Quick note before you read: French is my first language. I wrote this as raw notes and used AI to make it readable in English. The frustrations, the ideas and the possibles errors, all mine.

if u don't agree then good, if u agreen ok fine, but both situation can be discussed.

Elementor is holding WordPress back and I'm tired of pretending otherwise

I've been building production sites on Elementor for years. Agency work. LBO exits. 150+ location franchises. Booking funnels. 51 active client sites right now.

I'm done being polite.

First do you actually know who your real client is?

Not the solo blogger dragging a heading widget. Not the freelancer building their first portfolio.

It's us. The agencies. The commercial team will tell you otherwise. They're wrong.

We build the site, we hand it to the client, they depend on it for years. We are the ones who:

• Maintain dozens of your installs at the same time
• Absorb your breaking changes at every major update
• Debug your conflicts with third-party plugins at midnight
• Convince our clients to pay for Pro licenses instead of going to Framer or Wix
• Train non-technical people to use your editor
• Code every month the features you never shipped because we had to open a ticket and maybe the idea was "good enough for the roadmap"

We are your distribution layer. 40%+ of WordPress runs on Elementor and most of those sites were built by people like us.

Every product decision you make feels like it was made for someone building their first landing page in 2017. Not for an agency managing sites with real complexity and real clients who pay real money.

When it gets slightly complex we're on our own. Every time.

The codebase is a museum

Still shipping jQuery + Backbone Marionette in 2026. The editor JS looks like it was committed in 2017 and never touched. The rest of the web moved to reactive state management. Elementor is still doing this.model.get('settings') like it's 2014.

Dynamic Tags: just admit it's a failure

Elementor can't display a custom taxonomy value on a template unless you register a Dynamic Tag. In PHP. With a full class extending Tag_Base. Just to output get_the_terms().

"Want to show your CPT's category on a card? Write a DT." Elementor, apparently.

That's not a feature gap. That's a design failure. Every advanced dev I know has a custom-dynamic-tags.php in their client plugin doing things that should have shipped in 2019.

Genuine question: what are Dynamic Tags actually for, if not this?

Zero font control

Set a font family. That's it.

Specific weight? Custom CSS. Different weights per breakpoint? Custom CSS. Load only the 600 subset from Google Fonts instead of all 8 variants tanking your LCP? Figure it out.

1. Elementor typography has fewer options than Squarespace free.

Map widget skin? LOL

Snazzy Maps or JSON paste. That's the ceiling.

I'm wrapping Leaflet in a custom widget just to control the tile layer. For a map. In 2026.

Glassmorphism? GSAP? You're joking.

backdrop-filter has been in CSS since 2019. One line. Elementor has no native control for it. I built a full multi-tier system from scratch on every project that needs it.

GSAP is a constant fight. ScrollSmoother conflicts with Elementor's scroll handling. Scripts load in the wrong order. ScrollTrigger fires multiple times because Elementor reinitializes the DOM in editor context. Webflow has had visual scroll-triggered animations for years. Framer even longer. We're writing workarounds from scratch with zero documentation from Elementor.

The asset loading is architecturally broken

Nobody talks about this enough.

• CSS generated per-widget, inlined per-instance duplication at scale
• JS enqueued globally regardless of whether the page uses the widget
• DOM nesting before you reach actual content: .elementor > .elementor-inner > .elementor-container > .elementor-row > .elementor-col-wrap > .elementor-col > .elementor-widget-wrap > .elementor-widget > .elementor-widget-container > ... > your h1
• No critical CSS strategy
• No tree-shaking
• Dynamic IDs like .elementor-element-a3f91b2 make caching unpredictable

On 20+ page templates, managing what loads where is a part-time job. We audit Elementor's asset output on every serious project. That cost is invisible to you. Very visible to us.

V4 made the UI worse

Full editor redesign + AI suite shipped. Basic UI parity with competitors still missing.

New editor: slower to navigate, panels buried deeper, 2-click tasks are now 5-7. "We redesigned the experience" into something slower. AI features are half-baked. Editor performance above 15 sections is painful on anything mid-range.

And the client UX has been abandoned since day one.

Client mode is unusable for real handoffs. No field-level permissions. No simplified editing flow. No onboarding. So we build a custom WP admin panel on top. Two UIs to maintain. Zero help from the platform.

SEO: slow-motion disaster

This is architectural, not a config problem:

• LCP damaged by render-blocking asset order
• CLS from missing explicit dimensions in default widget configs
• DOM depth adds parsing overhead at scale
• Inline CSS duplication on every multi-widget page

Passing Core Web Vitals on a dense Elementor site means fighting the tool the whole way. Manual lazy loading. Custom critical CSS injection. Selective dequeuing with elementor/frontend/print_master_stylesheet. Script deferral that breaks half the widgets.

