WPLift is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Visual Composer Review: An Intuitive WordPress Page Builder
Are you wondering how Visual Composer performs?
Visual Composer was amongst the first page-builders to be released into the market. It has been around for a long period of time. However, as years passed by, tons of changes and updates were made to this plugin to improve its functionality.
Apart from that, other page builders came into the picture, creating some competition. Due to this, the Visual Composer plugin is updated on a regular basis.
While the WPBakery page builder was known as Visual Composer, it is not the same product as the ReactJS-based Visual Composer. The WPBakery plugin and the ReactJS-based Visual Composer plugin are two different page builders developed by the same team. Not to mention, the Visual Composer page builder is not short-code-based.
In this post, we will take you through the different features that Visual Composer offers you. Let’s dig in.
Drag-and-drop Editor
Visual Composer comes with a drag-and-drop editor, making it easier to add various elements to your site pages. Not to mention, the drag-and-drop editor lets you customize your site from the front-end. It features real-time customization functionalities for updating a website whenever a change is made.
The drag and drop editor has a side menu, which is intuitive and easy to use. It opens up easily, giving you access to elements, blocks, and templates.
What’s more?
The side menu also packs different customization settings and options that help you style various elements based on your personal preferences. Such options may vary from one element to another, depending on the functionality of the element.
For instance, if you plan to edit a button, you can easily access padding options from the side menu.
Plus, this page builder offers you a quick action box for customizing and editing various elements. Some of the functionalities featured on the quick action box make it easier for you to edit, delete, and clone an element.
Unlike the sidebar menu, the action box appears when you hover the mouse cursor over a certain element.
Apart from that, the drag-and-drop editor is compatible with various WordPress themes.
Elements
Visual Composer comes with tons of elements that can transform your site completely. Examples of such elements include:
- Basic button
- Faq toggle
- Feature section
- Image gallery
- Image masonry
- Outline button
- Youtube player
- Vimeo player
- Image slider
- Instagram image
As if that’s enough, Visual Composer has basic customization options for editing and styling all those elements. Such options let you align various elements in your site based on your preferences. There are three different alignment options; left, right, and middle.
As if that is enough, you can change the shape of an element to suit your style. While some customization options might be used to edit all elements, some elements have unique customizations options.
Moreover, Visual Composer has premium elements for extending a site’s functionality, taking it to the next level. These are some of the premium elements that Visual Composer offers you:
- Advanced custom fields
- Animated outline button
- Facebook comment
- Video popup
- WP forms
- Post slider
It gets better.
Visual Composer packs more than 15 WooCommerce elements, making it easier for you to add various functionalities to your eCommerce store. Whether you are planning to add a WooCommerce cart or list products in your eCommerce store, Visual Composer will help you achieve that.
Templates
Visual Composer packs more than 160-page templates that can be easily incorporated into your WordPress site to make it look elegant. Such pre-designed templates are suitable for websites that are in different niches.
Some of the templates offered by this page builder might be ideal for photography sites, travel sites, online businesses, financial sites, digital developers, corporate sites, and other types of sites.
Instead of developing a whole WordPress site from scratch, you can use such templates to style up your WordPress pages.
Furthermore, Visual Composer also offers you tons of pre-designed blocks that can style up different sections of your site. For instance, you can use a call-to-action block to create a stylish call-to-action section in your WordPress site, displaying various information.
With more than 160 pre-designed blocks, Visual composer can help you style up your WordPress site quite easily.
Theme Builder
The theme builder has various functionalities and settings that help you customize various parts of your theme, such as footers, headers, and sidebars.
The theme builder can be used to create a post header or a global header that will appear on all the pages. Well, you can either choose the per post type option or the sitewide option based on your preferences.
Moreover, the theme builder layout settings offer you various functionalities for creating a 404 page, a post archive page, an author page, and a search page.
Visual Composer Hub
As the name hints, cloud storage has a wide array of pre-designed blocks, templates, headers, sidebars, footers, and elements.
In short, the Visual Composer hub is a storage space that lets you download various elements that can style up your site.
What’s more, you ask?
Visual Composer hub also gives you access to stock images, which can be used in different sections of your WordPress site. Such images can be downloaded directly to your site from Unsplash via the Visual Composer hub.
Pop up Builder
Since Visual composer comes with a pop-up builder, you can create pop-ups on your site to boost your conversions and display various notification messages to your visitors.
Apart from that, the pop-up builder is quite effective in building pop-ups from the front end of your website. With this builder, you can create page-specific pop-ups or site-wide popups, which have animation effects to improve the overall style of your site.
Integrations
Visual Composer integrates with multiple third-party apps, offering a wide array of functionalities that help you accomplish different things.
Here are some of the third-party apps that Visual Composer integrates with:
Contact Form Applications
Contact form apps and plugins can create a form, which visitors can use to get in touch with you.
Here are some of the third-party contact apps that Visual composer integrates with; Gravity forms, Captain Form, WP Forms, Caldera Forms, Ninja Forms, Contact form 7.
Since Visual Composer integrates with more than eight contact form applications, you can easily choose the one that you choose the most.
Data Management Applications
Data management can manage various types of data, making work easier for you.
Visual Composer integrates with Update Tables to manage statistical, commercial, and other types of data. Moreover, Visual composer can link your WordPress Site with your MailChimp account, making it easier for you to manage emails and various campaigns.
WordPress Plugins
Visual Composer also integrates with various WordPress plugins that extend the functionality of your WordPress site by offering you more features.
For starters, Visual Composer integrates with WooCommerce, offering you various eCommerce functionalities.
It doesn’t stop there.
Visual Composer integrates with Toolset, making it easier for you to add dynamic content to your site via various elements. Moreover, this page builder integrates with Advanced Custom Fields so that you can edit the custom field data that might be on your WordPress site.
Addons
Premium addons have features and functionalities, which can take your site to the next level.
Global Template
As the name hints, this is a unique template that makes changes to all parts of your site.
Role Manager
The role manager addon lets you define different roles in your WordPress site.
Maintenance Mode
This is a functionality that lets you hide a page during a maintenance procedure. However, some users can be granted permission by the admin to view such pages.
Export/Import
This is a premium add-on, which makes it easier for you to import or export footers, templates, sidebars, and headers from one site to another, saving your time.
Pricing
Well, Visual Composer is available in two different versions; a free version and a premium version. The free version of Visual Composer has limited functionalities. It can be installed on one site and features 30 elements only.
On the contrary, the premium version of Visual Composer offers you tons of features that extend the functionalities of the free version. While the premium version is offered in three different packages, it packs more than 300 elements and features 200 + templates.
The premium version of Visual Composer is billed based on the number of sites you plan to install.
The Single Website plan costs $49 a year. The 3 Websites plan costs $99a year. The top tier package, the Developers plan, costs $149 a year. The top-tier plan lets you install Visual Composer on unlimited websites. It might be ideal for large corporations and companies.
Over To You
And there you have, everything you need to know about Visual Composer. Clearly, Visual Composer is an intuitive page builder that makes it easier for you to customize your pages easily.
While the free version offers you 30 elements, the premium version offers you 300 elements for styling your WordPress site. Not to mention, Visual Composure features multiple customization options for styling and editing such elements. The theme builder lets you customize, style, and edit various elements of your theme.
In a nutshell, Visual Composer is an easy-to-use, intuitive, and versatile page builder.
Very in depth review. Our site also uses visual composer. Do check it out