Jump to content

What's the best pagebuilder? (and are they any good?)


Recommended Posts

In the Prestashop market, I see there is a page builder "based on" Elementor by Webshop, AP Page Builder by Apollo Themes and CSS Magician. On Themeforest, there's also Visual Composer for Prestashop (and possibly more out there if I really search)

Does anyone have any experience using them and can give recommendations on which is the best. I'd like to know the following:

  • Can it edit headers and footers, or just page content?
  • Does it generate clean code?
  • Does it significantly impact page loading time and SEO speedtests?
  • Is it easy to use and gets the job done well?

I'm wandering if it's better to buy a pre-made theme, or buy a pagebuilder and customise the default theme. The reason why I ask is because I've been running theme's demo sites through Google's speedtest and all the themes  I've tested have had terrible ranking (4% - 30% scores), while Prestashop's default theme scored a massive 94% which is mind-blowingly awesome. I'm worried that the themes are bloated and I'd be better off modifying the default theme with a capable pagebuilder.

Any thoughts on this?

Edited by Stephen-FFC
Added another pagebuilder to the list. (see edit history)
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I am just a far as you asking if I should switch to a page builder.

I don't have many informations for now as I just start searching,  but regarding the Builder from Webshop which looks really great, there is one point for me which is blocking to use it. In fact this is just a page builder and it doesn't allow you to create a top menu which looks similar to the rest of your page.

So it give somehow an unfinished impression to me to the page !

I am also of course interested in any other inputs !

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The page builders seem to need a theme to start you off. You then build pages within the style of the theme.

CSS magician (and another CSS editor which I can't remember) seem to allow for editing all elements, including the header, but only their appearance, not their positions. This is why it's an editor, not a builder.

I've just done a Google speedtest on a second Prestashop site. The default theme scored that amazing 94%. The moment I loaded a theme from one of the most popular developers out there, my score immediately crashed to 24%. (and this is from one of the most popular theme developers for Prestashop who has hundreds of themes to chose from and boasts about his loading speed and optimisations).

I'm worried that adding a page builder to the mix will make this even worse.

Can we get some insight and comments from Prestashop moderators, programmers or just long term users?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
  • 3 months later...
On 7/24/2020 at 11:32 AM, Stephen-FFC said:

Any thoughts on this?

I'm a non-pro 'fudger', but I can generally get by.  I'm trying to find the best tool to make myself a shop and am sort of nervous about all these tools, as I slooowly make sense of the whole prestashop thing, which I find confusing.

I'd love to know what you concluded about page builders.  Any advice?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/12/2021 at 11:10 PM, GFS said:

I'm a non-pro 'fudger', but I can generally get by.  I'm trying to find the best tool to make myself a shop and am sort of nervous about all these tools, as I slooowly make sense of the whole prestashop thing, which I find confusing.

I'd love to know what you concluded about page builders.  Any advice?

the things is that. Without any page builder it is quite difficult for any non technical developer to create beautiful site in PrestaShop, module wise hook system, not able to hook any module inside content. Which made easy by page builder.

Thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, SmartDataSoft said:

the things is that. Without any page builder it is quite difficult for any non technical developer to create beautiful site in PrestaShop, module wise hook system, not able to hook any module inside content. Which made easy by page builder.

Thank you

 

Thanks for the reply SmartDataSoft.

Yes, I've realised that, which is why I was hoping that since Stephen-FFC seems like he's pretty knowledgeable, he might share his findings/conclusions.

There don't seem to be many page builders, but I find the entire prestashop universe very opaque and hard to work out.  I understand (I think) that the prestashop business model is Add-Ons, but there seems to be another world outside of theirs, for which security may be a concern?

For my own part, I've found only 2 page builders within prestashop's world. CSS Magician and Creative Elements.  Yesterday I found another, outside; Pagebuilder, but worryingly the owner appears to have gone silent in the last year.  I hope he's ok.  Unfortunately I think Pagebuilder is better suited to what I want, but I don't want to go that route if development has stopped.

Do you have any suggestions/recommendations?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello, GFS

 Our Visual composer page builder is running from 2015 and we are the first page builder introduce in PrestaShop , after that few years later creative element released.

We are the first PrestaShop developer to developed shortcode, page builder awasome slider revolution. Last year we release our crazy element page builder based on Elementor , and released in your site. https://classydevs.com

Our developed smartblog is the first big  free module in PrestaShop forum which almost used over 100,000+ user. What i want to mean you that you can trust on us and used our crazy element which is most powerfull and fine.

 

Hope it will help you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the reply SmartDataSoft.

