In this Divi theme review, we focus on Divi 4 from a WordPress theme perspective! I highly recommend you also read the complementary, in-depth Divi Builder review which covers the Divi page builder plugin.
Features of the Divi Theme
When I wrote my initial Divi theme review, back in 2015-2016, I criticized Divi for being a very page-centric theme, in the sense that it wasn’t truly template-driven.
You couldn’t design a true template, and have it automatically applied to all other, current and future, pages and posts.
Yes, you could design a page or post, and save it as a “template” in your Divi Library (for reusable assets – a useful and time-saving feature, nonetheless) from which you could then apply it (manually) to other pages or posts.
The beauty of templates, real templates, is that should you want to change the look of all your pages, or posts: you do those changes on the template, and voila – it’s instantly reflected everywhere that template is used.
That’s the beauty of real templates.
However, with its new theme builder – Divi 4 now has real templates. And it does them elegantly.
The term “theme builder” is a bit of a misnomer despite universal use by Elegant Themes (Divi) and competitors like Elementor and Beaver Builder (for Beaver Themer).
The closest thing to a “theme builder” is Dynamik Website Builder, which lets you build real Genesis child themes. Child themes that work, even after you’ve disabled Dynamik Website Builder (for ultra-lean performance).
Simplicity of the Divi Theme
Simplicity is where the Divi theme somewhat disappoints. Especially in Divi 4. Not because its design options are particularly complex. They’re rather rudimentary. But because they’re split between two interfaces: the standard WordPress theme Customizer – and Divi’s customization panel.
Odd – and not quite as elegant as we’d suspect from Elegant Themes. Conversely, the Divi Builder plugin is very elegant.
It feels like they transferred half of the old panel to WordPress’ standard Customizer panel – and forgot to transfer the rest, leaving an inconsistent user experience. Why not consolidate it into one?
There’s no rhyme or reason as to which options are found in the standard WordPress theme Customizer vs in Divi’s homespun options panel.
It will confuse and befuddle Divi newcomers, and it will needlessly tax the brains of Divi regulars, on a daily basis.
Do you change design option X here… or there? Like a ping-pong ball, your mind will bounce back and forth for the answer. And until the Divi theme options have become habitual and thus hardwired into your neuronal pathways, you’ll occasionally look for stuff in the wrong place.
The Divi theme’s “multiple panel disorder” can feel similar to keeping your appointments randomly in two calendars. One on your phone – and one on paper. Which one has the details you need for that appointment tomorrow?
…
To make matters worse, let’s not forget Divi 4’s new, well-executed theme builder, discussed in detail in the Divi Builder 4 review. The theme builder also has its own interface. Now there are three distinct interfaces for designing your website. It can be kinda confusing!
The Divi shortcode controversy
What’s been so controversial, is the way the dear Divi theme creates its impressive page layouts. Technically, under-the-hood, Divi does its job; using shortcodes. As long as Divi is your active theme, these shortcodes will be replaced with your intended layout.
But – and this is a big but (not butt… you don’t want a big butt, do you?) – should you ever decide to leave Hotel California aka Hotel Divi: you’ll be in for a nasty surprise!
“You can checkout any time you’d like… But you can never leave!”
The Eagles – Hotel California (lyrics)
As long as you’re using Divi, there’s no problem. Beware: should you ever decide to switch theme at some point in the future, your dear content will be soaked in a sea of shortcodes.
We’re not talking “a few shortcodes here and there” – we’re talking massive shortcode pollution to an extent that will make your web site look like, well… a giant “waste disposal” site. Not nice.
Being tied to Divi might still be good for you though!
That said, it can actually be a blessing in disguise. How’s that? Well, too many WordPress users switch themes as often as they buy new outfits. But a website isn’t a Barbie doll. It’s the vehicle that lets you deliver what you are offering to the world. It’s a reflection of you (or your company) – and as such, it shouldn’t change much, fundamentally. Just like YOU. Your outfit may change, yet you’re still the same you, broadly speaking.
Yes, your website design should be updated every now and then, but in more of an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, fashion. Being tied to a theme like Divi, might be good for you, then! Your brand will be more consistent, you’ll be investing more time refining your website, than wasting time, redoing and redesigning, year after year. And, you’ll have more time to focus on creating high-quality content!
Still, sacrificing your content in trust of the Gods at Elegant Themes, really is a choice you should be very conscious about!
To alleviate this widespread critique, Elegant Themes (makers of Divi) announced a Divi Builder Plugin, that can be used with any WordPress theme.
Problem solved? Partially. What if you’d like to stop using the Divi Page Builder plugin, for whatever reason?
Verdict: is the Divi Theme worth it?
It’s easy to think that the Divi theme would let you hit two birds with one stone: one neat package, combining theme and page builder.
Potentially, it could yield faster performance, a more efficient user experience, and less feature-overlap between the theme and page builder… Right?
That’s not the case.
Oftentimes, I advocate such integrated solutions, as they ensure a unified user experience and avoid compatibility issues.
However, while the Divi Builder plugin is a refreshing and dazzling page builder – the Divi WordPress theme isn’t as impressive.
It doesn’t outperform competing theme alternatives, the control panel experience is cluttered, and the theme and page builder features overlap slightly – especially after the theme builder was introduced in Divi 4. Elegant Themes should consolidate those overlapping features, to simplify the user experience. My guess is they haven’t, to ensure backward compatibility, which is respectable and understandable.
The Divi theme just isn’t as well-rounded and versatile as Astra Pro. It’s not as easy-to-use as the Beaver Builder theme (review). And isn’t as lean and fast as GeneratePress (review).
Astra Pro and GeneratePress are simply better, leaner, more robust choices than the Divi WordPress theme. Including use with Divi Builder (review). The Beaver Builder theme comes bundled with Beaver Builder Pro – so using that with Divi, would be odd, wouldn’t it? Better to use Beaver Builder then:)
For the ultimate web design combo, pair your page builder of choice, with the best possible theme. Mix and match what will best meet your needs.
In summary:
Divi as a theme? Not necessarily. There are better options (see above).
Divi as a page builder? Possibly! Read the insightful Divi Builder review. As a page builder, Divi 4 isn’t too shabby! It’s capable and fresh!
I hope you enjoyed this Divi theme review? If you haven’t already, be sure to also read the Divi Builder review – reviewing the Divi page builder plugin.
How about you: are you using Divi, Elementor, Thrive Architect or Beaver Builder? Share your thoughts below! Your questions are welcome too – speak up and join the fun:)
Anthony Ferrara says
Deep, unbiased, and informative! You are absolutely right that Divi Theme is not good as like their Page Builder. I have used Divi previously but for the loading speed and other issue switched to GeneratePress and I’m happy now with its performance. Thanks for the article.
Lone says
Hi,
I really like the pages and results that I can create with DIVI.
But the DIVI builder is extremely slow – so I only use it on my front page. Hope you can do something about that?
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Lone
Nice work you’ve done on your website!
Sounds strange it’s slow for you. Hard to pinpoint why, without taking a deeper look at it, beneath the hood.
Are your hosting resources adequate, i.e. not the cheapest available, a la One.com etc?
Oliver
Lone says
Resources/images on the front page are uploaded to the web server. I’m not sure I understand what you mean?
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey again, Lone 🙂
I’ll shoot you an email, so I can take a deeper look if you’d like.
(I’m a fellow Dane, in case you didn’t know:)
Oliver
Riya Patel says
As a WordPress developer, I personally like this theme. For freshers, i want to recommend to all that use this theme first.
Dave Johnson says
It doesn’t matter how much functionality you offer if it’s buggy. Here’s an example: on one site I have a simple Contact form. It doesn’t work. Solution? Yet to be determined. As of 8/20/2020 this is what their “chat window” says: “Our usual reply time: A few hours.” That’s for chat. You can do emails, but there’s an even more nonspecific wait time.
I give Divi ONE STAR, as in POOR, because they do not have phone support, they do not have real-time chat support and their wait times are a minimum of a few hours. If you do not keep the chat window open and wait in front of the window, your are kicked off and have to initiate the chat session again. And wait a minimum of a few hours again. They will email you with their best GUESS on how to handle a problem, but if it doesn’t work, then you have to initiate another chat query AGAIN with a minimum wait of a few hours. Unacceptable for people who have work to do.
It’s also important to notice that many of their components do NOT work as advertised. See a few review sites for examples. Finally, as is also noted over and over on review sites, Divi is SLOW loading. Out of the box. This comment also applies to Divi Builder.
I also use Elementor and yes, it’s significantly more expensive. But their customer support is more responsive and their code is quicker. It’s simply superior.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Dave
Which page builder provider has phone support? Elementor? Nah, I guess not;)
Elementor is a good page builder – and Beaver Builder too. But I must say I’ve been impressed with the UX, design-wise, of Divi 4. It makes me WANT to DESIGN websites. Though I still miss the 100% grid-based Headway theme, which sadly was discontinued due to mismanagement – and (according to one the owners) severe competition from… you guessed it: Divi:)
I can’t relate to any of your support experiences. In my own and MANY other users experiences, their support has been as quick as the competitors, friendly and helpful.
But I’m glad you’ve voiced your feelings. Adds to the full perspective!
Feel free to add a link to your website, or the page with the problematic contact form. I’d love to see it!
=)
Oliver
Calvyn Lee says
no regret for me to use divi, is consider my best choice chosing this themes in my WP’s journey. Altho there is a lot more choices out there such as elementor, yet I still found that divi is more cost effective especially 1 license for multiple website.
Piotr Starzynski says
I personaly prefer elementor over divi. Divi looks pretty slow to me. Really, extremely slow. Elementor has average UI, but works better overall for my taste.
DiviDon't says
Divi is absolute garbage. Not worth the $. A couple of versions back it was pretty solid but now it’s bloated and slow and half the time doesn’t even load. It was a nice idea in terms of how to organize a theme and it’s functionality but the execution of these ideas has been just really bad.
Oliver Nielsen says
My experience is the exact opposite:)
Can you elaborate with a few concrete examples?
wendy says
I really regret getting elegant themes and using divi builder. DID YOU KNOW? you can’t just build a site and then it looks good on mobile? no you have to go through every setting for tablet then mobile to move all your padding and margins and often times it doesn’t work I’m so upset I have to now spend money for someone to code it for mobile viewing, and while I was following their tutorials by josh hall, totally messed my view on desk top for the main hero section. can’t get it back either. I’m so frustrated I can’t afford help right now I’m a moderate knowledge with WordPress but need my site up so I can market myself and get more business as a voice actor. but no can do if I don’t have something good looking yet. soooo stupid DIVi is aweful and with elegant themes, their templates are a hoax they are remade photo shop images that make it look like its part of the theme. more time wasted!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Wendy (Cinde?)
Responsive design / mobile-friendly design is (pretty much) always a challenge, no matter the theme or page builder. Unless of course it’s a ready-made design that’s not meant to be changed. But if it’s a flexible theme / page builder, in the hands of a non-pro, responsive design can quickly become a mess.
Have you tried other page builders like Beaver Builder or Elementor?
I’m not sure what you mean with the sentence “templates are a hoax they are remade photo shop images that make it look like its part of the theme” … Can you clarify / elaborate a bit?
=)
Oliver
Simplebutcreative Media says
Divi is NOT for the lazy wordpress user lol. You guys can keep on using Elementor and Beaver. I admit that it’s not perfect but it’s still more intuitive than Elementor and Beaver combined. I’ve tried Elementor and Beaver for a while just to compare. I like to keep an open mind. There’s nothing so far that will sway my opinion about Divi. I will admit Beaver’s white label and multisite feature is quite useful. Elementor had the upper hand with the popup builder BUT there’s ALREADY a divi popup plugin for that lol. Users complain about bloat and speed. Honestly, they’re all bloated and slow in their own ways lmao. If you want something light then don’t use page builders. Give Generate Press, Astra, or Thesis a try if you want speed. I was a Thesis user before Divi. Thesis is definitely still the fastest theme in the market. Actually, oxygen builder is lighter than these 3 builders. I’m looking to test this soon. Speed is not the number one factor google looks for. Content will always be king. There are so many bloated and slow websites ranking on the 1st page. It goes to show that speed is NOT the most important factor when it comes to SEO. But most users love to complain because they don’t take the time to actually learn about WordPress optimization. I’m running a new multisite with about 50 users so far. Divi all the way of course. I have about 30 plugins installed. My homepage is loading anywhere from 1.5 to 1.8 seconds according to Gtmetrix depending on the circumstance. I also have a video on my homepage. If I remove the video it loads anywhere from 0.8 to 1.2 seconds (already tested). I have more content on my homepage vs this website. To each his own but I’m still Divi all the way! I have no issues with speed. Their pricing structure is the best! ET’s support definitely needs improvement. They need to hire a couple more people that have Divi experience.
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing your insights and Divi experiences. Much appreciated! I meant to say that in February, but it somehow slipped off my plate:)
Oliver
NIall Flynn says
Its so bloated imo, checkout Bridge its a theme I have built a heap of sites with and its rock solid, the support is fab. Divi and its ilk are the reason we have the Guts mess now too, these kind of themes and builders are so over the top.
Massimo says
Literally I waste my money … No assistance/service at all (they answers the day after if lucky) and very difficult to use. 0 Compatibility. Now I try to add multilingual pluging without success. I am trying WPML, Polylang and others. NO way at all! These are crazy days to solve (alone) this problem.
Guest says
Yes I have similar issues with Creativo theme, might as well have thrown $59.00 right out the window. Very hard to use, the support was ridiculous because there was none, never answered my emails, wish I could get back that $59.00. That was a lot of money to me and I shouldn’t have to pay over and above that amount for Bluehost or WordPress or Creativo “Support”. Seems like everything here is a racket (and don’t get me started on that auto-renewal bs) everything from the staff to the policy to the contract to the widgets or “plug-ins”, whatever, to blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada is trying to make money….and separate ME FROM MY HARD EARNED MONEY THAT I AM DESPERATLEY TRYING TO CONSERVE BECAUSE OF THE FRIGGIN PANDEMEMIC, UH, YA HEARD!???
[email protected] says
Interesting blog post.
I should have known better to read undated blog posts as I KNOW that they will be out of date.
