Elegant Themes is one of those names that, if you search for a new WordPress theme, you will almost likely come across at some point. It is one of the most important participants in the WordPress ecosystem because to its extremely well-known Divi Theme, a few highly effective plugins, an engaged user community, and a developing ecosystem.
When it comes to purchasing a theme or plugin for your website, Elegant Themes should most definitely be on your list of potential vendors to consider. However, do you think its items are the best fit for your website? Should you become a member of this WordPress mainstay or proceed with your search? It is my goal that by the time you reach the conclusion of this piece, you will have all of the information at your disposal to make a choice that has been well-considered and is based on accurate information.
Let’s get started…
Elegant Themes Review : Introduction
Elegant Themes has been in business for the last 14 years and has provided assistance to more than 800,000 clients to this day. A far cry from its humble beginnings operating out of founder Nick Roach’s undergraduate flat, it has established a staff of more than one hundred individuals scattered in over 20 countries as a result of this strategy.
Elegant Themes used to provide customers access to a comprehensive collection of WordPress templates. However, as of right now, it just has two: Divi and Extra.
Customers aren’t missing out on anything by having fewer themes to select from, though, because Divi can be used to construct nearly any kind of website using WordPress, owing largely to its enormous library of templates and sophisticated customization tools.
In point of fact, because Elegant Themes has fewer themes to update and provide support for, the company is able to focus almost all of its efforts on working to make Divi the greatest WordPress theme that is currently available. When you’ve finished reading this review, you’ll be able to determine for yourself whether or not it was successful.
When you become a customer of Elegant Themes, in addition to getting access to the Divi and Extra themes, you also receive access to a few plugins that Elegant Themes has developed.
These plugins include one called Bloom, which is a tool for creating email optin forms, and another called Monarch, which is a plugin for social sharing. With the release of Divi Builder, the drag-and-drop website builder for WordPress that was one of the factors that contributed to the success of the Divi theme is now also accessible as a standalone plugin.
In addition to the outstanding quality of its goods, the competitive pricing plans that Elegant Themes offers is another factor that contributes to the company’s widespread appeal. You receive access to all of its themes (including the flagship Divi theme) and plugins for just $89 a year, making it quite reasonably priced in comparison to similar products on the market.
The slightly more expensive “Lifetime Access” plan is actually the best deal if you intend to use the Elegant Themes products for a number of years. For a one-time payment of $249, this plan grants you access to all currently available products as well as any products that may be released in the future.
You will be able to use the Elegant Themes products on all of the websites that you own, regardless of whatever choice you decide to go with. This is something that you often cannot do with the majority of other popular WordPress themes. In addition, there is a thirty-day period during which customers can return their products for a full refund with no questions asked. Because of this, you won’t incur any costs if you decide to test out the plugins and themes.
Although it seems like a wonderful offer to receive access to everything for only $89, you should consider whether or not Elegant Themes is the best option for your project. Let’s find out…
Elegant Themes Review -- WordPress Themes
Before we go on to the plugins, let’s first have a look at the many WordPress themes that are available.
As was previously mentioned, when you join up with Elegant Themes, you are given access to two different themes. These themes include Divi, which was released in 2013, and Extra, which was released not long after Divi. The older ones of their themes have now been decommissioned, and you may no longer purchase them.
Divi Multipurpose WordPress Theme
The main theme, Divi, is one that can be used for virtually any kind of website. It can produce virtually any kind of website you could possibly imagine.
Divi’s helpful collection of high-quality templates and the robust drag-and-drop website builder tool are two of the reasons why web designers of all levels of expertise pick it as their preferred platform for website creation.
You may get a head start on your project by importing one of the Divi website packs, and the newly updated Divi Builder can be used to modify the templates in an easy-to-understand WYSIWYG drag-and-drop user interface. Importing a website pack is a quick approach to get your project off the ground. Developing one-of-a-kind designs from scratch is also not an issue for our team.
Since its initial release, one of the aspects of the Divi theme that has been enhanced is its accompanying library of pre-built website packs. These packs are now accessible for use with the Divi theme. At the time of this writing, there were more than 250 different full website packs available for import into WordPress. These website packs could then be edited using the visual builder to create a website that was completely unique to the user.
You not only have the ability to import a complete website pack that provides you with layouts for one or more homepages as well as templates for the pages that make up the rest of your website, but you also have the option to pick and choose from a library that contains more than 1,800 individual page templates.
