Most businesses of any size need a website these days. In a world where we have the yellow pages at our finger tips at all times, word of mouth will only get you so far. But small business owners already have so many hats they need to wear – human resources, bookkeeper, hiring manager, warehouse foreman, janitor, head chef, secretary, and so many more! Now they need to be lead developer and content manager for a website, too? I get the appeal of site builders/visual composers (basically the same thing) when someone doesn’t have technical knowledge to make their own site or the finances to hire someone else to. But I’m here to tell you why it’s a waste of money while making your website much more complicated than it needs to be.
A brief history of site builders in WordPress
Last year, WordPress (WP) celebrated its 20th birthday. Its initial release was May 27, 2003. Anyone alive in 2003 knows the Internet looked completely different then than it does now. It used a more antiquated version of what we now call the “Classic Editor”.
WordPress was originally aimed at bloggers, not necessarily business websites. So the editor was simply for writing up content and relied on the theme to tell it how to look.
However, those needs rapidly evolved. People wanted to use WordPress for their business websites, too. And as new versions of CSS were released and developers had more at their disposal, the way websites looked evolved rapidly, too. This demanded more of WordPress than what its little WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor was capable of at the time. Enter site builders/visual composers.
What site builders do for WordPress
Whether they entirely overhauled the editor with a visual composer or introduced a catalogue of fancy shortcodes, site builders allowed many people the ability to implement features without technical knowledge. Keep in mind, up until not too long ago, anyone who knew basic HTML was considered a wizard. The idea that just anyone could learn to code and create a website was immediately scoffed at, despite it being the furthest thing from the truth. Suddenly, with the assistance of a site builder, anyone could use columns, make their content full width, change a background, and many more things that felt impossible to someone who lacked code knowledge. Site builders set a precedence for non-coder WordPress site owners in the 2010s.
Reading that, you may think “Wow, so site builders really saved the decade, huh?” Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at it. But you don’t have to be in the tech industry to know how fast it moves. Today’s solutions to yesterday’s problems will be irrelevant by tomorrow. And site builders are no different.
Why site builders aged like milk (that was expired to begin with)
In June 2017, WordPress became pregnant with a bouncing baby Gutenberg, otherwise known as “the block editor”. Well, people don’t like their cheese moved and despite having been integrated into core WP for years now, the Gutenberg plugin (now for beta versions) still only brags a 2.1 star rating in the plugin repo.
The block editor is not without its hurdles, especially for those with disabilities who still face some accessibility issues with the block editor. And when it was first introduced, it was barely functional. But it has come a LONG way thanks to the diligent bug reports by not just every day users like site owners and developers, but accessibility pioneers and advocates within the community.
But, for all intents and purposes, the introduction of the block editor has made site builders entirely irrelevant because they offer core functionality that provides anything a site builder could. Especially with the plethora of Block Library plugins available to add additional functionality that seamlessly integrate into core, there is absolutely no reason to be using site builders anymore (even if you have no technical knowledge).
And let’s be clear here: A site builder/visual composer IS NOT the same thing as a page pattern builder or a block library. So a block library plugin like Kadence Blocks or Stackable and visual composer plugins like Avada or Divi aren’t even related because site builders overhaul how you use WordPress, like trying to use Tonka Toys with Lego pieces. While blocks libraries are just… going out and buying more Legos that are completely compatible with the existing collection to create bigger and better things.
Stop beating around the bush: Why I have a vendetta against site builders
I am vocally anti-site builder and it’s been a hill I’ve been willing to die on even before Gutenberg was gestating inside WP. When I first joined the WP community due to a job change, it was because I came from a raw-code development background and I’d never worked in a CMS (Content Management System) before. I thought I was better than WordPress and I saw site builders as cheating (and I’m the first one to admit it was a young, bratty, and gatekeeping attitude to have – one I’m grateful I no longer possess). And honestly, I found them more confusing than user-friendly – I still do. I had the skills to turn any WP website into what I wanted it to without a site builder, so why bother? However, now I’m older, wiser, and have much more experience, I’ve switched from a naive “augh, my parents are so uncool” perspective regarding site builders to recognizing “wow, my parents are actually incredibly harmful and toxic people” perspective (site builders being “my parents” in this analogy).
