The Future of WordPress Page Builders and Gutenberg

Gutenberg, the default WordPress editor, faces challenges and limitations compared to other page builders, making its future dominance unlikely.

### The Future of WordPress Page Builders: Will Gutenberg Replace Them?
* 🏗 Gutenberg was first released back in 2018 as a **new way to build pages and posts** with WordPress.
* 👎 Initially, Gutenberg faced criticism for not being intuitive and received **backlash from developers**.
* 🔄 Over time, it has added new features and themes to become **more user-friendly**, with **third-party add-ons and developers supporting it**.
* However, compared to other page builders like Elementor, Divi, and Brizzy, Gutenberg lacks key features such as **drag-and-drop functionality**, has a **cluttered interface**, and requires **additional plugins to match the capabilities of other builders**.
* 📈 Despite being out for almost five years, the market adoption of Gutenberg has not been as significant as hyped, with other builders continuing to **grow their user bases**.
* 💬 "I think the reason why you're hearing all this commotion is because the **smallest people in the room are always the loudest**."
* ❌ Therefore, based on its current state and development trajectory, Gutenberg is **unlikely to replace existing page builders**.
* 🔮 "I think they have a **long way to go** to catch up to today's page builders."

WordPress is in a really weird place right now. If you're brand new to WordPress, you've probably been bombarded with YouTube videos and blogs saying that WordPress page builders are dying while promoting the new WordPress Pageable or Gutenberg. In this video, I'll give you guys my opinion on the future of WordPress page builders, Gutenberg, and my personal thoughts on all of this. So first, let's talk about what Gutenberg is and the history behind it. Gutenberg was first released back in 2018 as a new way to build pages and posts with WordPress. At the time of its release, Gutenberg has received a lot of criticism as not being intuitive and people simply not liking it. If you visit the Gutenberg plugin in the WordPress repository, a majority of the negative comments are when Gutenberg first came out. The creation of Gutenberg also led to a lot of backlash from developers. Many developers claim they have always been loyal to WordPress and this was a move simply to ounce them out of the markets. Here's a 15-second clip on how some developers reacted to Gutenberg.

would you ask your question? Yes, there is a question. No, this is a blog post. Please ask the question. Please go down and read your question. Thank you. The question. So, and what I thought to Wordpress is you like twin brother. So, would you ban your twin brother from speaking on your birthday who work it so hard to help you out in last 10 years. Is James gear looks or callistead or other 40 million. Excuse me, again, this is not a question. That's a question. Are we abandoned? Can you answer the questions? Sure, immediately plugins were created to switch back to the default editor, which quickly grew to one million active installs. And a few years later, it hit 5 million active installs. There was a lot of resentment against WordPress and Gutenberg for the next coming year. However, over time, the page builder has added new features and themes to make it a bit more user-friendly. Also, developers have created third-party add-ons to accommodate the page builder with new widgets and some even trying to create new interfaces for a better building.

experience. Even some blogs and developers have opted Gutenberg as their new primary page builder. When I first started using WordPress about seven years ago, there was no default editor. It forced me and other users to basically go scour the internet and find third-party page builders in order to use WordPress. Even some themes had to develop their own page builder where specific options would make specific parts of the website propagate or disappear. So in short, you can either use a theme from ThemeForest, or find an independent page builder, or you can find a theme that acted as both, which didn't really leave WordPress with a lot of structure at the time. I've always thought WordPress needed its own editor. Other CMSs like Wix and Shopify, they have like a default builder that they provide for all their customers. So creating Gutenberg was just the next logical thing. However, a lot of people are asking, will Gutenberg replace page builders? And my simple answer is no. Let me explain. And to do that, let's talk about how does Gutenberg match up against other page builders. With the arrival of

