Breakdance vs Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver Builder: In-Depth Comparison

When it comes to building WordPress sites, you'll never be able to find the perfect page builder. There's just not a 1-size-fits-all solution to solving everything you need. You'll have to make some tradeoffs.

Over the years, these platforms continuously tried to compete with one another by implimenting features that others have, in hopes of swaying more people over to use one over another.

From my experience in the field, once you choose a builder, you're kind of stuck with it. Obviously you can change, but if you spent 5 years working with Elementor, why would you want to switch to something like Breakdance?

I can't really say. I mean every single one of these builders has an entire company behind it, none of them are objectively bad (or they would be out of business, right?)

People also don't really like to make choices. There's a few dozen builders in the world, but I've narrowed down the best ones down to 4. Without a doubt, Breakdance, Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder are among the best page builders today.

While I see Bricks rising in popularity very quickly, it's still on par with Oxygen (some of the more advanced builders you might run into).

As for casual WordPress development, you'll probably be using one of these to make your site. Choosing among these page builders can be overwhelming. Since each of them has its own unique features, none of them can be considered objectively better than the others.

While I use Breakdance for most of my newer websites & Oxygen for the ones I need to fully customize, all of them have their benefits and drawbacks. Let's talk about them:

Comparing The Best WordPress Page Builders

* Divi Builder has two pricing plans – the year plan and the lifetime license.
** You need first to purchase the Beaver Themer add-on.

Key Features Between Them

Theme & Page Builder

Breakdance

Breakdance is a quickly rising builder that was released last summer by Soflyy, the creator of Oxygen.

It allows you to create beautiful, fully-featured WordPress websites without coding knowledge. It's so streamlined and is actually meant to function without a theme. In fact, they actually recommend disabling your existing theme, so you can have full control of your website.

Designed for beginners, online store owners, and freelancers who create websites for clients, the Breakdance “themeless” mode offers amazing features and a wide range of customizable templates. The free version is fine, but Breakdance Builder Pro offers more elements, advanced features, and a deeper WooCommerce integration.

Breakdance Builder Pro has 130+ premium elements and 40+ advanced dynamic data fields and can be used on an unlimited number of websites, including your clients. The elements are divided into 8 categories, including Advanced, Basic, Block, Dynamic Data, Forms, Site, Social, and WooCommerce. Styling and copying them is super easy.

Elementor

Founded in 2016, Elementor is probably the most popular website builder for WordPress. It is used by over 13 million websites; with 5+ million of them using the free version. The paid version (Elementor Pro) is loaded with amazing features including 15+ Theme Widgets, 20+ Dynamic Widgets, Landing Page Builder, 20+ WooCommerce Widgets, and enhanced customization.

The built-in Elementor Theme Builder feature in Elementor Pro allows you to customize almost every core element of your website even if you don’t have coding skills. This includes your header, footer, single post template, search page, 404 page, and blog archives. You can also get special theme widgets such as Post Content and Post Title for blog customization.

Elementor Pro works with any theme and gives you three different tabs to manage your modules – Content, Style, and Advanced. The builder offers a lot of advanced styling options such as custom positioning and motion effects. But unlike Breakdance, Elementor has its own WooCommerce builder, and you’ll need a plugin to add Conditional Logic.

Divi Builder

As a proud product of Elegant Themes, Divi Builder was previously available only in a Divi-built Theme. In October 2015, the company released Divi Builder as a standalone WordPress plugin. As of today, this website builder is used by more than 4 million websites around the world. But unlike most page builders, Divi Builder has no free version.

Divi Builder comes with some nice features and add-ons, and you can use it with any theme you like, including the Divi-specific theme. The Divi Visual Editor has three building blocks - modules, rows, and sections, being the largest.

They currently offer 200+ elements, 40+ content modules, 20 column structures, and 20+ WooCommerce modules for your online store. 

Divi has a built-in split testing tool called Divi Leads, which other page builders don’t have. With this A/B Testing function, you can test different versions (headlines, layouts, colors, etc.) of your web pages to determine which variation will perform better.

Split testing in other page builders is also possible, but you'll have to use a separate plugin. Something to really consider if you want to switch up your pages frequently.

Beaver Builder

Launched in 2014, Beaver Builder is used by over a million websites. It has a free version (Beaver Builder Lite) but with heavy limitations compared to the premium version. And although Beaver Builder also has good features, it doesn’t seem to have anything super unique about it compared to the others.

