WPBakery offers a complete visual design interface for site owners and web developers with the desire to use drag-and-drop modules.
Similar to many WordPress page builders, WPBakery sells as a premium plugin. However, there’s no free version to utilize basic features or test out the plugin on your own website.
That’s not a huge problem, but it’s worth taking into consideration since competitors like Elementor and Beaver Builder both offer free plugins to get people started with their products. (Go to quick navigation if you are in hurry).
The good news is that WPBakery has a demo version they email to you for testing out the interface and understanding if it’s the right page builder for you.
In this WPBakery review, we uncover and discuss the most appealing features from WPBakery, then talk about other essentials like pricing, customer service, and the overall user-experience.
On the surface, WPBakery looks like a winner, as it offers both front and backend page building for any WordPress theme.
Not to mention, it includes over 50 content elements, along with a large collection of templates and add-ons.
After our WPBakery review, we found that it works well for advanced developers and some less-experienced individuals who want to speed up their workflow. It has a bit of a learning curve, but that seems to be the point.
You gain access to things like shortcode mapping, grid-building, and access to the API, showing us that WPBakery has developers in mind.
Having said that, we do recommend WPBakery for some beginners, or at least those with a little experience in web design.
Keep reading our WPBakery review to get the full scoop, from pricing to a feature overview.
The Top Features From Our WPBakery Review
The collection of features from WPBakery includes responsive pages, support for any WordPress theme, and options for developers to tap into the WPBakery page builder API.
The list goes on and on as we explore more about WPBakery and discover areas that make web development significantly faster and easier for the average developer.
Below, you’ll find a list of the top features we uncovered while completing our in-depth WPBakery review.
A Visual Builder With Two Views: The Frontend and Backend
Some page builders offer a visual frontend editor, while others stick to the more familiar backend WordPress interface, while still integrating drag-and-drop elements for an easier workflow.
The frontend makes it easier for those with a visual design style, seeing as how you can see the immediate changes take place when you add an image or text block to a homepage or any page on the website.
A backend editor combines the functionality of WordPress with a page builder, giving you a more comfortable design setting and combining WordPress tools with the page builder to potentially expand upon your options when designing a page.
WPBakery, on the other hand, offers a frontend and backend builder, so you get to choose which interface works best for you. Or, you have the option to utilize the backend in some situations and the frontend in other situations.
The choice is up to you, and we definitely prefer this configuration compared to being forced into an entire frontend page building experience, which is becoming more common as page builders progress.
As an example, the following screenshot shows WPBakery working on its frontend display. You can click on elements like text blocks and images to reveal settings for each one.
It also has a “+” button in the upper menu to place new content modules anywhere on your website without having to mess with code.
The page builder worked rather well during our testing and showed us that the frontend editor makes sense for those that want to see an immediate rendering of the webpage while designing.
You can decide between the frontend and backend editor while in the WordPress dashboard. Choosing the backend version brings you to a traditional WordPress page editor, except with a few additions.
For instance, the WPBakery page builder takes the place of the Classic Editor, with drag-and-drop content modules placed within that editor to move around and format your page elements.
This way, you still have immediate access to the tried-and-true WordPress buttons for previewing, publishing, adding templates, and more.
This also opens up the potential for improved plugin integrations. One that comes to mind is the Yoast SEO plugin, which often doesn’t transfer over when a page builder uses a frontend interface.
With this backend view, you can still go into Yoast SEO and target keywords and optimize your page.
The combination of the frontend and backend builders means flexibility and choice for all developers.
Each interface still lets you handle design in a more visual way, and you have the option to switch between the backend and frontend designer with the click of a button.
We particularly enjoy the fact that the backend page builder implements color highlights for each content module, further improving your organization since it’s not quite as visual an interface when compared to the frontend page builder.
Built-in Content Elements to Complement WordPress Widgets and Third-party Plugins
All
page builders come packed with content elements, and WPBakery is no different. The page builder boasts more than 50 modules to add to your website designs, from text blocks to social media elements. All of these are ready to use without implementing any code or special settings.
You do, however, have the option to edit the unique settings for each content module. For example, the button module includes settings for linking to another page, changing the shape of the button, and setting color and style.
An image module, on the other hand, features settings for the image style, linking, and image size.
The list of content elements is a long one, but you can find them all by either using the frontend or backend editor.
