Divi Review: Is This the Best Theme & Page Builder for WordPress?

What Is Elegant Themes Divi Builder?

Elegant Themes is an American company that has been selling premium WordPress Themes for over a decade. A few years ago, they came up with Divi, a powerful WordPress Theme that integrates the Divi page builder, allowing website owners to easily create sophisticated page layouts using a drag and drop builder.

The main feature of the it is its own drag and drop builder, named Divi page builder. As stated above, this powerful interface allows you to create visually appealing web pages without extensive coding, which is amazing for website owners with limited coding knowledge.

But the Divi Theme isn’t only for non-coders: Even experienced web developers can save a precious time by using the powerful drag and drop features offered.

How to Install Divi on WordPress

Let’s continue by checking out how to install it on a standard WordPress site. First, you need the best website hosting and an Elegant Themes membership, as well as an active WordPress install on your server.

You need to download the Divi Theme from your user account. Once logged in, select the Downloads tab from the menu on the left-hand side, navigate to the Divi product option and click Download. Once the download is complete, you’ll find a file titled Divi.zip on your hard drive.

There is no need to unzip the file. Simply login to your WordPress site and navigate to the Appearance > Themes menu. Click on the Add New button at the top, then click Upload Theme and select the Divi.zip file from your hard drive. When the file is uploaded, click on Install, and then Activate. You can also use the Live preview feature if you would like to check out how your site will look with Divi without activating it.

At this point, the theme Divi is successfully installed and activated on your server. If you now visit your website homepage, you’ll see the default theme in use:

How to Make a Divi Child Theme

Once installed and activated, it is ready to use. However, when customizing the visual aspect of a WP Theme, it’s always a good practice to create a child theme.

A child theme inherits the look and feel of the parent theme and all of its functions, but can be used to make modifications to any part of the theme. In this way, customizations are kept separate from the parent theme’s files. Therefore, working with a child theme allows you to customize th visual aspect of your site while still be able to apply all the updates from the theme vendor.

Creating a child theme can be intimidating at first, especially if you aren’t experienced with WordPress development. The good news is that 3rd party company Divi Space has created an amazing Child Theme Builder for you to easily make your own child theme in a minute.

How to Use the Divi Builder

Let’s now continue our Divi 3.0 review by having a look at the builder, its most powerful feature. The Divi Builder comes in two forms: The standard “Back-end Builder” and the front-end “Visual Editor Builder”. Both of those allow you to create visually stunning sites with the same content and design features.

In my opinion, the Visual Builder is the most interesting, as it allows users to create Divi layouts on the front-end of their website, and visualize changes in real time.

Creating a content page with the builder is a smooth process. The builder uses three main building blocks: Sections, Rows and Modules. Used together, those allows you to create a virtually endless amount of layouts.

• Sections are used to create large groups of content, such as a site header, for example.
• Rows are placed inside Sections and allows you to define any number of columns you need.
• Modules are fully responsive content elements. It comes with over 40 different elements that you can use to build your page. Built-in Modules include text, images, email address and buttons, as well as more advanced elements like Sliders, Portfolio Galleries and eCommerce Shops.

So basically, creating a Divi page layout is made by dragging and dropping various blocks of customizable content in order to visually assemble the page that will fit your needs. For non-coders, this allows you to make visually appealing pages that you couldn’t create otherwise. Experienced developers would still enjoy the amount of time they are able to save by using Divi instead of manually coding the page in HTML/CSS.

For a more extensive tutorial on how to use Divi’s builder, please refer to the official documentation.

I suppose most of you are now wondering what kind of websites and pages you can do using the Divi builder features. I have selected a few example for this Divi theme review that will show you what it is capable of in terms of design:

If you would like to see more layout examples, please check out this gallery of stunning designs made with Divi.

Is Divi Easy to Use?

Divi was crafted by an experienced team of WordPress developers and web designers, with the final user in mind. Therefore, most agree that the theme and builder are generally easy to start to use, even for beginners.

Divi comes with a very complete and extensive documentation that you can refer to for getting the most out of your theme. Premium 24/7 support is also included in both annual and lifetime memberships, so you can reach out for help by email or live chat.

That being said, it’s good to note that while using Divi is generally a simple and quick process, it can look intimidating at first for inexperienced users. Fortunately, it has an extensive online documentation, and every purchase enables user support, so you can get help and answers to your questions.

Is Divi Better Than Elementor?

Divi, Elementor and Beaver Builder are currently the most popular page builders for WordPress themes and layouts.

But which is right for you?

Let’s continue by comparing Divi and Elementor.

The main difference between the two is the fact that Divi is a theme AND a page builder, while Elementor is a drag & drop page builder plugin. So when you purchase Divi, you got a theme + the Divi builder plugin.

All content modules are included in Divi package, while Elementor comes with some content modules, the rest are only available when purchasing Elementor Pro.

Regarding pricing, both Divi and Elementor are using the same model of yearly payments. While Elementor has the cheapest offer ($49 for one year/one site), Divi offers users lifetime membership, which is a bargain as you can use Divi for life, on unlimited sites, for a one-time $249 fee.

Unlike Elementor, Divi doesn’t have a free version, but they offer a 30 day money back guarantee in case you are not happy with your purchase.

So which one should you choose? I would say that if you are happy with your current theme but looking for a solid page builder, Elementor is a good choice. On the other hand, if you are starting a new site, or if you’d like to update your WordPress themes, Divi is probably the best WordPress theme for you and works well with many themes and plugins.