When I first started using page builders, I was one person who loved so many features that other builders did not have. Two of the biggest page builders on the market which is Elementor and Divi have unique features.
Can you use Elementor with Divi? Elementor and Divi can be used together, however they will increase website load time and may cause several conflicts with one another. It’s recommended that you stick with one page builder unless you are switching a website over from one builder to another.
So now that you know that you can use two page builders together, let’s talk about why you might have to and why you really want to avoid it. I am going to walk you through the different scenarios that might happen if you use two page builders together.
Can you have Elementor and Divi together
Elementor and Divi are two of the most popular page builders, so it’s not uncommon for people to ask this question on forums or Facebook posts. However, the response to this is often tricky.
Elementor may have several features that you like that you hate in Divi, but Divi might have a better theme that you think works better than Elementor. So how can you mix the two-page builders and make sure they play nice together?
The answer is that you really can’t predict what problems you will face with two-page builders turned on. A page builder like Divi or Elementor takes full control of a website.
They are coded with the idea that you are going to be using them by themselves rather than with another page builder. For instance, look at this list of overlapping features between the two.
- Headers builders
- Footer builders
- 404 page builders
- Theme control
- Gutenberg integration
Because so many features overlap between these two titans, it can create enormous problems for a website. We will take about that more in the next section. The rule of thumb should always be to focus on one page builder rather than using two and only using two when you have to use them.
Common problems of using two page builders at once
So we talked about how in theory you can use two page builders if you needed to. However, you should limit this to very rare cases.
Here is a small list of common problems we will dive into one by one and explain why they are issues:
- Bloat
- CSS errors
- Update errors
- Plugin conflicts
Bloat
The first thing that you should consider is the fact that many of these page builders are already huge. This is because to add functionality like pop-ups, theme replacement and more they must add more code.
This code is no unimportant matter, many of these plugins have thousands of lines of code which by themselves don’t amount to much but when you consider all the different things they touch you start to see a bigger picture.
They may include things like libraries for certain features like parallax or animations. They may include things like jquery or any other popular library, which can be included in their builder.
So having one of these builders will slow down the process substantially just by using one of them. Add two of them and you have now doubled these bloat problems.
If that’s not enough the next section will open your eyes. We wrote a post on this titled is Divi Slow which might help you better understand.
CSS Errors
So the bloat didn’t scare you, but here’s one that might. When you combine two page builders, it’s not uncommon for them to have similar naming conventions. This means that they can have two CSS rules that target a similar style.
Let’s take something as simple as borders. If the first page builder is doing, it’s job it may have a line of code which turns the borders solid as a default. The second page builder comes along and the borders are off by default so it turns off borders and has an !important tag after it.
You go look at your page and you can’t figure out why when you change the borders it doesn’t show the changes. Reason, conflicting CSS styling which is very common with plugins and page builders we will talk more about this later.
So as you can see CSS conflicts between page builders can be a huge issue.
Update Errors
Everyone knows that you have to keep plugins and themes updated to make WordPress secure, but that’s not what we are talking about here. When you update a page builder, they often come with several bugs out of the box after an update.
This is a common practice of releasing a brand new build and then having to fix any remaining bugs. Well, if you have two page builders, you now have doubled your chances of having a broken website.
An outstanding example of this is Elementors latest release to 3.0 which has broken several people’s websites despite testing. This should be one of the biggest warnings.
I wouldn’t even want to consider something like two page builders doing this at the same time. It would be a massive headache to figure out where the problem is coming from.
Plugin Conflicts
Having a page builder on your website is already a headache by itself dealing with things that will and will not work with that page builder. While many of them do a superb job of making sure they work with all major plugins, they can’t be sure they work with everything.
If you have a much rarer plugin that is maybe only used by several people you now have the chance that two page builders can break that plugin.
So what is the right solution if I need to use two page builders?
Use them for a limited amount of time. If you can minimize where you are using these builders then you should be able to reduce the number of problems you have.
Another thing I would recommend is that while you are using the page builders, make sure that you only update on staged websites. Do not update to a live production website until you have tested that the updates are both working and stable with each other.
Really it boils down to you spending more time testing and less time doing what you should be doing which is running your website.
Related Question
Does it matter which two page builders I use together? Yes, and No. Some page builders might be better suited for working with other page builders. I don’t think anyone for sure has done the research into determining which two page builders work together better because it’s a moot point. It’s almost like asking if a car can have two engines, well it can, but you wouldn’t want to.
Which page builders are more bloated than others? We have a post on this that we wrote explaining some of the bloat that other page builders have among one another.
Conclusion
While you can use two page builder together, I highly suggest it and almost every other professional web designer on the planet that you don’t. Many won’t even want you using one page builder might less two.
I hope this article has helped you with your page builder problem. If you want more WordPress content, please check out our website where you can find tutorials and more page builder news.