Why do people not date their blog posts? They want to keep people reading them even if they are old. In this case this post is VERY old now and it is a disservice to readers.
Divi is now very advanced and in rev 4. I would urge anyone reading this to find a more recent review!!!
Drives me crazy!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Thomas
The review does have a date. Perhaps pay an optometrist a visit soon?
If you read the comments, you’ll see a very recent reply (and other, previous replies) in which I remark that I’ve regularly tested Divi since this review was first written – and sadly don’t have any reason to change my stance reflected in what I’ve written.
Now, Divi 4 was released a little less than 2 weeks ago. Rest assured this Divi review will be updated as soon as I have the time to thoroughly test it and form a rational opinion. Unlike boatloads of crap-creating “reviewers” online, I never post reviews based on an hour or two of dabbling. So it does take time to do.
Also contemplate that your personal choice of page builder or WordPress theme, isn’t a religion. It’s just a personal choice. If you enjoy Divi, I’m happy for you. Truly. And I have no urge to change your mind. Why should I? My work is all about helping people find the best solutions for their needs.
If Divi 4 rocks (which I hope it does) I will recommend it.
Also note that I could have easily trashed your negative, erroneous comment, but I didn’t. That should tell you something about my integrity.
Oliver
Brian says
As I user of Divi with over 80 sites on it I can safely say DO NOT get divi if you are expecting any average or even poor level of support. And we are currently on 4.0.3 a week or so after the 4.0.0 release and the bugs are still shocking. Divi 4 has cost me a LOT of money in wasted time this week, makes me want to go back to bootstrap!
Oliver Nielsen says
I’m sorry to hear, Brian. What has the issues been, more precisely? I’m curious!
Oliver
David says
Divi is absolutely ridiculous. I switched my header to a background video and it started scrunching it. Spent 1 month and talked to 20 different devs and designers and they couldn’t figure it out. Have to find a new theme and builder. Have no idea how much time and money this is going to set me back.
Noel says
Yesterday’s release of Divi 4 blows all of these negative Divi reviews out of the water. Like all page builders it takes a bit of work to grasp the advanced features and few people seem to grasp the re-usable design and import/export possibilities. Yes it can be slow in poor hosting environments but that’s something you all need to go to your hosts and think about! Using Divi for 5 years and have used it for corporate, designer spec.d, e-commerce, multi-site and multi-vendor sites successfully. The latest design and dynamic content features mean you need fewer plugins to achieve great results for SEO and site speed is something a theme cannot be blamed for if the developer is not utilising the best server setup, cacheing and cdn for their needs. I recommend you take a look at Divi and if already using it take a fresh look at the new theme builder in some depth. The separate ET Page builder plugin is very useful for migration of legacy themed sites!! Enjoy Divi 4.
Justine says
I am really new to Divi and the biggest regret that I made is that I did not conduct enough research about it. Shortcodes do impact your SEO despite what other websites are saying. In my observations, my SEO dropped drastically when I migrated to Divi. I thought it was just that I had to take the website in maintance mode but several days later There was no organic traffic like it was before.
Robert says
I doubt it was a problem with Divi’s shortcodes as they are not readable by Google bots. WordPress parses shortcodes into html output which is read by Google bots. Google will never see shortcodes…ever.
Anne says
Hi, Hi, I wanted to research prior to signing up with Divi, and I’m glad I did. I would have major disappointments, if I hadn’t! I had a really simple site with a major US domain provider, however, they did not allow migration; and I wanted to use a host that uses green energy. So, I switched my hosting provider.
Thanks, will look into your recommendations!
gc says
I’m fairly new to Divi (less than a year) but have a nagging feeling the Divi websites I’ve created for clients are going to come back to haunt me in the future. As I do more client projects, am I not just committing my them to Divi and ultimately to me? While building a website for someone, sometimes I need to manually re-add my ElegantThemes username and API key to update the Divi Theme. Will each former client need to reach out to me to update their themes or troubleshoot their websites since each is tied to my account? How do you all Divi-oldtimers address this? Thanks for any insight you can offer.
Holger says
I really regret using DIVI.
It is so super slow it kills me.
I use half of my time waiting for DIVI builder thinking or loading or saving. Very frustrating.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hej Holger:)
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Oliver
Paul says
I couldn’t agree more. Unless you’re just adding plain text modules, DIVI couldn’t be more of a drag. I just took over a website that uses DIVI and at this point, as soon as I can figure out how to get rid of it (probably meaning a complete site do-over) I intend to. Nothing about it is intuitive, all bouncing icon boxes all over the place that don’t offer any of the options I need. How do you even add a simple image into a text box? Useless.
Neo says
lol. I think if you are struggling with that then you are too quick to blame the theme, I think it might be user error here!
Lets be honest Divi is shyte! says
Lets be honest, Divi is a piece of shyte! The code is so bloated and heavy and its so buggy its unreal! Its not developer friendly at all! Using a page builder and theme in one is a very bad idea! I too used divi like 10 years ago before i knew what i was doing! You want a good page builder rather use visual composer and a light weight well coded theme!
Oliver Nielsen says
What makes you prefer Visual Composer over competing page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder?
Amit Jha says
I’ve recently tried to redesign my website using the Divi builder but honestly, wish I’d gone elsewhere. The support would be laughable if it weren’t so frustrating. As usual with chat, the first round of feedback is a link to some web content you’ve already seen and tried before reaching out.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Amit
True. It’s easy to offer chat support if it’s just some “outsourcee” (is that a word?) – or even a bot, simply searching the knowledge base for possibly relevant results, and posting it as a “helpful” solution – and if it isn’t: escalating it, aka creating a support ticket the the real, actual support staff (who knows about technicalities).
It’s interesting how many people complain about Elegant Themes support.
Oliver
Barbara says
Regarding Elegant Themes support:
I am a mediocre hacker/designer with just enough knowledge of CSS and flex boxes to get into trouble — which is what happened on an important client’s site I was working on several months ago. I needed help from the DIVI chat avatars, who ultimately did a great job. I grant you, it took some days, as they’re all probably on the other side of the globe and, because of the very particular demands of my client coupled with some language confusion, I had to re-phrase and repeat my needs in a few different ways until I was understood. (Also, most tech support people usually do EXACTLY what you ask, so I had to work on asking the right questions and giving the right instructions!) But we finally got the client’s special desires figured out for both desktop and mobile, and my professional rear end was saved.
I’ll build more sites with DIVI going forward because 1. I’m used to it now and like it and 2. even though designers can’t change all content to a completely different proprietary WordPress theme without the shortcode problem, there are so many ways to make DIVI layouts look cool, so far that hasn’t mattered. Cheers!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Barbara
Thanks for commenting:)
Very true that it’s vital to ask the right questions, when contacting support. I’ve worked in support myself in the past, and it became very clear some people just don’t know how to do that. People contacting you, saying “My phone doesn’t work.” or “I can’t log in.” – which is difficult to help with, without further enquiry, which often leads to a trail of similarly useless replies.
=)
Oliver
Alan Kmiecik says
I’ve been using Divi for many years and, as it developed, it has simply become bloated.
Never found it to be responsive. I’ve tested many simple page layouts that, when developed on desktop, should easily work on mobile but, nope, gotta go in and specify the layout within Divi.
The amount of clicking that needs to be done to get to make modifications is excessive and I don’t think one could develop a theme with more places to hide CSS.
Divi may be good for those who are new but, therein lies the crux of this article, you get stuck in Divi.
I found this site, because I am looking for a way out.
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for chiming in with your experience, Alan. Much appreciated!
Oliver
Anthony Bear says
All the new Divi Updates make this theme the worst by far. It is so slow and cumbersome. There is so much trash code in there, it just bogs down every system we have it on. If you are looking to make any sort of advanced custom code edits in your theme my strong recommendation is to avoid it. I am now stuck in a huge mess because of it.
Stephanie Shaw says
Divi looks great however the theme has so many bugs, issues and limitations that you will spend hours every day on chat to support to get them to fix them. Massive time waster of a theme.
Looks good but cannot back itself with functionality.
Terry M says
We have used Divi for both large and small websites. Have had no major problems – most issues were misunderstandings on my part.
We also code but this theme and the cost effective plans that they have was no contest. Have tried others and still keep coming back to Divi. Product support is average, but better than most. Not worried about the code that it leaves behind because I have no plans to change. I build a few templates that I like and always have them available. Lots of independent developers and because of this any questions can quickly be answered with a quick Google search. Its relatively new visual mode keeps improving and we now do most of our development this way.
I highly recommend the Divi Theme – its few shortcomings are trivial.
Reg says
If somebody posts a bad review about a product and doesn’t even include a date on the post it shows to me, all they want to do is promote a different product and get a lot of affiliate money.
This post is well over 3 years old. Divi 3 came out in Sep 2016.
I have used Divi extensively and had no issues. They have evolved in a massive way and this review might have had some weight 4 years ago, but it is now definitely not up-to-date anymore.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Reg
Thank you for commenting. I appreciate it.
I’m glad you’ve had no issues with Divi. WebMatros (this site) is all about helping people find the best tools for their task at hand. It’s never about preaching one product over another, to f.e. earn higher affiliate commissions. I know some bloggers work by such a flawed ethos, but I don’t.
A few remarks, regarding your comment:
The posts here do have a date of last update. It’s at the bottom of each post, where countless other blogs also have such meta information. In the case of this Divi review, it was last updated in July 2019. That’s last month. Divi’s foundational problem hasn’t changed, and while I do extensively test its latest version whenever new developments have happened, I haven’t found any reason to alter my stance on Divi.
In my opinion, there are better alternatives out there. If I can’t say that, on a free and open internet, on my own website: what kind of world do you believe in?
Your opinion may be different, which I respect – so please feel free to pay the same respect and openness towards me, rather than diss my hard work and rudely accuse me of poor, entirely fictional, ulterior motives that your mind has erroneously cooked up.
I sincerely like the folks behind Divi, and sincerely want to like Divi. And who knows? Maybe they’ll come up with another product that’s really cool. Or change Divi, in the next major revision. And if I like that, I will recommend it, wholeheartedly.
In the meantime, I wish you all the best, and I am glad you enjoy Divi – and the wonderful world of choice (and free speech) that we live in:)
Oliver
Rico Gibson says
What are the better alternatives?
Oliver Nielsen says
Depends whether we’re talking Divi, the theme – or Divi Builder, the page builder.
If Divi, the theme (as in: flexible “super theme”):
Astra
Dynamik Website Builder (a Genesis child theme)
And there are others. But most good themes benefit from using a page builder. IMO, the page layout functionality shouldn’t be part of the theme, as it tends to make a theme bloated, if it’s to cater to all kinds of user scenarios.
Another interesting theme: Marketers Delight – although it’s been a while since I last tested it.
If Divi Builder, the page builder:
Beaver Builder
Elementor
Thrive Architect – powerful, but not as polished as the above two.
– in that order, IMO.
=)
Oliver
Mary says
I hate to say it, but Reg is not wrong – this post most certainly is out of date, regardless of when you marked it as ‘updated’. You reference Divi version 2.5.3 right there in the post (3 years out of date already), and the post discusses several aspects of Divi that are either irrelevant to today’s Divi or factually incorrect (I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were true at one point and you just haven’t kept up with things).
For example:
“As a theme, Divi is pretty average. Borderline mediocre, to be honest!” This is misleading at best – Divi comes with over 200 layout packs, each of which is essentially a ‘theme’ unto itself, representing a variety of modern, responsive designs and each complete with all of the pages most websites need starting out, as well as 100% royalty free images and design elements.
Regarding templates: “But you can’t just assign a “Blog” template to your blog posts, and have all blog posts use it.” Again, misleading at best. No, Divi doesn’t create ‘templates’ by wp dev definitions (neither do most themes), but functionally, and in terms that clients understand, it most certainly does create ‘templates’ and you most certainly can apply site-wide changes. You simply create a custom blog post layout with dynamic content, set it to global, and then use it for all of your blog posts by selecting it when you set up a new post. Need to make changes to the ‘template’? No problem – any changes you make to the original (outside of post content of course) immediately apply to all posts using that template, whether it’s 3 or 3000. The size of the site does not matter. As an example, I have a client site with 4 different post types – traditional text content, event recaps, podcasts, and educational content. I’ve created four different layouts, one for each, and anytime the client wishes to update or alter the appearance of a ‘template’, it’s a simple matter to make changes in just one place and have them apply site-wide. If there is a specific post that they wish to be an exception, it’s equally simple to deactivate the global component on that post and make design changes on an individual basis.
I could go on, but this isn’t the place to write a book. My point is simply that regardless of whatever ‘updates’ you made to this post in July, it is still sadly misinformed – not entirely, there are certainly some good points, but much of it is no longer accurate, if it ever was.
Note that I do not work for Divi. I just started using it 8 months ago and it has made a huge difference in my productivity as a web designer. Yes, it takes some time to learn and if you haven’t put in that time you may well miss many of the helpful features that it includes and will no doubt experience some frustration, as is the case with WordPress itself. I would recommend that you spend more time with Divi, in particular that you install the latest version and test each of your points in the article against it, and then give your article a true update.
Thank you
Oliver Nielsen says
You know, Mary… As I’ve already stated, I’ve tested Divi’s later versions continuously throughout the years. My reviews here, and especially this one, is based on the fundamentals. If the fundamentals aren’t good, nothing you build on top is.
Therefore I stand by my opinion about Divi.
That said, I am currently in the process of revising the structure of reviews here, to better reflect the above. So all hope isn’t lost:)
Believe it or not (but it’s true!) – I value your comment, both re: the review, and your own experiences with Divi. Interesting to read! Provides nuance and perspective to me and other readers.
My purpose is never to be biased. Different strokes for different folks, and I’m genuinely happy Divi has worked well for you and solves your needs as a web designer.
Re: reviewer-bias, it’s just not in my nature to be biased. I’ve never cared much which sports-team win. When I watch MMA (the only sport I follow): I applaud the winner – even if he/she happens to beat the contender I’ve cheered/rooted for.
Thanks again, Mary!