Gutenberg. Many page builder developers kept a close eye on this builder. In fact, many companies like Devi and Elementor started to make integrations for the Gutenberg page builder. They did this in order to keep up with the WordPress trends and accommodate users who actually wanted to use Gutenberg as their primary builder. So where does Gutenberg stand four years later? Well, it's a builder but definitely not for its time. Using the Gutenberg page builder feels like I'm using WordPress five years ago. The biggest problem with Gutenberg is that it's just not intuitive and it's real with options, leaving you dazed and confused. Today, more people want ease of use and faster websites. Yet with Gutenberg, you might be left with some frustrations. So let's talk about them. One of the key features that are missing from Gutenberg is the drag and drop aspect. With builders like Elementor and Divi, you can easily drag and drop elements in place visually, making it much more user-friendly. With Gutenberg, you forfeit the drag and drop aspect, making it feel clunky, sturdy, and just

difficult to use at times. Another issue that we notice is that the Gutenberg options are scattered. When you create a module, they decided to add some editing options when you hover over the elements. Yet, there's also additional options on the right side of the screen for that same module. It would make more sense to create columns like Elementor, such as contents, design, and advanced tab, instead of creating this cluttered interface. I personally think this could all be fixed in just a few updates. What else? Well, limitations with Gutenberg. You'll have to purchase additional plugins or add-ons to make this page builder stay on par with other page builders today. It lacks design options and also features that most page builders today already offer. For example, Gutenberg lacks dynamic content, so you'll have to purchase third-party plugins in order to achieve this. Themes like Divi also have amazing animations like the Divi effects and also the Divi transformations, which allow you to completely transform different aspects of your website. It's great because these options are neatly organized, simple to use, and most

beginners can adopt this right away. And Elementor with the new Loop Builder. The Loop Builder enables you to create and design any element for repeating content, such as listings, as well as customized layout on the page. Brizzy is another block-based WordPress Page Builder, and the interface with Brizzy is very simple to use. The drag and drop aspect of this Builder makes even the most novice web designers able to make complete websites with ease. Yet going back to Gutenberg, we haven't seen this yet. We simply haven't seen anything remotely close to this. The closest resemblance for Gutenberg being a constructive page builder is using the Spectra add-on for Gutenberg. When you add an element, you'll be displayed with a general style and an advanced tab. This does clean up the Builder a bit, yet they simply have gotten inspiration from Elementor and applied them to the Gutenberg page builder. So the real question is, why would you just not use Elementor from the start? However, there are good uses for Gutenberg. I think Gutenberg makes a great editor for your blog posts.

that makes more sense. That's probably the biggest pro to using Gutenberg with some of the page builders. It can feel a bit awkward at times to build posts. If you want to create a simple blog post, Gutenberg would be a better fit for this criteria where you can just simply create some content, pump out a few images, and you're done. Gutenberg has been out for about four to five years. So, how does this stack up against other page builders? It took Elementor about two to three years to become WordPress's number one page builder on the market. It took Divi about four years to become the world's most popular WordPress theme in the world. However, with Gutenberg, we just don't see the market simply adopting this as the new page builder. We'll talk a little bit more later about how we came to this conclusion. Hey guys, off topic really quick. I wanted to ask you guys a quick question. Do you guys think these influencers here on YouTube are actually effective at promoting e-commerce websites and selling products?

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products. The results from this ad will be showcased on our eCommerce marketing guide. We're going to make that video in just a few weeks, so if you guys are generally interested in the coffee, feel free to purchase it. We'll give you guys a discount. If not, no problem. We're still going to publish our results. Thank you guys so much, and let's go ahead and continue with the video. So let's go ahead and summarize. WordPress creating Gutenberg was ideal, right? The fact that it didn't offer their own builder to their customers didn't really make a lot of sense, and it left a lot of customers in awkward positions. So the creation of Gutenberg was definitely necessary. And the fact that the WordPress Community has all these different page builders that you guys can use at your disposal is what makes WordPress great. You guys can use Divi, you can use Brizzy, you can use Avada, you can use Elementor, even site origin. You know you have access to all these page Builders, so it doesn't really matter what you're trying to build. You

can find something that works best for you. I would say my pull is pretty accurate. I say it's a decent Builder, definitely not my favorite, but it is doable in certain circumstances. Moreover, when you compare Gutenberg against other page Builders today, it has a lot of catching up to do. And to be quite Frank, Gutenberg having four years of development and seeing where it is at its current states, I'm a bit disappointed. I was expecting a little bit more, but hey, there can always be some updates in the future that can always turn the tides. But I personally don't use Gutenberg on my website, so I don't really care as much, but I am still glad that WordPress created a default editor so at least users do have something to build their website with. So that's my current opinion on Gutenberg at the current time of making this video. Sure, maybe in a few months they might make some new feature that I might like that might convince me to use it, but I simply just don't see it yet. Now, the

