarities, and more.
Webflow has emerged as one of the most user-friendly website-building tools and a hosting platform. It has become an ideal tool for creating blogs, articles, eCommerce stores, microsites, portfolios, event sites, landing pages, and corporate websites. The platform has to offer a wider range of customization options, making it a dream come true for web designers.
It has become the number one choice for web designers across the globe. Talking about numbers, did you know that Webflow has 3.5 million users worldwide and over 100,000 customers across the globe? With many built-in features and more than 6,000 website templates to offer, it has made work far easier for web developers.
Where Webflow is a powerful hosting tool, Elementor doesn’t lag behind. Elementor, which reportedly powers over 12 million websites worldwide has become one of the largest website-building platforms.
Elementor is a very popular plugin for WordPress to design and customize websites without having a need to code by hand. With its direct integration with WordPress, it provides a variety of elements and customizations that allow users to build their websites quickly and efficiently. For this reason, Elementor is favoured and utilized by not only experienced web developers but also beginners.
We now know what is the key purpose of Elementor and Webflow. Now, let’s see how Webflow and Elementor compare in terms of ease of use:
Webflow is a sleek, modern, standalone user interface that provides complete power over the website’s design and development to users. Whether you are starting everything from scratch or starting with a provided template, you can fully customize every aspect of your website.
From layout and typography to animations and interactions, Webflow offers complete flexibility to create an attractive and responsive website without having to write the code physically. You can customize and optimize every aspect of our site by using its visual editor, which can be used to develop complex and composite website layouts with ease.
It also requires some technical knowledge and skills to host your website. There are many things to deal with, including how to set up a domain name, SSL certificate, DNS settings, etc which the majority of the users find complex and hard to perform. Additionally, you need to have a certain knowledge of how containers, sections, div blocks, grids, flexboxes, and other elements are used to create a website layout, making it intimidating for beginners.
Webflow can be intimidating and stressful when developing websites without a piece of certain knowledge, but if you have a basic level of understanding and have worked on a website before, developing a strong and functional website will be a piece of cake for you.
Elementor, compared to Webflow, is very easy to use for anyone. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you can develop a fully functional and responsive website with ease using it. It also offers a large amount of free templates that users can use and optimize according to their needs. Its drag-and-drop interface lets you add and edit each and every element on your website. Additionally, you can check how your website will look on different devices in real time.
Unlike Webflow which requires a certain coding skill or understanding, Elementor is user-friendly. You can also add your own custom code if you want, making it easy to manage your website’s content and performance. On top of that, you can add additional plugins.
WebFlow is indeed a powerful standalone web design and development platform but has several factors to consider before going along with this tool.
| Pros
It provides users with a flexible content management tool that allows them to optimize meta tags, markup, indexing rules, 301 redirects, and more to make their website SEO friendly. |
Cons
Webflow, unlike other content management systems, doesn’t offer mobile applications to make customizations or edits to your content and design. |
| Designers can also add custom code from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more for any additional customization. | Where Webflow allows you to add your custom code but you can not edit the code it generates for you. |
| Webflow offers collaboration among teams that enhances the ability to develop good websites, also allowing project management to check their projects easily. | Webflow consists of extensive documentation and doesn’t offer a user-friendly interface, making it challenging for new users to navigate through its interface. So, in short, there is a learning curve. |
| With Webflow, you no longer require plugins to make a functional website. As plugins require updating and management, they help develop a much more stable website. | It isn’t the best choice for developing an eCommerce store as its eCommerce system doesn’t match the comprehensive offerings of development platforms like Shopify. |
| It offers a powerful visual editor that allows designers to create complex and difficult layouts without the need for coding. | Webflow offers diverse features and designing tools making it difficult for beginners to learn its mechanics. |
Did you know that Elementor has occupied over 7% of the global website builder market on WordPress, making it one of the top leading tools in the market? Elementor is a powerful web-development plugin integrated with WordPress, where it offers diverse customizations and features, there are some limitations to using it.