=)
Oliver
Mary Ritzel says
I want to thank you for this. I’m having some issues, some of which have been highlighted by you but also other people responded as well. I’m a little frustrated in the poor support at Elegant Themes after dealing with pretty great ones in the past, Squarespace, Livebooks and WPEngine – really disappointed in the response time with Elegant Themes. When they do, I don’t find they’re particularly helpful. I feel rushed off. I’ve worked with global clients so I understand there are certain language barriers and I’m okay with that, I’m simply mentioning staffing. So that’s a big consideration, walk before you run if you roll out something like this. That’s just business savvy.
Still, I’m so new to this builder. I recommended it to my agency (after a colleague recommended it to me) and now I feel I lead my team astray. I’m attempting to head it off with more research all over again because I don’t know how I feel. I think we hit go on this around the time your post came out and never saw this. I’m okay with investments in time/money (otherwise how would you ever grow?) but if I feel there’s something that doesn’t feel good I want to come up with a Plan B which you’ve laid out very nicely. And this has been around for a while so if there were changes to be made…
So many people write great posts but never reply to comments. It takes time to do this, so good on you. Especially with a polite response, ie. your previous Reg commentator. Some people simply lack gravitas. Too bad for them.
Thank you for this. I’m going to look into some of these other options and then bring it up with my team, if for nothing else, things to be aware of.
Very nicely done.
Mary
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Mary
Thank you! Kind words, and you’re very welcome! Comments are such an vital part of blogging.
Sorry for the late reply – I decided to celebrate my 40 year birthday at home, as a tropical theme party 😀 Those celebrations have seriously hijacked all my time this past week. Looking forward to finally throwing the party this coming weekend, so I can get back to work again, on Monday 🙂
Now, as to your comment:
I certainly know how you feel, re: having recommended something – later regretting it. Happens to everyone, you know. For me, it was making a huge web design online course based on Headway, a superb WordPress theme. Sadly, the team behind it, rewrote and rearranged the app’s UI so often that it was never as rock-stable as it should be. And documentation (and online courses) needed time-consuming updates. When their rewritten version failed badly due to bugs, they stopped the business altogether. Leaving me with a useless online course, and lots of people with websites built on a now dead platform/theme.
Your remarks on the support of Elegant Themes vs Squarespace, Livebooks and WP Engine is noteworthy too.
Thanks again!
=)
Oliver
Stuart says
Been using for 7 months and, at least recently, nothing but insanity. Fix mobile–desktop is off. Fix tablet, mobile/desktop usually off. But the worst (besides erroneous info from “support” and the long wait) is that, while it looks great in the page builder, once you check it on your phone (and usually desktop) it’s messed up. Hours and hours banging my head against the wall. I’m done. Going over to Elementor rather than Beaver builder only because you can use CSS when you need it…Free at last, thank God oh, mighty, free at last.
gc says
totally agree!!!! inspect elements is always a crap shoot. and the transform feature makes it all even worse. i can’t believe i just live with the frustration. wondering if quality of hosting provider has anything to do with it? so many people love divi and i wish i did, too.
Ivan says
WE are using Divi builder with the default theme and our site became very slow due to the size of the Divi.css which is 500KB. Anyone knows how we can decrease the css file size. It’s already minified
Karen says
I’ve recently tried to redesign my website using the Divi/Elegant Themes builder but honestly wish I’d gone elsewhere. The support would be laughable if it weren’t so frustrating. They take forever to get back to you and then simply give you links to articles that don’t have anything to do with what you asked about, then when you point this out they go quiet. AVOID AVOID AVOID
Andrew says
I tested WordPress and other site builders and they don’t give you 100% content control as Wix does, but at the same time Wix doesnt offer the speed and epicness that WordPress does so I guess I’ll bite the bullet. I was stuck with an image that I couldn’t even move without messing up the page! Yes Divi gives you some easier tools that you don’t have to code, but to get things 100% right seems to be frustrating. I wish WordPress could integrate something to make them just drag and drop without the need for coding not put everything in fixed positions….
Scott says
I like the product but the support is a joke. I’m based in Australia and in spite of claims that they have 24/7 chat, over the last week, they routinely get back to me at the same time the next day. Clearly they are only on US business hours. As usual with chat the first round of feedback is a link to some web content you’ve already seen and tried before reaching out. Then it takes another day to get the next response out of them. A very poor experience.
Rosemary says
I’ve been trying to build my website with Divi for more than a couple of months now and it has been nothing but trouble since the beginning. I’m a coder by nature, but this particular project needed to be done in WordPress, and I had heard good things about Divi from someone I consider to be an expert, and I trusted his opinion, so I went for it. I shouldn’t have. The Divi Builder / and my Divi theme have been a nightmare for me. It’s ALWAYS broken! Simple buttons that I’m supposed to have to edit my site just up and disappear! I have been on chat with their support team almost every single day I have launched the site to work on it. They come back and fix it, but by that time, I’ve lost another days’ work. I get a little bit done and boom – it’s broken again. Collectively, Divi’s support team started blaming it on “third party plugins”. But the thing is – I barely had any plugins at all, and the ones I did have I ditched so I could go “all Divi” and that didn’t make a bit of difference. Some research told me that Divi’s theme is so “heavy” that you quickly build up a lot of garbage in WordPress that needs to be cleaned out and “optimized.” So – I took a week off from building my site and I optimized everything step by step from an expert on this sort of thing and he was on the money. With his recommendations, I got As across the board. I thought NOW I’ll come back and everything will work great and I’ll finally finish my site, right? WRONG! It’s broken again. I can’t edit any of my pages. The only thing I’m able to do is make general customizations like Typography, the Menu, the Colors. but I can’t go in and edit or add a specific section or row or anything at all. I’ve reached my breaking point. I’m quitting Divi. I’m weeks behind schedule, and I just can’t take it anymore. I tried and tried and now I’m done. I need an alternative and fast. I need something I can put together very quickly and I would like it to look gorgeous please. Any suggestions are GREATLY APPRECIATED PLEASE. Divi – you FAILED ME!
Richard Stephens says
Rosemary,
If you’re still stuck on this project, get in touch with me and I’ll see if I can help in any way.
Chris says
Hi Rosemary – I am fairly new to WordPress and started out using Elementor page builder – the free version and quickly upgraded to the Elementor pro. I think it is a great alternative to Divi, and you can change the theme all you want with your content staying in-tact. I’m curious what you settled on for your project?
Michael says
I’ve been using Divi for some time and tried Elementor PRO recently. While I will agree that ePro is very good and FAST, it doesn’t (Yet) hold a candle to Divi. After a couple of days of ePro, I gave up on using it. And, just so you know I’m an Elementor fan, I will say this. If/When they add some more features that bring it up to Divi’s level, I will change to Elementor ’cause it’s very fast and much more enjoyable to work with when things react quickly.
Eric C. says
Been using Divi for years. Really have no idea what you are talking about. We run it on hundreds of clients sites. We build everything with Divi. We have had Divi websites appear on major television programs, and handled it like a champ.
Then again, we run on super high end, quality hosting that we built ourselves. Every time I see someone complaining about Divi, its usually due to side effects from running on super cheap, bottom of the barrel hosting that is not configured properly.
I mean seriously, I dont even recognize Divi in your post. Its literally the best commercial page builder on the market. Its run on millions of websites. Completely dominates. There is simply no way it could reach this level of success if it did even a small percentage of what you are stating here.
You have other issues causing all these problems.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Eric
Thanks for chiming in. Can you elaborate a bit on what specifically you think Divi does better than its competition? I’m genuinely curious, so I hope you’ll share a few nuggets:)
Oliver
Divi Sucks says
Divi product is fine. They’re support how ever is terrible.
Michael says
This post makes absolutely no sense to me. I’ve been using Divi for some time now and have never had any issue with it; other than being damn slow. My wife, who’s never done web design, picked it up quickly and had no troubles with it at all. I think you have Gremlins in your computer.
Pam says
Hi Rosemary, I know I am late to this party but I highly recommend ThemeCo X theme. I have 10+ licenses and it’s very easy to work with plus it has a builder called Cornerstone. They have two versions: X and X Pro. Don’t purchase the X Pro, it’s too complicated. You can get everything done that you need with the regular X theme. Hope that helps.
MB says
Hi Oliver,
I am now in the land of massive shortcodes (after making the decision to blog again after a hiatus of 3 years). I want to use a different theme altogether, so no more Divi. In looking for someone to transition my site, how do you recommend going about this? My dashboard pages look a mess!
Thanks!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi MB
You can try this plugin. I can’t vouch for it as I haven’t needed it myself, but it may help you out a great deal.
Else I’d copy the HTML from the frontend of the site (“view source” in browser) as that will at least have the shortcodes filtered out. Then paste it into the HTML part of WordPress’ classic editor (i.e. non-Gutenberg) and clean it up with the “eraser” tool (in its Visual Editor tab’s toolbar).
I hope that helps you out a bit?
=)
Oliver
Casey Landreth says
I’ve been using Divi for a couple of years now for all of my clients websites, I find the use of the tool and flexibility in the design that I can create for my clients pretty much what they are looking for in other themes. It is also fairly easy to teach them how to manage their site as well.
However since their launch of the new editor and the Visual editor (which I dislike) it is very bloated and if your client is on a slow server (mostly SMB’s) or your computer is not as fast it takes forever. Divi support is pretty good and gets back to you fairly quickly, which is better than many developers that I’ve worked with. Though Divi is pushing their new editor and visual builder and seems to be phasing out the classic editor which is the reason that I use that system.
Though don’t get me wrong the new editor has some many great new features such as pulling in dynamic content and animation effect. For some users the drag-n-drop features would be great for them, for me they are not good for me and my business.
I will have to check out Beaver Page Builder if the classic editor of Divi is phased out.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Casey!
It seems you value usability / ease-of-use (I do too), and for that, Beaver Builder wins over its closest competitors Elementor and Thrive Architect. Especially the latter, though Thrive Architect does have more power – especially for marketers. So definitely give Beaver Builder a whirl:)
I’m not a fan of Beaver Builders implementation of the frontend editor either. Though I wasn’t a fan of the abstract classic editor either.
Generally speaking, Divi isn’t as lean, code-wise, as Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Thrive Architect. So your experiences regarding speed, sadly don’t surprise me.
That’s not said to be harsh on Divi. If other, better alternatives didn’t exist, Divi would be a revolutionary choice. And the cost of switching to another page builder (re: the shortcode soup it leaves behind) wouldn’t be much of an issue, as everyone would want to stay on Divi (if it was the only option).
And in the beginning, when Divi was first launched, it was superior to the earlier heavyweight champ: Visual Composer.
Elegant Themes is a good company too, IME (in my experience).
=)
Oliver
Richard Stephens says
Casey,
Just wanted to say that when you’re in the visual builder, you can click purple menu button on the bottom (same one that you save with) and then change the view to ‘wireframe’ on the left side which is (pretty much) the classic editor. You can even make this the default view.
I’ve also been using Divi exclusively for all of my client sites and have yet to find anything that I can’t pull off with it. It’s also extremely simple to show a client how to make their own edits and have yet to receive any negative feedback from clients (~40 websites).
Ashish Maan says
I used to build simple sites using HTML & PHP earlier. But after switching wordpress & Divi Builder, everthing has changed. Now i am able to build more beautiful, mobile friendly sites an very less time. Thanks a lot
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Ashish
I’m glad you’re enjoying the wonders of WordPress + a page builder of choice, in this case Divi. I used to do things the old school way too. A CMS (like WordPress makes things so much easier!
=)
Oliver
shubham says
Hi, as a newbie i started with divi builder for my sites and am still using it. For me it is the best
vjPulp says
What I’ve found most annoying is that there is not even a possibility of asking pre-purchase questions. You can chat with a very friendly person alright, but they redirect you straight to the members area – which of course is only accessible after having payed for a membership.
D. Johnson says
We own a twenty year old specialized non-profit social and dating site. HTML/PHP/MySQL stack. We want to rebuild and have been researching Divi. After reading this review, I’m not so sure. What would be your recommendation. 100,000 members and top 100,000 Alexa. No Profit. It’s a labor of love, but we need to appear top tier.
Thank you,
D. Johnson
Lorraine says
Hello D.Johnson
I also started off with Divi and it was fantastic for my blog. Divi remains my number one recommendation to brand new website builders. As I expanded the blog, I realised I was limited in terms of the blog layouts I could do so I hunted around and have finally built my blog using Creativo theme which I purchased from Mojo Marketplace. Now my website has a clean looking interface and I can customise my blog style to suit different needs. Most importantly you can have a main menu and a secondary menu if you want to. Hope this helps and happy hunting .
hauerpower says
thats why we use a act pro fields – no problem with builder and SEO 🙂
RUI says
I didn’t know much about WordPress before using DIVI. Although I encountered a lot of bugs and unclears in the process of purchasing and using DIVI, the DIVI staff patiently guided me. I have used DIVI for three months now. I think the biggest disadvantage of DIVI is that “If you want to really play the power of DIVI, you must purchase a lot of third-party modules/plugins”, such as DIVI tool box, DIVI boost, DIVI switch. and many more. The features (such as breadcrumbs) should have been built into the DIVI theme, and I now have to install these additional plugins to complement the DIVI functionality.
lisa says
wow this has been a very educational blog for a newbee! Thank you to all of your words of wisdom. I have a passion that will include blogging, you tube videos and ecommerce by way of the products I use in my blog, amazon etc. WHO, please would you all recommend to host my site, what theme, platform… I am following my passion and this is all very scary, I don’t even have a youtube or Instagram yet, but I do have big dreams and ambition. in the past I have been a successful entrepreneur so I know I can do this but lacking direction, this online world is very new to me my head is swriling. Please any advice will be so appreciated as I was led here to ask and learn. Thank you bigtime!
Jess Taylor II says
I would suggest taking a look at elementor page builder and themes like studiopress, Astra. Siteground is an excellent hosting company. Happy to answer any questions. WPcrafter is a great youtube channel for learning WP for non-techs. All the best,
Lorraine says
Hie Lisa, I am excited for you reaching out for your dreams. Go girl! Yes its darn scary but the ride is well worth it. I use Bluehost web hosting for my blog and I have never had any issues with them. I first built my website with Divi because i took the DIY route so I could learn the tools of the trade. I have recently switched to Creativo simply because I wanted to explore a cleaner looking theme which I feel Creativo gives me. Would love to hear how things are going for you. All the best
Lorraine
Adam S. says
First, I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Having used Divi before, I totally relate.