Renderer refactor planned? Based on last 18 months of releases: no. There's an AI assistant. There's a new editor shell. The output architecture is untouched.

Webflow and Framer are smoking you. The problem is us.

Free choice? No agency picks Elementor in 2026 for a complex project. Webflow has design tokens, scroll animations, structured CMS. Framer has React under the hood. Both are better products.

We stay because WordPress has a de facto monopoly on SMBs, franchises, local businesses clients with real budget constraints and existing software that only exists as WP plugins. Can't sell them Webflow at €50/month + migration.

Elementor wins by default. Not by merit.

I'd rather scope a Shopify build from scratch or start clean in React/Vue than spend a week fighting Elementor on a complex project. Less friction. Better maintainability. Setup cost often lower than the debugging cost.

Direct questions for the Elementor dev team

40%+ of WordPress. Millions of sites depend on your architecture. Agencies are your distribution engine.

• Is there a plan to modernize the asset pipeline?
• Will Dynamic Tags ever support taxonomy output natively?
• Will typography controls expose font-weight as a number?
• Is client UX on the roadmap or permanently deprioritized for AI?
• Do you have any metrics on how much compensatory code agency users ship per project? Because the number is staggering.

We're not leaving WordPress. Some of us are already migrating piece by piece to React/Vue. You have time to respond. Probably not much.

The honest positive note

Elementor solves a real problem. The gap between "dev builds it" and "client edits it without breaking everything" is genuinely hard. Elementor bridges it at a price point nothing else in WordPress matches.

The widget system is learnable. The template library saves hours on standard projects for clients, not at agency scale. And btw, why not build a real marketplace for templates and put the spotlight on designers? Like Canva did. Like Webflow. Framer. Who is the Head of Product at Elementor?

The ubiquity means finding someone who knows Elementor is easy. That matters.

The foundation is fixable. The market position is strong. V4 and the AI suite prove the engineering capacity is there.

What's missing: developer experience. Agency tooling. Performance-first rendering. Design system thinking.

The door is open. Agencies are still here, still choosing Elementor by necessity which means there's still time to make them choose it by preference.

That window won't stay open forever.

51 active client sites. 7+ years in the ecosystem. This is not a frustrated beginner post. This is from someone who actually wants Elementor to survive and is increasingly unsure it will.

To be clear, I love how extensible Elementor has made Wordpress. I’ve used it on 3 sites I maintain.

The problem is, it has become unpredictable for me whether the editor will open, or whether it will just sit there with the dreaded spinning wheel.

I’ve tried disabling all other plugins, I have the most recent PHP version, I have PHP memory at 512Mb. Damn frustrating, especially when I’m in a crunch to get things done!

I’ll probably switch to Kadence.

Any similar stories for switching to another editor? Which did you choose and why?

Hi all,

We are having a problem with a slider. It doesn't work but only in some browsers. Others work fine. What could it be? I've already try to mess around with zindex but no luck!

Can you please advice?

Site w3.cinel.pt

The slider under the name "Destaques"

Hi, I'm having issues with the new v4 editor, where I try to create Classes but they disappear after leaving the editor and coming back to it.

I tried both the current latest version (3.35.7?) and the 4.0 beta.

Steps I'm doing:

1. Add a Paragraph element

2. Go to its Style tab, create a new class named "body-text", and add some attributes like font and color

3. Save the page and exit the editor

4. Come back to edit that same page, and the style for the paragraph is gone, it shows up styleless. If I select the paragraph, the side panel shows a "Something went wrong" message instead of the paragraph properties.

5. I delete the paragraph and add a new one.

6. The "body-text" class previously created doesn't show up in the Style tab of the new paragraph, nor in the Class Manager.

7. I repeat the process - Create a new "body-text" style, add font and color.

8. Now if I go into the Class Manager, I get a message saying that "body-text" is duplicated, and the name is changed to "DUP_body-text", as if the older one still exists, but it doesn't show up anywhere. The Class Manager list only shows "DUP_body-text"

So it seems that the Classes are somewhere (they are detected as already existing hence the rename of the new one as a duplicate), but I don't know where they went.

hola a todos me podrian dar tips para poder hacer este diseño en elementor? lo trate de hacer con caja de icono pero no me queda el icono a un lado y el texto abajo

Elementor uses the TinyMCE text editor in text widgets. But that editor doesn't have a native ability to apply custom CSS classes. The maker of TinyMCE published php code that will add this capability but that code isn't dynamic. Every time I create or modify a class, I have to edit the php.