Some of the content modules to look forward to include:
- Rows
- Text Blocks
- Icons
- Tabs
- FAQs
- Buttons
- Tours
- Accordions
- Call to Actions
- Post Sliders
- Pie Charts
- Progress Bars
- Google Maps
- Line Charts
- Post Grids
- Media Grids
- Many More…
You just click the “+” sign on the page builder to reveal these content modules, all of which are organized into a nice list and ready for adding to the design.
The filters break down the primary categories for WPBakery content blocks. For example, the Content category holds the highest number of elements, seeing as how this is the general content block section.
You can find everything from Image Gallery modules to Custom Headings.
Although the other categories aren’t filled with that many elements, it’s nice to see that WPBakery is beginning to organize its elements for easier use.
The Social tab, as an example, shows three content modules meant only for things like social sharing and buttons.
You can add a Facebook Like button to your website, or a Tweet or Pinterest button. The Structure tab includes one module for adding a widgetized sidebar to your layout.
An incredible advantage to using WPBakery comes in how the page builder presents built-in WordPress widgets next to the WPBakery content elements.
It offers a filter tab to see WordPress widgets on the frontend and backend builder. This way, it’s possible to add a WP Search widget in the sidebar right after you incorporate a WPBakery text box or image.
They work hand-in-hand in this interface, speeding up the entire process.
Furthermore, WPBakery supports a myriad of third-party plugins that also show up in the content module dropdown. Common integrations include Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, and WooCommerce.
Therefore, you can see WooCommerce content modules or widgets that get added to the page builder, combining every design element in the same spot.
It’s also worth mentioning that the premium add-ons often provide even more content modules.
Beautiful Pre-built Templates
WPBakery lets you create and save your own templates for later use. That’s quite the advantage for those developers who plan on re-using their designs for other projects in the future.
However, a WPBakery license also provides pre-built templates for setting up websites within a matter of seconds.
As with most features from WPBakery, you can find the templates on the frontend or backend page builder.
The Templates popup provides a tab for My Templates, which is where you save all of your own templates you make within WPBakery.
The Template Library tab features quick buttons to add section-based designs, for things like a parallax section or a product teaser.
These are usually smaller, pre-designed parts of a webpage that you would add to improve your current content.
There’s also a button to see the entire Template Library, which opens up your potential for publishing a fully-functional website in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.
The library offers previews for each type of template, along with names to give you an idea as to what you’re about to add to the page.
During our WPBakery review, we noticed templates for an About Page, Hero Section, Creative Showcase, and many more.
Dozens of full and partial page templates turn WPBakery into a webpage creation machine. A one-page website would only take one click, and some changes to the content, to result in a publishable webpage.
We particularly like that the premade templates have previews inside the page builder. This way, you can see what they all look like instead of guessing and checking as you add them to your page.
Our WPBakery review showed us that it’s extremely quick and easy to add one of these templates.
An Advanced Grid Builder
Given its own separate area in the dashboard, the WPBakery grid builder allows you to organize and format your content in a desirable way, without the need for special coding.
Grids have become rather popular in the design world, but you often have to pay for a completely separate plugin to access an advanced grid system.
That’s not the case with WPBakery. They provide a grid builder when you pay for the page builder, making it another two-in-one bonus.
The grid builder helps you divide content elements into useful, or more visually appealing, groups. The builder comes with the following display options:
- Media Masonry Grid
- Media Grid
- Post Masonry Grid
- Post Grid
Therefore, you can make a photo or video gallery within a matter of seconds. The same can be said for designing a post gallery where the blog posts show up in a masonry or traditional gallery format.
The grid builder provides animation tools to have your grid fade in or out, or to complete a wide range of other animations.
It also has its own set of compatible content elements to place items like images and headings inside the grid.
These elements get arranged anywhere in the grid design, like if you were to have a text block above two small images, and a post image to the left of them.
You can then publish the completed grid design and place it on a page elsewhere on your website, much like a pre-built template.
The grid builder doesn’t have as many content elements as the primary WPBakery page builder. However, these content modules are made just for the grid builder, making it easy to implement something like a button or an image inside that grid and develop anything from a portfolio of images to a pricing table.
A Quick and Intuitive Skin Generator
Another aspect of WPBakery that comes in handy is the built-in skin generator. Unique to WPBakery, the skin builder lets you design your own color scheme and activate it throughout the entire website.
So, you could select the main accent color, hover color, call-to-action background, and a wide variety of other colors, and turn them on for implementation all over the site.
What’s more is that the skin builder includes support for CSS customizations, where you can quickly style your WordPress website and incorporate the skins and color schemes in the CSS.
