News is relative, but with its one and a half year existence, Bricks is still one of the newest page builders. Other popular applications include Elementor, Divi, and Oxygen. In this blog, we will mainly make the comparison with Elementor, because these are the fixed builders in our workflow along with Bricks. In this article, we will also only discuss builders that run on WordPress.
WHAT PLACE DO PAGEBUILDERS HAVE AT PURPLE PANDA
When building our digital products, we always look at the specific strategy and the intended marketing goals. As a result of this consideration, we always choose the best solution. This ranges from fully custom-built and coded applications, to the use of page builders. Through the latter, we can build faster in some situations, without losing quality. For this, we always use Elementor or Bricks.
WHY ARE PAGEBUILDERS SO POPULAR?
Page builders are no longer exclusively tools for people who have no knowledge of (or budget for) web development. With the enormous evolution of recent years, there are some builders available that continue the simplicity of the classic ones to a powerful environment. These are mainly intended for developers and agencies to work with.
In this last point, Bricks stands out, but more about this later.
WHY DOES BRICKS CREATE SUCH HIGH EXPECTATIONS?
Unlike Elementor, Bricks is not a plugin, but a theme. This makes the approach totally different. Elementor works by building on the chosen theme, Bricks is more of a total environment in itself. Although the builder and interface are very similar, the following things create very high expectations for Bricks:
The code output
As mentioned earlier, both builders are very similar in use and there will not be that much time difference during the build. What is noticeable is the output that both builders generate. In comparison to Elementor, Bricks has a very clean and light output. Fewer elements are created in the final HTML code of the page, which makes everything considerably clearer and above all faster.
The page- en builder speed
Partly due to this lighter output, but also due to other technical factors, sites created with Bricks themselves score much higher in a page speed test. For example, a site with Bricks relies less on external plugins and add-ons. It is certainly possible to achieve the same scores with Elementor, but an expert will have to put in much more effort to achieve the same results.
Accessibility for developers
Being able to add existing code to the pagebuilder output, is an important feature for agencies like Purple Panda. Both builders are very suitable for this, but the possibilities of Bricks are even greater. The theme structure of Bricks allows more flexibility and a more in-depth customization. This makes it easier to create completely unique websites.
We’re just getting started
To a developer, Bricks is more user-friendly than Elementor, in many ways. However, the latter still has more options and support at the moment. Additionally, there is also more certainty with Elementor, because it has been an established value for years now. On the other hand, this is also what is so striking about Bricks. Compared to the rest, Bricks is still a very young software and yet it challenges its competition strongly. We can’t wait until this application is fully settled in the pagebuilder landscape. When we look at the roadmap they have on their website, we are only getting more curious.
Conclusion
Purple Panda has a vast experience with Elementor and we still fully support this product. Still, we are extremely impressed by what Bricks can do and especially by how easily we can continue to build on this application. This is why we are actively starting to use it in our projects.
Gerrie, our creative, can talk about this topic for hours. Do you want more information about Bricks or pagebuilders in general? Feel free to contact him directly: gert-jan@website.purplepanda.be
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