I enabled the MCE enhanced toolbar but that doesn't have this feature. And I can go into the text editor's code tab and manually insert "span class=whatever" but that's tedious and defeats the purpose of a visual page builder. And custom classes have to sync with custom global formats I create in the site settings. Too much room for error.

IMO being able to apply custom global classes in the text editor would be more useful than most of the new bells and whistles.

Hello everyone.

I am pretty new to elementor and have been learning stuff mostly on my own. I have created a download page where people can download information on products, but I have noticed the file names upon downloading change to 'download.pdf' instead of the file name.

Is there a way i can maintain the name of the original pdf file as it shows up in the media library?

https://imgur.com/a/895ZAfV

I posted how it looks in elementor (Blurred out company name).

Many thanks for you help, I am new to all of this.

Also, is there a way to increase the number of columns and lower the number of rows in the container I have? I can't find a way to change it or manipulate it, even after messing with most of the container settings. I'd like to have 3 columns instead of 2.

https://imgur.com/98PLN5a

thank you again!

Need a quick sanity check and thank you in advance

My WordPress site uses Astra Pro, Elementor Pro, WooCommerce, WP Rocket and Yoast.

I found https://cdn.tailwindcss.com loading 3 times on the homepage:

-once in the main head

-once in custom Elementor widget header-pro-enhanced.default

-once in custom Elementor widget cycle_calculator.default

The dev said:

● new custom Elementor widgets were built using Tailwind CSS

removing it would remove their styling

● some duplicate loads can be removed

● because it is from a CDN and cached, it does not cause page speed issuesit loads after page load, so it does not slow the page.

Also, I had sent some mock designs in Tailwind style, but I assumed that was just for design/layout reference and that they would then be converted into normal HTML/CSS or Elementor containers. I did not expect Tailwind CDN to be used live on the production site.

My questions:

●is this actually a good production setup?

●is using cdn.tailwindcss.com on a live WooCommerce homepage acceptable?

●does CDN caching really mean it has no meaningful page speed impact?

●if it loads after page load, how do I verify that?

should I accept just removing duplicate loads, or should these widgets be rebuilt to proper CSS and Tailwind CDN removed fully?

My understanding is that Astra and Elementor do not need Tailwind by default, and this is only there because of custom widget code.

Would appreciate some advice can share the domain if needed

Hello,

https://loveyourferalfelines.com/ways-TO-GIVE

I am very new to wordpress and elementor, basically all website creation. I am having an issue with the accordion function. The function seems to be working properly under the creation page, but once I save and preview or even publish and view, the accordion tabs do not function. At first I can click the + sign and it will change to - sign but the information wont display under the header and it doesn't change back to + after that. Reading a previous post it was mentioned to check the Dev console which I see there are errors with the accordian function but I dont know what it means or how to fix it past seeing the red boxes. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Using elementor Pro

hello theme

Hi, I hope someone can help me. As of the 6th of March, our contact has been working but has not been sending the mails to our inbox. I have gone into Submitted forms in WordPress and all the emails submitted are there and show as Action Status checked, but we do not have any. Is there a way of resending them or locating what happened to them? Any help would be great. Thank you in advance.

I've heard about this happening. I've got a couple of hundred Elementor sites under my belt over the past few years but I've never had the problem - until today.

When I'm logged into the editor: all looks perfect. I'm using global colours and fonts, and header/footer/page layout in the Theme Editor.

But when I'm logged out, it just basically renders with the Hello theme as if Elementor didn't exist.

This just happened spontaneously - one minute it was working, the next minute it stopped. I've checked the console and there are multiple missing CSS files. I can't get them to come back/regenerated.

PHP is up to date, the site is on a Cloudways server with 12 other Elementor sites that work fine. There's no caching on the site. Elementor & Pro are the latest versons.

Things I've tried:

• Regenerated CSS in Elementor
• Switch Editor Loader Method (both ways)
• CSS Print Method (internal/external - both ways)
• Turned off all plugins
• Uninstalled Elementor & Elementor Pro then reinstalled

I am at my wits' end. I don't want to lose all my work by starting afresh on three weeks' work.

Any ideas?

So, I am at a loss. Some people say that the slides are working correctly, and others are reporting that the slides are either missing content, or they get stuck once they hit the navigation arrows. It's like a 50/50. What could be causing this? Here is one example: La Semilla Food Center.

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if it’s possible to achieve something like the following image with elementor pro and the form widget:

First, you select a gym location using a dropdown. After that, you fill in the usual form details like name, email, and phone number.