next question is, is Gutenberg growing? Is it getting more popular? Well, it's a bit tricky, so let's talk about it. We've all heard the argument that Gutenberg is getting better. It's constantly evolving and adding new features, and we can all agree that Gutenberg is making new features for their Builder. But as previously mentioned, I am a bit disappointed on the development because I think it's just too far behind at the current time of making this video. Moreover, we can make the same argument for all page Builders and their developments. As I mentioned earlier, other page Builders are also furthering developing their page Builders. Elementor recently launched its new Loop Builder and also the flexblock containers. The Divi theme has introduced gradient Builders and also full site editing, which allows you to completely customize the footer and header of your website all from one location using their visual Builder. And the Brizzy page builder has decided to double down and join the page builder War. Brizzy obtained a 2.5 million investment in order to pursue their Builder. WP trans

is one of the websites that records the growth of WordPress plugins. Here, you can get a general idea of how the market is reacting to certain products by the growth and active installs. Yet, there's a few things that I want to point out and mention. Now, here's where the really tricky part comes in that makes Gutenberg really hard to measure. Upon looking for Gutenberg active installs, you can see that plugins like code blocks or Spectra have high active installs. This can make most people assume that many people are actively downloading the plugin and using it on their WordPress website. The same thing with code blocks created by GoDaddy. It appears to have high growth as if people are actively using these plugins. However, what the website doesn't tell you is that there are a lot of plugins that are automatically installed for fresh installations of WordPress or importing starter templates. With this metric in mind, it doesn't really give you an accurate representation of people actively using these plugins or not. Many people have no idea these plugins are

even on their websites. Here's a great example: this is the Redux plugin. When you visit the website, they have changed their entire interface to Gutenberg templates. Now, any normal person would assume that people must love Gutenberg with these massive active installs. What you probably didn't know is that this plugin has been out for seven years before Gutenberg was ever even created. This plugin is used to add custom options for WordPress themes on ThemeForest and WordPress.org, and it's also auto-installed on several themes, making it look as if people are using Gutenberg. But that's far from the truth. In fact, Redux actually lets users know that if they have this plugin installed on their website, there might be a reason why. So we do see a lot of plugins that are auto-installed on websites, and to be honest, that's a very poor metric on how to measure if people are using Gutenberg. So let's take a look at standalone plugins that use Gutenberg that aren't associated with auto-installs. If you search for blocks, the standalone plugin with the most high of active

installs is the ultimate block plugin with 40,000 active installs, followed by Gutenberg blocks for Gutenberg with 30,000 active installs. The rest, like otter blocks, code blocks, generate blocks, Cadence blocks, Spectra, or all plugins that are dependent on WordPress themes and auto-installed on websites. You can also get an idea by looking at reviews and activity on wordpress.org forums. For example, ultimate blocks only having 40,000 active installs has more than 500 reviews versus something like call blocks with 500,000 active installs yet with only 91 reviews. When you look at Standalone plugins that aren't reliant on themes, you can see the active installs are significantly lower. I would argue that this is probably the best demand representation of the amount of Gutenberg users because these are the users who are actively looking for Gutenberg add-ons. You might also be wondering what about the block-based themes, how many people are using the Block Base themes. There are WordPress themes that are dedicated to using Gutenberg. You can locate these themes in

the back end of your WordPress dashboard under themes, and then clicking on the Block theme section. There is another YouTuber who actually calculated all the numbers of active installs for these themes, and it is a coincidence that the total number of active installs for the block-based themes are around 40,000 as well. Gutenberg has been out for almost five years now, yet for some reason, many people still refer to Gutenberg as a new Builder, which is not the case. We can see the market for Gutenberg clearly; it is not reacting to all the hype that blogs and influencers have pumped up and created for Gutenberg. It just hasn't shown predominant growth. All other page Builders continue to double and triple in active installs while Gutenberg remains stagnant. I would say that my poll is pretty accurate on people using Gutenberg. Based off these results, I would say that Gutenberg does have a market share, but it's very low compared to its competitors. So like I mentioned earlier, right, it's pretty tricky to measure if people are actively using Gutenberg because the only plugins with high active installs

