Ultimate Guide to Elementor vs Oxygen Builder

If you have been Googling page builders on the web, then you likely know the two names above. Elementor and Oxygen Builder are two of the biggest page builders on the market as we know it.

Lots of people want to what is the best page builder? In this guide we are going to pit both Oxygen Builder and Elementor in a death match and see who comes out on top.

To make this fight fair, we will rank them in different areas that way you the reader can decide their ultimate fate.

Each one will be ranked from 1 meaning Poor to 5 meaning Excellent. Totals will be tallied at the end of the article and conclusions will be made.

Let’s finally put an end to the question who is the better page builder? Oxygen or Elementor. Find out below.

Disclaimer for Elementor vs Oxygen

I used both of these products and I have purchased licenses with both of them. Neither product is aware that I am writing this so there is no external influences outside of my own opinions with both programs.

All of this can be stated in one very simple word, these are my own opinions and I am an expert in my opinion. So take this with a grain of salt and make your own educated decisions.

With that said let the battle begin!

Community of Oxygen and Elementor

This one is a really though fight for both of these builders. On one hand Elementor has a huge community and Oxygen has a small community but you also have to consider quality of the community.

Both of these page builders have really helpful people that strive to make the experience nothing short of amazing for the users. Tutorials and helpful people can be found at both. As can drama and speculation over things that both builders would rather not talk about publicly.

Oxygen is much more open with their community allowing other page builders to be discussed and even talked about where as Elementors is not. You will find your thread closed if you start bringing up things that the mods do not want discussed (which is a problem).

I had a thread that was shut down for simply asking about when Elementor was going to fix it’s Div problem that Oxygen had mentioned. Needless to say Elementor loses points for this. I think you should police bad users but asking questions should never be a bad thing.

On the other hand Oxygen has proven to be quite aggressive in the past with marketing tactics. I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing but it has rubbed some people the wrong way in the past. So Oxygen loses points where too.

Both page builders let their users know about upcoming things in the community so updates are excellent on both.

It’s clear there is no winner. They both have minor flaws in the community which should be fixed or addressed.

Oxygen: 4, Elementor: 4:

TIE

Updates and Features of Oxygen and Elementor

Updates and features is another area that people want to know more about when it comes to either page builder. Are they being updated properly and are they being supported?

To check against this, we need to look a few different factors to really grade both programs. The first is how many tickets each one has in something like GitHub which is an open issues with the program. This won’t give us a full picture but it can give us an idea where the programs are going.

Elementor has 520 issues and 5,216 closed as of 6/4/2019. They have 13 new issues and 35 closed issues which shows progress. They are pretty great at responding to concerns with the builder and seem to do a good job of weeding out things that have no purpose in Elementor. Overall I think they do a good job at pushing out new stable updates.

Oxygen has 380 issues and 36 closed as of 6/4/2019. They also have 15 active issues with none closed. Oxygen does a decent job of handling updates and I feel that in the past these updates have been very slow but on Oxygen 2.0 they are pretty frequent which is a good thing.

Both builders have changelogs. Oxygen’s can be found via their blog while Elementors is just on a page by itself. Elementor has frequent smaller changes to fix things while Oxygen does bigger changes and groups things together. There is no right or wrong way both appear to be making updates.

Just judging from stats also Elementor wins this fight.

Elementor: 5, Oxygen: 4:

Winner Elementor

Page Builder Impression for Oxygen and Elementor

So rather than bounce back and forth it’s easier to handle these separate one by one and go over each of the flaws and impressions. We will start with Oxygen.

Oxygen

Oxygen is a relatively new builder compared to Elementor. I would put it in the same category as Brizy in terms of its popularity and interest. It hasn’t hit a level which I would be call equal to something like Elementor or even other builders like Divi.

Still with that information out of the way several people love this builder. As a matter of fact when anyone leaves Oxygen out of a page builder list they are quickly reminded that it exists. That shows a loyalty you won’t find on other page builders.

It builder itself is excellent. The UI/UX could use a new coat of paint as the inside of Oxygen is clunky compared to Elementor but once your inside you realize very quickly this is a different beast.

