Breakdance Builder Review (+2.0 Features That Make It Better)

There's finally a WordPress builder that isn't full of bloat, optimized for 2024, and able to be used regardless of if you've ever built a website before.

If you want to take a stab at building an amazing website yourself and want to combine the power of WordPress – you finally have an accessible, affordable, and very powerful option. It's called Breakdance.

I've been developing WordPress websites for over 7 years and Breakdance is the first WordPress page builder I've used that is easy to learn, extremely powerful, and lightning fast. You'll be able to create beautiful websites in a breeze, regardless of skill level.

I've been obsessed with Breakdance since I got access to it in June 2022. It combined the best features of all the page builders on the market while removing all of the bloat.

I've created over 60 written Breakdance tutorials, YouTube Videos, and even a full introductory course on the builder. If that doesn't show my commitment to it, I'm not sure what else does!

Breakdance is a page builder built by a team that cares about power, speed, and growing an extremely helpful community.

You don't need to know anything about web development to build your first site.

Regardless if you're a mom who just opened up a local corner store or an agency that builds new sites by the week, the spectrum of use cases Breakdance allows is something that's really never been achieved by another WordPress page builder. Let's talk about it!

What is Breakdance Builder?

Breakdance is a relatively new WordPress page builder focused on both features and speed. The builder was announced in June of 2022 but wasn't actually released until September of that year. Breakdance features over 140 block elements usable through a drag & drop interface.

Whether you've never built a website or run an entire development agency, Breakdance scales based on the flexibility of your own needs.

Creating beautiful websites are both easy and fun (if you love to visualize your site designs). Plus, because it's built on top of WordPress, it has all the power and flexibility for advanced development.

Breakdance was created by Soflyy, the company that works on Oxygen Builder (so it's not their first product). Their goal was to create a tool that was both easy to use and powerful enough for website developers of all skill levels.

What Can You Build With Breakdance?

If you can built it in WordPress, you can build it with Breakdance!

You can use Breakdance to create any type of website (with their pre-built themes or from scratch) but we specifically endorse it for WooCommerce websites.

If you don't use WordPress for e-commerce sites, you've probably worked with Shopify before. While Shopify is good, it doesn't give you complete control over your website. Breakdance + WooCommerce gives you the site control WordPress provides, with the extensive shopping capabilities you could get in Shopify.

Just add your products and start selling! Breakdance comes with beautiful styling for shops by default so your store will look great out of the box.

Beyond selling, I've seen Breakdance get used for general informational sites, local service and product shops, online companies, and even a few online communities.

You can use Breakdance to create a simple brochure website, an advanced photography portfolio, or build your very own digital community. And again, since Breakdance is built on top of WordPress, you'll have access to thousands of plugins and themes to further customize your site.

Here's a few examples of some sample themes included in Breakdance that you can freely edit and customize. These are 100% Breakdance. No additional plugins or bloat. How incredible:

User-created websites are also pretty incredible. Here's a few landing pages that have been thrown around in the Breakdance Website Showcase facebook group:

How Much Does Breakdance Builder Cost?

The builder currently costs $199/year which includes unlimited website activations. If you want a single site license you can now grab one for $99. The team claims this is only introductory pricing and will soon rise to $349/year, but its been the same price since launch.

If for some reason you decide to stop paying for your yearly subscription, your websites will still work – you just won't have access to future updates and support.

There is also a 60-day no questions asked money-back guarantee. You could give the builder a try and get your money back if you're not 100% satisfied.

Currently there's only 1 plan available for Breakdance (the unlimited site license). This license can be used on an unlimited number of websites (staging, production, anything). We're not sure if there will be an individual site plan for a cheaper rate at some point in the future, but for now you have to buy the singular plan.

How To Try Breakdance Builder for Free?

If you're interested in the builder but still not convinced on whether or not it's right for you, you can demo Breakdance for free on a sandbox website.