are automatically installed on the website, or it automatically installs when they import a WordPress template. And the fact that these Standalone plugins for Gutenberg have a much lower active install count would make me believe that this is probably the user base that Gutenberg currently has. But like I mentioned earlier, right, it's virtually impossible to know if people are actually using those auto-installed plugins on their WordPress website or not. So I wanted to actually investigate this and get a little bit more detail on these plugins and their user base. I decided to reach out to a few WordPress theme companies and ask, are people upgrading to the pro for these plugins? Upon asking three of the most largest WordPress theme companies out there, two of them said that the conversions are poor for the Standalone Gutenberg plugin. This has led to WordPress theme companies to start adding the Gutenberg blocks plugin as part of the highest price package in order to add more value to the pricing plans. So that's all we have to go off really from these WordPress companies. I think the reason

why you're hearing all this commotion is because the smallest people in the room are always the loudest. You'll see all these people in the comments saying Gutenberg this which sort of Sparks the conversation but if we're gonna say is Gutenberg gonna replace page Builders I would simply say no based off gutenberg's development over the last four years. I think they have a long way to go to catch up to today's page builders. So my final answer to the question is will Gutenberg replace page Builders and my answer absolutely not. Many people will make the claim that Gutenberg is getting better however we can make the claim for all page builders that all page Builders are also getting better. Either way it's a great thing for WordPress and it's a great thing for you because competition makes better products. I hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know what you guys think of Gutenberg or any page builder in the comments below and until then I will see all of you party people in the next video guys take care.

Why Gutenberg Wont Win The Wordpress Page Builder Battle...

Hey Party People! My Name Is Darrel. I help teach people how to make Wordpress websites with no coding skills and teach people how to use drag and drop builders. I've helped thousands of people create business's online and help people make money online. Learn How To Make A Wordpress Website Or eCommerce Websites With No Experience! Im not a FAKE GURU and if you spend the time to watch some of my videos, ill teach you how to start your own business and career with Web Design using Wordpress. So grab a beer and go watch some of my videos!

Darrel Wilson

The Current State of WordPress: Gutenberg and the Future of Page Builders

WordPress Gutenberg was initially criticized for its lack of intuitiveness, facing backlash from developers and users, leading to the creation of plugins to switch back to the default editor, which quickly gained millions of active installs.

Over time, Gutenberg has been improved with new features, themes, and third-party add-ons, gaining some acceptance from developers and users.

However, despite its enhancements, Gutenberg is not likely to replace other page builders, as it was created to provide WordPress with its own editor, offering a different user experience compared to traditional page builders.

Many companies, like Devi and Elementor, have integrated with the Gutenberg page builder to keep up with WordPress trends.

However, Gutenberg is criticized for its lack of intuitiveness and the absence of a drag and drop feature, making it feel outdated.

The builder also has scattered options and lacks essential features, requiring users to purchase additional plugins.

Despite these criticisms, Gutenberg is still valued as a great editor for blog posts.

The Impact of Gutenberg on WordPress and the Role of Page Builders

Gutenberg has been in existence for 4-5 years, but it has not gained the same level of market adoption as other page builders like Elementor and Divi.

The creation of Gutenberg was necessary to provide a better content creation experience for WordPress users, who still have the option to choose from a variety of page builders.

Gutenberg is ideal for simple blog posts, while other page builders offer more advanced features for website building.

The Current State of Gutenberg and Its Growth

Gutenberg is a bit behind in development after four years and is not very impressive at the moment.

Other page builders like Elementor, Divi, and Brizzy are advancing with new features, making it hard for Gutenberg to catch up.

The growth of Gutenberg is difficult to measure accurately due to high active installs from automatic installations, making it challenging to determine its actual popularity.

The Misleading Perception of Gutenberg's Popularity

The Redux plugin's high active installs are misleading, as it is often auto-installed on websites, giving a false impression of Gutenberg's popularity.

Standalone plugins not reliant on themes show lower active installs, providing a more accurate representation of Gutenberg's demand.

Despite being around for almost five years, Gutenberg's growth and market share remain low compared to its competitors.

The Impact of Gutenberg on WordPress Theme Companies

Standalone Gutenberg plugins have a low active install count, leading to poor conversions for the pro version.

As a result, theme companies are now including the Gutenberg blocks plugin in their highest price package to add more value.

Despite the commotion surrounding Gutenberg, it is unlikely to replace page builders due to its development still needing to catch up.