Divi Builder Review – a Refreshing Update

This insightful Divi Builder review dives deep into Divi 4 – and its new Theme Builder. Does it rival (or surpass) Elementor and Beaver Builder / Beaver Themer?

I’ve done a lot of extensive (and at times: exhausting) testing and research to serve you this accurate, and (hopefully) helpful Divi 4 review.

This review is also solid proof that I’m totally unbiased and always open to change my stance when writing reviews.

My original Divi theme review was quite critical – and stirred quite a debate. This Divi Builder 4 review however, will be quite positive! And I’ll tell you exactly why.

Note! This review will focus on Divi as a page builder and theme builder – not as a theme.

We need Divi, Elementor, Beaver, et al.

Elegant Themes is a strong player in the WordPress community. As WordPress users, we need strong, proactive players like Elegant Themes to commercially fight back against the fierce competition from hosted platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, et al. Some of them openly challenge WordPress, much like the classic “I’m a Mac” commercials poked fun at the Windows PC.

Check out the Divi commercial below. It’s fairly cool:)

We need flexible, user-friendly page builders for WordPress to stay the world’s leading website platform, and not lose terrain to hosted website builders like Wix!

Apropos page builders and what led us here, feel free to check out my eccentrically entertaining guest post on the Beaver Builder blog: Why Page Builders are Taking the World by Storm 🙂

Anyway. Is Divi a great page builder in version 4? Read on!

Silence before the storm…

Isn’t it interesting how we humans can often sense that “something new – and perhaps better” is on the horizon… simply based on the unusual silence surrounding it?

For me, Divi 4 was equally a surprise, and a given! In the month’s leading up to its launch, I certainly found myself wondering “ what are Elegant Themes up to these days? Seems strangely quiet, considering relentless competition from Elementor, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, Brizy… I’d bet they’re workin’ hard on a major Divi 4 update…”

And so they were!

Now the key question is: what did Elegant Themes do, in Divi 4?

Did they solve Divi’s much-debated shortcode shortcomings? Did they improve the user experience? And the reliability? Or the opposite?

That’s what this Divi Builder 4 review will reveal!

Features of Divi Builder 4

What is a theme builder?
WordPress page builder plugins like Beaver Builder and Elementor use the term theme builder to describe their ability to create and control global website elements like headers and footers, blog + archive templates, and other website elements traditionally handled by the theme. A theme builder is a powerful supplement to your theme and lets you do more than you can with most WordPress themes.

See all WordPress theme builder reviews »

Without a doubt, the blockbuster feature of Divi 4 is the Divi theme builder – so let’s review that right away!

Finally: the Divi Theme Builder

Spoiler-alert! There’s good and bad stuff. First, here’s what’s good: overall, Divi’s new theme builder is a monumental achievement for Elegant Themes. Finally, Divi-users have the ability to create reusable templates for things like posts and pages, archives, search results, and much more.

Divi’s template overview lets you manage your theme builder templates visually – and brilliantly – thus beating the more traditional, text-based dropdown interfaces found in competitors Elementor and Beaver Builder / Beaver Themer (reviewed here).

Now for the less perfect parts:

Sticky, Transparent Header & Footer?

The most critiqued parts of Divi 4, can be summed up with these words: Sticky. Transparent. Header. Footer. Hamburger. Menu.

Users of the Divi theme (reviewed here) were disappointed with the new theme builder’s lacking transparent + sticky header and footer abilities – less than already found in the Divi page builder and theme. Understandably, they expected more, not less, from the new theme builder.

Dynamic Content & Custom Fields

Another omission is support for custom fields in the theme builder. I had to rub my eyes when first discovering this! First in disbelief – next in tears, when realizing it’s true.

Divi’s Dynamic Content feature lets you tap content like the post title, featured image and such, for use in Divi page builder layouts. And you can also use custom fields. Just not in the theme builder’s reusable layouts. Strangely so.

If you need support for Custom Fields, ACF, Pods, Toolset etc, Elementor – or the Beaver Builder + Beaver Themer combo – are more mature products.

Blog Layouts

The blog layout capabilities are somewhat disappointing. Power-users may crave more control and flexibility. There are only two layout options: list or grid. That’s far less than in competing themes which typically let you choose between a regular grid and a masonry grid + various other layouts.

Theme Builder summary

My guess is Elegant Themes postponed custom field support and transparent + sticky header and footer options, to not hold back the release of Divi 4. Understandable, considering the huge scope of crafting a theme builder.

