Best Free & Premium Divi Alternatives in 2022

Looking for Divi alternatives for your WordPress website? 🤔

Divi is one of the most popular website builders out there. Its drag-and-drop design makes it easy to build complicated websites without knowing how to code.

That said, the builder 🏗️ has quite a few downsides, too. For instance:

  • There’s a lot of bloat in Divi-designed sites, pages take time to load (though Divi has been working on improving its performance)
  • Working with longer pages is frustrating as they often start lagging
  • $89 per year is unaffordable for many website owners

Fortunately, there are plenty of other high-quality website builders that can make a better Divi alternative for your situation.

What to consider when browsing these Divi alternatives

Some of the criteria you will need to look into 🔎 when selecting a Divi alternative for your WordPress website are:

  • Ease of Use: The tool should have an uncomplicated and clean interface so that beginners can use the builder without feeling overwhelmed.
  • Portability: Switching to a different website builder or removing the website builder shouldn’t leave your site with a huge pile of shortcodes.
  • Frequent Updates: WordPress is rapidly improving. The website builder should be able to keep up with the changes in the platform.
  • Compatibility: The tools should be compatible with the active theme and plugins installed on your site.
  • Page Speed: Using a website builder will most definitely impact site speed so one needs to choose a builder that could cause the least impact.
  • Add-on Support: Adding more modules and advanced features to the tool will help you build complicated designs.
  • Price: Needless to say, the tool has to be affordable and any extra cost should be shown upfront.

These are the criteria you will need to look into before settling for a Divi alternative.

Five best Divi alternatives (free or paid)

Here are our picks for the five best Divi alternatives:

  1. Neve
  2. Elementor
  3. Beaver Builder
  4. Visual Composer
  5. Thrive Architect

Now, let’s dive deep into each tool and see what they have to offer:

1. Neve

themeisle neve theme

Neve is a lightweight multipurpose WordPress theme that helps you build a great-looking custom WordPress website without requiring any knowledge of how to code.

Unlike Divi, Neve does not come with its own built-in visual builder. However, it does offer a tight integration with the native WordPress editor (“Gutenberg“), along with popular visual page builder plugins.

Beyond that, Neve offers a drag-and-drop header and footer builder as well as custom layout options.

Some of our favorite Neve features are its lightweight design and focus on responsiveness so that it looks great on all screens.

We also love the pre-built starter sites and WooCommerce-specific features like a quick view box, floating cart, off-canvas shop filters, and multiple checkout layouts, among other things.

👍 Pros:

  • Highly customizable and easy to use
  • Lightweight and improves site speed – it’s one of the fastest themes out there
  • Works with the native WordPress editor as well as any page builder plugin
  • There’s a functional free version, whereas Divi only has a premium version

👎 Cons:

  • Neve doesn’t include its own visual builder like Divi (but it does work well with other page builder plugins like Elementor and Beaver Builder, so you can still access visual design)

💳 Price:

Neve is a free theme but to access some of its features like custom layouts, quick view box, multiple checkout layouts, etc, you will need to purchase the Neve Pro add-on plugin for an annual fee of $99.

2. Elementor

Elementor

Much like Divi, Elementor offers a drag-and-drop visual builder with tons of useful features like revision history, auto-save, navigator, finder, hotkeys, etc.

The interface is a simple static sidebar that helps you customize every part of your website in real time.

You can design individual pages. Or, with the Pro version, you can design your theme template files.

Elementor offers its own blank canvas theme called Hello. Or, you can pair it with any WordPress theme, including the Neve theme from above.

The plugin offers 300 different page templates to choose from. But if you want to create your own designs, then you can use elements from the site builder and save them as templates.

Other Elementor features include integration with email marketing apps like ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp, eCommerce widget integrations, etc.

Elementor website builder screenshot

👍 Pros:

  • It offers both page building and full theme building
  • Compatible with most WordPress themes
  • You can use the visual builder to design custom pop-ups, which the core Divi theme doesn’t support
  • Elementor has a much bigger third-party extension marketplace

👎 Cons:

  • It’s a little heavier than Divi in terms of performance, though the difference isn’t very large
  • There’s no unlimited site license like Divi offers

💳 Price:

The free version offers a generous number of features like revision history, animation, maintenance mode, etc. But to add full theme building support like Divi (along with lots of other features), you need to purchase the premium version of the plugin which costs $99 per year for a single site.