| Pros
If you don’t know how to write code with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, or any other programming language, Elementor’s drag-and-drop feature has got you all covered! |
Cons
Elementor is limited to WordPress platforms, switching to another CMS is a challenging task as you have to rebuild your site. |
| It is a single plugin that offers a vast amount of features and customizations. With Elementor, you no longer require any third-party plugins to do the task. | Basic functions are easy to use and understand but learning for advanced functionalities is quite challenging. |
| One of the major features it has to offer is mobile editing tools. Any website created from Elementor is both mobile-friendly and responsive. | It offers very little multilingual support for users, even the PRO version doesn’t offer much support for websites of different languages. |
| It efficiently works with WooCommerce as it includes a large amount of WooCommerce element content. | If not optimized properly, the sites can be slower, especially if many widgets, animations, and elements are used. |
| It gives users access to tons to thousands of already-made page templates. | From all the features it has to offer, it doesn’t have a lifetime pricing option so you have to purchase their services every year. |
We have yet to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both Webflow and Elementor but it is to be noted that these development tools share many similarities. Let’s dive into the features they have in common.
Webflow and Elementor may share many similarities but it is to be noted that both of them have different structural approaches. While Elementor doesn’t have any built-in SEO features and integrates itself with SEO plugins, Webflow offers many SEO features.
When it comes to hosting and performance, both Webflow and Elementor use different approaches. Webflow has its own hosting system, allowing users to run their websites on Webflow with the limitation that the sites created by Webflow cannot be hosted on any other hosting platform. Now it is all about preference, whether you are comfortable with running your website on Webflow or not. This is where Elementor joins in, allowing users to host their websites anywhere they want but with Elementor like Webflow, you pay for hosting and web development as part of their subscription model.
Whenever you purchase a hosting, performance is always the prior question. Webflow provides a completely managed solution for website hosting so the users don’t have to feel concerned about flexibility, site downtime, or need to apply any security patches. Now, Elementor operates as a plugin so it depends on the WordPress hosting provider selected by the user.
Elementor may be a plugin but it offers a comprehensive set of tools that allow it users to design and customize their WordPress websites effectively. Now, we are going to discuss the top tools provided by Elementor to enhance website building:
Contact Form 7: The Contact Form 7 widget is a powerful tool that could help users create and customize the appearance of contact forms on their Elementor website. You can customize your forms and mall contents with a simple market, allowing your visitors to easily contact you from your website.
Image Tooltip: Do you know that optimizing your images is not only beneficial for SEO but can also enhance your site’s user engagement? If you are looking for a tool to optimize your WordPress website with engaging image descriptions, Image Tooltip is the best tool available for this purpose.
Currency Converter: One of the prior things that come to mind when building an online store is a currency conversion, especially when your store expands to multiple geographic locations sharing different currencies. If you own an eCommerce website, this tool is useful for you. With this tool, you will not only stay notified on real-time exchange rates but can also calculate conversions on your site efficiently.
Layers: One of the top-notch tools available on the market which allows you to efficiently layer images, text, shapes, and icons on your website pages. This tool also offers responsive settings, allowing you to control layer visibility on different resolutions, simplifying your Elementor website’s responsive design.
Notification: Another marketing tool for Elementor, which allows you to add notifications and alert message boxes to inform users about any update, news, or information. This tool can be very useful, as it ensures that your visitors do not miss out on any important notices or announcements.
We all know what Webflow is capable of, but now we are going to discuss the tools for Webflow. Like Elementor, Webflow also offers a variety of tools for development and design purposes. Some of the major tools used for development in Webflow are explained below:
Figma: A design tool globally used for developing top-quality, high-pixel website designs. With Figma integrated with Webflow, you can turn your design into a clean code. You can then optimize your website easily without the need to recreate the design. Just copy the layer in Figma and paste it into Webflow.
Airtable: If you are looking forward to managing your content and database, Airtable is the best option. Users can store, update, and manage data, which then can be linked to Webflow’s CMS. This is helpful for managing large and diverse content-driven websites efficiently.
Conversion AI: Looking for an AI-driven, SEO-friendly tool for your Webflow website? Conversion.ai is a powerful tool that can help you generate high-quality, conversion-optimized content like website copy, blog posts, and SEO titles through AI. It can generate titles and meta descriptions based on provided keywords, essential for SEO. It also provides a user-friendly interface so you don’t need to stress yourself over understanding the tool.
