Discover the top Gutenberg block and page builders for your 2024 membership websites!
Discover the top Gutenberg block and page builders to create stunning membership websites in 2024. From customizable templates to seamless integration with WordPress, these tools will revolutionize your website-building experience. Learn how to enhance user engagement, increase conversions, and streamline your online business. Don’t miss out on this essential video guide – watch now to unlock the full potential of your membership site.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
#1 – Kadence WP
Prices Free | $149
#2 – Spectra
Free | Spectra Pro $49 | Essential $79 | Business $149
#3 – GenerateBlock Pro
Prices Fee | Personal $59 | Plus $69 | Professional $99
#4 – Maxiblocks
Free | $6.95 per month or $399
#5 – Elementor
Prices Free | $59 | Advanced $99 | Expert $199
#6 – Bricks Pro
Prices | $79 | Business $149 | Agency $249
#7 – Breakdance
Prices Pro $99 | Pro $199 | Pro $299
#8 – Divi
https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/
Prices Divi $89 | Divi Pro $287
The Show’s Main Transcript And Links
[00:00:01.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks. It’s another Membership Machine Show. We’ve got a great topic. I’ve got my co-host on my other show, my regular co-host. He’s my special guest for this particular Membership Machine Show. We’re going to go straight into it. I’m going to do my countdown. It will all be about the best solutions to build your membership or community website at the beginning of 2024. It should be a great discussion. So I’m going to do my countdown. We go straight into it. So three, two, one. Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 68. In this show, we will discuss some of the best page-building solutions to build your membership or community website on WordPress at the beginning of 2024. It’s an ever-developing area. What are the best page builders or Gutenberg block library editors out there? What are the best ones? Which ones could work for different types of users? I think we’ve got some great insights. I’ve got my everyday co-host for my other podcast, but he’s my special guest in this episode. We got Kurt. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers quickly?
[00:01:35.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
Absolutely. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called MananaNoMas. We focus primarily on membership and learning websites. Plus, I work directly with WP-Tonic and the good folks at Lifter LMS.
[00:01:48.770] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I got some great messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to say, as I said, we got some great special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins and services. If you’re looking to build your membership or community website on WordPress in 2024, and both me and Kurt feel that you should do that, you can get all these free goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, WP-tonic. Com/deals, and you’ll find all the stuff there. So let’s go straight into it, Kurt. Let’s have a quick introduction because where do you think we are, generally, when it comes to advising people about what is the best page website building solution on WordPress in 2024? How do you try and explain it to somebody who comes for a consultation with you, Gert?
[00:03:11.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think what we’re doing here, Jonathan, is like an extension of some of the recent conversations that we have had. I think where we’re at right now, and one of my favorite terms is use case, like what’s the use case? I believe this conversation today depends on the use case, experience, and expectations. So when I talk to a client, I’m like, What’s your comfort level? What are you looking for? What are you trying to build? And then maybe nudge them in a direction. And now that we’ve met the people that make these tools and we’ve gotten in a little bit more profound over time, it’s really interesting to have a show today that says, well, how do you feel about this one or this one or this one? Because we even know the folks. So it’s like you almost feel guilty given your opinion. But that’s what the show is about. We have to a righteous opinion for use case and who our target audience is.
[00:04:04.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and it’s just our opinion. Other people will have different opinions. You’re gone.
[00:04:11.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
I didn’t finish and say what I should have said right up front. Jonathan, I think it’s a mess.
[00:04:18.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, there’s a lot of choice. There always is a lot of choice when it comes to WordPress. We have not selected, so I wrote up the list. I think you’ve agreed, hopefully, Kurt, that I’ve chosen, I believe, the leaders of the pack. There’s a lot more actual solutions out there, folks, but we’ve got about half a dozen or more solutions here, and I think they’re the best solutions, but they do appeal to different segments, different types of end users, which hopefully we’re going to be able to explain who a particular, in our opinion, what a specific solution is best for or is positioned to help the most. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot of overlap. These are only views, and a particular product might be aimed at a specific type of user, but it doesn’t mean a different kind of user I still can’t use it and be happy with it. I think before we go into the list, I think you can subdivide the situation like this, and then I’m going to ask if he agrees with how I’ve done this. The two main is either Gutenberg. Gutenberg is the native editor that comes with the core of WordPress.
