If you are looking for a WordPress page builder with an easy-to-use interface, responsive features, lots of styling options, and great performance, Elementor and Breakdance are great candidates. But which one is better? Let’s find out in this detailed Elementor vs Breakdace comparison.
In this article, we are going to compare literally every aspect of these two highly capable builders, including different use cases. We aim to help you choose the best one for your needs.
Breakdance Overview
Breakdance is a new and modern page builder with a user-friendly interface that makes designing pages easy, even for beginners. It has quickly gained traction and is now powering over 25,000 WordPress sites in just two years.
Breakdance excels in simplifying even the most complex web design-related tasks. With more than 145 elements, you can literally build anything with Breakdance. It also comes with a decent collection of high-quality website layouts to make life easier for designers.
It gives a lot of emphasis on performance. Unlike some other page builders, it doesn’t load tons of scripts for pages. Coupled with theme builder and WooCommerce builder, Breakdance ticks all the boxes you may be looking for in your next website builder.
Elementor Overview
Elementor is one of the most popular WordPress page builders out there. It is renowned among web designers for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, pre-built layouts, popup builder, and responsive design options.
The best part about Elementor is its fast interface. It is very convenient to add and edit elements with this page builder. Coupled with inline text editing, you can just click and type on the page to modify most text you see on the live page.
Elementor comes with a lot of built-in design options. It gives you all the necessary tools to customize your website the way you want without having to write a single line of code.
With the introductions out of the way, let’s have a look at different aspects of these page builders and compare them to help you choose the best one!
Elementor vs. Breakdance: Key Features Compared
While it’s not possible to compare every single feature these two amazing page builders have to offer, we’ll cover the ones that matter to most web designers.
Elementor vs. Breakdance: Ease of Use
Both Elementor and Breakdance are fairly easy to use. They have different UIs, but both of them get the job done quite well.
Starting with adding elements/widgets, the differences between the two come down to small nifty features.
Elementor has a drag-and-drop method for adding elements/widgets. You can add your preferred widget from the sidebar. Just click on the widget icon at the top left of the screen, and you’ll see a list of available options. You can also access the sidebar with a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl / Cmd + P). Search your preferred widget, and click/drag it into your design.
Breakdance is not too different. Use the Ctrl / Cmd + A keyboard shortcut to access the elements panel, and search for your preferred widget. You can click on the element to add it to your page, but in most of the cases, the top result is automatically highlighted. You can simply press enter to add it. The nifty features like this saves you a ton of clicks if you consider that these steps are repeated
When it comes to adjusting element and widget settings, Elementor offers all the options on the panel on the left. Just select any element and adjust the settings through three tabs: Content, Style, and Advanced.
Breakdance also has a similar customization panel. Depending on the element you select, you can adjust the settings with two or three tabs: Content, Style, and Settings.
As for ease of use, Elementor and Breakdance are quite neck and neck.
Breakdance vs Elementor: Styling Options
To choose a suitable page builder, you need to pay some special attention to styling options. For styling options, both element and global styling options are important.
Element or widget styling options let you choose how a certain element is going to look like. Global styling, on the other hand, includes site-wide colors and typography settings.
In Elementor, you can adjust styling settings via the Style tab located in the widget properties panel. It has options such as typography, colors, border width, and many more.
You can access the element styling options in the properties panel in Breakdance as well. Navigate to the Style tab and you’ll find styling settings like alignment, colors, typography, size, spacing, and so on.
Elementor’s global styling lets you set up your site’s image options, typography, colors, button styles, etc. Point to be noted, Elementor doesn’t have more than one global button style. Apart from that, there is no WooCommerce-centric global style either.
Breakdance is much better than Elementor in terms of global styling. In Breakdance, you set up the global styles first, and then tweak the elements to adjust their styles as per your liking. It saves a lot of time and effort. There are multiple button styles, as well as WooCommerce-specific styles.
We have to give it to Breakdance for having more options and flexibility in global styling.
Breakdance vs Elementor: Performance
Performance is one of the most important considerations for choosing a page builder. No matter how visually appealing your site is, if it can’t load fast, your visitors won’t be happy.
To compare the performance of Elementor and Breakdance, we conducted a test by loading two demo sites on InstaWP, one with Elementor and the other with Breakdance.
The homepage of each site contains the exact same elements: a heading, an image, some plain text, and an embedded video.
To see which one is faster, we ran the page speed test on the Pingdom tool.
Let’s consider Elementor’s results first. We ran the test on a blank default sample page first. We didn’t make any changes to it other than installing and activating Elementor.
