"Hi, I'm your WordPress"
Almost a month ago i left Elementor Pro. It's time to make a first assessment. There are already measurable effects and others that are perceived in navigation, all of them beneficial, so I still think it's a good idea to do without this builder. I will now list them.
Improved perceived speed
A very important point in favour. It is of little use to work madly on the optimisation (with the risk of falling into over-optimisation) to improve scores if the end user does not perceive a faster page. This has had an immediate and obvious effect, which is noticeable in practical terms in navigation.
Less resource consumption
We already know that overloading a WordPress installation with plugins is not a good idea and forces you to optimise them according to different factors, something that not everyone knows how to do. Elementor Pro needs its free version to work, so, by dispensing with two big plugins, it's really noticeable. If you replace what you're missing with lightweight alternatives those three or four new plugins probably won't consume even a fraction of what Elementor used to eat.
Faster admin
The WordPress administration control panel is where you notice the change from the first minute. It drastically increases the speed of response in general and in particular for those actions that require many queries to the database, if it is large, such as mass edits or the management of tags, categories, etc.
Improve Core Web Vitals
While it's not a good idea to obsess over the scores, you shouldn't overlook the these metrics because they offer clues as to what may be holding back the loading, positioning and usability of your blog.
As the readings are updated with measurements of visit periods of the last 28 days, within a month you start to see noticeable improvements every day. In my case, the FCP and LCP, which I could not master, have already started to drop at least one point each day for the mobile version and the same is true for the desktop version. I estimate that in two weeks, at the latest, they will be well below the maximum recommended limits.
Less and cleaner code, fewer bugs
By pulling GenerateBlocks which are still native blocks of Gutenberg and therefore of WordPress Core, not only is there much less code, but it is also cleaner. One less thing to optimise. You also don't have to worry about the occasional errors, which are all too common after each Elementor update due to incompatibility with other plugins or with the template.
Save a few euros
Although Elementor Pro's $49 per year is not an excessive price, it is still a fixed cost that not everyone can afford. If you don't need to manage client pages and offer them more elaborate or gimmicky designs, you can always find lighter and free alternatives, or cheaper ones, to make up your blog at your leisure.
