[Top] 38 WPBakery Page Builder Review PROS & CONS (Formerly Visual Composer) | Best WordPress Page Builder?

WPBakery Page Builder

Pros

• You can save templates for later use
• Works with most themes
• Multilingual interface
• Various content blocks
• Many addons available for it
• User role access control

Cons

• There is a learning curve
• It can have conflicts with other plugins
• Once deactivated leaves shortcodes on pages
• Not easy to use and straightforward
• Can impact page speed

WordPress page builder plugin can turn your WordPress site pages and posts into an amazing looking website. In this WPBakery Page Builder review I will be dissecting features of this very popular plugin.

These WordPress page builders allow you to create, edit, and customize your site layout without writing any code. Many WordPress beginners find it difficult to change or customize page layouts on their site.

While today many premium WordPress themes come with different page layouts, those are often hard to customize. There are several great drag and drop page builder plugins available for WordPress. They allow you to customize mostly every component on your posts and pages.

These components can be anything like adding multiple columns, parallax backgrounds, full width images, content slider, etc. Users can use these components as blocks to build their own layouts within their WordPress themes.

The page builder market is very competitive today. But one page builder plugin pops out almost on every corner. It is WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress.

It is a very popular plugin with more than 94 000 sold copies and an average rating of 4.7. More than 500 000 websites around the world have this plugin installed. There are many page builder plugins for WordPress available. Both free and paid. But this one is recommended by most WordPress users.

NOTE: I have also compared WPBakery vs Elementor, so check that comparison if you are interested to see differences.

Why Was Visual Composer Rebranded To WPBakery Page Builder?

WPBakery Page Builder used to be called Visual Composer page builder and is one of the original page builders for WordPress. The Visual Composer trademark has since been used for an entirely different project: a full-fledged website builder – Visual Composer Website Builder. Check Visual Composer review for more info.

While CodeCanyon still sells the original WPBakery Page Builder, the Visual Composer Website Builder is a separate plugin and sold on its official website. You can check Visual Composer vs WPBakery comparison to see differences.

WPBakery vs Visual Composer Differences

• Name
• Price
• Free version
• Drag and Drop editor
• Frontend editor
• Tree view mode
• Backend editor
• Mobile editing
• Inline text editor
• Instant save
• Header editor
• Footer editor
• Sidebar editor
• Page layouts
• Global header and footer
• Works with any WordPress theme
• Custom Post Type support
• Multisite support
• Multilanguage ready
• RTL compatible
• Template management
• Blocks templates
• Element presets
• Templatera/Global Templates (Reusable templates)
• Template Export/Import
• Design Options
• Copy/Paste
• Element clone
• Element custom name
• Grid Builder
• Hide element
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Recent colors
• Undo/Redo
• Blank Page Wizard
• Custom CSS
• Custom JavaScript
• Element replace
• Role manager
• Icon libraries
• Google fonts
• Instagram-like filters
• Parallax effects
• Gradient background
• Slideshow background
• Carousel background
• Zoom In/Out background
• Video background
• Element animations
• Background image position
• Shape divider
• Box Shadow
• Instant column resize
• Column stacking
• Reverse column stacking
• Row full width/height
• Responsive preview mode
• Automatic responsiveness
• Custom row responsiveness
• Yoast SEO support
• Shortcode support
• WordPress widget support
• Gutenberg element
• Block for Gutenberg
• Custom widget support
• Unsplash Stock Images
• API
• Staging activation
• 3rd party Add-ons
• WooCommerce Support
• Cloud library
• Menu elements
• Theme integration
• Developers License

• VISUAL COMPOSER WEBSITE BUILDER
• $59 for single site$59 single site premium license for unlimited access to all of its elements and customer support, a $149 for 3 websites license, and Developers license (for unlimited usage) for $349.

• WPBAKERY PAGE BUILDER
• $45 for single site$45 single site license (one time payment) and a $245 extended license for Saas applications

SHORT SUMMARY: Visual Composer Website Builder and WPBakery Page Builder are both independent products. They can’t be replaced merely one by another.