Hidden header regions on websites built with Divi weren’t very simple to personalize or conceal in the past. As a consequence of this, it was simple to recognize a website that was developed with Divi, as the majority of these websites had the identical top navigation bars. Fortunately, you can put it in the dustbin of history thanks to the full-width template, which makes it ridiculously simple to conceal the header section. The front-end full-site editing capabilities and theme builder capability of Divi have been updated, and as a result, you now have the ability to create your own unique designs for the post template, header, and footer.
Without regard to the user’s level of technical expertise, the Divi theme is an excellent option for creative individuals who are interested in developing a bespoke WordPress website. And because it includes so many pre-built website bundles as well as individual templates, Divi should also work well for anyone who is seeking for a design that can be purchased off the shelf and used immediately.
Extra Magazine WordPress Theme
The Divi child theme, Extra (see live demo), was released after Divi and incorporates many of the latter’s most notable improvements. While Divi may be used for a wide variety of projects, the Extra theme was developed specifically for blogs, online magazines, and other content-heavy types of websites.
If you want to create a website that seems like an online newspaper or magazine, the homepage style that comes standard is ideal for that purpose. If you use this design, you’ll have the flexibility to showcase your best or most current information in an attractive grid structure. You may display samples of your material by utilizing post carousels, tabbed sections, mini-article sliders, and custom widgets, among other presentation options.
Additionally, Extra comes with a homepage design that is image-centric and makes use of the featured photos from your articles to attract attention to your content. This theme’s design is centered on luring your site visitors to click through to other items that you have posted on your site.
Your website can be upgraded from the appearance of a simple blog to that of an authoritative online publication by using Extra in conjunction with the Divi Builder. This will allow you to design custom page layouts that overlay images with text, include photo collages, use pull quotes, feature multiple columns, and include other tried-and-true content elements. Importing any of the website packs or individual page templates that are made accessible to users of the Divi theme is another option.
The category builder and all of the modules that are linked with it are an excellent feature of Extra. You will be able to construct custom category pages for your website by utilizing this feature. These pages will allow you to decide how lists of blog posts and other material, such as portfolio items and eCommerce products, will be displayed on your website.
You are not only able to design many layouts, but you are also able to quickly assign those layouts to various kinds of content that exist on your website, such as particular blog categories. This feature gives you a lot of leeway to be creative with how you arrange the items in a list, giving you greater control over the presentation of the material.
Extra is an excellent option for blogs and websites that function as online magazines, even if you don’t plan to make use of the included Divi Builder. With the help of the template library, you can quickly and easily add new pages to your website, even the most crucial ones. When you set up a new website, you may save a lot of time thanks to the included page templates for the author page, the timeline page, the portfolio page, and the contact page.
Because it provides complete support for the WooCommerce plugin, Extra may also be used in conjunction with WordPress to set up an online storefront for selling goods and services. Extra is more than capable of meeting your needs, regardless of whether you want to create an online store or simply add real or digital items to your blog or magazine.
Extra was developed by Elegant Themes with the intention of becoming the best theme for bloggers and online publications. While Divi was developed with the intention of becoming the best theme for any WordPress website, Extra was developed with the intention of becoming the best theme for bloggers and online publications. Extra is a very competitive theme that the owner of any website that is formatted like a magazine should think about using.
Elegant Themes Review -- WordPress Plugins
Both of Elegant Themes’ price plans provide access to a selection of the high-quality WordPress plugins that have been developed by the Elegant Themes team.
Let’s have a peek.
Divi Builder WordPress Plugin
The page builder tool that is included in the Divi and Extra themes is also available as a stand-alone product that can be downloaded through the Divi Builder plugin. The most recent version of the Divi Builder includes a front-end user interface. As a result, if you choose the Divi or Extra theme, or install the plugin on a website that is using another theme, you will be able to create custom pages making use of a visual editor that allows you to drag and drop elements.
The front-end interface of the Divi Builder allows you to drag and drop modules into position, alter the size of page components, and personalize your content in a wide variety of ways. You’ll get access to more than 40 modifiable content modules and a selection of WooCommerce modules to work with, allowing you to incorporate a wide variety of helpful components into the pages you create.
Other helpful features of the Divi Builder plugin include the ability to effortlessly apply custom CSS to your pages, copy and paste within the builder, rapidly duplicate any page element, copy and paste within the builder, and have limitless undo and redo capabilities.
The Divi Builder plugin now makes it very simple for you to save any layout, section, or module in your library so that you may reuse it in other places on your website. If you make changes to any of the items in the library, you will have the ability to selectively apply those changes to each instance of the item that appears everywhere on your website.