Some of those layers cause code conflicts, some cause security vulnerabilities, and most of those layers cause accessibility conflicts and drastically reduce site performance.
Site builders like Elementor, Divi, Avada, Beaver Builder, and WP Bakery essentially overhaul the framework of WordPress and add layers and layers and layers of extra bullshit to your site. It turns your site into the equivalent of the little brother in A Christmas Story who’s wearing so many layers he can’t put his arms down. Some of those layers cause code conflicts, some cause security vulnerabilities, and most of those layers cause accessibility conflicts and drastically reduce site performance. Ultimately, under the guise of saving you time, it is creating a ticking time bomb for your website and creating more for you to maintain. And it’s not a matter of if one of those layers fails, it’s a matter of when.
Just last year, there was a Critical Vulnerability in Elementor (patchstack). This breach essentially allowed non-users to gain admin access through the plugin and put over 5 million websites using Elementor at risk. Well, not JUST those 5 million websites. By allowing predators administrative access, you give them access to the site data including say, stored official user account information (like eCommerce sites with user accounts) and personal information provided by form entries stored in the dashboard. So 5 million websites and their users were put at risk. It took about a week and a half to patch once discovered.
Don’t get me wrong, Elementor isn’t the first plugin to ever have a security vulnerability that had the potential to wreak havoc. Plugins are removed from the repo all the time due to security vulnerabilities. But I find it unfathomable that people are still putting faith in this site builder after such a potential catastrophe. I mean geeze, every Elementor site I’ve ever audited has broken skip-links. So even when they try to be accessible, they literally fuck up their own attempts. I don’t even know how they manage it.
At this point, site builders are wreaking more havoc on websites than helping. They provide nothing core WP doesn’t at this point (with help from block library plugins) and are desperately trying to survive by marketing themselves as something that is no longer needed because non-techy site owners just don’t know the difference. They’re quite predatory in this sense. An overwhelmed, non-techy site owner with no knack for design or coding experience just needs a nice little site for their business or organization and have no idea they could do it with an accessibility-ready theme, core WP, and Kadence Blocks (seriously, y’all, I love Kadence and their faculty; they’re amazing). But site builder/visual composer plugins step in seductively and neg them like some sort of pick-up artist saying, “C’mon baby, you’d be prettier if you were using me.” It’s gross.
Site builders are NOT user-friendly
Site builders put most of their appeal into being usable by non-techy people. In reality, they aren’t. They provide too many unnecessary options a non-techy user wouldn’t know what to do with while restricting options that would actually benefit both site owners and front-end users. Even as an experienced developer, I feel like a lost child in a mall whenever I work in a site with a site builder because none of it ever makes sense. They implement this whole other layer of options (MOST of which are already available in core WordPress, so why do we need them again?), create more layers of crap to wade through, and make dashboards within dashboards.
For example, when you create a section in Elementor, one of the settings is to set the wrapper tag (div, header, footer, etc). So if you’re creating a header section (logo, main menu, cart, etc) for a site, you’d think that wrapper should be set to header, right? Wrong. Because if you’re in the header template within Elementor, the wrapper is already going to be header by default. So if you set that header wrapper to header (which seems logical), you’ll end up with nested banner landmarks. This is an accessibility no-no. This is the kind of crap that is setting people up for failure when they use site builders.
I just don’t get it. Everything a site builder offers can been done better, quicker, easier, and more dependably in core WordPress — WHY are people still bringing them business?
I think site builders are being hella sneaky right now
Every single WordPress accessibility conference I’ve attended or participated in recently has had a site builder/visual composer company as a sponsor. One of the big sponsors, higher tier. Since they were able to capitalize for so long on a more difficult and lacking aspect of being a non-techy WP site owner for so long, these companies have deep pockets by now. So now, we have “Big Site Builder” holding sponsorships over our heads, money that’s desperately needed to keep these conferences afloat and spread awareness, that prevents more people from being more aggressive when it comes to site builders. Site builders sponsoring an accessibility conference is like Marlboro sponsoring a lung cancer walk-a-thon. “Like, bruh, you created half these issues — why are you even here?”