Like most page builders, Beaver Builder can be used on an unlimited number of sites and is compatible with any theme. It has a form builder, a popup builder, and three same advanced styling options – General, Style, and Advanced. Beaver also uses Rows, Columns, and Modules to design sites.

All of this aside, Beaver only has 30 content modules, no content block for standard headings, and no built-in popup builder. They also don't offer a theme-building feature.

User Interface

Breakdance Builder

Breakdance Builder has a simple drag-and-drop UI, which makes it very easy to use. It recommends starting from scratch rather than using your current theme. This might seem confusing if you’re a beginner. But as you go along and navigate the menu options, you’ll be surprised that building websites and customizing them is super easy.

With Breakdance, you can choose from 100+ pre-designed layout components and add them to your pages. Breakdance has a Mega Menu builder instead of installing a separate plugin to create menus. The main elements such as the header and footer come with a dropdown menu that allows you to choose as many elements as you wish.

Once you drag an element to your canvas, Breakdance will only show the settings that are relevant to that element. You can set the display conditions for each element so you can control the location of that element. You can also easily add Global Blocks, customize them, and reuse them anywhere on your site.

Elementor

Elementor has a clean and intuitive user interface, which has two main parts. On the left, you'll see a sidebar that contains the drag-and-drop elements and global widgets. In the middle, you’ll see two button options – ‘Add New Section’ and ‘Add Template.’ 

Clicking the ‘Add New Section’ button will give you several options for structures. After choosing one, you can drag any element to the middle, and it will have a live preview on your page. If you click the ‘Add Template’ button, you will be presented with a wide collection of blocks, pages, and templates you have previously chosen and used.

With Elementor, you have two ways of editing the text in an element. You can use the text box on the sidebar or you can do inline editing, where you edit the text directly on the page. Instead of using the search bar, you can create a favorite section to keep the widgets you usually use. Elementor also supports the right-click function.

Divi Builder

Divi actually has a really nice user interface. After launching the page builder, you will be given two options – the standard back-end ‘Default Editor’ UI and the front-end ‘Visual Builder’ UI. As the name suggests, choosing the ‘Default Editor’ will replace the standard WordPress post editor.

The ‘Visual Builder’ interface allows you to see a live visual preview, just below the options. But instead of a sidebar on the left side, you will see three + icons for sections, rows, and content modules. You really only get what you need. Divi is less complicated

You can drag-and-drop and resize blocks as well. Divi supports the right-click function and inline editing, although its not as flexible as Breakdance and Elementor. And although Divi is generally user-friendly, some features maybe require a bit of tinkering to get used to.

Beaver Builder

Beaver kind of looks like a chrome extension within WordPress. When opened, you'll see an intuitive UI with a popup containing all the available modules, rows, and templates.

Beaver allows you to create new columns by simply dragging one module next to another instead of manually creating them. You can also adjust the column widths, inline editing, and can see an actual live preview of your page. 

Beaver doesn't support the right-click function and has no full-screen page template available with your theme. This is because there’s no blank template that allows you to build complete full-screen designs.

You also cannot copy-paste styles between different modules. It's still a pretty user-friendly design.

Template Library

Breakdance Builder

Being the newest builder, it is understandable that Breakdance doesn't not have as many templates as the others. It does offer fully-customizable, professionally-designed templates in 13 categories. A great kickstart if you want something to work with or learn how pages get designed. Each gorgeous template is complete with all the necessary pages and can be easily imported.

Elementor

Elementor has a huge Kit Library, where you can find over 117 free pre-made templates under 5 categories – Blog or Magazine, Online Store, Portfolio, Simple Website, and Wireframe. You can find the Elementor Kit Library on your Elementor Templates tab. You can also add new templates or import them from your library.

If you upgrade to Elementor Pro, you'll gain access to 300+ Pro templates and blocks. These gorgeous templates are in 19 categories, including Business and Services, E-Commerce, Education, Fashion, Music and Bands, Portfolio and CV, Technology, and Travel. They're also all responsive designs.

Divi Builder

Since Divi Builder was created by Elegant Themes, you should not be surprised to hear that they offer 270 full layout packs that have nearly 2,000 full-page templates. These beautiful templates are carefully organized into different categories such as Art & Design, Business, Education, Events, Fashion & Beauty, Lifestyle, and Online Store.