I would however, love to hear your opinion on the Avada Theme…
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Adam
Avada: bloated, overkill, slower than a theme should be, cookie-cutter, difficult to customize…
That about wraps it up:)
Oliver
aman says
Hi Oliver
Really profound insights 🙂
Was thinking about deploying Generatepress with elementar page builder to accompany. Kindly let me know your view if tried this theme
Jim says
What themes do you rate highly?
Pam Dean says
Agree with you, Oliver. Have an Avada license and it’s just sitting there unused.
VectorVictor says
I used Avada for a site a few years ago and I got it looking really nice but it was incredibly slow loading. Very very js heavy. I won’t be using it again.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Victor
Glad you’re sharing your experiences re: Avada. Those are my own sentiments too. It’s bloated and slow.
Such generic, DIAATS (do-it-all-and-then-some) themes are rarely a good option in the long run.
They be beautiful on the outside… but inside they’re a burdensome mess!
=)
Oliver
Marcel says
“Designing a website with Divi, still happens in WordPress’ content editor”. Wow, really? Divi has had a visual editor since 2016.
Sure, Divi takes a little getting used to and it’s not perfect, but it is still my favorite page builder. I own licences for Brizy Pro, Oxygen and Elementor Pro, and I’ve build several websites with all of the above too, but I still prefer Divi.
Unfortunately, most of the other issues you mention are still true for now. They still don’t have a real template system (they are working on it, but they announced it in May 2018 already and it’s still not ready…) and the translations are horrible (in Dutch as well).
And of course there’s still the shortcode issue. But there are plugins available that will automatically clean up those shortcodes for you.
I also tried Thrive Architect, which I really liked as well, and Beaver Builder too. I didn’t really like Beaver, but I like to have a lot of features and Beaver didn’t offer enough of those for my taste.
Queen Blogalina says
I have been with Divi since November and from the start had misgivings (like how to get my logo to replace their tiny one)…I’ve made about 5-6 websites since 2003…and though no designer, I figured out how to use prototyping software, and even that was easier than Divi. I’ve had to add code and asked if they have a code library for all these glitches, and the customer service rep seemed to think it an odd request. Shortly after I gave a rep access to the site, the site went down. I can’t say why, as I was in my file manager and may have screwed things up with a shaky hand. But the whole directory was a mess. Now how to make my escape?
Niall Flynn says
Its a mess of a theme, I have repaired so many, checkout Brigde its a really nice alternative.
Manfred Rodríguez says
Hi, there is a fork of Headway themes that deserve a shot https://www.padmaunlimited.com/
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Manfred
Thanks for the mention of that. Hadn’t come across it before. Looks very interesting!
=)
Oliver
Charlene says
Anyone tried it yet ? Scared to download…
Manfred Rodríguez says
I did, I use it on 20+ sites now and works amazing.
Wolf says
Can you give some links to them?
nina says
Oliver, it’s been ~6yrs since I built/maintained a WP site. No good deed goes unpunished, and I’m on deck to build one again.
Bought the domain, etc. and imagine my surprise when I found BeaverBuilder on Godaddy… I.had.no.clue.
Where was my old “WP” fill in the blank/edit/dodgy looking work environment with a plugin for everything known to man!?!?!
What’s this @*&^*(@^& drag/drop crap…. What is Beaver Builder? (Yeah, obviously I need to get out more…) SO, I did just that. I went out looking… and there she was…
Divi winked at me… Thinking she was friendly, I read through the page, and almost fell for her “I need 89.00 to save starving programmers” annual membership fee.
I had questions, and found that, while CHAT had the faces of three happy people, and after entering my questions, there were no happy people waiting to chat with me at all, which left me a very unhappy person.
I was prompted to enter my email, and then notified (all in the chat window) someone would get back to me in hours. HOURS. **HOURS**.
Good gravy, at least tell me “Tomorrow” or “A month from Sunday” but hours? pffffffffffft
Disappointed, I caught the first Google bus and searched Divi’s reputation, and I found your article.
Thank you my friend, your post confirmed my suspicions, and I’m 89.00 richer for it!
rfgrtgretr says
Lousy opinion. Your $89 gets you their ENTIRE LIBRARY of themes, not just one. And amazing free support. Constant updates (for both security and features).
This article existed years ago before Divi was any good, and it’s here still receiving comments because it RANKS on Google. (Notice the article has no original publish date??). The author makes $$$ off the ads and referrals in the sidebar. He has no incentive to change his opinion and review the Divi of today.
Sasha says
Whatever you do, just DO NOT buy Divi! They advertise it as this easy-breezy builder, but it actually takes quite a lot of time to learn and once you get a basic grip of it, there are so many issues that are contradictory in Theme customization and individual modules. Also the mobile view option does not corresponds to the real mobile view. I’m not going to even start about the Extra and Divi themes incompatibilities. However, since have spent quite a lot of time on it, all that was manageable, although pretty time consuming for someone like me who learns on the go, so I’ve decided not to renew the membership for the second year. Now with the changes caused by WP5 and Gutenberg, my visual builder is gone, and once I asked ET for advice, their answer was to renew my membership for 10% discount (which is offered regardless if you are buying the membership for the first time or renewing it) and that there’s nothing else they can do about it. So, basically, if you don’t renew, you are screwed. Their justification is that their product is still working (only backend editor), so basically they don’t care about users that get the theme and the builder after their membership is up. I was thinking to renew my membership, but after their careless customer service that posts smileys while basically is telling you to either cough up more money or to …. off, I am definitely switching from this nightmare of a theme! Once more save yourselves a lots of time and nerves, and just do not consider Divi. However, I am not in need of a new builder for someone who knows just the mere basics of HTML and CSS, and prefers visual builders anyway…
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Sasha
Thank you for the insightful comment!
Please do feel free to “get started on the Extra and Divi themes incompatibilities” – I’m curious on that one.
=)
Oliver
rfgrtgretr says
There is no incompatibility. Divi was ready even before WP5 officially launched. Same goes for Extra. But stupid people like to rant instead of finding solutions to very simple problems they may have encountered in the move to WP5.
Raymond Dunthorne says
Ah Divi. I should have spotted it before deciding on going for it a few years ago for client sites I couldn’t justify development budget on. You see, I am in the UK and originally from the North West, where ‘divi’ is a a pretty widely used insult.
Look it up in Urban Dictionary: ‘Divi, Divy, Div: A person who is not very smart or has just done a stupid thing’
I pretty-much realised I had done a stupid thing some weeks into struggling with the first iteration of the ecommerce site I was building. In MY defense (I am not defending Divi, we will get to why in a moment) I need to QUICKLY iterate some basic designs that would allow me to get client sign-off and put all resource and budget into content content content, and deliver on the SEO part of the brief.
I am not going to mention any of the site or link to them then you know this is not SEO spam, happy to point you at ’em if you really want though. TO be fair to Divi, my non-tech content developer was able to lay out and edit / design (in the loosest sense) basic pages.
To be fair to me, every bloody week an email pops into my inbox with a subject of something along the lines of: ‘Get a FREE Physical Therapy Layout Pack for Divi’ (received 5th January) that does NOT in any way make me feel like I made the right decision.
Far from it, a few of the other things that make me constantly regret this duff decision:
Sick of the spammy, low-rent emails, I decided not to renew my ‘subscription’. Obviously I cannot get updates anymore. However, this now appears to mean that now there is no ability to use the stupid Divi visual editor at all – obviously this is post a few recent WP updates, and blocks.
I can no longer even log in to the stupid Elegant Themes account I have – not without paying $96. No access to anything at all note, nothing. Just a message saying: ‘Your account has expired! Submit a renewal payment to re-activate your account and get access to our latest themes, plugins, updates and support.’ I think this is pretty shocking and exploitative, bordering on being held hostage. Not even an ability to re-download the crappy versions of the stupid theme I paid for. Not even a stab at telling me what subsequent updates have cleaned up or made available.
Is it ‘fast’, does it work? Well, the sites I built are only fast thanks to the usual spend on CDN, Caching, Solid State hosting and so on, plus a few seemingly essential third party Divi add-ons to actually make it remotely user friendly (Divi Booster for example) I hate it and wish I had never used it.
Sorry you asked? Sorry I went on so long, it was good therapy though. Thanks!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Raymond
Don’t be sorry for the length – it’s a very welcome comment and a good read:)
Oliver
Julian says
I’m pretty sure every theme created by Elegant Themes is garbage, plagued by little bugs and poorly written code. There are many themes that are nicely engineered, but I’ve never seen a well engineered theme by Elegant Themes. For example, allowing proper child themes and overrides, using wordpress hooks and actions correctly, etc…
Elegant themes is like a nice looking car with unreliable foreign parts inside (basically, like an American car).
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Julian
That car analogy made me smile and LOL – thanks:)
And thanks for the comment in full, as well:)
Oliver
Niall Flynn says
Its all Chrome and noise alright 🙂
Bjorn says
Hi,
Was a good article, and fun read all comments. Now it is 2019, what is really a good theme or page builder to do a small website for a company? It seems like it never comes any really good tools for this, ever.
At the moment I want to a single page, visually impressive site. Nothing really fancy is needed, just a presentation of people and skills.
Cheers
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Bjorn
Beaver Builder and Elementor are both really powerful options, with Beaver Builder having a slight edge on usability / user-friendliness, and Elementor an edge when it comes to capabilities. My personal top recommendation is Beaver Builder. I value simplicity above feature creep!
If your site’s requirements are very marketing-heavy, i.e. the primary purpose is lead generation, then a combo of the Thrive Architect page + Thrive Themes’ other plugins (that all integrate tightly with Thrive Architect) will be the bees knees (whatever that expression means… but you get the idea). TA is more complex though, and its UI isn’t as pleasing as the aforementioned two.
=)
Oliver
=)
Oliver
Greg says
Download All Of Our Plugins Plus Every Single One Of Our Amazing Themes For One Low Price! Wow, going on 6 years with 3 plugins?
Not rocket science
Euan McMillan says
Hello Oliver,
Like all things they are a good points and bad points! So after many years of not working on web sites and blog posts I picked up Divi to make the relearning quicker, by being able to achieve something without having to remember all the details you just need to know to get a web site looking ok! My take is this after about 6-8 months.
– Divi shortcodes being left behind maybe an issue, depending upon how you have organised yourself. You can always just go to the output and copy the text to reuse from the output! After all you have the images and video and the logos right? So the modules you used are not reusable with another builder anyway, so we are talking about the text resources used for building the content.
– Divi support, well yeah it’s a pain in the butt. I don’t understand other user comments here, as I definitely do NOT have access to their forum to see solutions to issues, or what the user crowd are reporting as issues and solutions.
– Divi support, being in Australia, the support is not closed, just not active when you need it, due to time differences! My solution is to type in the problem I have, with screen shoots and descriptions which helps me to formulate in my head exactly what is happening so I can troubleshoot it. Then I leave it to Divi to bother to reply, sometimes 10 – 12 hours later. In the meantime, I get on with doing what I can to find solutions. Often I have a solution by the time Divi support answer. Then I just see if they give me an alternative solution, or if I learn something. I use the extensive Facebook Divi/Extra groups to find other user support.
– Divi and Guttenberg, I realised I am ok with Divi for the web site development but not for the blog content, as I want to reuse that and this is the big time consumer for me. So I decided to make the site with Divi and do the blogs in a normal editor or later Guttenberg. Problem is that Divi would not coexist with anything during the development of Guttenberg. Contact their support and they will acknowledge the issues and DO NOTHING! No suggestions – NOTHING! The ultimate insult.
Divi blog posting templates and stuff – there is none! Its just rubbish what is provided. – Ok there were 3 templates, half published as examples.
– Extra Theme, was developed after Divi, and then they split their work in 2 directions. Extra is intended for magazines and content creators (hmm intended only, not achieved). So I built a website for our magazine in Extra (www.kopibrisbane.com.au). There is some nice development in Extra, such as the catalogue builder, but you have to buy a third party plugin to get access to the Divi builder modules in Extra. Marketing present them very positively, and fails to mention this. So this lead me back to looking at php again after many years and I started to rebuild this back into Extra, on an as needed basis! Hey it’s all there why not turn it on to your PAYING customers? That ET said in their marketing, it is suppose to be there!
– Extra theme has not received the ongoing developments of Divi, so you cannot take advantage of the flaky recent developments of being able to copy modules settings, so you have to do the re-editing of multiple modules. So what is developed in Divi is not included in the more recent theme? And yet they are marketed as being compatible and alternatives.
I am still happy with my (ET) Divi purchase and work. Divi is not that well done, I tried to follow a tutorial ET published on their blog (within 3 days of it being published) and the tutorial did NOT match the current revision of the software, in fact even the settings of the spacing did NOT work, and when you looked at them you realised they could never work. So difficult to gain really how to work with the modules as a learning even from the tutorials.
Divi development is slow so I built a development server which took me back to my start in computing and Unix. If I have to do some c or assembler coding, then I will have completed my circuit!
Thanks for the article and comments, these are mine for your readers.
Cheers
Isom kelly says
I think that if you are a person new to web development you will be drawn to this product because of its promises. But if you are a person who has some pretty advanced ideas without the skills to make them happen Divi will make you feel more like a dummy. It is not advanced at all and will leave you stuck like a rat in a maze at times. I keep finding myself saying but it’s RIGHT THERE I mean Literally RIGHT THERE but alas it is not at least not as promised. I really enjoy the idea of the tool, not the execution. It is like working on some corporate project on an Apple computer for a whole week, only to find out that you can only submit your work if you are using the Microsoft Platform.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Kelly
Sincerely sorry for your comment being held hostage in my WordPress comment moderation queue. Not my intention. For some reason comments were hidden from plain sight.
Thank you for taking time to comment! My sincere apologies for the delay!
=)
Oliver
Raymond Friederichs says
Honestly, i am using Divi 6 months now. And i must say that i am happy with it. Perhaps the last few updates made it better? I find it easy to use, and i am content with the costumer service
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing your experiences with Divi, Raymond! I’m glad you’re enjoying it:)
Oliver
Mike says
Divi is the devils work – I have used it for approx 3 years. If you are buying it primarily for the visual builder, don’t. Simply do not buy Divi. It’s plagued by bugs and lacks very basic features that once you start building a site will come and bit you in the ass.