If you are not a web designer, it’s very hard to explain the feeling of first using Oxygen. It’s not very user-friendly from the stand point that it has a much large learning curve than Elementor. But the rewards at the end of that learning curve are much better than what you would find at Elementor.

Oxygen has taken a massive amount of time to make everything that makes this builder special and pushing it to the upper limits. Once you dive into the program you are pleasantly surprised but the shear amount of power that is in-between your fingers.

Patrick – Wpbuilderhelper.com

The only really comparison I could use would be something like Photoshop which is not an easy program to master, Oxygen is much of the same. They have made it easier to tweak the code and make changes which is great for someone who has a web designers mind, not so great for a brand new client that works with wood (as an example).

Oxygen has many modules you can use to build you site but you won’t find a huge amount of 3rd party help here. So whatever in the builder you are kind of stuck with. If you can code, you won’t find this a problem because this is one area that Oxygen really kills Elementor.

Overall the program feels good once you learn your way around it. I would take off points for the shear fact that you can’t hand it over to a client like you could with Elementor. Still Oxygen isn’t something you want to give to someone who has zero knowledge of web design, it’s just not user friendly enough.

Elementor

When you first look at Elementor you are greeted with a free plugin with limited offerings. Oxygen had this same thing but choose to not update it which I think leads to less interest. Still Elementors free doesn’t touch much, it’s there and it’s nice to have but the PRO is where you find the real power.

Elementors UI/UX are heads above anything on the market. One thing that really kills any other builder is the Finder. This allows you to stay inside of Elementor while editing everything from Headers, Footers, pages, posts and even 404 pages.

Elementor is also very well supported by 3rd party publishers which is nice since there are a handful of additional plugins you can use to enhance your site.

The place where Elementor really struggles is bloat. People have made an effort to point out some major flaws in the way Elementor does things. Oxygen is amazing at reducing bloat and keeping pages as lean a possible. Elementor not so much as a matter of fact it’s only gotten worse from independent testing.

Still in the grand scheme of things how much does this bloat matter? I would say overall, it plays a part and people want it fixed but it’s not the top priority.

Still Elementor provides a much better experience overall than Oxygen does at the current moment. Every new update adds to the experience making it easier and easier for both newer designers and someone with no design background to create a full theme from scratch.

Each builder has their flaws in terms of what they can improve. Elementor provides a much smoother experience for brand new users and Oxygen gives more powerful coding experience. Each has their pluses and minuses but overall, I would give the edge to Elementor.

Time has really improved the Elementor experience while Oxygen is still making up ground. However, it’s making really great strides to put Elementor in its place which is never a bad thing from a competition stand point.

Elementor: 4, Oxygen: 3

Winner Elementor

Support for Oxygen and Elementor

While it’s easy to use the facts that I have gathered above, it’s much harder to grade support for both of these builders. So rather than trying to grade them I will be very subjective and not score either.

Support is a tricky area in any page builder as times will greatly vary depending on things like number of tickets, time of day, etc. So there is no solid way to test this on either builder.

Judging by looking at Facebook groups alone, I have seen people complain of not getting a response from Oxygen but Oxygen quickly replies and most times these cases are closed quickly.

Not to long ago Elementor had the same problem when they started to grow past the point of being able to respond to every ticket fast enough but this has since been resolved.

Unless a company offers phone support which is never going to happen with a page builder, then you are stuck waiting for a ticket to be answered. Both seem responsive in Facebook groups although sending a physical email or ticket is always better than posting on a group.

TIE

Pricing for Oxygen and Elementor

This is another tricky area to take on with page builders. The pricing models vary so greatly that it can be very hard to determine what is a good deal and what is not a good deal.

Let’s start with the obvious some page builders like Oxygen are offering Lifetime deals for people who sign up early or are founding members. These types of deals are highly sought after since your return on investment is excellent. However you are taking a risk by taking one of these deals.

Lifetime deals are only for the lifetime of the software and often don’t cover added features that may come out in the future. This only makes sense since the software has to make money in order to continue selling.