A sandbox website is a temporary website that allows you to play around with the builder as it were a live site. This is the perfect way to see if the builder is right for you without any risk. Just make sure not to create anything of value, as each sandbox website will be deleted an hour after creation.

You could also download the Breakdance free plugin that gives you 80 elements to use on an unlimited numbers of websites. You can't build forms or popups and have limited access to dynamic data and WooCommerce, but it's a great feel to determine if the builder is right for you.

Breakdance Builder Key Features

Ok, let's talk about the builder! Offering over 130+ premium elements, Breakdance is on par to replacing many of the current leading page builders within the next 2 years. I've been working with WordPress for longer than I can remember and I wish I had Breakdance when I first started making sites.

With basic, dynamic, and block elements to choose from – you can completely design a site from scratch or use pre built blocks and themes to jumpstart the process.

The main features Breakdance has an edge over compared to other builders have to be its WooCommerce integration, dynamic blog support, integrated forms, and its design library. We'll go into more depth on those soon.

The builder has tons of native blocks you can drag and drop onto your site. These range from simple text elements to customizable pricing widgets. In comparison to other leading page builders like Elementor and Divi, Breakdance is amazing for first-time website designers. Drag, drop, and customize.

Breakdance also includes an Element Studio feature for developers, allowing the creation and customization of Breakdance elements, both pre-built and new ones.

Beyond the basic blocks, the design blocks are responsive and customizable elements you can throw on your pages to speed up the design process. You can setup headers and menus, add custom code & wrappers, and implement dynamic data to customize blogs & advanced pages within a few minutes.

Basic Blocks - Section, Columns, Div, Heading, Text, Rich Text, Text Link, Button, Image, Video, and Icons

Design Blocks - Icon Box, Image Box, Basic List, Checkmark List, Icon List, Pricing Table, Blockquote, Stats Grid, Business Hours, Frequently Asked Questions, Gallery, Social Icons, Star Rating, Fancy Divider, Progress Bar, Basic Slider, Circle Counter, Simple Counter, Tabs, Countdown Timer, Lottie Animation, Scrolling Image, Image Accordion, Logo List, Dual Heading, Animated Heading, Simple Testimonial, Fancy Testimonial, Image Comparison, Notification Bar, Image Hover Card, Image With Zoom, Masker, Google Map, Facebook Comments, Facebook Like Button, Facebook Page Plugin, Facebook Post, Facebook Share Button, Facebook Video, Twitter Button, Twitter Embed Tweet, Twitter Timeline, Social Share Buttons

Site Blocks - Header Builder, WP Menu, Menu Builder, Search Form

Advanced Blocks - Wrapper Link, Code Block, Advanced Tabs, Advanced Slider, Global Block, Shortcode, Shortcode Wrapper, HTML IMG

Dynamic Blocks - Comment Form, Comments List, Post Meta, Post Title, Post Excerpt, Post Content, Post Featured Image, Author, Adjacent Posts, Archive Title, Post List, Post Loop Builder, WordPress Widget 

Form Blocks - Forgot Password Block, Form Builder, Login Form, Register Form

In 2.0

In Breakdance 2.0, released not so long ago this year, there's a few more things they've added:

Breakdance AI

You can use AI to write content on your website (headers, paragraphs, etc.). You can also use it to rewrite text. Breakdance uses ChatGPT (GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4 Turbo, and GPT-4o).

Migration Mode

A new plugin from Breakdance lets you easily migrate your current website in another theme or page builder to Breakdance (in just a few minutes)

Other New Features

CSS Controls in Design Tab, Import/Export Global Settings, and an integration with AnalyticsWP

Why I Love Breakdance

I introduced a very good friend of mine to Breakdance just a month or two after it's release and the site looks like it was made by a professional designer.

This guy never touched WordPress a day in his life before this:

It's Just Simple

One of the main reasons I created this website years ago was to teach/explain concepts that are generally more complex to someone with no knowledge.