See it this way: Divi Builder is at version 4. The Divi theme builder however, is a typical 1.0 version. From that perspective, it’s a great start!

Meanwhile, most of the current header and footer shortcomings are remedied by following some of Elegant Themes’ well-written tutorials:

• Create a Transparent Floating Menu Bar in Divi Theme Builder
• Add a Sticky Category Menu to Your Blog Templates in Divi
• Shrink Header/Menu When Scrolling in Divi Theme Builder

Website Layout Packs

Divi comes with countless (!) versatile, well-designed website layout packs – templates you can import and customize to your heart’s desire. And the collection grows rapidly, all the time. You’ll never lack inspiration and quick jump-starts!

Disable Sections & Rows

Individual sections and rows can be disabled, so you can work on it on a published page, without it being visible for site visitors. Useful!

You can also hide stuff responsively: disable a section or row on mobile only. Or on mobile and tablets. Or hide it on desktops and tablets, but keep it visible on mobile devices. Nice!

Divi also has built-in split-testing for conversion-rate optimization, plus many other cool features you can dig into on their website.

Simplicity of Divi Builder 4

I wasn’t a fan of the UI in previous versions of Divi. It had two different design interfaces: a wireframe-view within WordPress’ native post editor + a visual page builder, accessible via the frontend. An inefficient, disjointed user experience.

Fortunately, Divi Builder 4 not only improves upon it – it goes above and beyond!

Easy-access Wireframe-view

The wireframe-view makes it easier to get an overview of the structure of your layout. It also makes it super fast to move modules around on the page! The minimized height of each module means you don’t have to drag and scroll at the same time – an otherwise tedious process.

Page Zoom

For an even clearer overview of your page’s design, click the Page Zoom button, and whooosh: it zooms out, for a comprehensive bird’s-eye view of your page. Super handy!

A fresh, efficient, intuitive UI

Divi 4’s UI is possibly the most colorful UI of any WordPress page builder. It doesn’t get in the way of your design work and gives Divi a crisp, fresh feel. Combined with Divi 4’s highly efficient design interface, it makes you WANT to use it.

Like Steve Jobs said in 2000 when he presented the new “Aqua” icon design in Apple’s new OS X: “we made them look so good you’ll want to lick ’em!”

The same can almost be said about Divi 4’s colorful UI:)

Furthermore, the UI of Divi 4 is well-organized.

It’s very consistent. No matter which element of your website you’re working with, the options will adhere to the same basic structure. 3 tabs: Content, Design, and Advanced.

In the Design tab, you’ll find a collapsed, accordion-like selection of generic options like Image, Text, Sizing, Spacing, Border, Box Shadow, Filters, Transform, Animation. These are common options for all modules and are always organized in the same order. I can’t emphasize enough how momentous that is.

It’s simple – and elegant. After a short while of using Divi, you’ll just know where everything is. It’ll be logical, stored in muscle-memory. Your web design work will become natural and flowful.

Reusability – reuse anything, everywhere

If there’s one word that flows through Divi’s various features, it is: reusability. And it can really save you time and speed up your workflow.

The word “reusability” perfectly encapsulates this formidable aspect of Divi. It has two connotations – the obvious one being: reusable. That something can be used again and again, saving time and effort. It also signifies usability. That something is intuitive and easy-to-use.

You can set global colors, for easy access to your brand colors.

You can save anything you’ve created in Divi’s Library, for easy reuse elsewhere on the site.

Or, using the Portability feature, you can export it as a JSON file, for sharing with your Divi-friends, or for using on your other websites.

Divi also lets you copy and paste styles from one element to another.

Alternative page builders do some of that as well, yet I haven’t come across any that rival Divi’s simplicity and flexibility.

Divi takes reusability a lot further. Check this out:

Instead of copying and tediously pasting – you can simply Extend the styling of an element. Let’s say you want to use the text styling from your Post Content module – to any other module. F.e.

You may f.e. have styled a nice button in a Call To Action module. You can then extend that styling to buttons in other CTA modules. Or Comment modules. Or Contact Form modules.

Or extend (apply) the Spacing (margins and padding) from any type of module to any other type of module.

You can even select whether you want to apply it to that page, that section, that row, or that column.

Realize how granular and specific that is! Yet super-easy and straightforward to do.