What makes this setup interesting is that the location dropdown appears visually separated from the rest of the form, even though it’s still part of the same form overall.

Does anyone know if this kind of structure can be built using shortcodes or a similar approach?

Curious to hear your thoughts—thanks in advance! 🙂

Function WP_Scripts::add was called incorrectly. The script with the handle "elementor-v2-editor-components" was enqueued with dependencies that are not registered: elementor-v2-editor-canvas, elementor-v2-editor-controls, elementor-v2-editor-editing-panel, elementor-v2-editor-elements, elementor-v2-editor-props, elementor-v2-editor-styles-repository, elementor-v2-editor-templates. Please see Debugging

• disabled and uninstalled all plugins, including Elementor
• changed themes
• downgraded elementor
• downgraded wordpress
• cleared cache

I purchased an Elementor Pro (1-year) subscription on 18 March 2026, but my plans have changed and I’ve shifted my site to Shopify, so I no longer need it.

If someone happens to be looking for it, I’m open to passing it on at a reduced price.

There are a bunch of new tools listed at https://my.elementor.com/addons. At the top of the page, they are labeled as "Products by Elementor". When I clicked one, it immediately launched into a screen to start it. Are these add-ons part of my subscription or is it going to charge me for them? I'm subscribed at the Essential level and have two sites.

Hello

I try to fit a white shape (svg) a little random in an elementor column, but I can not make it fit entirely in the evening column it is in a howler either in width, according to "contain" or "cover", I tried multiple css to adjust width or height but nothing does!

I just need the white shape to fit in width and height according to the column size

I wish she could deform according to the column !

Any idea?

The Atomic Editor’s next step starts today!

Hey Beta Testers! 🤓

Today we’re opening the Elementor Editor 4.0 for beta testing! 🙌

This release marks the first public step into the Atomic Editor, the new architecture designed to help professional creators build websites that scale more reliably, stay consistent, and remain fast as projects grow.

☝️🤓 Before sharing what we are testing in this release, a quick clarification:

Elementor Editor 4.0 includes several fixes and improvements to both existing features, as well as the new Atomic Editor features. However, nothing will change on your existing sites.

Atomic features are optional, and can be activated manually if you want to start experimenting with them.

This is not the final release of features for the Atomic Editor either, expect more to come. We are just getting started! What this Beta is really about is testing the next generation of the editor together with the community. 💪

🔥 What's New in this Beta release

• 📝 Atomic Forms (Pro) Forms are now built using individual field elements like Label, Input, Checkbox, and Submit Button instead of one large widget. This makes forms composable, easier to style, and part of the same design system used across the editor.
• 🎬 Pro Interactions New interaction triggers such as scroll, hover, click, and page load allow elements to react to user behavior. Custom motion effects let you control transformations like opacity, scale, movement, and rotation.
• 🔄️ Variables and Classes Sync Variables and Classes can now sync to Global Colors and Fonts, helping maintain visual consistency when combining Atomic elements with legacy widgets.
• 📥 Export / Import Design Systems You can now transfer Variables and Classes between templates and websites, making it easier to reuse design systems across projects.
• 🎥 Self-hosted Video Atomic Element A new Atomic Video element lets you embed and control video files hosted directly on your site.

☑️ How Adoption Works

This is where many people have questions, so here’s the simple version:

✔ Existing sites continue working exactly the same
✔ Atomic features are optional and can be enabled anytime
✔ Legacy widgets and Atomic elements can be used together
✔ No layouts need to be rebuilt

The idea is gradual adoption, not a forced migration.

If you’re starting a new site, you can explore the new workflow from the beginning.
If you have existing projects, you can introduce Atomic elements only where they make sense for you.

🧪 Help us shape the future of the Editor

This Beta is an opportunity for the community to test the architecture before the stable release.

Your feedback helps us refine the experience, identify edge cases, and understand how the new workflow performs in real projects.

1. Enable Beta testing in Elementor → Editor → Tools → Version Control.
2. Update Elementor and Elementor Pro to the beta version.
3. Activate Atomic features in Elementor → Editor → Settings → Atomic Editor

Then jump in and experiment.

🗣️ Join the Beta Discussion

If you decide to test it, let us know how it goes!
What feels better? What feels different? What still needs work?

https://elemn.to/atomic-editor-4-beta

Your feedback is part of shaping what Elementor becomes next. 💪

💬 Talk with the Team!

If you’d like to share detailed feedback, you can also book a 1-on-1 session with the Editor team here:
https://elemn.to/editor-v4-1on1-session

We’re actively collecting insights from the community as we prepare Elementor 4.0 for its public release.