CMS Library for Webflow: The CMS Library for Webflow is a JavaScript library developed by Finsweet that enhances the Webflow control management system’s functionality. It allows various additional features to customize your website. And it is not even hard to use. Just take the snippets and add them to your Webflow website and it is done.
Optily: With Optily, compressing Webflow images has become an easy task. It automatically compresses the file size by up to 80% for JPEG and PNG formats, improving your website loading speed, which is good for SEO and achieving a better user experience.
Features Offered By Elementor:
As web development continues to push boundaries, platforms like Elementor still stand as one of the best service providers on the market. By providing many customization and development features, it has minimized the need to write the code by hand. Let’s discuss some of the important features offered by Elementor.
Drag-and-Drop Editor:
This builder is the foundation of its entire design and development process. Users can just drag elements and place them where they want. Allowing them to create, rearrange, and resize elements on the page without needing to code.
Theme Builder
Elementor’s theme builder allows its users to customize their WordPress theme with the ability to customize headers, footers, and literally every aspect of the website. This also includes optimizing dynamic pages such as blogs and archives
Form Builder:
This feature allows users to create and manage custom forms and surveys in Elementor. With features to offer like conditional logic, integrations with email marketing platforms, and advanced style customization options.
Widgets:
Elementor also offers both basic and advanced widgets like buttons, forms, images, sliders, and galleries. It offers 57 for the free version and 86 for the Pro version. Although they don’t sound very important, they are essential for building an interactive and dynamic website.
Popup Builder:
In Elementor, this feature allows users to create customizable popups, these popups can also be designed using the same drag-and-drop interface provided and can integrate various widgets like forms, countdowns, social media icons, and more.
WooCommerce Integration:
For those who own an eCommerce website, Elementor offers WooCommerce Builder which allows users to customize their product pages, shop pages, and utilize other eCommerce elements to optimize their Elementor website.
Features Offered By Webflow:
In the race to develop the best web builder tools, Webflow also doesn’t fall behind. Webflow is one of the fastest-growing web development tools, prioritized by many designers due to the variety of features it has to offer. Now, we are going to discuss the key features offered by Webflow.
Visual Editor: Webflow offers a visual editor that allows its users to design and build a fully functional website. This provides users with a real-time preview so they can easily make adjustments in layout, styles, and animations. This is a very essential feature of web flow as it provides control over design elements to users without the need for code.
Web & Motion Design: Creating animations and motions used to be a hard task for beginners in the programming field. Well, not anymore as Webflow’s features include providing clients with extensive customization options that allow them to add animations, interactions, and motions on their website. You can create complex animations, transitions, and interactions without any difficulties.
Marketing & SEO: One of the reasons why programmers go with Webflow is its ability to develop responsive and clean website codes, enhancing its SEO performance. You can also customize meta tags, optimize images, and create clean URLs with Webflow, making it a better option for SEO and eCommerce.
Integration: You can easily integrate third-party tools and services with Webflow. This allows users to enhance functionality through platforms like Zapier, Google Analytics, MailChimp, Google Optimize, Google Domains, and many other tools, making it easier for businesses to perform multiple operations and customizations on their websites.
Hosting: One of the best features Webflow has to offer is its own hosting scheme. Elementor also provides a hosting scheme, Webflow offers fully managed hosting solutions to its users, making it a better option for users who demand an all-in-one solution.
CMS ( Control Management System ): Webflow includes a robust control management system that allows its users to tailor custom content structures. It also supports dynamic content, allowing users to efficiently manage and showcase their content. Although this feature is more useful for blogs, portfolios, and eCommerce websites, it provides scalability and flexibility in how content is managed and presented.
Elementor offers more than 4,900 fully customizable, responsive, and functional templates for your Elementor website. Not only that but there are over 400 plugins and Add-ons to enhance the functionality of your website. As Elementor is integrated with WordPress, it allows over 2000 WordPress themes that can work perfectly with your Elementor website.