It’s insanely efficient and powerful. If you want to improve your workflow and finish websites faster, you GOTTA try it!

One minor usability-gripe

I could only create new sections, rows, and modules by clicking below existing ones. That’s cumbersome when you want it above. I hope it’s just an oversight and will be improved soon.

Reliability of Divi Builder 4

I hoped Elegant Themes would break free from Divi’s dreaded reliance on its much-debated shortcodes, in Divi 4. Intensely criticized in my original Divi theme review.

Regrettably, they didn’t. And to this day, it’s still Divi’s infamous Achilles’ heel – and biggest drawback / pitfall.

Once you “go Divi” you’re kinda… stuck… with Divi, since it will leave a huge spaghetti-mess of shortcodes behind, should you ever decide to deactivate the Divi Builder plugin, or Divi theme – to switch camp, to f.e. Beaver Builder.

That said, there are nowadays some third-party solutions available, to clean your site of Divi shortcodes, should you ever switch.

Stability & Support

Despite my efforts to uncover bugs in Divi Builder, I had a hard time getting it to misbehave.

The two times I emailed their support, their first reply solved my problems. And one of them turned out to be my own fault.

Another thing that impressed me, was Divi’s auto-save (likely stored in the browser). It’s been flawless. Despite network issues, a server-hickup, etc: none of my work was lost. Nothing is worse than losing your work, so it’s a nice feeling Divi’s got your back!

Help is always near, my dear

After installation, Divi took me on a helpful tour… which I skipped of course:)

There’s also help-popups/tooltips for pretty much every single option, everywhere in Divi.

Even better is their inline help videos. These are EXCELLENT. Easy-to-follow, high-quality video tutorials. Right within Divi. Having made online courses myself, I appreciate deeply how good helpful and well-produced those videos are! Bravo, Elegant Themes!

A helpful, active Blog

The official Elegant Themes blog has been ultra-active for years and is an evergrowing resource of easy-to-follow tutorials showing how to do all kinds of stuff with Divi. Here are some recent ones:

• Create a Dynamic Portfolio Template with Divi 4 & ACF
• Create a Transparent Floating Menu Bar in Divi Theme Builder
• Create a Custom Footer in Divi Theme Builder
• Add a Sticky Category Menu to Your Blog Templates in Divi
• Customize a WooCommerce Product Page with Dynamic Content
• Shrink Header/Menu When Scrolling in Divi Theme Builder

Active Facebook Groups

There are also at least three active Facebook groups, including an official one, actively maintained by Elegant Themes. As a Divi user – you’ll never be alone.

And, impressively, Elegant Themes has an excellent customer rating on TrustPilot – based on more than 2.400 reviews! Hardly “fake reviews” by friends and family – Divi-users are a huge, and happy, bunch:)

Verdict: is Divi Builder worth it?

Divi 4 should make the Elementor team worried. And the Beaver Builder crew, too.

Since I wrote Elementor – the Fastest Meteor to Hit Planet WordPress, Elementor DID conquer Divi, as the world’s most popular page builder. But now, with Divi 4, Elegant Themes can certainly win back that position.

Honestly, I’m still a liiitle hesitant, recommending Divi. Despite owning/renewing a license for years, I always ended up choosing Beaver Builder over Divi for my client projects. I didn’t like previous versions, and encountered some bugs (software shall be reliable – not buggy).

Nevertheless, throughout meticulous testing, Divi 4 has continued to amaze me, with a user experience that has reignited my passion for web design. Yes, no less! And I’ve encountered only a couple, easily solvable hickups. One of them even my own fault:)

So yes: Divi Builder 4 gets my recommendation! As its version number indicates, it’s a highly refined, highly mature – and inescapable – WordPress page builder. If that stance changes in future use, rest assured this review will promptly be updated to reflect it!

Their Lifetime Access pricing option is a VERY popular choice among many long-time Divi users. I’ve seen that in countless blog comments, Facebook groups, and YouTube comments by earnest, devoted Divi users. And it’s easy to understand why – considering the value (!) and dodging YaaS (yet another annual subscription).

Personally, I’m renewing my Divi license every year. But with Divi 4, I’m seriously considering that Lifetime license option! It’s quite a deal – and nice not having to renew ever again:)

I hope you enjoyed this review and found it enlightening? I’m eager to hear your take on Divi 4! Does it rock? Suck? Anything you’re missing? Share your opinion in the comments below!