Short answer: we stopped recommending Elementor for new WordPress projects in 2023 and moved every new build to Breakdance. The pages are lighter, the admin is faster, we need fewer plugins, and the same design costs fewer hours. Elementor is not broken; it is carrying a decade of decisions that a builder started in 2022 did not have to make. We still maintain Elementor sites, and we say below when staying on it is the right call.
What was wrong with our Elementor sites
By 2023 our standard company website was Elementor Pro plus eight to twelve add-on plugins: a header builder, a forms plugin, a slider, a popup tool, a table plugin, a WooCommerce extension or two, and a caching plugin to hide the cost of all of the above. Each one loaded its own CSS and JavaScript on every page whether the page used it or not. Each one had its own update cycle, its own licence and, twice a year, its own security notice.
The output was heavy. A simple section in Elementor renders as five or six nested wrappers before the content starts, and a typical homepage shipped three to four hundred kilobytes of CSS that mostly styled things the page did not contain. We could get those sites to a good Lighthouse score, but it took a caching layer, critical CSS extraction and an afternoon of tuning per site, and it regressed the first time the client installed a plugin.
The admin was slow too. Editing a page with a large Elementor template on shared hosting meant waiting for the editor to load, then waiting again on every save. Clients noticed, and the ones who noticed most were the ones who had paid for good hosting.
What changed with Breakdance
We tested Breakdance on internal projects for most of 2023 before moving client work. Four things decided it.
Cleaner HTML. A Breakdance section is a section, a container and the content. Fewer wrappers means less CSS to describe them, smaller pages and simpler responsive behaviour. On like-for-like rebuilds we measured pages two to three times smaller than their Elementor originals before any caching or optimisation plugin was involved.
Fewer plugins. Header and footer builder, forms, popups, sliders, tables, dynamic data, the WooCommerce shop templates and a global design system are part of the builder. A project that needed twelve plugins on Elementor needs three or four on Breakdance: the builder, the SEO plugin, a security plugin and, for shops, WooCommerce. Fewer plugins means fewer updates, fewer conflicts and a smaller attack surface.
A faster editor. The builder interface loads in a second or two and stays responsive on large pages. For a client editing their own site this is the difference between updating a page and emailing us to do it.
Global styles that behave like a design system. Typography, colours, spacing and button styles are defined once and used everywhere, with class-based styling for anything the presets do not cover. Redesigning a section does not mean re-clicking through every page.
Side by side
| Criterion | Elementor Pro | Breakdance |
|---|---|---|
| HTML output | Deeply nested wrappers | Minimal markup |
| Plugins needed for a typical company site | 8 to 12 | 3 to 4 |
| Page weight on like-for-like rebuilds | Baseline | Two to three times smaller |
| Editor speed on large pages | Slow on shared hosting | Fast |
| Header, footer, popups, forms | Pro plus add-ons | Built in |
| WooCommerce templates | Pro, with add-ons for details | Built in, including cart and checkout |
| Global design system | Site settings | Global styles plus classes |
| Multilingual | Mature; works with WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress | Works with Polylang; we build our multilingual Breakdance sites with it without compatibility issues |
| Third-party ecosystem | Very large | Small; rarely needed |
| Finding a freelancer to maintain it | Easy | Harder, growing |
| Best for | Existing sites; teams that rely on Elementor add-ons | New builds where speed and low maintenance matter |
What we lost
Honesty about the trade: Breakdance has a smaller ecosystem. If a client’s workflow depends on a specific Elementor add-on, it will not exist for Breakdance and we build the feature instead, which is usually better but is not free. And when a client later wants to hand the site to another freelancer, Elementor developers are easier to find. That gap closes every year, but it exists.
When we tell a client to stay on Elementor
- The site works, the business is happy, and the only complaint is a Lighthouse score. A rebuild is not worth it for a number; a caching and image pass is.
- The team edits the site daily and knows Elementor well. Retraining costs more than the performance gain.
- A specific Elementor add-on runs a core part of the business.
When we rebuild on Breakdance
- A new website or shop. Every standard build we deliver uses Breakdance; it is what our WordPress websites and WooCommerce shops are built with.
- An Elementor site that has become slow to edit or slow to load and is due for a redesign anyway.
- A site with a plugin count in the twenties, where half of them exist to patch the builder.
And when neither builder is the answer
A page builder is the right tool when a non-technical team must change layouts without a developer. When the front end is a product in itself, when speed is a competitive position rather than a checkbox, or when the site must feed apps and partners as well as browsers, we skip the builder entirely and build the front end in Next.js on top of WordPress. That is the headless tier of our work, and this website is built that way.
Frequently asked questions
Is Breakdance faster than Elementor?
In our rebuilds, yes, on both counts: the pages it produces are lighter, and the editor is quicker to use. The gap is largest on sites that needed many add-ons under Elementor.
Can an Elementor site be converted to Breakdance?
Not automatically. Pages are rebuilt in Breakdance, using the existing design as the brief. Content, media, SEO settings and URLs are kept, so rankings are not affected.
Do you still work with Elementor?
Yes. We maintain and extend existing Elementor sites. We do not recommend it for new projects.
Is Breakdance good for WooCommerce?
Yes. Product, category, cart and checkout templates are built into the builder, so a standard shop needs no extra templating plugin.
If your site is on Elementor and you are wondering whether a rebuild is worth it, send us the address and we will tell you which of the three cases above you are in.