In August 2022, Elegant Themes launched the Divi Theme Builder Library where you can save your favorite templates and template sets (collections of templates). Since this library is integrated with Divi Cloud (similar to Google Drive or Dropbox), you can easily access these templates and apply them to your site.

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder’s templates are included in its official Page Builder addon. Their pre-made templates are divided into two categories - Landing pages and Content pages. The landing pages cater to specific niches, while the content pages are universal templates that you can apply to your website, regardless of your niche.

Beavers templates cover 15 niches, including automotive, fashion, fitness, legal, mobile app, music, photography, and restaurant. The content pages include an About, Contact, FAQ, Newsletter Subscription, Services, Team Page, Portfolio, and Pricing. As of posting, Beaver Builder has a total of 55+ pre-made templates.

WooCommerce

Breakdance Builder

WooCommerce integration in Breakdance is seamless. You’ll have access to 35+ WooCommerce elements that you can customize based on the needs of your online store. This includes Product Images, Product Description, Product Price, and Add to Cart Button. You can also create WooCommerce pages such as Account Page, Shop Page, and Checkout Page.

Elementor

Elementor has its own WooCommerce builder, which you can easily customize using the drag-and-drop editor. It comes with 24 Woocommerce widgets, including Product Title, Product Images, Product Breadcrumbs, Product Meta, Product Content, Add to Cart, and WooCommerce Pages. You can also add, delete, or style Upsell Products.

Divi

Divi Builder currently has 17 built-in WooCommerce product modules and 8 cart and checkout modules, making a total of 25. But while WooCommerce integration is totally free, you can enhance the functionality of your online store by integrating Divi with WooCommerce by purchasing the Woo Essential plugin, which costs $79 a year.

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder only has 15 built-in WooCommerce modules, including Product Title, Product Description, Product Images, Product Price, Product Breadcrumbs, Product Upsells, and Add to Cart. If you need more, you can purchase the Beaver Themer plugin for $147, which can be used for unlimited sites and has other advanced features.

Extensions

Breakdance Builder

So far, Breakdance Builder only has about four extensions - BD-dLibrary (freemium), BD Library Awesome (premium), Destiny Elements (premium), and Elements Hive (free). All of these add-ons offer numerous elements and advanced features that can enhance your website and online store, and improve their performance, but none of them are required for the functionality of the builder.

Elementor

Among the four, Elementor has the most free and paid add-ons. As of posting, there are at least 30 Elementor extensions, including Crocoblock, Designer Power Up, Elements Kits, Envato Elements, Happy Addons, Premium Addons, and PowerPack. And although you have a lot of choices, you wouldn't need more than 1 or 2 of these on your site.

Divi

Divi is second to Elementor when it comes to the number of available extensions, which you can find on their Marketplace. Among the most popular ones are Divi Blog Extras, Divi Booster, Divi Carousel Module, Divi Essential, Divi Events Calendar, Divi Masonry Gallery, Divi Plus, Divi Pixel, Divi Social Sharing Buttons, Divi Supreme Pro, and Divi Toolbox. 

Beaver Builder

Beaver is not far behind Divi when it comes to the number of available extensions. Aside from the Beaver Themer, among the best Beaver addons are Beaver Builder Header Footer, Beaver Builder Mega Menu, FacetWP, LiveMesh Addons, Ultimate Addons, and WooPack. Some of them can also be integrated with other page builders, so that's a plus.

Breakdance vs Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver Builder: Speed

Various factors affect the speed of a website. This includes a poor hosting provider, external scripts, a poor-coded theme, and heavily embedded videos and images. Some page builders can also cause slow loading of pages. Below is the comparison between the four page builders, and what some users say about them in terms of speed.

Breakdance Builder

Breakdance Builder is a game-changer when it comes to speed and performance. It's undoubtably the fastest WordPress page builder in existence today. You don't need to do anything for a fast site. Aside from having a clean code output, it works well with a3 Lazy Load. Breakdance also has a built-in caching feature and a bloat eliminator.

Like most page builders, Breakdance has no built-in SEO capabilities. Yet, you can integrate Breakdance with WordPress SEO plugins such as Yoast and RankMath. Many users praise Breakdance for its fast-loading pages. It scores very high on Google's core web vitals straight out of the box.

Elementor

Elementor used to be one of the fastest-loading page builders. But as time passed by, it became filled up with junk and bloat. Elementor claims that it is doing everything to improve its performance but its actions don’t seem to be enough. You'll generally have to rely on some speed plugins if you have an intensive website.