Nested columns would be a good example.
Next, the visual builder simply doesn’t work well. Changes don’t get made correctly, it’s often difficult to edit an element due to the UI (forcing you to hand code), it’s often hard to make simple things like bullet points, change colours, make text bold etc.
It is without a doubt more hassle than it’s worth once you get passed the “attraction” of a drag & drop builder.
And I haven’t even started on responsively or how it’s bloated with code or incompatibility with very handy market leading plugins.
AVOID this like you’d avoid a rapist.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Mike
Thanks for sharing! The frankness brought a smile to my face:)
=)
Oliver
paul says
Hey guys we were also looking at Divi, any updates on recommendations for decent site builders and themes for WP? I’m ok with some HTML, and just want something that works and i won’t regret in 12 months in terms of integration, functionality, future ecommerce plugins, and ease of use. thanks in advance, cheers Paul
patty says
“… too many WordPress users switch themes as often as they buy new outfits.” Huh? Who? In 10 years I’ve never heard of a single user who does this. And I’ve never understood why this is considered such a concern. Who in the world switches WordPress themes, at least when you’ve made more than a handful of settings and customizations? I think this is a myth. The main reason the “Divi controversy” exists is that that dude Chris Lema wrote a nasty post about it early on which for some reason appears high in searches, even though he had nothing really significant to say.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Patty
Apropos your comment: I’m currently working on two sites. Both are theme switches (for clients). What a strange coincidence, huh?
“That dude Chris Lema” made the same valid point as I did: that Divi leaves a mess behind, should the user ever want to switch. That’s a very relevant point to thousands upon thousands of WordPress users considering Divi. And since it’s (for obvious reasons) not mentioned as a selling point on Elegant Themes’ Divi sales page, it’s up to bloggers like Chris and I to inform the public on such a matter.
Your opinion may differ, and some may think I don’t like Elegant Themes as a company – but I actually do! I just state the facts about Divi.
=)
Oliver
Niall Flynn says
Anyone serious re SEO has been watching out for a heap of changes over the last 10 years, changing theme accordingly. Just look at the default themes from Automatic, crap as they are even they change year in year out.
patty says
Why switching a Divi site to another theme is only rarely an issue: (1) The Divi Builder is typically used for only the Home page. (2) Divi *is* normally used for smallish websites.
Niall Flynn says
I have seen 20+ examples in 2018 contrary to both of these. Its always a shock to a site owner when they find out a theme change with a theme like this is a 100% rebuild copy paste and all.
Arby says
True of any theme really. I’ve done conversions from OTHER builders, TO Divi and encountered much the same. From OptimizePress for example, or WP Bakery… the list goes on. All of them leave behind a mess.
The problem here isn’t WordPress, WordPress themes or builders. The problem is ignorant, small, cheap clients who think all it takes is $150 and an afternoon.
Karen says
Hi Oliver,
I don’t even know what I was searching for when I stumbled upon your post, but I enjoyed it and am currently checking out Thrive at your mention.
The popular builders all say “build it with zero code!” I personally have never had that experience and have found learning the HTML and CSS I need is much easier than learning some of the weirdness of many builders. I started out as a hobbyist using SiteOrigin page builder and SiteOrigin Vantage and then moved-on to three of Theme Trust’s themes (Trade, Weston, Create). Honestly, Create is one of the most amazing themes I’ve ever used, and like most WP folks, I’ve used many 🙂 For me, the combo of SO (premium) and Theme Trust has been awesome and is often my first choice for client sites. That being said, there are things that cannot be easily done, so I have other builders available based on the client scope, which frankly, I think everyone should do. The almost paralyzing fear so many people have to NOT learn a lick of HTML or CSS keeps companies like Divi in business and it fascinates me on a regular basis.
I own Divi and originally built my own company site with it, basically because of the “one time” fee. I didn’t want to worry about renewing a theme each year and for security, I wanted to make sure I was receiving updates. Over time I’ve grown to hate Divi and am currently transitioning my business site off the Divi train. I view Divi as the used care salesman of WordPress: long on promises, short on delivery, and everything is a bait and switch. Sure there are third party services like Divi Den, but for me, that’s the problem: EVERYTHING worthwhile in the entire ecosystem is either a paid DIVI add-on or a paid third-party add-on. The sheer time it takes to wade through the completely disorganized ecosystem is also a business buster, but the absolute ultimate reason I hate DIVI is the abysmal customer service and apparent inability to resolve long-standing bugs. When I send a bug report to my current theme company, it’s fixed immediately. When I’m having problems with CSS, SiteOrigin shows me what I’m doing wrong. I know when a client PAYS me money, I will be able to get the help I need if something goes sideways. So I’ll do a bit of coding to make things to my liking, because at the end of the day, for me, the most important thing I need in a theme and builder is people on the other end of my computer screen that will be there and be smart enough to solve my problem.
We all have our preferences in the way we work and what we need, so what is right for one person, may not work for another. I respect all opinions but suggest that anyone making a long-term decision vet carefully, because it’s a real pain to invest time and energy into something that doesn’t work out.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Karen
Thank your for posting a very thoughtful and interesting comment. You make several good points.
You’re right it’s sometimes faster to code a bit of HTML and CSS vs wading through countless options in a, perhaps cumbersome or disorganized, theme / page builder. Or even one that’s well-organized, but new/unfamiliar, until one gets truly acquainted with it.
My own site is built on Genesis, and at times Genesis can really frustrate me. Anno 2018, there’s still no page builder friendly full-width template included. Making one isn’t as simple as it could be, and requires following a tutorial a blogger wrote. At least StudioPress themselves could make a proper, easy-to-follow guide.
It’s not that I can’t do it – but it makes me wanna switch to a better theme framework, like f.e. GeneratePress which has impressed me a lot, lately.
Using Genesis, I’ve often found myself wondering why I’m using Genesis, instead of coding my theme from scratch, which I used to do. That way, there are no hooks to find and figure out, and no idiosyncracies to work around. Just lean, easy-to-grasp code.
With Genesis, the template files aren’t even regular template files. Everything (the loop etc) is abstracted, and can’t simply be overriden in the child theme as one would do with a normal WordPress theme.
Oh! Now I remember why this site is on Genesis: I moved my site to the Rainmaker Platform. It only allowed Genesis. Since migrating back to WordPress, I should perhaps switch to a different theme.
But as you know: switching from f.e. Divi, isn’t a quick task. It takes time.
So indeed, as you say: “anyone making a long-term decision vet carefully, because it’s a real pain to invest time and energy into something that doesn’t work out.” – well spoken. So true.
Well, felt I wanted to share the Genesis perspective above, as your comment reminded me of those woes.
Thanks again for your comment:)
Oliver
Joey says
Divi initially impressed me as easy enough to use and configure – until I got to my WooCommerce bits. I run 6 WooCommerce sites, and have no problems with any of them – except the one with Divi.
First, despite their broad claim as WooCommerce-friendly, support informed me (after a 24 hour wait) that Divi doesn’t support Product Search. Then, when I had other problems related to the implementation, they pushed me off to my ISP, saying it was probably a firewall issue (although they provided no evidence of that, and the other 3 sites are fine).
Good marks for a nice page builder, but bad marks for WooCommerce spotty support and the tendency for tech support to point fingers.
I’m removing my Divi (and dealing with the shortcodes) and getting my $$$ back.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Joey
Thanks for sharing your hard-earned Divi efforts with us.
Which page builder will you replace it with?
Oliver
Izabela says
Thank you for your review. I found Divi very easy and friendly to use. It’s an amazing tool!
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion Izabela:)
Oliver
Ryan @ Web Eminence says
It’s personal preference and a lot cognitive bias going on with theme builders, but I’m a huge Divi fan. I’ve built over 200 sites with it since the beginning of Divi. I’ve never had the problem of moving the shortcodes from Divi to another site because I’ve NEVER moved a site away from DIVI. I have moved many sites TO Divi. Also, you’ll probably have this issue with a lot of builders and frameworks. You can’t just transfer pages/posts and expect it to work seamlessly.
Divi is well supported and they keep making it better and better. I hope they don’t make it too complicated like other builders though. It’s simplicity is what makes it golden in my view.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Ryan
Thanks for chiming in:)
While it’s true it isn’t easy to migrate from any page builder, the problem with Divi is that the leftover content is shock-full of shortcodes. Untangling your content from that shortcode soup is like untangling a dish of spaghetti bolognese. Doable? Sure. Time-consuming? Extremely.
=)
Oliver
Kitty says
Oof. Divi looks good, but it has a huge honking problem aside from what you point out. You get a baffling 500 server error almost every time you update. This is such a common issue that they have their own help video (that isn’t much help.) It’s absolutely terrible if you have no idea how to fix it – something about htaccess files??? I know many web-snobs are all ‘well, if you can’t manage your own website and remember your ftp login and password once every year, what good ARE you?’
The truth is, though, that this is a huge issue for many people, such as authors, musicians, etc. It all has to be DIY because, well, we’re not exactly set up to hire staff. I really don’t recommend it. It looks great on the surface, but is terrible to manage if anything goes wrong… and it DOES go wrong.
Niall Flynn says
The cache clearing thing in the builder is bizzare, I had a lot of random 500 errors today migrating a site from an older PHP version. But even after it all got stable just randome errors/500s etc etc
JimH845 says
Appreciate the review. I am not a developer/coder/whatever. As a small business owner with a limited budget I have learned to set up basic websites and update them on my own. I’ve done about 5 of them. My websites are more brochure type and I found doing them myself less painful than trying to provide all the content to a designer, reviewing and approving everything and relying on someone else for relatively simple updates (Maybe I had the wrong designer once?). Originally I used simple themes but then attempted to use X Theme. Unfortunately I found it to be overwhelming and was about to concede defeat when I found Divi. Even with Divi I’ve had to learn enough about coding and such to be dangerous but generally it’s been easy to work with and there is a lot of online information to help when I hit an issue. Support from Elegant Themes has been generally pretty good. For me, Divi’s been a great solution.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Jim
Thanks sharing your experiences with Divi! I’m glad it’s working well for you!
=)
Oliver
AyS says
Many thanks for this article. I have no coding skill and I am looking for building a “Recruitment” website (where both companies & candidates subscribe and post their profiles and expectations).
I will start with a version 1 myself, and is traffic is coming, I will move to a professional developer.
To start with, would you use “Divi” for this ?
If not, what could be used for a non coder guy ?
Many thanks
Oliver Nielsen says
For the technical aspects, I’d go with something like Gravity Forms – a plugin you should check out. It has many useful add-ons that extend its capabilities.
For the design, I’d go with Beaver Builder. It’s the easiest page builder, IMO.
=)
Oliver
John says
If you plan to use a slider, and don’t already have a favorite plugin that is compatible with Divi, don’t use Divi. It’s stupid slider can drive you mad. I’ve built about 20 sites the past 3 years or so with Divi and every time the slider height crap comes up. Just Google ‘divi slider height’ and you will see tens of thousands of people bitching about it. And this ‘divi booster’ people make money out of this too. So you need a plugin to solve your problem that Divi won’t solve for the past n year.
Ana says
Interesting review. Of course one has to hold in mind that the purpose here was to find a client-friendly interface, meaning that it still could be a good thing for designers to use all this builders. But I must say I’ve found this post based on google searching for Divi downturns. I guess that the huge marketing experience on their homepage vs. the not so impressive demo templates included sounded a few alarms, in my point of view. Even the ones exposed as primary examples of Divi potential seem average from an IU experience when compared with other online templates. And I guess it’s ok to be average but when you’re offering a package with a very specific price tag to it, one must offer a certain degree of quality overall. So yeah drag and drop builders are here to stay for sure and rest assured they will be improving in time, but I still see many short-comings along the way. Maybe a team will fill in this gap in WordPress and Web Design in general.
Anyways, it gave me a good share of experience about Divi without having to risk in for a ‘money-back guarantee’. Thanks in advance.
Nikola says
Does anyone know how to put a video background in Divi theme? It constantly shows media error. I uploaded the mp4 file, but it will not start the video background again, and again it shows media error. Please Help!
Oliver Nielsen says
Have you tried contacting their support, Nikola? What did they reply?
Rishad Quazi says
I have this exact same problem using Beaver Builder Page Builder and the Genesis framework. I suspect it’s server config issue, not specific to Divi.
Ernest Burden says
I have put a video background into Divi successfully. Didn’t have any tech issues with it that I remember. I did use “Handbrake” to optimize the video for web prior to upload.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Ernest
Sincerely sorry for your comment reply to Nikola being held hostage in my WordPress comment moderation queue. Not my intention. For some reason comments were hidden from plain sight.
Thank you for taking time to comment! My sincere apologies for the comment moderation delay!
=)
Oliver
Liane says
MHO — I hate video backgrounds! So annoying!
Oliver Nielsen says
I totally agree!
Bloggersneed says
I really like divi theme and they have added a lot of new features in the new version and divi 3.0 site builder absolutely amazing.
And you are saying beaver builder is far better than divi but honestly i never tried so i can’t comment about it.
As per my experience divi is freaking good to use….
Rishad Quazi says
I’ve been working with Beaver Builder (with a ton of other add-ons such as Power Pack, Ultimate Add-ons, and a few more) for the past month or so now. It’s been nothing but frustration from the get-go.
Granted, some of this is due to my own relative inexperience using WordPress in general, but I found myself severely underwhelmed by my Beaver Builder learning curve. My client now wants to move to Thrive.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Rishad
Thanks for commenting!
Can you elaborate a bit on your specific troubles with Beaver Builder and in particular: the add-ons?
Even though I’m quite fond of Thrive Architect (and Thrive Themes other plugins) I’m not so sure you’ll experience less challenges going that route vs Beaver Builder;)
=)
Oliver
Enrique says
Man, I think your Divi review is waaaaaaaay too old!!
Currently (2018) Divi has by far the best Frontend Page Builder out there and are working on making the Backend Page Builder as good!!
It has lots of features that no other other WP Page Builder out there could ever dream of!!