I’ve seen few improvements to site builders over the years – both in accessibility and functionality. They are only surviving by using borderline Guerrilla marketing tactics and capitalizing on fear mongering and taking advantage of not-techy people. I mean, fuck, I’m half-tempted to subscribe to Reddit Premium just because I’m sick of all the Divi ads I see.
Too long; Didn’t read: Why you should just avoid site builders and visual composers altogether
In my opinion, any benefits every site builder and visual composer on the market brings to the table are just entirely shadowed by the massive shit pile of downsides they bring along that inexperienced site owners aren’t aware of.
I lump them in with accessibility overlays. This broken promise to site owners that ultimately ends in failure. They prey on the ignorance of someone who doesn’t know about development or accessibility and sell them the promise of success simply because they don’t know any better. This kind of predatory marketing makes me sick to my stomach.
Site builders/visual composers will…
- Drastically reduce site performance. They add layers and layers of nested elements that all need to load and that takes time. For every nested element and unnecessary feature they provide, there goes a millisecond of page load speed. And people are not patient these days.
- Create more opportunities for breakage. Every time you install a plugin on your WordPress site, it has the potential to break when a WP core update comes out. But if that plugin is literally your entire site and it breaks, how long will your site be looking wonky until a patch is pushed? It’s the different between a missing puzzle piece when a block breaks and only a small portion of your site malfunctions, while site builders are more like Jenga or making a card pyramid and watching your site come crumbling down because you put all your eggs into an unreliable basket.
- Limit your ability to use other plugins. Not all plugins play well together, and that’s especially true for site builders and visual composers. In addition to conflicts, if a site builder doesn’t give you an option to use the feature of the plugin you download because the author didn’t make it compatible with site builders, you’re going either have to find another plugin or convert that page to a normal block page anyway just to use a potentially standard feature.
- Create more security vulnerabilities. Just like aforementioned Elementor trainwreck, depending on a site builder is creating an entirely new level of entry points for predators by creating a new layers of optimal vulnerabilities. Now, as a site owner, you have to watch out for issues both within WordPress and whatever crappy site builder you’re using (PS, they’re all crappy). This doubles your workload.
- Likely make your site an inaccessible wasteland. Between confusing interfaces site owners are expected to familiarize themselves with, providing every opportunity for something to go wrong, and site builder developers who seem to not give a damn about accessibility, it’s a disaster. I’ve never audited a site builder/visual composer site that wasn’t a lawsuit waiting to happen. They simply do not set site owners up for success in this regard. You really would have to be an accessibility specialist to successfully ensure a site builder website was accessible (and even then, would need the help of a developer to fill in the many accessibility blanks they cause). And then what’s the point? The whole point of a site builder plugin is to allow non-techy and inexperienced site owners make a nice website without the help of a specialist. Using a site builder plugin is like buying a stunning home with the perfect layout, not knowing the walls are filled with black mold and termites.
The fact is, site builder and visual composers are outdated and antiquated and create a MUCH more complicated experience for site owners. They simply aren’t necessary now that the block editor is available. No, the block editor is not perfect and has its own share of accessibility issues that are being worked on. Additionally, the reason I sell Kadence Block so hard as my go-to library is because they accessibility seriously while some of the other block library plugins out there create just as many accessibility issues as site builders do.
If you’re an inexperienced site owner, trust me when I say you’re better off just familiarizing yourself with core WordPress and using the block editor and block libraries. Every single time I’ve done a re-design project for a WordPress client previously in a site builder and fully converted them to the Gutenberg block editor, the client will go on and on about how easy their site is to manage now (after an adjustment period that varies from client to client). Every. Single. Time. A lot of the time, they were negatively influenced by the people who resisted (and still resist) the block editor and went with a site builder just out of fear. But once those clients experienced the block editor themselves, it’s like they didn’t know managing their own site could be so easy once they ditched their fucking site builder.