You should be able to utilize the Divi Builder to personalize your WordPress website even if you are not using a theme from Elegant Themes. Therefore, the Divi Builder plugin can be a suitable option for you if you want the capacity to build bespoke designs for your content but would prefer use a theme that is less elaborate (such as those developed by StudioPress rather than Divi).
This plugin is an excellent option for including a visual editor on your website because it performs favorably in comparison to the other drag-and-drop page builder plugins for WordPress. Therefore, regardless of whether you plan to use a theme from Elegant Themes or a theme from somewhere else, you should consider using this plugin.
In our hands-on review of the Divi Builder, you can find out more information about this plugin.
Bloom Email Optin Form WordPress Plugin
There are several advantages to having the ability to send an email to your audience each time you publish a new article, introduce a new product, or have some other significant news to make. Building a list of people who have subscribed to your email might be a challenging endeavor. Thank goodness, there is a plugin called Bloom that may assist you in persuading your site visitors to sign up and provide you with their email addresses.
After you have activated Bloom, you will have the ability to begin adding a variety of opt-in or sign-up forms for email subscriptions to your website. There are a variety of form alternatives available, such as pop-up, fly-in, inline, below post, and widget forms. There is also a form for protected content, which asks users to submit their email addresses and subscribe to your list before allowing them access to a certain piece of material.
Bloom also contains a nice range of email optin form templates, each of which may have some little personalization applied to it using the editor that is included with the plugin.
In addition to the ability to change some parts of the look of the forms, you also receive a fair degree of control over how they operate. This control is in addition to the ability to alter the forms’ appearance. You have the option of selecting an introduction animation, which will impact how the form looks. You also have the option of delaying the appearance of the form by a specified amount of time. The visibility of the form, as well as other aspects of the form, may be controlled by using custom triggers.
You are able to determine where on your site each form will be active by using the parameters for the Bloom form display. Among these possibilities is the capability to activate the form over the entirety of your website, as well as on the homepage, particular posts and pages, and a great deal more. You are able to truly personalize the appearance and content of the forms you build so that they correspond with the articles that they are placed on. This is made possible by the fact that you are able to create various forms and then display them on certain portions of your website.
In addition, Bloom comes with a tool for doing split tests, which makes it simple to compare two different forms to determine which one is more successful with your target demographic. Bloom is a choice worth considering if you want to add popup and in-content email optin forms to your website because it possesses these qualities. On the other hand, it does not have any of the sophisticated functionality that can be found in plugins like OptinMonster and Thrive Leads. These features include powerful form editing as well as extra form and popup kinds.
Bloom is a powerful tool that may assist you in expanding your list of email subscribers. Having a list of email subscribers is beneficial to nearly any sort of website, and Bloom can assist you in doing so.
In our evaluation of the Bloom WordPress plugin, you’ll discover further information about this utility.
Monarch Social Sharing WordPress Plugin
You may boost the amount of times people share your material on social media by using the Monarch plugin, which is available for free. Not only do social shares assist to attract more visitors to your site, but they also have the potential to help your content rank higher in search engines like Google. In other words, social shares are a win-win.
After Monarch has been deployed, you will have the ability to add a variety of social sharing buttons to your website. You may show the buttons in five different positions, including on photographs and videos, and more than twenty different social networks are supported.
In addition to showing floating sharing buttons that are always visible, Monarch gives you the option to select from a variety of buttons that activate in response to specific events. You may manage when a pop-up or slide-in set of social sharing buttons is given to your visitors by using triggers such as time delays, page scroll position, after commenting or purchasing, and after a period of inactivity. These can all be used individually or in combination.
In addition, you can utilize Monarch to display links to your social media profiles, replete with counts of the users who are following you on those platforms. Adding social proof to your website has never been easier than with the help of this function.
You have a great deal of flexibility over the presentation of your social networking buttons and links with Monarch, just as you do with the other tools provided by Elegant Themes. The customization process is handled through an intuitive interface that provides a wide variety of options and settings. This helps to ensure that the plugin functions just as you would like it to.
Your subscription with Elegant Themes grants you access to Monarch, which is regarded as one of the top social networking plugins for WordPress; hence, having this resource at your disposal is really advantageous.
Elegant Themes Review — Other Services
Divi Cloud
Elegant Themes clients now have access to the brand-new and innovative cloud-based solution known as Divi Cloud. Those who wish to store more than 50 things are required to pay $8 per month, which comes out to $72 per year. However, a limited service is provided at no additional charge.
It functions in much the same way as a cloud storage service, allowing you to save your layouts, sections, and any other unique material that you’ve developed for use in Divi.
After then, you may access this information from any WordPress website you’re working on, even sites belonging to clients, in order to facilitate a deployment that is both speedy and convenient.