These are the results we got:
| Pingdom Results – Blank | Performance Grade | Page Size | Requests |
| Elementor | 89 (B) | 531.3 KB | 14 |
Then we added the test widgets and re-run the test.
Here are the results:
| Pingdom Results – With Widgets | Performance Grade | Page Size | Requests |
| Elementor | 80 (C) | 767.1 KB | 30 |
As you can see, with the widgets, the performance grade dropped by 9 points. The page size increased by 200+ KB and the number of requests doubled.
Now, let’s consider Breakdance’s performance.
For the blank default page with only Breakdance installed and activated.
These are the results we got:
| Pingdom Results – Blank | Performance Grade | Page Size | Requests |
| Breakdance | 87 (B) | 43.5 KB | 11 |
While the performance grade is very similar to Elementor, the page size is significantly lower.
For the test with widgets:
The following are the results:
| Pingdom Results – With Elements | Performance Grade | Page Size | Requests |
| Breakdance | 83 (B) | 286 KB | 16 |
As you can see, the performance grade only dropped by 4 points, and number of requests increased by 5. The page size is much smaller than Elementor too.
In terms of performance, Breakdance is a clear winner!
Breakdance vs Elementor: Elements and Widgets
Both of these page builders come with lots of elements and widgets. Comparing the two, Breakdance has more built-in elements.
Elementor has 106 built-in widgets. There are four categories: Basic Widgets, Pro Widgets, Theme Elements, and WooCommerce Widgets.
These widgets are enough for most light users, but you won’t get some notable advanced widgets by default. There are no widgets for advanced effects like scroll progress bars, image hover cards, and SVG masks.
On top of that, Elementor can’t build mega menus or complex menus without enabling experimental options. This might not be an issue for experienced designers, but beginners will find it difficult. The limited built-in widgets mean you’ll have to install third-party add-ons which can increase the overall cost of your website.
Breakdance, on the other hand, includes 145 elements by default. These built-in elements cover almost everything a designer may need. Starting from basic text elements to Advanced Custom Fields repeater elements, Breakdance covers it all.
Breakdance’s element categories are Basic, Block, Site, Advanced, Dynamic, Forms, and WooCommerce. Unlike Elementor, Breakdance includes a progress bar, image hovercard, and native masker elements.
One of Breakdance’s most impressive elements is the Code Block. With this element, you can write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP in the builder. Another amazing feature is the Element Studio, which is the world’s first element development IDE. With Element Studio, you can build your own element!
So, once again, Breakdance takes the point home!
Breakdance vs Elementor: Theme Builder
Both Elementor and Breakdance have theme building features. Theme builders allow users to have complete control over their websites. With a capable theme builder, you can design your site’s headers, footers, page templates, post templates, and many more.
Elementor’s theme builder is only available in Elementor Pro and it allows you to use the theme builder interface to design and manage templates. Among many options, the WooCommerce template options are noteworthy.
The other options include header, footer, single page, single post, archive, and more. You can also use conditional settings to apply your templates wherever necessary.
Breakdance, on the other hand, lets you completely disable the WordPress theme. This gives you a lot more flexibility, as you may not need the resources from the WordPress theme when you are working with a page builder.
With Breakdance’s theme builder, you can make a wide variety of template types, including custom template types. Compared to Elementor, Breakdance’s options are more dynamic. To determine when and where your template should be applied, you get fully-featured conditional display options. This allows you to choose conditions such as user logged-in status, dynamic data, custom PHP, and others to display your templates.
Building themes is much more convenient with Breakdance, thanks to its fine-grained control. If you want to build a highly customized website, you should pick Breakdance over Elementor.
Breakdance vs Elementor: Templates
For newbies, a rich template library helps a lot when designing websites. Elementor and Breakdance come with a rich selection of pre-built templates for literally any purpose.
Elementor excels when it comes to templates. There are two types of templates in elementor– block templates and full-page templates. In the free version, you’ll get around 70 templates. If you upgrade to a premium plan, there are more than 300 templates for you to choose from.
Breakdance’s template collection is not as large as Elementor's. This is understandable, as Breakdance is a newcomer compared to Elementor. However, the 38 templates Breakdance has, are all fully responsive and customizable. All of these complete site templates use global styles. If you need to alter how your preferred template looks, just tweak a few settings.
Elementor has a larger template library, but Breakdance prefers quality over quantity.
Breakdance vs Elementor: Dynamic Data
For advanced websites, dynamic data is super important. Whatever is pulled from your site’s PHP code or database is called dynamic data. User status, post date, author information, comments, etc. are considered dynamic data.
