Oxygen vs Bricks Compared: Two Extremely Powerful WP Builders

This one is hard.

As an Oxygen user, I've loved everything the community has built ever since I started using it years ago. But it's really obvious that there's a legitimate tool that's pretty much on par with everything Oxygen gave us, and it's called Bricks.

If you're reading this, you already know the immense value of having a powerful page builder at your disposal. It's not just about constructing a website with ease; it's about the freedom to truly customize your pages and posts to push WordPress to its limits.

Oxygen and Bricks are two game-changing builders specifically crafted for the advanced users of WP. Both of these popular page builders were created to give developers the ultimate control over their WordPress sites, and I'd say they are the best WordPress builders on the market. So let's dive in and talk about it.

History and Development

Oxygen

Oxygen was the groundbreaking page builder that changed the WordPress page building scene. Created by Soflyy in 2016, Oxygen took the WordPress community by storm. It had a unique approach and worked by disabling the existing theme entirely (which is clear today how great of a choice their optimizations made on performance.)

Oxygen set out to redefine the concept of WYSIWYG visual editing, and boy, did it deliver.

From the get-go, users were given the choice to either start with a blank canvas or use one of their pre-made website templates (not themes, templates). With Oxygen, you could craft beautiful & dynamic websites that were super fast.

While there was a bit of drama when Soflyy released Breakdance in 2022, Oxygen remains one of the most sought-after visual builders, particularly for those who want to elevate their WooCommerce game.

While I personally think Breakdance was a marketing failure, it's still a pretty solid page builder. It's great, but Soflyy should've rewrote oxygen and released Oxygen 2.0 (or something called like Nitrogen, lol).

Oxygen does have a massive library of extensions built for it (although a decent amount have abandoned it since the announcement of Breakdance, with developers switching to Bricks because of Oxygen's wish-wishy transparency).

Bricks

Bricks was announced in March of 2021 and is the brainchild of the talented Thomas Ehrig.

Despite being a relative newcomer, Bricks wasted no time in building their community around its impressive theme/page building capabilities.

Unlike its counterpart Oxygen, Bricks is not a plugin; it works as a complete theme and page builder package. While it also doesn’t offer a free version, that really hasn't stopped many in the Oxygen community from switching to Bricks in the last few years.

Despite its relatively young age, Bricks offers a lot and features an extensive roadmap.

As Bricks continues to soar, it's worth highlighting something they take pride in—maintaining lightning-fast speed and clean code despite numerous upgrades and the addition of exciting new features.

This is similar to Oxygen, but Bricks uses the Vue.js 3 framework (smart asset loading, clean markup, and some other enhancements — basically a JavaScript framework known for its speed). Oxygen was made with Angular.

User Interface and Experience

Oxygen 

The first thing you’ll probably notice about Oxygen is its clean and intuitive user interface. After activating, Oxygen lets you choose between two installation types - Premade and Blank Installation. By choosing a premade website, you can choose from a few of their internal website designs. I'd suggest blank, but if it's your first Oxygen site it'll take you a bit to get used to.

Once you choose the Premade Website and pick a design, you can add a new page or go edit the existing ones. You can customize your templates to control your headers, footers, and layouts for any post type or archive. You can also change the design anytime you like.

Oxygen's visual editor interface has a left sidebar to add new elements, tweak existing ones, and browse the design library. The responsive controls for different devices are at the top left. The structure panel control, settings, and stylesheets are at the top right.

Bricks

Again, Bricks Builder is a theme, not a plugin. So you won't actually find it on your plugin list (this had me fooled at first). After installing it, you'll be directed to the Getting Started section and invited to check out the Bricks Academy.

If you are familiar with Gutenberg, using Bricks will be very easy for you. First add a template and save it. Then, click the Edit with Bricks button. You'll see three parts – the toolbar, the panel, and the canvas. The latter is the visual representation of the page that you are working with.

The Bricks Setting tab has an organized menu bar for everything you need in building your website. This includes Builder Access, Templates, Builder, Performance, API Keys, Custom Code, and WooCommerce.

Core Features Compared

Oxygen and Bricks both have really similar (and powerful) features that really let you create anything you want.

Both offer a full theme, menu, and popup builder. Bricks also has a built-in form builder, unlike Oxygen.

Bricks Builder has more design elements than Oxygen as well. If you want more Oxygen elements like for accordions, you can get it included when purchasing their Ultimate Plan for $179. If not, you have to purchase their Composite Elements add-on for $29 a year.

Both page builders have responsive controls for different devices, an Undo/Redo button, and the included library of premade templates. Bricks supports more than 20 languages other than English, Oxygen only supports English.

Both Oxygen and Bricks can integrate with WooCommerce. Oxygen offers over 20 elements (shop page, cart functionality, checkout page, product profiles) while Bricks has a bit over 30. They still do the same thing.

Being the younger page builder, Bricks still lacks some features pretty popular with Oxygen. On the flip side of the coin, Bricks has some unique features, one which I love is called Remote Template. You can easily access and insert templates from another Bricks installation; no need to import and export templates. Oxygen does let you copy the JSON styling from one template/page to another.

Theming works differently between the two as well. With Oxygen, your WordPress theme system is disabled completely. All websites need a theme but Oxygen eliminates the need for child themes. Your theme only serves as a placeholder.

Bricks is a hybrid type since it is both a theme and a page builder. You will only need extra plugins or add-ons if you want to add more components to your site.

Customization and Flexibility

Oxygen

Oxygen Builder offers a lot of customization options that may look confusing at first, but it's the reason I still use the builder to this day. Oxygen uses three main elements for building custom layouts – Sections, Columns, and Divs. Oxygen uses flexbox.