I went all in on Breakdance because it's something I could explain to my mom – someone who struggles with daily computing tasks – and she could still create something with Breakdance. And no, that isn't a diss on my mom or Breakdance (it's actually complimenting them both!)

Faster Speed & Fewer Plugins

With tons of optimizations, the builder loads four times faster than other leading WordPress page builders.

You basically don't need any plugins to do "normal" things that should be included by default in a builder. Things like speeding up your site, removing bloat, plugins to add extra elements. You don't need extras.

Of course you can add wonderful plugins like WP Rocket, but you just don't need to. The builder is great right out of the box. Stop stressing.

Breakdance includes a ton of native elements that people have wanted out of the box in a builder for years. My older website with Elementor had 32 plugins when I got rid of it. That could just be my fault though. But you get the point.

WooCommerce

The WooCommerce integration is fantastic. If you want the extensive depth WooCommerce offers while setting up a site within minutes, you should be using Breakdance + WooCommerce.

Once you install Breakdance and activate WooCommerce, you'll automatically have a default shop page that can be used instantly. The page below took me ~3 minutes to add these products and find the page.

Easy Template Editing & Integration

Breakdance was designed to be pretty by default on install, but if you're looking to further customize your site, it's still ridiculously easy.

7 types of templates can be created to customize dynamic content like your blog, WooCommerce, and custom pages.

The complete list includes Single Product, Shop Page & All Product Archives, Specific Product Archives, Single Posts, Post Archives, 404 Not Found, and Search Results templates. Custom templates let you create reusable pages (like if you had a store with multiple locations, make one template and apply to each page).

Extensive Customization

Even though the builder is often boasted to be beginner-friendly, it still offers extensive customization options for more advanced users. If you know your way around CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, you can easily add custom code to blocks and elements.

You can add shortcodes, custom code, wrappers, global blocks, and make use of dynamic data using plugins like Advanced Custom Fields.

You have control over the actual builder design too. If you want to move the blocks to the right side of your page and tweak simple UI layouts, you can easily do so.

Powerful Form Builder

While there are plenty of powerful WordPress form builders, the vast majority of people don't need 90% of the features included in them. Out of the box, Breakdance has multi-step forms and integrations with extremely popular apps you probably already use.

MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Discord, GetResponse, Drip, ReCaptcha, MailerLite, and Slack are just some of the integrations Breakdance supports out of the box. You can integrate contact forms into team communication software, CRM software, and more to easily manage your site's leads (if contact information is a big part of your website.)

Dynamic Data & Conditions Integration

As you build more advanced templates, you want access to the dynamic data your site offers, this includes custom fields, post types, taxonomies, image sizes, and user data.

With the dynamic data integration, you can access this information in conjunction with a plugins like Advanced Custom Fields to easily display it on your pages. As mentioned earlier, you could use templates + ACF to build some pretty impressive category, blog, and other dynamic types of pages.

Additionally, the builder features conditional logic to show or hide certain blocks based on conditions like user role, page template, post type, and more. Add login/registration pages very easily. I wish other builders had this out of the box.

Custom Fonts

On install, Breakdance has dozens of fonts available for use in your pages. However, if you want to use a custom font, the builder makes it easy to add them. You can add .woff or .woff2 file formats & then use these fonts in any of the builder's text blocks. No external plugin is necessary, although some might give you further customization.

Multisite Compatibility

Multisite WordPress is a feature that allows you to run more than one WordPress site from a single installation of WordPress. This is useful when managing multiple blogs or trying to create a network of websites.

Each site in a Multisite WordPress installation gets its own database and can be managed independently, but they share the same plugins, themes, and settings. Breakdance is fully compatible with WordPress multisite installations.

Optional Themes

With Breakdance, you have the option to use any theme you desire or simply install it on your existing website without altering your current design. I've been talking about the extensive customization you get when disabling the theme system but failed to mention that you can still keep themes enabled if you want to.