If anybody is interested on all Divi updates since this review was posted, just go to Elegant Themes blog and search the terms ‘feature update’.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Enrique
I’ve regurlarly kept up with changes in Divi, and tested it myself (I still renew my license annually) and while I do think the interface has gotten better, it’s still an inherently troubled page builder for the same reasons as I’ve pointed out in my review.
I’m curious: which features of Divi is it that no other page builder “could dream of” ? You’re the second Divi-fan I’m asking, and I’m still waiting for a concrete reply… ?
=)
Oliver
Andrew Shoxx says
I think too many times things are overly complicated for the sake of simplicity. I use all the builders pretty much (most common ones anyway).
The item that the regular non-coder should always reference is “NEED.” All these builders are great for certain purposes. Ranking and SEO are definitely a NEEDed item from the on-set.
All platforms take patience and you need to try an understand the overall functionality of your chosen builder not become an expert. You will never need 100% of any builders capability again does it fulfill your NEEDS.
If one were to say “X” builder will totally not allow you to rank or hinder you significantly,
then, of course, I would at least research the claim. If that claim was to be proven as truth then and only then would I take that particular tool from my toolkit.
All else is opinion and much of it based on coding and ability for the common user to grasp.
It matters little, as long as you have a satisfied client and you have produced a product that is
functional and does what you promised.
Simplebutcreative Media says
Looks like you’re a Divi hater lol.
ET/Divi has been one of the best investments I’ve made in years throughout my internet marketing career. But then again I’m the type of person who don’t mind giving things a shot.
Although, I’m a heavy Divi user…I still give Beaver the edge because of its multisite and white label feature. I run a couple of multisites. I’ve actually been considering Beaver for one of my big multisites. If Divi ever implements a multisite feature, that would be a game changer for my business. I’m sure they’ll never implement a white label option.
I might just have to utilize both builders for my business.
Oliver Nielsen says
Not a hater at all – I like Elegant Themes as a company – and they do some good stuff. Just stating the facts.
Which Divi features are you missing in Beaver Builder?
=)
Oliver
Dave says
” I’m sure they’ll never implement a white label option.”
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
I don’t own Divi but am researching to see which I want to use. Based on your comment I googled their site and they have a blog article about how to remove their copyright and put your own in. They also have an article about how to white label the dashboard.
Karen says
Dave, removing a copyright and white labeling are two very different things. White labeling would allow you to remove the builder’s name and put your own company name in its place. So, where you would see the name “Divi” you would see “company x” instead. Removing copyright is just the text line found in a site footer.
Mik,e says
Support is non existent even for paying user with simple questions. they figure they got you so who cares. Looking elsewhere.
Saravanan says
I love DIVI Theme, Divi has really helped our website.
Oliver Nielsen says
I’m glad to hear it’s been the right thing for you, so far:)
Jake says
I would actively warn people from using this cancerous theme (Mind you have used Divi for over 3yrs).
It breaks the layout randomly when doing updates.
It is extremely slow compared to other page builder themes.
Their support is abysmally bad
Try out Beaver builder or any other page builder for that matter but stay away from Divi.
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Jake!
=)
Oliver
Enrique says
What are u talking about??!!!
Divi recently launched their instant chat support which it’s been pretty usefull for me instead of having to open a ticket and wait 😉
carissa says
I would have to agree with Jake. I have been running Divi for about 2 years and on Monday it broke…total white page. I chatted with support for 5 days with hours between their responses. I ended up randomly fixing it myself…I am not a coder. That’s a long time for a business site to be down when you’re relying on them!
Jake says
I can expand on my initial comment a bit.
I must give the Elegant theme some props for being able to fill their website with enough content marketing snake oil that their own blog tops Google for posts that don’t even answer the actual question i Googled for.
Example: Google on how to add youtube icon to the footer of the Divi theme and you will most likely end up on this post:
https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/divi-resources/how-to-add-more-social-media-icons-divi
The post describes how to click on a freaking button in the Divi options to enable one of the 4 icons that will be visible in the footer. But in no way describes how to actually add NEW icons.
Then they go on rambling about how to add it to a module which was not the initial point of the post but there is enough content there to basically rank no.1 on any combination of the words “Divi + add + more + icons + footer”.
Of course there is a way. You copy paste the actual PHP file where these options are defined from the Divi theme and add it to your child theme with more options. Yes, very hacky and prone to break on the next Divi update.
Anyway, there are millions of more of f*cked up things with Divi i could bring up. I am actively migrating away from Divi now for all my websites(which by the way is a royal pain in the ass).
The only type of site i would ever use Divi again would be some marketing site with 3-4 landing pages tops.
/Rant over 🙂
Jake says
Well, their customer support seems to consist of trained monkeys who can answer the same questions that you can find answers to one Google away.
They do not put any efforts into fixing existing bugs but just keep adding new features that are only making the already bloated theme even heavier.
Greg says
Where is this magical instant chat? They are definitely not helpful answering pre-purchase questions Unable to explain why “all their plugins” consist of 3, including the Divi builder.
No Sale
Alf Drollinger says
I used Divi for about three years now and I loved to work with the Visual Editor, but never cared about the quality behind or the lock-in using Divi to layout thousands of posts (also CPTs). I was a busy web developer using TYPO3, writing very clean code, caring about accessibility and code quality … but not on my hobby. My bad. Now as my platforms grew, my interest in building a more SEO-friendly and accessible website grew too. These WordPress platforms are now my main business, so I started to analyze and after some weeks deep dive into Divi code my only way seems to write a plugin to convert the shortcode desert fields after de-installation.
I decided to go that way, but why? It is not about the messy shortcode-thing, not about the performance issues, problems with valid HTML and divitis (haha, that’s a good fit), missing semantics or accessibility, not about the very bad translation, not about the failing code tests and the missing compliance to WordPress coding standards, not about the unsolved bugs they don’t care for years. All minor problems I can live with, solve in my child-themes or with plugins. The biggest problem is the same with other themes and plugins based on shortcodes. It is the development that WordPress will undoubtedly make. First the Rest-API, now Gutenberg, soon the development of great new possibilities to develop ingenious plugins and themes with great frameworks like React. Not all page builders will die, but all those who oversleep and Divi is most likely one of them. Why else has ET not reacted to this important question for months, but continues to bloat the plugin and theme with features they better place in extra-plugins or child-themes? I really don’t unterstand the way they go. You cannot beat Automattic on their own game and we know that Shortcodes will die for over half a year now (if you’re an active core contributer or into Slack maybe over a year).
I’ve started developing my own theme based on Gutenberg, what is btw the very best editor I’ve used so far, and will soon be writing my new posts with it, having the Divi plugin installed to keep the old stuff working. My only hope someone is quicker to write the saving plugin to convert the shortcodes to Gutenberg tags, please understand this as an invite if you’re able to … 😉
Just my 5 ct, cheers from Malaysia,
Alf
Oliver Nielsen says
Thank you for sharing all that, Alf! Much appreciated.
PS: TYPO3 – i could never wrap my head around it myself, TemplaVoila and all that. But I’ve had friends who’ve worked primarily with it. Powerful stuff.
=)
Oliver
Dave says
From what I have read about Gutenberg they are working very hard not to break existing websites! In addition it will still take years for all of its features to roll out. Therefore to say that shortcodes are going to stop working (die) with the arrival of Gutenberg is inaccurate. What will die are products which don’t evolve with the platform!
John says
Nice comment, Alf! I would be very interested in that plug-in as well when it comes along… If you know of one please let me know!
I built my site with Divi after a guru I listened to suggested how much he loved it… my bad.
My site loads horribly slow. Something is broken that I can’t fix and it’s a waste of time every time i try to find the problems. Now links are breaking. I think Google penalized me for slow loading speeds. So has been very bad for SEO.
So now I am looking to migrate my site to a more sleek and streamlined theme- had trouble with BB in the past so maybe something simpler that’s Gutenberg friendly.
Always open to good suggestions.
thanks and thanks for the nice article Oliver- very helpful!
John
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi John & Alf
Sorry for John’s comment being held hostage in my WordPress comment moderation queue. Not my intention. For some reason comments were hidden from plain sight.
Thank you for taking time to comment! My sincere apologies for the delay!
=)
Oliver
nina says
I used many themes and many builders, as a regular user, blogger I love the flexibility that divi and extra gives me, plus I have those amazing divi-den elements/pages/websites that I can use to design my web pages myself- so much fun. No other builder is coming even close to divi and extra. The new updates are amazing, and there are new even more amazing updates on the way. And I tried also beaver builder, avada, themify, elementor, visual composer etc., no other theme/builder allows me that much freedom, creativity and fun. Although I must admit, it is unsettling that if I want to leave the divi framework completely I can’t. On the other hand, at this moment I have no idea why I would do that.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Nina
Thanks for commenting. Will you elbaorate a bit on the stuff Divi does for you that other page builders doesn’t? I’m curious.
PS: not being able to switch can be a blessing in disguise – when there’s no temptation to do so:)
Oliver
Sandra says
I love DIVI.. Have been working with it for years now.. Its the best ! Price is right.. Those who are having issues are stuck with past ideas on how to make a site.. Stay open-minded and you will see the worth in this Theme! Its excellent and excellent in the multilingual department as well for our clients.There is always a solution to any issue you come across. Support Dept is fast and you can research thoroughly on their forums with any issues you may encounter.
Jeremy says
This post is WRONG – I have successfully implemented and replaced content on multiple WP Themes and Frameworks. Including Genesis and WP Bakery Themes. Divi Builder is a STANDALONE builder which DOES NOT REQUIRE DIVI THEME. IT WORKS JUST FINE. Nothing is out of the box amazing, so don’t expect amazing, but their support team will gladly help.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Jeremy
Show me a YouTube video where you successfully and effortlessly switch from Divi Builder to another page builder like f.e. Beaver Builder.
I’m not holding my breath.
Oliver
Alf Drollinger says
If the problem would only exist with other page builders. It already appears when you install WordPress 5.0 Alpha with Gutenberg. The future of WordPress? Not with Divi 🙁
BTW, Oliver, do you know an overview where PB are compared regarding the internal code they use, ie short codes, tags or…
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Alf
Can you elaborate on what you’d like to see regarding a comparison of internal code in page builders? I may do it.
Oliver
Alf Drollinger says
Hey Oliver,
thanks for your reply.
I would like to develop a theme for Gutenberg myself, but I see the need to include a page builder. Gutenberg will take a bit longer to become so powerful. Divi Builder is out because of the shortcode problem. The only plugins left in the selection are those based purely on tags in the frontend, as Gutenberg does.
Buying all the builders is too expensive for me, so if you could take a look at them from an internal-code perspective, I would be very grateful.
The second reason is far away, but the development of a plugin to convert shortcodes into tags would interest me much. I think there will soon be a need for it.
You can write me a mail to alf @ drollinger.info, preferably in German 😉
Cheers from Malaysia,
Alf
Sally says
Wouldn’t it be equally hard to change from one page builder to another, no matter which one it is?
Terry says
The Divi is the greatest thing to happen to WordPress. It is not perfect. However, it improves production, is well supported, is continuously updated and the price is reasonable. I have tried all of the others and nothing comes close.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Terry
Can you elaborate a bit on what specifically you feel Divi does better than the competition?
Oliver
Jeremy says
How? Have you even used WP Bakery? The fact that it lacts all of the functions necessary to be a true front-end builder… simple things like… RIGHT CLICK AND COPY… Divi does that. Maybe you should update your review and use the latest version, review their latest features, and update your post.
AG says
Very informative and helpful info.
Thanks!
bksi says
I purchased the Divi package on Thursday. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m asking for a refund.
Divi Builder is non-user friendly (good luck to that individual clubs editing their own stuff) and actually seems to break some standard WordPress functionality – not so much that you notice right away but little things.
I’m not a developer but I do have some experience in web devel and WP.
There is no documentation, zip, zero, nada. If you have an issue you file a support ticket and/or are instructed to watch video(s). Did you ever need one little answer to something and have to watch several twenty minute videos to (possibly) find the answer? Product support is spotty; tech staff seems to cherry pick the tickets they feel like answering and leave the rest to languish. Ask a question they like? Get an answer within minutes. Ask something they are averse to and you just won’t get any answer, at all.
One of the selling features of Divi was their pre-built layout packs and touted as already built websites. Unfortunately you don’t get a ‘pack’ but individual pages without linkage and no theme support for the layout pack. The font sizes/padding/margins is screwed up on many of the packs (percentage) making this a patience effort of hand editing to get the layout to look like the promised page. I asked support for a list of what the padding *should* be and was told to just experiment until I liked it. This was not a good answer for me.
And switching to a non-Divi theme pretty much loses everything you’ve done if you started with their layout packs
I’ll check out your Beaver review. thanks
Jeremy says
It sounds more like you’re being impatient and jump to the gun. You spent all this time writing this post out and no time actually using the system. Don’t use Divi Theme, use your own theme, the builder is very intuitive for developers.
When switching to ANY new framework you need to COPY AND PASTE the content, not the html, then you won’t lose things. Now if you happened to put things in place in certain layouts, learn how to make it work for you.
Sounds like impatience and lack of understanding crippled your experience.
Hank Castello says
I’ve been using ElegantThemes and their Divi theme and plugin for a couple of years now and I’m very satisfied. I prefer the backend construction rather than their new frontend UI. It seems to me that their biggest customer is RocketTheme.com which, as illustrated in a recent blog article on CompuSolver (dot com), is absolutely to be avoided at all costs. Both companies have beautiful themes and fairly good support. But adherence to the WP API for updates is essential.
Allison says
Hi, New small business owner here. I’m just getting started with Divi and I’m noticing on my mobile device that when I refresh my screen the content condenses to a simplified format- erasing my pretty fonts and background images. The spacing is all messed up between paragraphs too. Any suggestions??
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Allison
I’m sorry but you’d have to ask Elegant Themes’ for support on that one. They’re the makers of Divi and can likely (hopefully) help you out.
=)
Oliver
David says
Allison,
Sometimes, you have to make different designs for the device. You can create sections, rows, content based on device by turning on and off the visibility. For phones, I think a smaller font with smaller pictures helps. As things may stack instead of be side-by-side, you may also have to change the layout a little. I am no Divi pro but I do this with my website. If you need more help, let me know and I’ll attempt to assist.