Elementor has never been a lifetime deal which means you are stuck paying a decent chunk of change to Elementor. A recent change in their terms of service also saw them reduce the number of licenses from unlimited to 1000.

According to Elementor this was due to the fact that many members where not using anywhere close to that and likely to stop fraud among the page builder community. This somewhat ticked off the community who demanded that they be able to have unlimited since that is what they are paying for.

I am not sure who is in the right or wrong since Divi has always had a lifetime license and monthly license but yet continues to grow. Some would call Elementor’s license changes a cash grab move.

Oxygen on the other hand tried to do a monthly pricing temporarily and the community was not ready for it. Smartly the company took back the deal and continues to offer lifetime licensing to this day. We are not sure what their monthly pricing will look like compared to Elementor.

I think both of these deals are great. Elementor is certainly worth the price of admission but this recent change has really made a lot of people worried that they could reduce the licenses in the future. I’d give Oxygen the edge.

Louis the creator has been stand up for Oxygen and has given away every update for free. Even when Oxygen goes pay to play, I expect its pricing will be very affordable. I also think Louis is likely to give the founding members some kind of deal even if we are charged anything for the software other than initial pricing.

Elementor: 4, Oxygen: 5

Winner Oxygen

Woocommerce Integration for Elementor and Oxygen

Anyone who does anything on the internet always wants to know how well Woocommerce works with a page builder. Since so many page builders are driven by eCommerce, clients are demanding changes to regular Woocommerce pages.

Both Oxygen and Elementor work with Woocommerce although I would have to give the edge to Elementor which has more modules and things that allow you to completely customize the experience.

This isn’t to say that Oxygen does not have these things as they do have Woocommerce integration but it’s not 100% yet, word is this is coming in the future. A lot of people on the forums have demanded some sort of refinement for just Woocommerce and I believe that Oxygen group is listening.

Elementor on the other hand has fully functioning Woocommerce which allows all sorts of combinations that you previously could not do with other builders or even Woocommerce itself.

I think both of these solutions are great out of the box for making changes to Woocommerce but Elementor certainly takes the cake in this round.

Elementor: 5, Oxygen: 4

Winner Elementor

Speed of Oxygen and Elementor

This highly debated topic has brought no shortage of angry villagers with torches on both sides of the table. Louis the creator of Oxygen did a video on bloat and just the construction of builders on the market.

In order to understand this you need to understand that many page builders add unneeded files, code and elements to even something as simple a blank page with a heading and some text.

When this video came out many of the people behind Oxygen including myself begin asking questions such as is this on Elementors road map of things to fix? We were quickly shut up or deleted in the groups because of this.

It seems Elementor doesn’t want to talk about the flaws that Louis pointed out, either because they don’t have an answer or they don’t plan to address them. Either way it lead to a giant let down for many people who had hoped that Elementor would at least address the issues which would give them points.

Instead to this day this is one of the hot button topics you are not allowed to ask in Elementor groups. Oxygen has shown time and time again that the code that comes out from the builder is clean. Not only is it clean but it runs very lean as one of the founding members Supa mike points out.

While other page builders are getting giant in bloat, Oxygen is killing the speed game and has really made a product that not only can help improve speed of your website but give you a much higher faster one without the additional issue of a bunch of plugins.

It’s also very important to note that Google has made this a ranking factor when it comes to websites. So the more waste these builders can cut out of their software the better your website will rank on something like Google which is always a good thing.

That’s why Oxygen makes up ground and Elementor is giving only a grade of decent.

Elementor: 2, Oxygen: 5

Winner Oxygen

Documentation for Elementor and Oxygen

Elementor and Oxygen both have very active Youtube accounts that have a number of different videos. Oxygen has a very successful tutorial series teaching newer designers how to create websites using Oxygen.

Oxygen and Elementor both do video tutorials when new features come out which is a plus for learning what has changed from recent patches. The tutorials are always high quality with a lot of effort put forth to make them professional grade.

Elementor and Oxygen both have documentation area on their website for them to detail what the page builder does and how to use it. I think they are equal in this respect.