Elementor has a total of 31 dynamic data tags for text widgets. With these tags, you can insert data to text elements, custom fields, post ID, post date, archive descriptions, and many more. These tags cover most of the basic use cases.
However, Elementor is quite limited in terms of conditions. Conditions display elements based on certain factors, like whether a user is logged in or not. There are roughly 16 condition types in Elementor, which is sort of restrictive.
You need to install dynamic data plugins like Metabox or ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) for more customizability. Elementor natively supports ACF, but not Metabox.
Breakdance has more dynamic data tags than Elementor. WIth 36 of them, Breakdance is far more capable. The “URL Parameter” and “Shortcode” tags are especially very useful. Elementor lacks these tags.
Breakdance has 24 built-in conditions over Elementor’s 16. These conditions cover a lot more use cases and will amuse advanced web designers. In addition, Breakdance supports ACF and Metabox without needing any additional add-ons.
Breakdance is hands down the better choice here.
Breakdance vs Elementor: WooCommerce Capabilities
If you are thinking of building an eCommerce site, you should consider the WooCommerce capabilities of the page builder of your choice.
Elementor’s WooCommerce integrations are quite basic. There is only a small selection of WooCommerce-centric widgets, such as product price, add to cart button, short description, related products, product stock, and upsells.
While these widgets are enough to build an individual product page, they lack the features to fully customize your cart and checkout page. You won’t be able to build custom product loops either.
Breakdance is the best when it comes to building WooCommerce stores. It has lots of WooCommerce elements, including the ones you need to fully customize your cart and checkout page. With the powerful product loop builder, you can build totally custom product loops.
Breakdance also offers global styling for WooCommerce elements, which is not available in Elementor. Breakdance’s WooCommerce capabilities simply hit it out of the park!
Breakdance vs Elementor: Form Builder
Both Breakdance and Elementor have built-in form builders. You can use them to create simple or email opt-in forms.
Elementor is a bit restrictive when it comes to forms. Its form builder feature is only available in the paid plans.
Breakdance is more generous, as the free version includes the form builder. With its native functionality, you can create registration forms without adding any custom functions. It also supports conditional logic.
Breakdance wins again!
Breakdance vs Elementor: Popup Builder
The popup builder feature is quite decent in both Elementor and Breakdance. However, Elementor only offers this feature in the premium plans.
Popups on Breakdance, on the other hand, are free. Both page builders have similar trigger types for building popups, including on-page load, on-page scroll, on-click, after inactivity, exit intent, by date and time, and more. Breakdance’s free version only has the on-click trigger.
In terms of capabilities, both are similar. We’ll keep Breakdance ahead due to the popup builder being free.
Breakdance vs Elementor: Customer Support
The customer support teams of Breakdance and Elementor are pretty good. Great customer support is one of the key reasons behind Elementor’s popularity. Breakdance also has a highly responsive customer support team full of technically sound individuals.
It’s a tie!
Breakdance vs Elementor: Pricing Plans
Lastly, pricing is a very important factor in choosing a page builder. What you should look for is the most value for your money.
Elementor Pricing
Elementor has a free version with limited features. To take full advantage of its features, you need to purchase a premium plan, and not the cheapest one.
Elementor’s premium plans start from $59/yr, with which you can build one site only. It also lacks some features like custom code and popup builder. You need to upgrade to more expensive plans to get all the features and widgets.
Breakdance Pricing
Breakdance’s free plan has more elements and features than Elementor’s free plan. In fact, Breakdance offers the popup builder and form builder for free. This definitely gives it a lot of extra points.
The premium plans start at $99.99/yr, which is limited to only one site. For an extra $100, you’ll get unlimited site activations. This is quite affordable if you own a web design agency. Breakdance also saves money thanks to its tons of built-in features. You don’t need to purchase third-party add-ons at all.
Which is a Better WordPress Page Builder?
From our detailed comparison, Breakdance is clearly better than Elementor in the following aspects: styling options, performance, elements and widgets, theme builder, dynamic data, WooCommerce capabilities, form builder, and popup builder.
Breakdance’s cheapest premium plan is more expensive than Elementor’s cheapest premium plan, but it offers a lot more. For not having to install third-party add-ons, Breakdance saves money in the long term. Overall, Breakdance is more cost-effective.
The only aspect where Elementor is ahead is the number of pre-built templates and layouts. Breakdance’s template library is getting larger day by day, and very soon it will match Elementor’s library.
In conclusion, it’s safe to say that Breakdance is the way to go!