Respectfully,
Dave
David says
Agree with David. Sometimes, I use a picture with text instead of text itself so it condenses (e.g. https://welearntechnology.com). Other times, I design separate modules for phone and desktop (see my website).
Dex says
Divi Visual Builder Makes it super easy make tweaks for mobile and tablet sizes. It’s built right into the visual builder. So if you are working on a section, you would click the little mobile icon and then make changes in the form fields that you want. Click SAVE and presto, your moblie tweaks will be different. When you are intially buliding, everything you do will be the same for Desktop/Tablet/Mobile. Then when you see a layout you don’t like on Mobile or Tablet, you just switch to that device type in the Visual Builder and it will create that delta for you. It’s quite simple. For more details, google is your friend.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Dex
Sincerely sorry for your comment reply to Allison being held hostage in my WordPress comment moderation queue. Not my intention. For some reason comments were hidden from plain sight.
Thank you for taking time to comment! My sincere apologies for the comment moderation delay!
=)
Oliver
François says
After 2 hours trying Divi for the first time, I can tell: Divi is not a great theme (but a not too bad one).
Divi should be just a page builder plugin. Since there is not much flexibilty with the header, footer and sidebar! Fot that price it’s a crime! No widget area in the header! So I have to ridiculously override header.php in my child theme… No default behaviour for the sidebar. In the customizer the footer credit doesn’t apply shortcodes! WTF!!! (from Divi “the shotcode abuser” it’s a really bad joke).
And last point, the builder got a well done UI/UX, but it’s a bad shorcodes trick! And it not very portable with RestAPI, Custom Post Types…
I have some plugin using Custom Post Types, If I want to use the Divi Builder for those post types, I have to add the use Hook to apply the page builder, but if the plugin allow me to integrate the content with a shortcode, the Divi shortcodes will not be intrepreted.
For me Divi is only good to make really basic website, with a flat integration. I feel really disapointed with that, cause my client don’t whant to hear about any other theme. They did a good marketing job but need to hold their promises…
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Francois
Hehe, that remark on Divi “the shotcode abuser” not parsing shortcodes in the footer really made laugh:) Good one:)
Also thanks for sharing your other experiences regarding custom post types.
PS: really frustrating when a client stubbornly insists on using a problematic product. Personally I’ve always steered clear of clients showing that trait. It’s a bad sign. Similarly, a therapist or coach may gracefully avoid working with clients who insist continuing to act in ways that inhibits their progress towards better results.
=)
Oliver
François says
I agree with taking distance with dreamers.. But sometime I need practice some extreme sport!
François says
When I read lots of blogs telling Divi is the utltimate theme blah blah.. I’m pretty sure they are in the Divi modules business (antother big joke for a theme supposed to do everything)
elizabeth says
I really appreciate your review. Elegant themes released Divi with the builder integrated. It broke every site I uploaded it to. My only site that is still okay is the one running an outdated divi theme.
It does bother me that I have to pay 90.00 each year to get updates. I also hate how I am stuck with divi. Since the divi update broke my site, I decided to switch to another theme while I try to fix thing but the short codes make it unworkable. I looked at the thrive architect and it looks great. Thank you for the heads up. I will be making the switch.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Elizabeth
Glad you’ve found my posts useful. And thank you for testifying a real-world case where Divi’s shortcodes encumbers switching to another theme.
I hope you’ll find Thrive Architect better. Please feel free to report back on your experiences with it!
=)
Oliver
Azhar says
I love DIVI theme as it is super easy, the modules systems works fine it is also really easy one can design the modules according to their liking and minus the coding so it is really cool and made my life a lot easier as a newbie in web designing.
Yin says
I purchased Divi recently (USD 249 package with 10% discount) and after spending hours and hours pouring through their tutorials and articles (which the number of videos and tutorials really surpassed any themes out there)… I realized it is not for me and decided to cancel and request for a refund (as it is within 30 days). Which the team promptly processed my refund within few hours.
Your blog posts really covers the very same reasons why I decided Divi is not for me. Yes, it is indeed a great theme and produce great impressive site. However like what you mentioned, it the shortcode being left all over the place. I tested on a few pages and after switching back to my existing theme (Thesis), I find the pages that I meddled with has lots of sort code.
Also it is really true that it is hard to use the theme if your site has tonnes of blog posts. My main sites have hundreds of articles each which I have painsakingly created custom sidebars and pages using my Thesis theme. Yes, I would lose my customization the moment I even if change the child theme (Thesis call them “Skins”) but even if I switch themes, I would not find a load of shortcodes being dumped on my pages.
And I totally agree with what you say said that if we help people to build websites, we have the duty to give them a site that is sustainable. They need to know how to manage the site and easily switch themes without breaking the site. Imagine when they decide to switch theme only to be met with disaster. Then they come back to you and either you have to spend hours or you wanna bill them for the extra recovery work and it upsets them.
In the past while I was an employee, I worked with vendors whom we had to go back time and time again because a system breaks or goes down with a simple update. Of course as a client who does not know much about the system and only as a user we would feel we have been cheated. No matter how the vendor tried to explain, we would not understand.
Similarly people pay us to build websites for them because they do not have time to learn to do it themselves. They are not going to understand that they need to keep the Divi plugin to keep their site intact (and even with the builder, some sections or elements would go haywire). They would think we are irresponsible, lousy and unprofessional and this is going to affect our professional reputation.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Yin
Thank for writing that. I’m really glad you agree on our professional duties of professional web designers. Short-sighted designers/developers indeed harm our reputation. What clients are paying for, is competence.
Keep up the good work!
Which theme have you ended up with now?
Oliver
D says
Thanks for the article. While I think Divi has functions decently as a web design creation tool, it seems to fall short in many areas. I purchased Divi when it first came out so I have the grandfathered in pricing, yet due to the confusing nature of the theme, the scattered documentation, the dated aesthetics, and underwhelming and very limiting themes and “layouts”, I just never use it.
I think if Nick and Elegant Themes fixed those problems they would have a lot more to offer. Instead of creating more “layouts” (many of which are very limiting… only include home page), they should start offering more extensive full fledged demos. And they really need to take a note from some of the great looking themes on Themeforest that have a bunch more offerings when it comes to features and modern stylings.
I’m actually surprised that there is still no stellar drag and drop WordPress web builder tool yet in 2018. Genesis themes are clean and well coded, but very lackluster and their demo offerings are boring and there’s only a few to choose from. WooThemes themes are plain ugly and dated. The same with iThemes.
The more quality / well coded offerings lack in the features and aesthetics department and the Themeforest themes that look great and have lots of versatility are poorly supported, often abandoned, non transferable, very buggy, and slow.
This is mind boggling to me. I’d think there’d be a better option. Squarespace looks great, but it’s too pricy for web development and you’re stuck with what they have to offer (for example, they didn’t even offer a “subscribe to comments” option for their blogs last I checked).
I recently came across a Themeforest theme by the name of “Boo” by Themerella. It’s probably the best looking theme I’ve seen in a long time. Very versatile and lots of great looking very modern demos to choose from. Yet a glance at their comment section reveals horrible and slow support and constant bugs. And they have completely abandoned some of their older products leaving thousands of customers with no option but to find a new theme (unless they want massive security issues from lack of updates).
When I commented about my concerns in the Boo theme comments section, the author removed my comments, despite me asking legitimate questions and concerns. Themerella, rather than answering my questions, asks me to re-send questions via email. I did so 3 days ago and still no reply. It’s a shame because with a product as nice looking as Boo, they’re loosing out on thousands of possible sales from treating their customers and potential customers like crap. When someone tells them “3 tickets, 5 days, still no replies!”, Themerella replies with “Hope you’re having a great day! … and “Boo family!” when all people want to hear is an apology and a solution.
Anyway… If anyone knows of a better WordPress web builder tool that has it all (aesthetics, function, versatility, good code, good support, etc), please do let me know. I’ve yet to find anything that comes close. Thanks.
Oliver Nielsen says
Interesting and insightful comment! Thanks for that.
I agree regarding the generally low code-quality of many ThemeForest super-themes. Many of them are indeed beautiful though.
The explanation may be that it’s easy to make a spiffy theme, if you’re a shortsighted developer who puts bling over speed, stability and support.
One thing is for sure: those multi-purpose super-themes on ThemeForest will never be a good long-term option. There’s simply too much code in them. They’ll be slow, and difficult to customize.
Oliver
Dave says
“I’m actually surprised that there is still no stellar drag and drop WordPress web builder tool yet in 2018.”
I don’t know why you say that since many people who are not on the Divi bandwagon love either Beaver Builder or Elementor.
Tom says
Hi Oliver,
thank you for this good comparison article and also your statements in the comment section.
I am in the process of converting a static html-site (a business directory) to wordpress and am still looking for the right tools (themes, plugins) to use. Today I came across divi as my webhost mentioned it as an easy to use tool. Having read your review and comments, I am not so sure any more.
Do you happen to know any good and easy to use plugins or themes to fulfil my task? Probably it is similar to what you had in mind with your orignal Thai Chi site mentioned inthe post. It doesn’t have to be a pagebuilder like Divi or Beaver.
Thanks in advance for your (or any one elses ) kind reply on this.
Tom
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Tom
To recreate the layouts you’re likely to want/need, a page builder would be wise to add. Beaver Builder or Elementor are good choices. If you’re very marketing-oriented, Thrive Themes‘ page builder (Thrive Architect) and additional plugins (many of which integrate directly with Thrive Architect) should be of interest.
If you’re going more for a shop/ecommerce site, I’d go with Shopify, if I were in your shoes:) WooCommerce (the most popular WordPress ecommerce plugin) is itself is fine and stable, but once you start adding extensions to it, things (in my experience) tend to break when you least want it.
Oliver
jin says
Divi still has many errors. A simple youtube search can show the bugs actual paid users are facing. for e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78fS4JZjTbU
Tj says
Thanks for the great review and information. Much appreciate your insight. As of today, do your opinions of Divi and Beaver Builder still remain the same.
Cheers, TJ
Oliver Nielsen says
Absolutely TJ – my opinion of Divi vs Beaver Builder is the same. I can say that with great confidence as I’ve been testing Divi Builder as late as yesterday, as part of a blog post I’m working on:)
Oliver
Teresa says
Hi Oliver,
I own a company that builds websites for small businesses and startups. A lot of our clients are using other CMS – like Wix – but we offer SEO services as part of our digital marketing packages, so I find Wix far too limiting. We are NOT coders, so we need to stay in the CMS land. So, I’m a big Yoast user. How do you find that Divi and Beaver Builder Themes compare in terms of getting along with Yoast SEO plugins? Is there any difference worth noting?
Also we’re looking for a ‘theme’ we can use as our preferred for most, if not all clients and the Divi feature that you don’t have to buy the theme over and over again is appealing. Do you have any recommendations/thoughts in that regard?
Richard says
Been awaiting a fix for a problem over a month now. To be honest there are so many support tickets and issues ET can’t keep up! Essentially, my issue is of low priority as it only affects my theme in IE.
I’ve use another theme named “Avada”…
Handsdown… Divi has nothing on Avada. And, their support is one of the best I’ve come across. I get answers/help over night. No Excuses… no try this, ok well try this like I get from Divi!
In my opinion, I (we) all have become beta testers for ET’s Divi…
Never seen so much hype about… well essentially nothing!
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Richard
Thanks for chiming in on Divi.
Feel free to share what specifically is causing you trouble in Divi. I’m curious.
=)
Oliver
Adnan Boozie says
I think there’s a bit of exaggeration in this article about the shortcode thing and there is an important factor has been left out in it, which is the divi plugin. Can you switch from Divi theme to another theme while keeping the design? YES! You can do that while keeping the plugin activated and your content will be the same with any other theme you might use (if you decided to move). Everyone will have at least 10 plugins installed so what’s the problem of keeping one more? I don’t see that and it’s why I keep using Divi for my client’s websites, and never mind this “shortcode/can’t move” problem because there isn’t a problem with that.
The clients I build websites for theme they ABSOLUTELY love Divi and it’s visual builder, and I have to say it’s really cool and fun to work with. There was bugs when Divi 3.0 was out yes, well you can expect that for an initial release but now their latest version is 3.0.76 (76 updates fixing all major issues and making it stable). So why would I leave Divi? I don’t see any reason for this to be honest! Thanks though for the article but as a WordPress developer/designer I have to disagree with you. 🙂
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Adnan
I have written about the Divi Builder plugin in other posts, and have one about Divi Builder coming up.
If you can see the reasoning behind someone wanting to switch theme, why can’t you see the rationality in someone potentially wanting to switch page builder? Who says Divi stays at the top of your list?
I can look back at many themes and plugins that I’m glad I’m not stuck with today, due to being locked in.
And with other, better alternatives like Beaver Builder and Elementor available – that do not make it difficult to keep your content should you switch to a different page builder – why choose the one that does leave you with that headache, down the road?
Don’t be shortsighted on your customer’s behalf. You’re there to help them build a future-proof website platform. Yes, your clients like having a page builder. No, your clients will not thank you when (for whichever reason) they’d like to switch from Divi to an alternative like Elementor or Beaver Builder to name just two of the most popular choices.
One last thing: the choice of page builder is not a religious choice. And it’s not a sports team to cheer. It’s a matter of choosing the best tool for your own or clients websites. I’m making that clear since you seem quite attached to the idea that the world is divided in Divi and non-Divi. Which is not the case. There are many choices, and I’d be quick to endorse Divi if only it didn’t suffer from a giant fundamental design-flaw. I’m not asking you to “leave Divi” – you’re free to enjoy it, and I’m glad you do.
All being said, I thank you for commenting. It’s good to talk about these things:)
=)
Oliver
MFK Tusar says
Does Beaver Builder or Divi work with Genesis Framework or its child theme or Thesis Theme? Can you explain please?
Oliver Nielsen says
Beaver Builder and Divi Builder works well with Genesis and Genesis child themes. I’m not sure about Thesis. It’s a very unorthodox theme.
Oliver
Jeanene says
Hi Oliver,
I am looking to create a new website for a beach bar/restaurant and I had no idea finding the right WordPress theme would be so overwhelming. I also considered Divi, but became concerned after reading more about the short codes and concerns that the site is slow. I have a couple of questions:
1) Does Divi work well with Safari?