[00:06:00.790] – Jonathan Denwood
There are added Gutenberg block editors that come from third parties that expand the options and the ability of what comes with native WordPress. There’s a subdivision, though, in Gutenberg and has made things a little bit more complicated to explain to somebody who’s totally new to WordPress. And that subdivision of the Gutenberg world is full-page editing, which comes with a totally new mythology and interface, which has diverbed out mostly through 2023. And then There’s a more traditional, I was going to say classical, but that would confuse because there’s the non-Gutenberg WordPress world, which is called classic. I’m not going to utilize that term because it would be confusing, but a more traditional morphology, which one or two of the solutions that we’re specifically going to point out to you utilizes. The The Gutenberg world is slightly got more complicated. Then the third or the second, because the first one is a subdivision, but the second main choice is not to be part of the Gutenberg world and to utilize a fully functioning page editor, website builder that’s built utilizes the technology WordPress, but doesn’t utilize Gutenberg. So what do you think about what I’ve just tried to outline here, Kurt, or do you think I’ve just lost everybody and made things even more confusing?
[00:08:14.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, I think it’s good that we discern the difference between full site editing and the standard block editor. Even though both use blocks, the interfaces to access different things, it’s just different. When you get in into the patterns and template manager and full site editing, that whole experience is very much removed from, say, using the customizer in a custom block theme. So what we think in terms of Aster or Cadence, you have that customizer that you can go play in or you can work inside the page. But it’s good that you broke those apart. And then to me, it’s just a whole different world to talk about what’s a full page editor look like. There’s page builders, and then I guess if you talked about full site editing, that would be a site builder, right? I mean, I guess technically.
[00:09:09.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, I would agree with you. Let’s start off with a solution that we’ve adopted at WP Tonic. We provide the full suite as part of your hosting package. There’s going to be two in this that we actively provide and we actively support. We start off with Cadence WP. Do you want to give an outline of what you think are some of the strengths and weaknesses as a Cadence, Kurt, and who do you think it’s really aimed at?
[00:09:52.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think Cadence is a wonderful add-on to Gutenberg for people getting started. And if I were to be more transparent, even people that we would consider beginner through mid-level implementers. So when you are first working in the Gutenberg editor, and it’s by itself. You’re putting stuff in the main page in the main body of where you’re working. If you were in Adobe Creative Cloud, we would call it the stage. So you’re working in the stage, the main part of the page. And then the controls, the are on the right-hand side. And when you first get into the block editor, you can feel lost because you’re like, there’s things I want to change, I just can’t change. Padding, margins, things like that. And when you add Cadence WP to your site, all of those things that you intuitively thought should have been there end up being there. It adds those tools. Plus, with Cadence blocks, you get that extra library of blocks that just becomes really intuitive and helpful in building out your site.
[00:11:03.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you put it there. Basically, the main difference between a traditional editor that’s based on Gutenberg and full-site editing is that the header, the navigation is going to be separated, where with full-site editing, your header and the navigation will be on the page, basically. So that’s one of the main differences. I really love it because the added blocks are very useful. Also, they’ve got full integration add-ons, which come with the Pro version, which you get with WP Tonic. You get the full add-on suite of cadence, and it’s highly integrated with WU commerce. Also, they’ve got the ability to add additional add-on that enables you to have pop-ups and landing pages, and it comes with a large library of templates and patterns and sections. And we’ve built our own sub-library of full starter sites based on cadence that you get as part of your package when you host with WP Tonic. And we’ve built over half a dozen Pacific starter websites that are aimed at people building membership and community websites, which are totally available if you host with WP Tonic. I think you can You can build whole websites and very complicated websites with cadence.
[00:13:08.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I think, and also the starter themes, they do have a large library of their own starter themes, and they’re pretty well-designed, and their patterns and landing pages and sections is very extensive. We’ve added them, so there’s more choice to our Pacific niche that we work with at WP Tonic. But I think it’s a very polished product. More professional web designers where they’re building full custom solutions for a client. They could do it with Cadence, but I would say that when you’re venturing in full custom blank page, building a totally unique design and layout for the client, that’s the only area where I would say Cadence Maybe some of the other solutions that we’re going to talk about, that’s where it probably is at its weakest. How would you respond to what I’ve just outlined?
[00:14:30.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I think we’re driving back to the use case example, Jonathan. When I think about beginners to intermediate implementers, I think about people that leverage a starter site, change the hero image, change out the content, with your H1s, H2s, and text and move some things around. But yeah, to your point, when you get into, Hey, I’m going to design something on a blank page, can you do it in Cadence? Oh, absolutely, right? And we’ve interviewed people on the show that are I’m very adept in doing that. But I think in those terms, when you get to someone that’s like, I’m a custom designer and I want to design my own, there’s other tools we’re going to discuss that are more apt for that.
[00:15:10.800] – Jonathan Denwood
More focused to that particular niche of a quasar professional web designer developer, we’re building unique solutions. On to the next one, Spectra. How would you explain Spectra to a potential client or somebody that come for a consultation and brought it up to you, Gert.