And do your research. Before downloading a theme or plugin, read the reviews and check for accessibility issues. Unfortunately, you as the site owner are liable for everything that goes onto that site. So it is up to you to choose wisely. Do not blindly trust reviews of a 4.5+ star rated plugin because those reviews are often done by able-bodied people in your same position of being non-techy. Read the 1-star reviews and check the support threads for accessibility and functionality issues.
Just, for the love of all that is holy and whatever god you believe in, don’t download a site builder or visual composer… there is no point. They offer nothing but problems for you and your users. Ignore the seductive sweet nothings of an easy life they try to whisper in your ear… they will only break your heart.
Secret second-half: If you absolutely must use a site-builder, listen to this episode of “Accessibility Craft” first.
So, I listen to a podcast called “Accessibility Craft“. Really great, really fun, and hosted by Amber and Chris Hinds – people I really respect in the accessibility community. I was actually working on this blog post when their recent episode “072: An Extra Spicy Take On Page Builder Accessibility, Jaimaica’s Finest Hot Hot Hot Ginger Beer” (transcript available) came out, reviewing site/page builders and ranking their accessibility. Well, as soon as I saw the title my first thought was, “Well, crap, I haven’t published my post yet so now it’s just going to come off as a copy-cat.” After listening to it, my takeaway was, “Not spicy enough, y’all.”
So Amber reviewed a bunch of page/site builders to create her rankings. But what I think is overlooked here is Amber is experienced. Both in accessibility, site implementation, and dealing with web development. Chris is also an experienced developer. Together, they made Equalize Digital, a great plugin and co-pilot for site owners concerned with accessibility. But that experience means when they use a site builder, they know what they’re doing. They know what to look for in terms of accessibility issues, what to do with certain settings, and how to avoid pitfalls. The non-techy site owners these site builders are marketed to do not. And even someone experienced with a site builder but NOT experienced with accessibility will still create issues within the site because they don’t know what exists in there.
On a logistics level, their review was well documented and the data was accurate. But on a realistic and emotional level, it wasn’t practical enough when trying to put myself in the shoes of an inexperienced site owner. And while JavaScript fixes were mentioned a lot, no reference to the downsides of users who browse with JavaScript disabled were made and how they might experience the site (this is not an uncommon practice; for more details, read my recent blog post “Driving web development: confusing confidence with stupidity“).
But I don’t give that a total pass because they should do it out of the box and number one, and number two is like most average users, like of Elementor are not going to know to do that, or even know how to do that.
Amber Hinds, Accessibility Craft
While I have taken this quote entirely out of context (you’ll just have to listen to the episode yourself to find out), it is my whole point. Site builders don’t implement things a standard, non-techy site owner would know how to do or even know to do. Things like attributes are either hidden away, misused, or slapped on willy-nilly. They provide too many options and not enough options all at the same time that just set inexperienced site owners up for failure.
In the episode, they did talk about the perspective of an inexperienced/non-techy site owner. I just don’t think they did it enough. I don’t think they advocated enough for the site owners out there who don’t know anything about what a website needs to be, they just know they need one. But maybe it’s because I felt their hot take on site builders was more “jalapeño” and mine is more “Carolina reaper” so it’s difficult for me to find any positive aspects of site builders whatsoever. Though, as public figures, they’re more tactful than I am capable of being here in my anonymous little blog and five readers (ok, three). So I also understand why they may have held back more than I would have liked them to (or hey, maybe they didn’t hold back at all and I have unreasonable standards).
I think for the most accurate review, you’d need to get an inexperienced site owner to build their own website: once using core WP (and Kadence Blocks), then again and again in different site builders. After that, review which one was most accessible coming from the non-techy demographic site builders and visual composers are marketed towards. To me, that would be a more compelling case study of accessibility and functionality in a practical and realistic sense.
If you haven’t already, check out:
- Their plugin: Equalize Digital
- Their podcast: Accessibility Craft
- Their social media links are available on the homepage
Nothing but love and mad respect. The episode referenced in this post just happened to be on a subject that I am vehemently passionate about.
So if for whatever reason you absolutely must use a site builder, at least take an hour out of your day to listen to the episode so between their tactful and respectful audit review and my unhinged ramblings against “Big Site Builder” you will, in some way, know what you’re getting yourself into.