Where Webflow offers over 6000+ templates you can use for your website, isn’t it impressive? But Webflow is a standalone platform offering web development so it doesn’t primarily require any plugins due to which updating softwares and managing outdated plugins is no longer required. However, you can add plugins if you want and the process for that is pretty easy and straightforward.
Elementor and Webflow, both offer free and purchasable services. Now, we are going to compare the pricing plans of both tools.
| Webflow | Elementor |
| Basic Plan
Price: 14$ Per-month |
Essential Plan
Price: 4.92$ Per-month For $5, Elementor has to offer one site, 24/7 support, 57 Pro widgets, a theme builder, dynamic content, and a form builder. Where Webflow gives an upper hand on page limits and bandwidth. |
| CMS Plan
Price: 23$ per month For $23 per month, it has to offer a custom domain, 150 pages, 20 CMS collections, 2,000 CMS items, 1,000 monthly form submissions, free localization preview, 50 GB bandwidth, surge protection, site search, and 3 editors. |
Advanced Plan
Price: 8.25$ Per-month For $23 per month, it offers up to 3 sites, 24/7 support, 86 Pro widgets, a theme builder, dynamic content, a form builder, a popup builder, custom code and CSS options, eCommerce features, and collaborative notes. |
| Business Plan
Price: 39$ Per-month For $39, Webflow is offering a custom domain, 300 pages, 40 CMS collections, 10,000 CMS items, 2,500 monthly form submissions, free localization preview, 100 GB bandwidth, surge protection, site search, and the ability to upload files through forms. It also allows up to 10 editors. |
Expert Plan
Price: 16.58$ Per-month Where for $16.58, Elementor’s Expert plan offers support of up to 25 sites, offering 24/7 premium support, 86 Pro widgets, a theme builder, dynamic content, a form builder, a popup builder, options for custom code and CSS, eCommerce features, and collaborative notes for teamwork. |
Elementor also offers one more pricing plan called “Agency” for $33.25 per month, offering up to 1000 sites, 24/7 premium support, 86 pro widgets, a theme builder, dynamic content, form builder, popup building, custom code & CSS, eCommerce features, and collaborative notes.
We have now extensively discussed the pricing plans and offerings of both Webflow and Elementor. From the points discussed above, we have found out which web development tool is the best choice for our work.
From pricing, both of the tools have different offerings. Webflow pricing plans offer features at a bit higher price, focusing on comprehensive design tools, and its hosting capabilities. While Elementor has more affordable pricing options, focusing on customizations and providing more sites per plan.
Webflow is a standalone platform that focuses more on customizations and designs, which include features like CMS collections, bandwidth allocation, and providing to users looking for quality design capabilities while Elementor is a plugin for WordPress that focuses on offering pro widgets, dynamic content, expanding the number of websites per-plan and providing optimized site-building tools that enhance user experience.
In Conclusion, both the development tools may have the same purpose which is to develop websites without the need of writing a code, but their focus areas differ from each other. Webflow focuses on design and hosting, making it an ideal choice for projects, while Elementor offers a more economical solution with many customization features for WordPress users.
Can you use Webflow for e-commerce websites?
Webflow is no longer in beta and it has opened its gates for eCommerce websites. It is a good choice for developing a responsive and functional eCommerce website store. Although it has a limited product range, it is a good choice for a small or medium-sized e-commerce website.
Which is better for responsive design, Webflow or Elementor?
Both are great web-development tools but which one is best depends upon your needs. If you want to have an upper hand on website development without the need to code, go with Webflow, if you want to go along with WordPress and don’t want to go through the basic knowledge of coding, go with Elementor.
Which platform is more customizable, Webflow or Elementor?
Webflow generally offers comprehensive features and wider customization options, giving users full control over the design and development of their website compared to Elementor. Elementor can be easy to understand compared to Webflow but if you are looking for a platform with which you can perform more customizations on your website, Webflow is a much better option.
Can Webflow replace WordPress?
The number of websites hosted by Webflow is roughly a million compared to WordPress, where 478 million websites have been built. Elementor is just a plugin of WordPress, while WordPress is itself a much wider and more powerful web design and development tool compared to Webflow. Webflow is growing rapidly, but it cannot replace WordPress anytime soon.
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