Overall, the skin builder is a simple but welcome addition to the WPBakery page builder. Color schemes often require a significant amount of editing, and even then it’s not guaranteed you add those color changes on a global scale.
With the skin builder, you only have to go to one area of the settings to customize the colors, and you know every change gets added to the entire website.
WPBakery Review: The Pricing
As mentioned briefly in the WPBakery review intro, the page builder doesn’t provide a free plugin. This is a bit of a downside, but you still get to test out the page builder with help from a demo version you can sign up for on the WPBakery site.
Outside of that, WPBakery offers no free trial or guarantee that we know of.
Therefore, you must pay for a premium plan to use WPBakery. Luckily, the WPBakery pricing is simple, transparent, and broken down into two plans:
- Regular plan – $45 per year to use WPBakery on one website, get free updates, premium customer support, and access to all WPBakery templates. You could consider this a one-time payment if you don’t plan on using customer support in the future, but that’s not exactly recommended.
- Extended plan – $245 per year to use WPBakery on one SaaS application, receive free updates, premium customer support, and theme integrations.
That’s all there is to it. As we said, WPBakery makes it easy to understand the pricing, compared to the often confusing tiered or multi-package pricing from other plugins and page builders.
One question remains: how much do I have to pay if I opt for multiple licenses? The answer is that there’s no discount if you need two, or three, or five licenses.
You simply pay the full price to use WPBakery on five websites. That said, a discount is provided for those who need more than 20 licenses.
You must, however, contact the WPBakery sales team to make that arrangement. We’re not clear as to what the discount entails.
Here are some other important elements of WPBakery pricing:
- The prices listed cover 6-months of customer support. You have the option to renew your customer support license when that time expires.
- The pricing is technically a one-time payment if you don’t plan on using customer support for longer than six months.
- You receive product updates for life, as long as you own a license for WPBakery. This is a huge advantage compared to other page builders that make you renew every year to get product updates.
- Developers have the option to use the WPBakery page builder for their clients and sell those creations with WPBakery included on the backend.
- As a reminder, you can’t get a free version of WPBakery for your own website. You must sign up for the free demo, which is installed on a demo sandbox.
Overall, the WPBakery pricing looks excellent on several levels. First of all, the Regular plan beats out the premium pricing from other page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder.
In addition, you get lifetime updates for every license you purchase. You still have to renew your license if you need customer support, but it at least saves some developers some money if they have no need for customer support.
It’s a little strange that WPBakery lacks a guarantee or a free plugin (since both are fairly common in the page builder market) but you still get to test out the plugin with a free demo.
Our Review of the WPBakery Customer Support
The premium support from WPBakery includes access to an email ticketing system. The company lacks phone support, but that’s not all that common with page builders to begin with.
The true value comes in the form of the online resources.
WPBakery is no slouch in the online support resources world, seeing as how it has a quick FAQs page, a video tutorials academy, and a comprehensive knowledgebase filled with links to articles about topics like add-ons, installation, and content modules.
You can even sign up for the WPBakery newsletter to receive emails about future updates and new features.
The direct customer support doesn’t look like anything special from WPBakery, but we’re rather impressed by the knowledgebase and the video tutorials academy.
Our WPBakery review showed that the video academy provides a large collection of free videos for everyone to learn about how to use the WPBakery interface and create beautiful websites.
The Pros and Cons From Our WPBakery Review
WPBakery stands out as a bright spot in the cluttered page builder space. If you still have questions about our WPBakery review, take into account the following pros and cons to figure out if it’s right for you.
Pros
- WPBakery offers both frontend and backend page builders, giving you more of a choice as to how you design your websites.
- The pricing beats out much of the premium page builder competition.
- You can choose from dozens of pre-built templates and sectional designs.
- The page builder includes a massive library of content modules, many of which are unique for social sharing and post formatting.
- It comes with a grid builder for better organization of your content.
- It has a skin builder to activate a certain color scheme on a global scale.
- You can access standard WordPress widgets from the content element dropdown menu.
Cons
- WPBakery lacks a free plugin version, making it a little more difficult to test out the page builder or potentially just use the most basic features without having to pay.
- The backend editor is nice to have but it’s not nearly as visual as the frontend editor. It often gets confusing remembering which elements are which.
- There aren’t many discounts for buying multiple licenses unless you buy more than 20 licenses.
Let us know in the comments if you have any further questions about this WPBakery review.
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