This means you could find other pre-built WordPress websites and use Breakdance to customize them. Get the best of both words – a website very close to what you're looking for with the ability to use Breakdance to edit them. Just make sure the theme will support the builder or you might run into compatibility issues.

Breakdance Builder Pros and Cons

Despite being fairly new, Breakdance has definitely already surprised its users with its outstanding features. It seems like every day people have been making the switch over. People are so frustrated with existing builders.

The Facebook group continuously talks about the ease of use & power combination. But with all great tools come pros and cons. Here's our list:

Breakdance Builder Alternatives

Elementor

Elementor is currently considered the closest competitor to Breakdance. I don't really see anything coming this close in similarity anytime soon. Launched in 2016, this WordPress website builder also has WooCommerce integration and other interesting and powerful features. While Elementor has benefits, it's generally regarded as slow & laggy. Check out our comparison on Breakdance vs Elementor. 

Pros

• Free version available (with limited features)
• 300+ Designer Made Templates
• Customization made easy
• SEO, Social Media, and email marketing integrations
• Widespread community

Cons

• Speed issues (some elements have slow loading)
• Elementor Pro is not beginner-friendly
• Customer support has tons of negative reviews

Divi

Launched by Elegant Themes in 2008, Divi is also a popular WordPress page builder combined with a WordPress theme. Like Breakdance and Elementor, Divi can also be integrated with WooCommerce and features drag-and-drop editors and other useful features. Check out our full Breakdance vs Divi review.

Pros

• Clean, intuitive UI
• Lifetime access, unlimited websites
• Over 350 ready-to-use templates
• Integration with lots of WordPress plugins
• Quick, responsive customer support

Cons

• Steep learning curve for beginners
• Removing Divi can cause website breakdown due to lots of shortcodes

How To Install Breakdance

Just like any other premium WordPress page builder, it requires a subscription and license key before you can install it. You can purchase a license key from the pricing page on the official website. Once you have your license key, you can download and install the plugin just like any other WordPress plugin.

If you would like to use Breakdance but don't have WordPress installed, you'll need to host your WordPress site somewhere before continuing. If you're more technical, it might be worth setting up a local WordPress development environment using something like Local or MAMP.

If you are newer to WordPress or website development in general, we recommend using a WordPress hosting provider like Flywheel or WP Engine. These providers will install and configure WordPress for you so you can get started building your site without any headaches.

Once your site is set up and you have a Breakdance license, upload and install the plugin just like any other WordPress plugin. Once the plugin is activated, you'll be prompted to enter your license key. After that, you're ready to start building!

Step-by-Step Guide Breakdance Install Guide

1. Visit Breakdance's website and download the plugin.

2. Log in to your WordPress website.
3. Go to WordPress Dashboard >>> Plugin >>> Add New.
4. Click on the Upload Plugin button.
5. Select the Breakdance zip file from your computer.

6. Click the Install button, and then, Activate.

7. If you have already purchased the License Key, get it at https://breakdance.com/portal/ and enter it on the field.

8. Before doing anything else, go to WordPress Theme System. Breakdance strongly recommends choosing Disable Theme, so you can have full control of the design of your website. It also eliminates the possibility of theme bloat.

9. Don’t forget to click Save Changes.

Final Thoughts on Breakdance

Breakdance is extremely powerful. So powerful that we use it on tons of our own client websites. It's got the power & flexibility to do nearly all of the things you're looking for in a WordPress page builder.

Overall, Breakdance is an incredible WordPress page builder that encapsulates everything you need to build beautiful websites in a single tool. Breakdance includes everything you need to create both regular & WooCommerce WordPress sites without any bloat or annoyances. If you want a WordPress WooCommerce website that can be setup almost instantly, there's no doubt this is the builder you should be using – they're a match made in heaven.

Both WordPress designers and non-techies finally have a great option for creating WordPress sites quick and easily. If you're looking for a powerful WordPress page builder that will be supported and updated for years to come, there is no WordPress page builder I would recommend more than Breakdance!