There is a good chance that you won’t want Divi Cloud unless you plan to construct or manage several websites using Divi. However, if you are a freelancer, a developer, or an agency that works with Divi, this service might prove to be quite helpful.
Divi Hosting
Even though Elegant Themes allows you to use any host for your website that is powered by Divi, the company has formed partnerships with a select hosting companies.
If you sign up for any of these services through Elegant Themes, the only actual benefit you’ll receive is that Divi will be pre-installed on your website for you, which will save you some time and work.
If you aren’t sure which host to use, the fact that these businesses have been suggested by Elegant Themes should help you limit down your options and bring you closer to making a final selection. If you aren’t sure which host to use, visit elegantthemes.com.
If you would want Divi to be pre-installed on your website, you shouldn’t be dissatisfied with any of these hosting providers because they are all reputable hosts.
Divi Marketplace
In addition to this, Elegant Themes has released the Divi Marketplace. You’ll discover both free and commercial child themes and layouts there for Divi, all of which were designed and developed by designers and developers outside of the Divi team. In addition, there are extensions available that augment Divi and its builder with additional capabilities.
Even though Divi is loaded with capabilities out of the box, it’s fantastic that there are so many third-party add-ons available for it.
Elegant Themes Review — Support
A number of years ago, Elegant Themes was given a rather negative reputation in the industry for providing clients with assistance that was only adequate. After conducting some research into this matter and having been a satisfied client for some time now, I am delighted to report that Elegant Themes appears to have fixed any problems that may have been there.
The company’s major products receive consistent updates and enhancements, and the company’s themes and plugins are accompanied by highly thorough online documentation. The tutorial movies are really stunning and informative at the same time.
Until recently, the only option to seek assistance was to write a message and submit it to one of the community forums. However, there is now a live chat help channel that is available around the clock. While I was in the middle of writing this review, I was given a prompt response to any chat messages I received. On the other hand, the notification that the support team normally responds to messages within a few hours is shown in the chat box very frequently.
In addition to conversing with a member of the Elegant Themes customer support team in real time, you can also send support emails over the live chat channel and check back later for a response when it is convenient for you to do so. The Elegant Themes team no longer monitors the forums that were mentioned before; nevertheless, the forums are still active, and they may be a fantastic location to seek answers to your issues from the Elegant Themes user community and engage in conversation with other Elegant Themes customers.
The Elegant Themes Community
It should come as no surprise that a sizable community and ecosystem has developed around Elegant Themes and the goods that it offers given the company’s vast customer base. There is an official Divi Users Facebook group with more than 70,000 members, but in addition to that, there are a lot of unauthorized organizations and third-party markets where child themes may be purchased. Additionally, there are a great number of independent blogs that are focused on the Divi theme. In addition to interacting with other Divi and Elegant Themes customers in an online setting, there are also live Divi Meetups that take place in various locations all over the world.
Elegant Themes is also responsible for operating one of the most popular WordPress blogs. The blog often provides users of the Divi page builder with new page layouts and additional bonuses, in addition to posting advice and suggestions for users of WordPress and site designers.
Elegant Themes Review -- Conclusion
There is no question that one of the very finest and most widely used versatile WordPress themes available is called Divi. Signing up with Elegant Themes offers excellent value for the money because, for that price, you can get both Divi and Extra, in addition to a few plugins that are actually quite helpful.
The most recent version of the Divi Builder, which is included as a fundamental component of the Divi theme, is now regarded as one of the most effective page builders for use with WordPress. The strength of the Divi Builder is something that may benefit everyone, from those who are new to the process of developing websites to more experienced web designers.
The level of creative power that Divi and Extra gave in the past made them somewhat daunting for website owners. Additionally, you were unable to import whole website packs or demonstrations into your site using these two plugins. Launching a new website with one of these themes, on the other hand, is a lot less difficult now that pre-made website packs and individual templates can be imported into your WordPress dashboard with just a few clicks each. Having said that, the interface of the Divi Builder is very different from that of the WordPress editor, which means that you will need to spend some time becoming familiar with the new system. When you do finally get the hang of it, though, there won’t be much on your WordPress website that you won’t be able to modify in some way, shape, or form.
Signing up with Elegant Themes in order to gain access to the Divi, Extra, and the Divi Builder plugin makes a lot of sense whether you are searching for a WordPress theme that can be used to create any kind of website or you are looking for a plugin that can assist you in transforming your existing site. Either way, this is something you should consider doing. The other plugins, such as Bloom and Monarch, are also quite helpful tools.