WPBakery Page Builder Review

WPBakery Page Builder plugin allows you to design unique pages using building blocks of content. Some page builder plugins call these blocks modules while some refer to them as widgets. WPBakery calls them “Content Elements.” They all refer to blocks of content that can be dragged and dropped into any part of a page.

Over 40 content elements are packaged with WPBakery. This includes text blocks, social media buttons, video players, image carousels, post grids, charts, etc. WPBakery Page Builder allows you to style your pages on both the front-end (your live website) and the backend (the WordPress admin area).

You install and activate it like any other WordPress plugin. You may need to enable WPBakery Page Builder plugin for posts in its settings as for me it was unticked by default. Except that, there is not much work in settings of the plugin.

At the top of the page, you can choose which post types WPBakery Builder can be used with. Posts, pages or any other active post types. They all can be enabled or disabled. You can also select Google fonts and disable responsive content elements.

You can choose whether a specific user group can use both WPBakery Page Builder and the default WordPress editor or restrict usage. For example, you could only allow use of WPBakery to administrators and editors.

Specific content elements can also be disabled for each user group. Go to create pages or posts and there you will see new options. You may have more or fewer elements to add depending which plugins you have installed and which theme you use.

Drag and drop page builders usually let you style pages in the backend (i.e., the post editor) or the front-end (i.e., the live website). WPBakery Page Builder allows you to do both. You choose or combine depending on how is easier for you.

Don’t worry if you had content before. You will not lose anything. In fact you can make your previous content even better and more appealing. WPBakery Page Builder will work with any WordPress theme so there shouldn’t be any conflicts. It supports multiple languages and is compatible with the WordPress translation plugins like WPML (check WPML review).

It has a responsive design which means content will look great on mobile devices. You can check out how the website will look on mobile devices during the page building process.

How WPBakery Builder Works?

Once you’ve activated WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress on your website, you will see two buttons added to your post editor. One allows you to style pages using the backend editor. The other will take you to the front-end editor.

Clicking on the backend editor button will switch the default WordPress editor to WPBakery backend editor. There are four buttons at the top of the interface. The plus symbol lets you add a new content element — the grey box with a white T inside loads the template box.

The cog symbol will load up a custom CSS box that lets you define CSS classes for that specific page. The last button will take you to the front-end editor. When you first load the backend editor, a welcome page will be displayed that offers shortcuts to common choices.

You can add a new element, add a text block (a type of content element), or choose from one of six pre-defined layouts (i.e., load a template). These templates are a great starting point from creating pages such as landing pages. Loading a default template will add the layout below your existing customizations. You can then replace the dummy text with your own content.

WPBakery Builder plugin for WordPress lets you customize each content element. The settings that are available to you will depend on the type of content element you are modifying.

Simple content elements only allow you to define the size of the button, while more advanced content elements may offer many different options and settings.

New rows can be added by clicking on the plus symbol in the row header. Next to that is an option to place content into multiple columns. There are 11 column layouts are available. For example 2/3 + 1/3, 1/4 + 1/2 + 1/4, and 5/6 + 1/6. Or you can create your custom layout.

Once you have added columns, you can freely move content elements from other rows and columns into the new columns you created. WPBakery WordPress Page Builder allows you to customize the look and feel of columns and rows.

The general tab allows you to change the default font color and define additional CSS classes. The size of borders, padding, margins can be defined in the design options tab. You can also change the color of borders and backgrounds.

The backend editor is very simple to use. Like most WordPress plugins it may take you some time to get accustomed to how everything works. Once you get the hang of it, you will be in a position to create stylish pages that are truly unique.

WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress Backend Editor

Don’t worry; you can always switch to frontend and vice versa. Or even back to WordPress classic mode. But classic mode will show WPBakery elements like in the picture below. Still, it is editable if you know what you are doing.

WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress Front-end Editor

The front-end editor allows you to style pages on your live website. You can switch to the front-end editor from the backend and vice versa at any time. Be sure to save changes you have made to your page before switching the editing mode or you could lose your changes.

Backend editor is better for structuring a page initially, and the front-end editor is better for tweaking pages afterward. Clicking on a content block will bring you the same options you would see using the backend editor.

This includes options to add new rows and columns and the option to add, edit or delete content elements. At the top of the page, you will see options to add new elements, launch the templating system, adjust page settings, save a draft, publish the article, etc.