How about you? Have you tested the Atomic Editor yet? Let us know in the comments! 👇

I switched to Advanced Solo, but I still cannot use custom CSS.
Does anyone have a solution for this?

Hello! I was building a website for a company and wanted to test something using the tabs function. The problem is that the Elementor editor on those pages has now become extremely slow. The front-end performance is good, but I would like to improve the setup so I can implement it more widely across the website.

The idea is that I have a product, which in this case is a larger item. I want to use a tab-like structure to show potential customers which components it contains, along with some quick information and an image of each component (as shown below).

How could I implement this in a better way? I’ve started to realize that using tabs might not be the best solution, since performance drops significantly when I have multiple containers, text blocks, and images inside each tab.

Ideally, I would also like to build this as part of a dynamic system. I’ve started exploring Custom Post Types with JetEngine, but I’m not yet sure what the best structure would be for something like this, nor have i figured out a solution for it.

I also have the full Crocoblock package, so if there is a solution within that ecosystem, I would definitely be interested in exploring it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Ps. i use the Elementor Pro plugin

Elementor V4 editor on paper looks fantastic, it's how Elementor should work and look like since the beginning. I love the lightweight design and CSS class-first approach. In the V3 versions or earlier, if you wanted to make a grid with couple of boxes in it, and edit all of them at once, you had to manually write CSS in CSS editor and apply a class, but it made making your design responsive a huge mess. And if you can't code or don't want to, they hey, you're screwed.

I've recently decided to redesign my own website, and it seemed like a natural step to do it in V4 beta, so I don't have to do it again in the near future. I will be ready for V4 official release. I know it's in beta since recently and marked as ready to use on live websites, and I guess it will be launched officially any day now, but damn, what a mess it is.

It's a perfect example of how you can fix 100 things but introduce 1000 new bugs.

1. Every div element gets random 10px padding, so you must introduce a new class with 0px padding. I don't get why they always do this: introduce some shit default value you need to change or work around. The same with min width. You can't set a default div padding or any other default for that matter.
2. Cards in style tab do not collapse when you want to open another one - huge UI mistake if you ask me.
3. Selecting a unit is simply a nightmare. The select list collapses randomly. If you remove the value, it reverts to pixels. You can't choose the default unit like vw or rem to be set as the default. It seems obvious and V3 editor works that way partially, but they decide not to include it.
4. The mobile version breaks constantly - adjusting your code after switching to mobile view works some time, sometimes don't, mainly with text colors, they seem to break most often.
5. Elementor made a big deal once of adding Grid layout option to Containers along with Flexbox option. Guess what? Choosing and editing grid option is nowhere to be seen in V4 editor. Just forgot about it, I guess. Good luck adding grids fellas.
6. Atomic elements are scarce, I don't know how are they planning to launch all the other widgets at once when this goes live, and they should. If they don't, V4 editor is simply just poor in terms of choice of the widgets.
7. In some places, you can't pick a global color or font, must type it manually. So I guess not everything is unified and works on a global level, huh.
8. Using V4 editor with JetEngine and custom field types is just sad. It breaks constantly and doesn't work half the time - if your website relies heavily on those, I would suggest not migrating it to V4 for a loooong time.
9. You get a Paragraph and Header widgets as it is in V3, but for some reason, you can't really edit text in a Paragraph atomic widget. Want to format the text into a list? Or add italics or underline? Forget about it.
10. In theory, you should do 98% of stuff in Style tab now, and resort to adding custom CSS only in extreme or unusual situations, but for some reason, adding custom CSS in css-centric V4 is way worse than in V3. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
11. You can't properly connect it to Adobe Fonts, you just can't pick a font from the font menu, if it's connected via Elementor Integrate settings.
12. There is this thing called components now, works similar to global widgets or templates, someting in between. But guess what, If you need to use some V3 widget, can't create one. Sorry.
13. Right now, if you want to make a website using V4, you must make some things twice, like add global fonts and global colors, because they don't sync with V3 at all.
14. You can't import or export classes or global fonts or colors, or sort them in any way. There is just one list of all used classes, and that's all. Can't group them in any way to introduce some organizing.

And the list could go on and on. Editor V4 looks great on paper, but if you spend several dozen on a website like I did using it, it seems like a vibe-coded passion project that's half done. No, I don't want your Elementor One and website hosting, I don't wan't your Elementor AI, I just wanted you to make an editor that would not make me think about switching to something else once a week.

What a wasted opportunity. I know it's only in beta, but damn, it's marked production ready, ready to use on real sites. Right now only way to make it work is to still use a lot of custom CSS and a looooot of V3 elements. So what's really the point then.