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Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg: The Best WordPress Page Builder in 2026

Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg compared for 2026: features, pricing, performance, ease of use and which WordPress page builder suits your website.

  • Written by Webzoo Team
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  • Updated
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Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg: choosing the best WordPress page builder in 2026
Contents
  1. Elementor: the industry standard for business websites
  2. Elementor's strengths:
  3. Weaknesses:
  4. Divi: a powerful visual builder with a lifetime licence
  5. Divi's strengths:
  6. Weaknesses:
  7. Gutenberg: WordPress's native block editor
  8. Gutenberg's strengths:
  9. Weaknesses:
  10. Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg: side-by-side comparison
  11. Which page builder suits which type of website
  12. Choose Elementor if:
  13. Choose Divi if:
  14. Choose Gutenberg if:
  15. Is it worth migrating from Elementor or Divi to Gutenberg?
  16. References
  17. More articles you may find useful

Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg in brief: Elementor is the most flexible and has the most templates (a good fit for mid-sized and larger businesses), Divi has a lifetime licence and powerful visual design tools (good value for agencies), and Gutenberg is free, lightweight and built into WordPress (a good fit for blogs and content sites). Your choice depends on 3 factors: budget, design complexity and the website speed you need.

Choosing a page builder is one of the most important decisions when you build a WordPress website. Choose wrongly and you face expensive migration costs later. This article compares the three most popular page builders in 2026, based on our direct experience building business websites in Indonesia.

Key points in this article

  • Elementor: the most popular (10 million+ active installs), Pro at $59/year, the most templates
  • Divi: $249 lifetime, a powerful visual builder, high vendor lock-in
  • Gutenberg: FREE, built into WordPress, lightweight, with a steep learning curve
  • Performance: Gutenberg is the fastest, Elementor is middling, and Divi tends to be the heaviest without optimisation
  • Best fit: Gutenberg for blogs and portfolios, Elementor for mid-sized businesses, Divi for agencies
  • Lock-in: lowest with Gutenberg, highest with Divi (shortcode bloat)
  • Updates: all three are still actively developed

Elementor: the industry standard for business websites

Elementor is the world's most popular WordPress page builder, with more than 10 million active installs on WordPress.org. It suits almost every type of website except those that need extreme speed.

Elementor's strengths:

  • Visual drag and drop: real-time design, with true WYSIWYG results
  • A library of 300+ templates in the free version, plus 100+ professional ones in Pro
  • Theme Builder (Pro): custom headers, footers and archive pages
  • WooCommerce Builder (Pro): design product pages without coding
  • A wide add-on ecosystem: hundreds of extension plugins
  • A large community: plenty of free tutorials on YouTube

Weaknesses:

  • It can be slow without optimisation (see how to speed up WordPress)
  • Pro costs $59/year (a subscription that goes up every year)
  • Many Pro features need extra add-ons
  • Its HTML/CSS output is less clean than Gutenberg's

Verdict: choose Elementor if you need design flexibility, a fast time to market and a non-technical team. It is the sweet spot for small to mid-sized Indonesian businesses.

Divi: a powerful visual builder with a lifetime licence

Divi from Elegant Themes is a page builder plus premium theme with an unusual business model: a lifetime licence for $249 (one-off payment). For agencies managing many client websites, that is cost-effective.

Divi's strengths:

  • Lifetime licence: pay once and use it on unlimited sites for ever
  • A very powerful visual builder (effects, animations, conditions)
  • 2,000+ pre-made layouts built in (no Pro upgrade needed)
  • Divi AI: generates copy & images automatically
  • Theme and builder in one package: a consistent design
  • Role Editor: set permissions by user type

Weaknesses:

  • Severe shortcode bloat: if you change theme or builder, your content becomes a mess
  • Heavier HTML output than Elementor
  • The highest vendor lock-in of the three
  • A steeper learning curve for beginners
  • A smaller Indonesian community than Elementor's

Verdict: Divi is worth it for agencies or freelance designers who will manage 5+ websites. For a small business with a single website, Elementor is more practical.

Gutenberg: WordPress's native block editor

Gutenberg has been WordPress's default editor since version 5.0 (2018). It is a block editor rather than a classic page builder, and between 2024 and 2026 it has grown into Full Site Editing (FSE).

Gutenberg's strengths:

  • FREE and built in: no extra plugin to install
  • Clean HTML output: the best for SEO and speed
  • Light and fast: minimal CSS/JS overhead
  • Future-proof: WordPress core keeps investing in Gutenberg
  • Block-based themes (FSE): design the whole website with blocks
  • Compatible with all popular plugins

Weaknesses:

  • Limited visual customisation without additional block plugins (GenerateBlocks, Kadence Blocks)
  • A steeper learning curve at first for non-coders
  • No large built-in template library yet
  • Migrating from the Classic Editor takes effort

Verdict: ideal for blogs, content sites and websites that put speed and SEO first. For more features, Gutenberg combined with the Kadence Blocks plugin (free) or Spectra (free) is already powerful enough.