Both companies have pushed hard to make content for videos. I think that each has a solid ground in this area so there is no clear winner.

TIE

Unique Features found in Elementor vs Oxygen

This was more of a bonus round for the builders so I wanted to take time to go over the special things both page builders do. I can’t really grade them on these features but I can let you know what is possible with both of them.

So we will go through a list of the most unique features found in both and then go over what each of these features do.

Elementor: Finder

This is one of the best things for anyone who is a web designer. The finder brought us the ability to edit page after page without exiting the software.

What put the icing on top of the cake was it allows you to find anything within WordPress. Want to edit the customizer? It has that. Want to edit a post? It has that. Page? Done. Popups? Done.

It virtually stops you from ever leaving the page builder itself which is amazing for productivity.

Oxygen: Customization of Elements

Oxygen has a secret feature that isn’t talked about but it plain amazing. If you place something in Oxygen, you can edit the code used to make it. Unlike Elementor which locks you into it’s own UI.

Oxygen allows you to see and edit the code directly and in some cases even allows you to write your own code to make your own customizations to a module. If you aren’t a designer you may be confused but trust me, it’s a good thing.

And a small note, while you can use something like Chrome to view the CSS, it’s just so much better when you can click on a module and change the CSS directly from a panel.

Elementor: Popups

Oxygen has popups also but Elementor’s popups really are pretty advanced. They have so many different functions and options that it’s hard not to create something useful for a business or otherwise.

Still I would say they are pretty close to even but Oxygen’s popups need a little more work but they are coming along. Either way having the ability to do modals or popups is a nice function for anyone building a website. One less plugin you need.

Oxygen: Bloat

I have mentioned above that Oxygen has done a great job of making sure that the builder eliminates anything that isn’t needed. They even have options that make sure to take out unnecessary things.

The team at Oxygen have made Oxygen lean enough that it can cut down on some of the wasted time that other builders have. Oxygen is the most lean website builder on the market today.

Elementor: Safe Mode

This may be something you might know about or you might not but safe mode is a function that will allow you to run Elementor and trouble shot conflicts. This is a helpful feature when you do an update and then later have no idea why your website is broken.

Safe mode allows you to diagnose a website yourself without the need of calling a web designer or paying someone to figure out why your site is broken.

Library of Elementor and Oxygen

The last place I wanted to score each builder was the library of pre-built items it has for people who need a help or push building a website. Both page builders have a decent selection of websites that you can use for inspiration.

I think Elementor takes this one by a hair only because they also have a bunch of pre-built popups which makes for an easy way to get something up fast.

I would call either one of these extensive as they have lots of pre-built Elements but I do feel that both could push the boundaries a little more and add more unique themes to their libraries.

Elementor: 4, Oxygen: 3

Winner Elementor

And the Winner is…

Name

Community

Updates & Features

First Impressions

Support

Pricing

Woocommerce

Speed

Documentation

Library

Totals (Points)

Elementor

4

5

4

n/a

4

5

2

n/a

4

28

Oxygen

4

4

3

n/a

5

4

5

n/a

3

28

Conclusion

Before you get angry let me say these are my own personal ratings. You are more than welcome to form your own opinion and conclusion for both the page builders.

I think there are a few things that make Oxygen unique and things that make Elementor unique.

But how do I pick one? Simple. There is a test I use every time, this may change in the future but as of today it remains true for me.

Is the person doing the designing of the website familiar with CSS? And do they enjoy hand coding? If yes, then I would go with Oxygen without a doubt. It’s very friendly to someone with an established background in web design. If not and the person has little or no knowledge of CSS then Elementor.

Are you handing the website off to a client or will you manage it yourself? If the website is going to a client, I would recommend Elementor. It has a smaller learning curve. If you are a web designer and you are managing or you want to get you hands dirty, Oxygen.

I hope this comparison has helped you see the flaws and facts behind both of these page builders. I think It was a very close race and I am not shocked that came out tied in the end they are both great builders.

If you are interested in learning more about these page builders or learning more about WordPress you should check out our website. We have tons of tutorials as well as review all sorts of software for WordPress.

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