To learn about the differences in benefits between the free and the premium plugin, take a look at our Elementor free vs Pro comparison.

3. Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder Homepage

Beaver Builder boosts similar functionality to what Divi has. It offers a drag-and-drop visual builder and a wide range of pre-built designs that make it super easy to create professional websites.

There are 30+ pre-built templates to choose from and they are all beginner friendly and easy to customize. All customizations are autosaved so that you don’t lose any design.

The developers of Beaver Builder offer an official Beaver Builder Theme that you can use with the builder, but the plugin works well with any WordPress theme.

Or, you can also purchase the official Beaver Themer extension to add full theme building support to Beaver Builder.

Beaver Builder website builder screenshot

👍 Pros:

  • Beaver Builder is a bit more lightweight than Divi – all things equal, a design built with Beaver Builder will usually load faster than Divi
  • Compatible with most WordPress themes (including Neve), and there’s also an official Beaver Builder Theme
  • You can add full theme building support with the Beaver Themer extension
  • Beaver Builder offers a built-in white-labeling feature, whereas Divi doesn’t

👎 Cons:

  • Doesn’t offer as many design options and design tools as Divi does
  • Beaver Builder doesn’t offer a lifetime license like Divi

💳 Price:

Beaver Builder does have a free (lite) version at WordPress.org, but it’s very basic and can’t compete with Divi.

If you’re considering Beaver Builder, we definitely recommend using the premium version, which offers a much more full-featured builder. The basic premium version costs $99 per year for unlimited sites.

4. Visual Composer

Visual Composer Homepage

Visual Composer also offers a visual drag-and-drop site builder and has an interface similar to Elementor. The side menu is packed with blocks, elements, and templates that you can use to customize your site from the front end.

The plugin offers a ton of elements like buttons, feature sections, image sliders, galleries, video players, animation, and much more. You can style these elements differently and modify them according to your needs.

There are 150+ templates to choose from and multiple third-party apps to integrate.

👍 Pros:

  • Has a huge selection of design elements and integrations
  • There’s a functional free version, whereas Divi only has a premium version

👎 Cons:

  • The theme building feature is a lot more limited than Divi, especially when it comes to designing single post templates
  • Complex design bogs down editor
  • There’s no unlimited site license like Divi
visual composer website builder - Divi alternatives

💳 Price:

The free version offers limited access. For instance, you can only use 30 elements but with the premium version, you have access to 200+ elements and templates. Take a look at the detailed differences between the free and premium versions.

If you decide to buy the premium version, it will cost you $49 annually for a single site.

5. Thrive Architect

thrive architect website builder - Divi alternatives

Thrive Architect is a visual page builder that comes equipped with editable templates and a wide range of elements. Besides the basic elements like buttons, columns, and background images, you can also implement advanced elements like star rating, pricing table, custom menu, table of content, and much more.

The plugin offers a large range of customization options for core content blocks (headers, footers, images, text, etc.) along with a front-end design editor so that you can see how the page looks in real time.

Thrive Architect has built-in lead generation functionalities that allow you to create and add lead generation pop-up messages to your landing pages using pre-built templates. Needless to say, the plugin integrates seamlessly with popular email marketing plugins, like Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, and Drip, among others.

👍 Pros:

  • Comes with lots of built-in features for lead generation
  • Access to 350+ landing page templates and 810+ block templates
  • The in-line content editing is very seamless and fast – it feels “faster” than Divi’s inline editing
  • Integrates with the Thrive Optimize plugin (separate purchase) for flexible A/B testing

👎 Cons:

  • It’s a lot more expensive than Divi and there’s no unlimited site license
  • There’s no theme building support like Divi (though the developer does offer a separate Thrive Theme Builder product)

💳 Price:

Thrive Architect is a premium plugin and has no free version. You can get the plugin for an annual fee of $97 and use it on a single site.

Try these Divi alternatives today 🎬

Divi might be the most popular website builder for WordPress sites, but it’s not ideal for all websites. There are several more high-quality website builders out there. Our top five Divi alternatives are Neve, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, and Thrive Architect.

If you want to get started with a lightweight foundation, you can consider using the Neve theme as the base of your site. If you want to add full visual, drag-and-drop building like Divi offers, you could then pair the Neve theme with one of the other Divi alternatives such as the Elementor plugin.

To see even more options, you can check out 👉 our collection of the best WordPress page builder plugins.

Do you still have any questions about choosing between these Divi alternatives? Let us know in the comments!

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