Elementor vs Divi vs Gutenberg: side-by-side comparison

Criterion Elementor Pro Divi Gutenberg
Price $59/year $249 lifetime FREE
Site limit 1–25 sites Unlimited Unlimited
Built-in templates 400+ 2,000+ 50+ (via theme)
Loading speed Medium Medium to heavy Fast
Learning curve Easy Medium Medium to steep
Vendor lock-in Medium High Low
WooCommerce Built in (Pro) Built in Needs a plugin
SEO output Good Good Best

Which page builder suits which type of website

Choose Elementor if:

  • You need a business profile website or landing page with a custom look
  • Your team does not code and needs easy drag and drop
  • You want a wide marketplace of templates
  • A budget of around Rp 1 million a year is fine

Choose Divi if:

  • You are an agency or freelancer managing 5+ client websites
  • You prefer a lifetime licence to a subscription
  • Your projects need complex visual effects (parallax, animation)
  • You have a backup plan in case Divi shuts down (unlikely, but possible)

Choose Gutenberg if:

  • You run a blog, magazine or content-heavy site
  • Your top priorities are speed and SEO (see on-page SEO techniques)
  • Your budget is zero or you want to minimise plugin dependency
  • You are comfortable with modern WordPress (FSE)

Many studios even mix them, using Gutenberg for the blog and Elementor for landing pages. That is a perfectly valid setup.

Is it worth migrating from Elementor or Divi to Gutenberg?

A question that often comes up once a website is 2–3 years old: “Should I migrate to Gutenberg for a speed boost?”

Things to consider:

  • Migrating content from Elementor (which stores layouts as JSON data) or Divi (shortcodes) to Gutenberg is not automatic and needs a manual redesign
  • Effort: 1–2 weeks of a designer's time for a website with 20–50 pages
  • Speed gain: usually noticeable, especially on mobile, but how much depends on your theme and plugins
  • SEO benefit: cleaner HTML output and lighter pages

Worth it if: your organic traffic is above 10,000 visits a month, your Core Web Vitals are failing, and you have a designer budget of Rp 5–15 million for the migration. Not worth it if: your website is still small (under 1,000 visits a month). Focus on content and basic SEO first.

For a technical audit before you decide, see our guide to auditing your website's SEO.

References

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Frequently asked questions

Which is more SEO-friendly: Elementor, Divi or Gutenberg?

Gutenberg wins clearly: it has the cleanest HTML output, little DOM bloat and usually better Core Web Vitals. Elementor and Divi need extra optimisation work (CSS minification, lazy loading and so on) to reach the same scores. For websites that rely on organic search (blogs, magazines, content sites), Gutenberg is the safest choice for SEO.

Can I use Elementor and Gutenberg on the same website?

Yes, absolutely, and many people do. Use Gutenberg for blog posts and content pages (where speed is critical) and Elementor for landing pages and the home page (where design is critical). You can choose which editor to use for each article or page. This setup is known as "hybrid" and gives you the best of both.

What does Elementor cost over 3 years compared with a Divi lifetime licence?

Elementor Pro's Essential plan is around $59 a year, so $177 over 3 years, plus any price rises. Divi lifetime is a one-off $249, plus access to all of Elegant Themes' other themes (Extra, Bloom, Monarch). On the numbers alone, Elementor's total cost only passes the Divi lifetime price in year 5 ($59 × 5 = $295). But also weigh up support quality, how fresh the templates are and how active the community is.

Is Gutenberg powerful enough for agency websites, or only for blogs?

Gutenberg plus a block library plugin (Kadence Blocks, Spectra, Stackable, GenerateBlocks) is already powerful enough for agency-grade websites. The combination is free, and its HTML output is much cleaner than Elementor's or Divi's. What it still lacks is a true WYSIWYG drag-and-drop visual builder like Elementor's. For clients who want experimental designs, Elementor is faster. For content-focused agencies, a Gutenberg and Kadence stack is a very sound choice.

Is it hard to migrate from Elementor to Gutenberg?

It is not automatic and needs a manual redesign. Elementor stores layouts as JSON data in post meta, so when the plugin is deactivated only the plain content is left, without the layout (it is Divi that uses shortcodes, which leaves pages full of raw shortcode). A migration strategy: (1) export each important page as HTML, (2) rebuild it in Gutenberg block by block, (3) test redirects and internal links. Allow 1–2 hours per complex page. Consider migrating only if you have a strong reason (speed or SEO), not simply because "Gutenberg is better".

Which page builder is best for a WooCommerce online store?

All three are good candidates with different strengths. Elementor Pro has a powerful WooCommerce Builder for designing custom product, archive and cart pages. Divi has mature WooCommerce integration and a visual builder for every WooCommerce page. Gutenberg needs extra plugins (CoBlocks, Kadence Blocks) but is the fastest. For an online store with 100+ products that prioritises speed, Gutenberg combined with a WooCommerce-ready theme (such as Astra or Blocksy) works best.

Are there other free page builders besides Gutenberg worth trying?

Some solid alternatives: (1) Elementor Free, whose free version is powerful enough for simple websites. (2) Brizy, a modern page builder with a clean interface. (3) SiteOrigin Page Builder, a classic, lightweight builder with clean output. (4) Bricks Builder, a paid option with very clean HTML output. For most needs, Gutenberg with Kadence Blocks (free) or Elementor Free is more than enough.

Topics:WordPressBlock EditorDiviElementorGutenbergPage Builders

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