The builder also allows you to rename, duplicate, or delete elements with just a single click. Using the Global Styles settings, you can set the font style, size, and color of your default headings and body text pretty easily.

You can also add multiple HTML attributes to elements via the Attribute section, and custom CSS properties using the Code Block. Oxygen allows you to apply all the styles to multiple elements that belong to the same CSS class instantly.

Bricks

Like Oxygen, Bricks Builder also uses Flexbox except that the four elements - Section, Container, Block, and Div are combined.

The Div element is also used for grouping elements and creating layouts. But as you go along, you’ll notice that Oxygen is more focused on Div's than Bricks.

Also similar to Oxygen, you can use Google Fonts aside from the available custom fonts. To customize the conditions, colors, font size, and more, you can go to Theme Styles tab by clicking the Settings (gear) icon. You can set as many conditions as you want and put dynamic conditions. And yes, you can exclude conditions!

Bricks allows you to insert multiple attributes (name and value) in elements and also use dynamic data. It comes with built-in tooltips (CSS only) that you can set through custom attributes. Both builders pretty much let you do the same things in terms of design.

Performance

In terms of speed and performance, Oxygen is faster than most page builders out there. It only loads the elements required to appear on a specific page. Its latest versions, including Oxygen 4.9, already have a Lazy Loading option for Gallery and Video elements. Oxygen has a built-in Bloat Eliminator feature. Try to run PageSpeed insights on a blank install, you'll be dumbfounded.

You also have the choice to disable unnecessary functionalities and third party scripts. This includes built-in WordPress JavaScripts and Webfont.js.

Oxygen is also CDN friendly, and works well with powerful CDNs such as Amazon CloudFront, CloudFlare, and bunny.

Bricks Builder runs on Vue.js, which is one of the latest and most advanced JavaScript frameworks. Bricks also disables unnecessary scripts such as embeds and emojis, loads selected fonts only, and has no bloat.

But apart from having clean, semantic code, Bricks has a unique feature called Smart Lazy Asset Loader.

Here, you can be sure that images and videos will be only loaded and visible in the visitor browser viewport. If you are uploading lots of images, you should probably also use image optimization plugins like Imagify.

There’s nothing better than seeing the actual speed test results comparing Oxygen and Bricks though. Based on my use across various sites I own, you can't really tell a difference. If you want to see the differences in depth, check this great video out by Touchdown Tech.

Integrations and Extensions

Oxygen

Really any website created with Oxygen can run without the need for any additional plugins. But if you want to optimize things, there are 70+ free and premium plugins to choose from. Some of them were created exclusively for Oxygen, while many others just work quite well with it:

• Agency Base
• Asura
• Code Snippets
• Editor Enhancer
• Hydrogen Pack
• Nimbufy
• Oxygen Theme Enabler
• Oxy Transfer Pro
• Oxy Ultimate
• OxyExtras
• OxyMade
• OxyNinja Core
• OxyPowerPack
• OxyToolbox
• Swiss Knife Pro

Oxygen has built-in integrations with RankMath, SEOPress, and Yoast SEO.

Bricks

As a younger competitor, Bricks obviously has the fewer number of add-ons and extensions. As of writing this, it has about 30 extensions with most of them being premium & exclusive to Bricks.

But honestly, just like Oxygen, Bricks works completely fine without add-ons. They really just make your life easier. Here's some that cater to Bricks:

• Brickforge
• Bricks Awesome
• Bricks Navigator
• Bricks Plus
• Bricks Ultimate
• Bricks4Woo
• Bricksable for Bricks Builder
• BricksExtras
• BricksTemplate
• BricksWizard
• Fancy Bricks
• Max Addons for Bricks Builder

As of posting, Bricks doesn't have any specific integration with any of the popular SEO plugins (like Rank Math and SEOPress). Rank Math integration is coming in the future.

Community and Support

When it comes to community, Bricks is quite far behind Oxygen considering their 5-year age gap. The Official Oxygen User Group has almost 40k members, while the Bricks Community has about almost 20k.

Both communities are super active though and you can get support/answers to your questions quite easily.

In terms of official support from Oxygen, you can submit a ticket via their contact page. Louis (their CEO) is also very active within Oxygen's Facebook group.

For Bricks, you can join their Community Forum if you have feature requests or want to report a bug. If you prefer official support, shoot them an email through their Contact page. I haven't had to contact Bricks yet but Oxygen has been quite responsive over the last few years.

Pricing Comparison

Oxygen

Oxygen Builder has no free version but offers three different premium lifetime license plans – Basic ($129), WooCo ($149), and Ultimate ($179). All plans do have a 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee, with no questions asked. Here's what they include:

Bricks

Like Oxygen, Bricks Builder also has no free version. But instead of three pricing plans, Bricks only has two one-time payment plans – Starter ($99) and Ultimate ($249).

The Starter Plan is good for a single website, while ultimate includes unlimited. Both plans have the same features and a 30-day money-back guarantee:

Alternatively, you can also get their lifetime subscription for a one-time payment of $599.

Pros and Cons

Which Is The Answer?

Let's be real here, it's a tough decision to make. When it comes to Oxygen and Bricks, they're neck and neck in terms of user interfaces and features.

I really love them both. Bricks has a wonderful community growing daily thanks to their feature roadmap. There's so much planned in the next year or two it's going to be fun to watch. Oxygen is just so stable and been around for a while there are way less bugs & more extensions to work with off the bat.

As things currently are, future update potential & a warm growing community are the most important, Bricks is your answer. If you want something with heavy roots that is durable on performance and capability, Oxygen is the better choice.