There is an option to preview how your page will look in five different sizes of devices. This includes desktops, tablets and smartphones. Very useful option.

WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress features:

• Light and easy to use interface
• Frontend and Backend editor
• Multilingual ready
• You can save templates for later use
• Great look on desktop and mobile devices
• Included content elements
• Object-oriented code

Plugin content elements can be modified directly from the theme functions.php file and you can also add your own shortcodes. There are also a huge number of addons for WPBakery to enhance its options even more and many more WordPress plugins that work in conjunction with it.

WPBakery Page Builder Review Summary

While WPBakery WordPress Page Builder was useful page building plugin for our beloved WordPress, I don’t think it is anymore as there are far better options now. You really can create beautiful pages but I don’t agree that it can be done in few minutes. If you are new, it will take some time to get acquainted.

I found the transition to the front-end editor to be a little problematic at times. Sometimes it refused to load; sometimes it would load correctly. It was frustrating to have a problem with such an important feature.

Content can be enriched. I discovered that writing new posts was less time-consuming when I didn’t have WPBakery Builder installed. Now there are so more options calling me to add them, and I spend more time including them than writing text.

One thing that bugs me the most. Let’s say you buy WPBakery Page Builder. You are creating a bunch of new posts using its features. Time passes by, and one day you decide you don’t want to use it anymore.

Maybe you switched theme, add a new plugin, discovered that your favorite WordPress theme or plugin conflicts with WPBakery plugin. Maybe the author stopped supporting it (doubt that is going to happen), new better page builder showed up or some other scenario.

What then? Deactivating plugin will show a lot of “vcrow”. There is no way of fixing that except manually editing all posts. If you have a lot of them, it will be a week or maybe even months.

I want to say; when you start using WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress, there is no coming back. Can’t say that is something good. Correct me if I am wrong.

If you don’t care much about style, effects, settings, layout, and other options, then you can live happily without it. Price is $64 on Codecanyon.

It has few bugs and sometimes it will not let you use frontend depending on which theme you use. You may have problems switching from the backend editor to the front-end editor, or frequently it will not load correctly and just display the loading icon indefinitely.

I did some research on this issue and found that other users have had the same problem, but were able to resolve the issue. It appears that the front-end editor sometimes fails to load due to various issues relating to the preloader.

WPBakery Page Builder offers good value for money. It is an advanced WordPress plugin with tons of functionality. It also includes a wide range of content elements. This includes social media buttons, multimedia elements for videos and images, content related elements such as post grids, post carousels, and post sliders.

Separators and empty space can also be integrated into pages to help structure a page. You will also find support for buttons and call to actions. All content elements are responsive. The plugin also allows you to customize each content element to your liking. You can easily change borders, margins or padding.

Font colors and background colors can be changed through the settings box, too. Custom CSS can also be added to style elements even further.

Don’t expect to create perfect pages right from the start. Although it is easy to use, it will take you a few hours before you will feel comfortable creating the pages you want.

The pre-packaged templates that are included with the plugin help speed up this process. By loading a default template and then spending time moving things around and tweaking content elements will definitely help.

WPBakery Page Builder has been available for years, yet the plugin is still regularly updated with new features. As the best-selling plugin on CodeCanyon, you can be sure it will be actively supported for many years to come.

There are no yearly fees. Therefore, once you purchase the plugin, you will receive lifetime support and updates. WPBakery Page Builder has been designed so that necessary Javascript files are only loaded if they are being used by a particular content element.

This ensures that pages load fast and bandwidth is reduced. For example, the Javascript that is necessary to display a post carousel is only loaded if you have added a post carousel to that particular page.

Many fast loading websites use WPBakery Builder. Therefore you don’t need to be concerned about the plugin slowing down your website.

If you want even more from this page builder then check out extensions and addons:

In a wide market of drag and drop WordPress page builders, WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress is one of options available to WordPress users. But I would recommend that you rather choose any other page builder.

Other popular page builder plugins include Beaver Builder (check Beaver Builder review), Elementor (check Elementor free vs pro), Divi (check Divi vs Elementor), Visual Composer, Brizy, Oxygen, WPOnepager PRO, etc.

DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.