Like in other page builders, using CDN and a good cache plugin like WPRocket can help speed up web pages. However, it appears Elementor’s speed problem is due to two reasons: unnecessary code and add-ons.

Divi

Divi Builder has a lot of advanced features to help improve default speed and performance. This includes dynamic CSS, JS libraries, icons, PHP, and module frame. But people still complain about speed (and have even been switching to Breakdance because of it)

WP Rocket conducted a performance test which indicated that Elementor is slightly faster than Divi Builder in mobile performance. Elementor’s full loading time was 4.4 seconds and 83/100 at PageSpeed while Divi loaded at 4.9 seconds and had a 75/100 score (the test was done without WP Rocket.)

Beaver Builder

Generally speaking, Beaver is a bit more lightweight of a builder because it only has a few interface features and provides minimal code extensions. Since it has a lot of add-ons though, you might still run into speed issues. As mentioned earlier, you still might need the Beaver Themer add-on to extend Beaver’s functionality.

WP Rocket also conducted a speed test for Elementor and Beaver Builder and said Elementor has a PageSpeed score of 83/100 and a loading speed of 3.8 seconds. This is quite faster than Beaver Builder, which had a score of 68/100 and 4.2 seconds of loading time. The test was also done without WP Rocket.

Breakdance vs Elementor vs Divi vs Beaver Builder: Pricing

Breakdance Builder

Breakdance Builder offers a free pro trial but it is only applicable to a sandbox website and will be deleted after an hour. There is also a free version available for use on unlimited websites but with only 80 elements and very limited features. The paid version (Breakdance Builder Pro) has an unlimited price plan at $199/year, and single site license at $99. Both prices are expected to increase sometime in the near future.

Breakdance Builder Pro Features

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited client sites
• 120+ Elements
• 40+ Advanced dynamic data fields
• Client Mode/User Role Manager
• CSS Class and Selector Manager
• Advanced Form Builder
• Popup Triggers
• Unlimited access to Design Library
• More WooCommerce Elements/Conditions

Breakdance offers a 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee, and you can get a full refund. If you wish to cancel your subscription, your websites will still work and your content will not be lost. However, you will no longer have access to their support and updates. As of posting, Oxygen Builder is still offering a 1-year free use of Breakdance to its users.

Elementor

Elementor offers a free version like Breakdance, but Elementor Pro has more advanced features. There are four premium plans – Essential, Advanced, Expert, and Agency.

All of them have the same features but different prices, depending on the number of websites. Therefore, none of them allows you to use Elementor on unlimited websites.

Elementor Pro Features (All Plans)

• Drag & Drop
• No Code Editor
• 100+ Website Designs
• 100+ Widgets
• Theme Builder
• WooCommerce Builder
• Form Builder
• Popup Builder
• Loop Builder
• Dynamic Content
• Motion Effects
• Collaboration Tools
• Premium Support

Elementor Pro Prices:

Elementor Essential Pro

• $59/year for 1 website

Elementor Advanced Pro

• $99/year for 3 websites

Elementor Expert Pro

• $199/year for 25 websites

Elementor Agency Pro

• $399/year for 1,000 websites

Elementor does not offer a trial period but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you will cancel your subscription, you will still have access to the Pro features until your current billing period ends. If you will not renew your subscription, you will only have limited access to the Pro features and will no longer receive updates and premium support.

Divi

Divi Builder has two pricing plans – the year plan ($89/year) and the lifetime plan ($249 – one-time fee). Both plans allow you to use Divi on an unlimited number of websites and have full access to the Bloom email opt-in plugin, Divi Theme Builder, Extra magazine theme, and Monarch social media plugin. You will also receive 24/7 Premium Support.

Divi Builder has no free version or free trial but has a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you won't renew your subscription, you can still use Divi for free. You just won't receive updates and support.

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder has a free version called Beaver Builder Lite, which you can download at WordPress.org. The paid version has four premium plans – Standard, Pro, Agency, and Ultimate. None of them offer lifetime access, but all of them are covered with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Below are the Beaver Builder price options and their respective features.

A Recap

That's really everything you'll need to know about all of these builders. All of them are powerful but have many features that make each one stand out from one another.

Whether you care more about speed, user interface, design, flexibility, or customization, each one gives you certain options to choose from.

You won't really go wrong choosing one of these over another, but you should really do your research before purchasing and investing all your time into a single builder, as its likely a decision you'll be sticking with for a couple of years!