2) Can you recommend something that would work well for my Beach Bar (easy to use, w/ Woo Commerce functionality)
3) Are you familiar w/ Rosa or Sage, would they be good choices?
Thanks,
Jeanene
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Jeanene
If I were you I’d consider the Beaver Builder theme + Beaver Builder plugin. A strong and complete package (it’s called their “Pro” package) that gives you everything you need.
Read more about Beaver Builder vs Divi and Beaver Builder in general here:
https://www.webmatros.com/on/beaver-builder
Not familiar with Rosa and Sage – never heard of them before. In general, I stick with only the best themes. I know there’s a plethora of themes out there – but as you write: the choice is overwhelming. Additionally, you want a theme that’s built by a company that you can be sure will continue to update the theme, in the coming years. So it’s best to be conservative and go with your gut.
Oliver
Ron says
Elegant Themes did an excellent job of promoting DIVI. So good in fact that I purchased the lifetime membership when it was still a back-end builder. When the front end version came out I was looking forward to using it. However, I found it clumsy and frankly not as intuitive as they claimed. I found myself gravitating to the back-end where things are a little more logical. Since DIVI 3.0 it seems that elegant themes is far more interested in adding more bells and whistles than they are in tuning up the main interface. Frankly my user experience was a huge disappointment given all the build up hype.
We want something intuitive and user friendly. Given all the bells and whistles DIVI has a STEEP learning curve and it’s easy to get “stuck” in a position that then has to be scrapped.
I have seen multitudes of sites built with DIVI over the last year and they all have a common look and feel, ok but not great. The libraries provided all have the same look… well I could go on and on.
Can you tell I’m disappointed in elegant themes?
Ron
Victoria says
Arg!…the world of the web, while delicious with all the information out there, and thank you so much for your excellent and detailed review – sometimes I feel that by virtue of “too much information” paralysis can set in when its completely unnecessary. I was very excited to find Divi, and attracted to the simplicity, until uh oh…..what about the shortcode! I hate the idea that I don’t have something clean to start with. However, coming from the micro owner operator perspective, (like the coach above who is happy with Divi as it got him up and running and he doesn’t have plans to change themes) I ask myself and all of us (who are not web-developers), aren’t we in the context of web services, always slaves to a master of some kind that could change at any time?
Realistically I hope not to change much over time, and if I do, wont I be in completely different web (and even Divi) environment by then? In which case the shortcode may have been solved by Divi and/or I am revamping my website anyway, so that starting over is not that big of a deal? Short-term / long-term view……
This notion makes me latch onto your statement that – hold on, Divi might still be for you………any thoughts on that y’all?
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Victoria:)
I’ve had those same thoughts. And the reason I revisited Divi a few weeks ago, was because I had two websites to make, where the first just needed to be made quickly, and likely won’t contain much long-term content. It’s a launch site for a music album release. Apart from tour dates and a Facebook Like Box, there’s not much else content:) So Divi would be okay for that.
The second site, was my perpetually disordered photography website, which WOULD be, and ONCE WAS a nice portfolio website. But I’ve been tempted to switch themes so many times, and then something else more important (I’m not a pro photographer any longer) has come up (i.e. client work) and I’ve forgotten all about the ongoing redesign. That made me think: why not “tattoo” my website permanently, by forcing myself to stay with Divi?
Well, the result of my re-test of Divi, was that Beaver Builder is a vastly superior user experience. Much easier, and just as powerful.
So I prever Beaver Builder.
But yes: I can absolutely relate to your sentiments!
=)
Oliver
Charlie says
Divi is poorly coded compared to any other text editing software. There control icons constantly obscure anything your trying to create or edit, especially text. Editing fonts, sizes and colour is like trying force water back up a hose pipe. For the money and functionality its in no way superior to Elementor which is Free.
They emphasise that you don’t need to understand code to create a web site….on their origins theme the spacing between paragraphs and sizing of boxes is a train without a driver….runaway.
Try editing the header or title page…home page. Its impossible unless you’ve done a course in CSS and WordPress…Divi skips over this in its sales pitch.
Divi’s definition of WYSIWYG =’s What You Pay For Is 10% Of What You Actually Get.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Charlie
I agree. And customizing Divi with CSS isn’t even as easy as it is with many other themes. Divi is Divi. It’s the look you get. It’s not a good “WordPress theme framework” in any sense of the word.
Beaver Builder is approaching that badge, now that they’ve released Beaver Themer, which lets you layout and style the parts that Divi doesn’t.
Thanks for voicing your opinion and experiences with Divi.
=)
Oliver
Nastassia Luisis says
This is my first time using the Divi Theme, for the record, I am new to website building and know less about coding. I gotta say if it weren’t for the Divi Theme I would have never been able to build a website on my own, they have really done an excellent job at creating a user-friendly, drag and drop theme that even a first timer can use. The complaint I hear about most often in regards to the Divi Theme is the migration process from one site to another; luckily I don’t plan on migrating my site to another host or domain; I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I get there. But if your goal is to have full control of your website and not dip too deep into your pocket to create one then I would highly recommend the Divi Theme. Feel free to check-out the website I built using Divi: http://www.jonathanhermida.com
Eimear says
I’m new to building websites and have read through blogs to figure out where to start. Divi appears to be very popular… I’m having trouble figuring out what to do if it might be difficult to move on from it later down the road.
If I want to create a review website (glassdoor, tripadvisor, foursquare) but a smaller but sizeable industry, should I avoid? I don’t want to have user-created content and it be a nightmare to edit later on…
Oliver Nielsen says
Yes, avoid Divi for such a purpose. Rather use Genesis + a StudioPress child theme, and pay a web developer to customize it as you need it.
Better solution, long term!
=)
Oliver
Randy S says
I purchased a lifetime support with Elegant Themes and have been happy until the last 6 months. Elegant Themes does NOT take their bug reporting very seriously. They have had a bug in their Shop Module (Divi theme) for about 6 months now and they still are not fixing it. This issue has hurt MANY customers of mine and Elegant Themes has known about the bug since I first reported it and have released 4 updates since the initial report of the date sorting problem. It is still NOT fixed and their tech support team does not even reply to the posts inquiring about the bug being fixed. Stay away from Elegant Themes and invest in a Theme company that pays attention to their customers’ issues. Too bad you cannot see the support forum on Elegant Themes website (for customers only).
Oliver Nielsen says
Thanks for sharing your experience Randy! Much valued by me and other readers!
Oliver
Lucian Florian says
I agree with some points in this articles that Divi theme might have some limitations but I have to say this is the best theme I have worked with. Clients love it because they have finally control over their own content and it’s intuitive.
I disagree with the point of Divi polluting the content with shortcodes because all other builders are doing the same. Besides, whenever you move away from a theme it involves a full redesign with new content so it’s not as important to have a shortcode free text.
Other than that updating it doesn’t break the site. It was the case one time when the client didn’t update it in 2 years and we had some custom changes but otherwise it’s a very consistent experience.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Lucian
I beg to differ. I simply don’t agree – and your statements aren’t valid.
Divi does severely pollute your site, by leaving behind a ton (!) of shortcodes, totally intermixed with the content. This is NOT something “all other builders are doing the same” – that’s a blatantly false statement.
A website redesign does not, in any way, presume that all the content needs to be redone. In fact, one of the biggest benefits of using a CMS + a theme/templating system, is that you can entirely change look of a website, while leaving your content exactly as it is. Some of the sales/landing page content may require new fancy formatting using the new theme’s capabilities, but regardless: it’s still the same content. And in that case, It would be at least 5x easier and faster to work with content that’s free of shortcodes from the previous builder/theme, rather than content that has been drenched in shortcodes like pasta in bolognese sauce.
There’s a brilliant builder plugin and matching theme out there, it goes by the curious name of Beaver Builder. It doesn’t leave any shortcodes behind. So why pick Divi over Beaver Builder? It would be an irrational choice.
If only Divi offered the choice to remove all traces of its use, when a user switches to a competing product: I’d be more than happy to fully endorse Divi. Version 3 has a much better UI than version 2 did. It begs to be used.
=)
Oliver
Victoria says
Thanks Oliver! As an artist with little plans to change much on my website what would you say in terms of usability (love the front end editor of Divi) are the main difference between Divi and Beaver.
Do you like beaver because of the shortcode issue primarily. I like Divi initially because it looks so yummy. Does the shortcode effect any other functionality besides moving to another (non Elegant theme) – like affect SEO?
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Victoria
Nope, the shortcodes won’t affect SEO, as they’re replaced on-the-fly (when the page loads) with the HTML markup they represent. So no problem there. But you’ll hate yourself the day you wanna move to a different theme or page builder.
I think Beaver Builder (the theme and plugin) looks just as yummy as Divi. But on the backend, I particularly prefer Beaver Builder over Divi, because of Beaver Builders much more logical user interface. There’s more order, less chaos and confusion.
Honestly, I’ve tried to “like Divi” for what it is (dismissing the shortcode-issue) and re-tested the latest version of Divi as recently as a few weeks ago. I just couldn’t find myself using it. There are so many UI-inconsistencies. Even with the vast improvements they made in Divi 3.0.
Beaver vs Divi is like Mac vs Linux. Similar in nature, but different – and Linux is more complex, and doesn’t let you do much more (if anything) that macOS ;o)
Thanks for asking! Much appreciated!
=)
Oliver
Elizabeth says
Curious if you have any different thoughts over a year after writing this initial post. My company is looking to switch from Drupal to WordPress and deciding between Divi and Beaver Builder.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Elizabeth
Nope, I still stand by what I’ve written. Only difference is, I think Divi’s UI has improved a lot in Divi 3.0. The frontend editor is nice to work with.
That said, I still believe Beaver Builder is easier to use. It’s less bloated and more logical.
Welcome to WordPress:)
=)
Oliver
Diana says
One of the problems with Divi is the neverending updates, which fix some things that need to be fixed, but they keep adding more and more bells and whistles and messing with things that aren’t broken. Now I am trying to figure out how to fix my logo and header after the latest update, because when the page loads, (and it’s admittedly loading slowly while I design and work on my site) the logo which has a transparent background, overlays the slider, making the loading page look like a huge mess. I am constantly having to “fix” things after updates, and I am just done with the neverending maintenance after updates. I’m getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Diana
Thanks for reporting your experiences here. I feel your pain: plugin and theme updates breaking stuff is one of the biggest downers in the World of WordPress.
Have you considered Beaver Builder?
=)
Oliver
Denise says
Oliver,
I’m curious about whether you are an investor, affiliate or contributor to Beaver Builder? I read another person’s blog, who said pretty much the same thing, but he looks to be part of Beaver Builder.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Denise
Ha! No, I’m neither and investor or contributor to Beaver Builder. I am a member of their affiliate programme though. But I’m also a member of other, competing affiliate programmes, like f.e. Elegant Themes, the makers of Divi. As you can see in that case, my opinion is not (as in never) for sale. Period. I only ever recommend what I can stand fully behind.
I do hope you’ve still benefitted from reading my 100% honest review?
=)
Oliver
Tomasz Bystrek says
Hi, I’m not sure if my comment got through, as I had to refresh page. And I think I used phrase ‘hold promise’ wrong in this context, I just meant ‘promised’. Sorry, this is the original comment, just in case:
Thank you, Oliver! I’ve tried the plugin, so I had a glimpse into Beaver and I like it a lot, I’ll definitely try full version. It saves so much time, so handy that it’s actually fun 🙂
Can’t wait for the new content, good luck with it. I’ll be watching for updates. And Headway hold promise for news about upcoming version 4 and… mysterious “another new product” soon. So many surprises ahead.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Thomas
Nope, your comment got lost somewhere in cyberspace. Let me know how you do with Beaver!
=)
Oliver
Tomasz Bystrek says
Thank you for this post. I’ve never consider any page builder before, as I thought Headway does enough job for me. I just didn’t know how it could be used with other framework. But I got a newsletter about Divi plugin, watched a good introduction video https://youtu.be/_gUUKGfexa8 and almost bought it on the spur of the moment. Then it came to me that I read a review warning against Divi theme using shortcodes and a mess it can leave, when you change theme, and thought it might be the same problem with the plugin.
Looking for other options, I stumbled on Beaver Builder, as one of the most often recommended. After reading your post, I’m more convinced to go with Beaver, unless you change my mind. Your opinion matters for me, as you helped me a lot with your Headway course. I was so lost at the beginning, but the course gave me a kick needed to start.
Thrive sounds interesting too, but I want something easy to edit content for others/customers.
Should I wait for a full review of Beaver Builder or go for it now?
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Tomasz
First a big *thanks* for your kind words about my Headway Hero online course! Makes me smile. Currently busy on new, closely-related member content. Very exciting, and more will be revealed very very soon!
Anyway, back to Beaver Builder – i think you can safely get that one! Must be added though, that I did experience some occasional glitches with saving (but we’re used to that with Headway, right? ahem…) which I and a few other users reported to Beaver support. Haven’t checked up whether it’s been solved, but I lean towards it being a browser-related issue, perhaps a browser plugin (Safari). All in all I’ve been quite impressed with Beaver Builder. Their theme (available in the full package) was also quite nice. But really, you can use any theme, as long as it has a true, full-width template.
Be sure to let me know whether you also end up impressed or not – I wanna know!
=)
Oliver
Oliver Nielsen says
Oh, forgot to mention: there’s a free lite version of Beaver Builder available on WordPress.org! (in case you haven’t seen it)
It gives a good idea about the product. The full version just have more modules. Besides that limitation, it’s not crippled and fully usable, also on a production website.
Cesar Falcao says
Nice article. As an Elegant Themes user for the past 4 years, I think it’s very hard not to use Divi. ET themes were great themes, but since the Divi ‘s launch they’re doing a amazing job not in their theme’s quality, but also in design – I think their Page Builder UI is gorgeous! – and features (like Sucuri’s security certification) and regular updates.
Beaver is a great product, and as mentioned in your review, has the some special features – I like so much front end editing – but at the fast pace ET is updating the Divi framework (and the now universal page builder), I think it will get a advantage very soon.
Oliver Nielsen says
You think so? Hmm, time will tell 😉