I'm currently looking at woocommerce... partly out of frustration at the obscure, almost covert way, in which prestashop presents itself.  You may not realise this, because you understand it so well, but for a newcomer, it's really hard to understand, fundamentally, how the prestashop universe works, not only on a business level, but also technically with regard to third-party products and so subsequently, how much it's going to cost and the implications going forward.  I sort of feel like I'm being conned.. which is something that really annoys me. 😕

(BTW, your sliders are really nice. 😊)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Hi. I just want to give an update to my experience. I bought Creative Elements, and it's been a mixed bag.

My initial installation was as follows:

Prestashop 1.7.7.0
Laberthemes "Emilio" theme
Creative Elements page builder

Using CE (Creative Elements) was very easy as it works exactly like Elementor in WordPress. I'm very happy.

However...... Then it all went sour with one update. I updated to Prestashop 1.7.7.1 and everything broke.

Pages built in CE are no longer editable (the home page loads but is locked, and another page doesn't load at all in the builder)

The home page loads, but the other page doesn't (Frontend to visitors)

 

If I deactivate the CE module, then none of my pages load. (Obviously since it's not inerpreting the code for display)

 

To be fair, I don't know if it's CE that is the problem when running on PS1.7.7.1, or if it's the theme because, the login page also doesn't load.

I reinstalled the theme, but the problems persisted.

I changed themes back to the default Classic theme. All my pages loaded again and they were editable in the backend by CE, so it actually seems like a theme issue.

 

So while it seems to be a theme issue, it was CE that took the hit and appeared to be broken. I tried contacting CE, but because I was outside of my bundled few months free support, they wanted me to buy support to just ask them a few simple questions. No way around it - I had to submit a ticket and include my licence. There wasn't even a sales email address to try circumvent their ticketing system.

 

Final thoughts on Creative Elements

Pros: Easy to use. Powerful. Works as it claims.

Cons: Seems to be vulnerable to poorly coded themes. The company's support SUCKS.

 

I guess my next discussion question is going to be: "Who writes quality, reliable, fast themes that are well maintained?"

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I gave up on Prestashop and Woocommerce, through frustration at the complexity and the seemingly covert business models, which seem to be a 'thing' within the WordPress universe.  It just seems to be nigh on impossible to get a straight answer to anything, especially when it comes down to cost... right down to 'last minute deals' which turn out to be permanent.  It's an incessant con.

Finally I've gone with imagely/NextGEN because it's simpler and their eCommerce solution is sufficient for my needs, but it's still something of a UI mess.  It's the hobbyist's garage floor.  Bits everywhere.  This does seem to be a problem with WP in general.  I'm thinking of it like the Microsoft UI.  Just nudge something sideways to make space for 'the great new feature'.

I've built my own website for 20 years and it's been fully responsive for 7 or 8.  I'm fairly amazed that imagely, which is essentially gallery software, doesn't have an image-slider, but it doesn't and so I've gone for Smart Slider and once again, I'm kind of surprised to see 'px' everywhere.  I haven't used px for years.  I mean... they break responsive.  It has options for % and em, but they're not the default and they're not everywhere.

I can just see myself, when I finally get my site up and running, going back to the web software I know and rebuilding it.  Ho hum.  Apparently WP is great for SEO.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

You ask some of the better questions I've seen around here.

If you've tried using a page builder on the default theme, I'd love to know your results. 

Elementor is quite powerful, but generally will reduce page scores somewhat. I'm certain, though, that you'd probably do far better than dropping all the way down to 24%! Wow.

It's possible the non-Elementor ones don't affect speed scores much at all. Depends on how they built them. But it's hard to know by reading alone If most users don't notice anything. I appreciate that both of you guys in this thread DO notice such things 😁

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@richardka

I am not agree with this speed issue, it reduce some score but it will save your thousands of hours and work.and create beautiful site is quite difficult. 

If user optimize image then what css and js insert by page builder is not effected site . A good theme which used page builder can more faster than default theme using huge extra module . 

Other module load css in all page either use or not.

 

Where crazy elements page builder load css when elemnts load in that page.

 

Thank you 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/15/2021 at 4:33 PM, SmartDataSoft said:

@richardka

I am not agree with this speed issue, it reduce some score but it will save your thousands of hours and work.and create beautiful site is quite difficult. 

If user optimize image then what css and js insert by page builder is not effected site . A good theme which used page builder can more faster than default theme using huge extra module . 

Other module load css in all page either use or not.

 

Where crazy elements page builder load css when elemnts load in that page.

 

Thank you 

 

Wow, that’s great! That’s some really good news.

Do you have any examples online we can run through page score speed tools?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...