[00:15:35.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, for a long time, Manana Nomas was an ASTRO Pro Spectra package provider because they also had the starter templates and things like what we discussed with Cadence. I think if we’re just going to be transparent for the show and for the listeners, you would ask me my opinion about Cadence for WP tonic. Here I was this ASTRO user, right? And I was like, well, I’m Aster and Spectra, and you want to go Cadence, six and a half dozen the other. I mean, we can figure it out. We can use whatever. But then I think I did a side by side comparison on a test site, and I actually found that I was on your side of that conversation. I was like, I think Cadence gives us, as a company, I think Cadence gives us a better tool to help a broader scope of client. And that’s just my thought because I thought as a package, Cadence Pro, Cadence WP, all the things that we do with Cadence, especially on your own starter template library that you had mentioned. Cadence definitely was the answer in that regard.
[00:16:39.720] – Jonathan Denwood
It was one of the major things that influenced me. But if I had thought that the actual editor, the core functionality was subpair, I wouldn’t have gone down that road just to get the functionality to be able to add our own library of start a thing. But I think it’s a very good solution in its own right, but it plus added something that I’ve been looking for for quite a long time. And also the Chief Developer and founder of Cadence, Ben and his team are excellent. When it comes to Spectra, I would say the main difference, they are in some ways quite similar. I don’t think the two main differences is Spectra is a full-site editor, Gutenberg full-site editor, where Cadence is a traditional editor environment, whereas So in Spectra, you’re going to be able to have the header, the navigation on each page available for editing, and it’s got a totally different interface than the traditional experience. Kirk, and I see totally, he says, When you’re totally new to WordPress, his interactions with possible clients is that they find it easier. I, because I’ve got experience, I find it easier to work the traditional mythology.
[00:18:26.090] – Jonathan Denwood
And I think for some technical reasons, I feel. But it’s an opinion-based. I’m not saying that I’m right or Kirk’s right or wrong. There’s a lot of back and forth. I think the other main area, and I might be wrong here, I’d be interested to see what Kirk’s got to say, is I don’t think it offers the enormous add-on functionality to integrate with WU as much as Cadence has spent, because their integration with WU, they offer a group of add-ons, and they’ve spent a lot of time and money. The other thing with Cadence is we are to some degree agnostic about learning management systems. We love Lift at LMS, and Cadence works well with Lifter, but it also especially works really well with LearnDash because the parent company that owns LearnDash and Cadence is the same. So obviously, they make sure that it works really well with LearnDash. But like I said, they’re the two that we work with, Lifter, LMS, and LearnDash. But these things I’ve just Outline, Spectra doesn’t offer. Do you think I’m correct when I say they’re not offer such integration with Wu?
[00:19:54.610] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t think they integrate at the same level with WU commerce that Cadence does, certainly. I mean, they work with cart flows. They talk about that quite a bit on their website. But yeah, I don’t think they integrate with Wu to the point that Cadence does. I did just want to point out, It’s the same thing as Cadence. When you go into the block editor the first time, it feels naked, it feels very bare bones, and then you add spectra, and instantly you get all of these extra things that you can customize and move around and tweak with spacing and gradient colors and things like that. And that’s one of the things that really attracted me to Spectra, along with the extra blocks and stuff that it had added to the library. But when I think about how it integrated with Lifter LMS, it worked really well with Lifter, and I use the Lifter native payment gateway. I didn’t do much with WU, so I really don’t have room to comment in that area.
[00:20:58.460] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I just got the impression. The other thing that leads me to say that, and I might be wrong, is that the parent company behind Spectra, Ashtra, also is the parent company with a competitor to WU. That’s SureCart and SureMember We actually, if you are not wanting to utilize WU, we do provide Sure member as part of our hosting package, and it works really well. But it’s specifically It can work with WU, but it’s specifically designed to utilize SureCart, which is a fully hosted shopping car experience. It doesn’t offer the enormous versatility of WU, but it’s also a lot easier to set up and utilize. They do offer a very highly functioning… It’s a subscription SaaS solution like SoundCart or ThriveCart, but they do offer a fully functioning free level that does subscriptions and a lot of things that you would have to pay they’re going to be for. They do offer paid elements, but you can do a lot with just the free product, and I don’t think they’re going to change that anytime. That’s probably the reason why they haven’t invested so much with WU, but I’m only surmising that. Do you think I’m probably on the right track there, or do you think I’m on the right track?
[00:22:37.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
It could be. I just did a really quick search, and they’ve got a sticky header that works with the WU commerce template. But in looking at this quick document, that seems to be all that it focuses on, and it doesn’t go into a full-page shopping cart product, customization or anything like that.
[00:22:57.560] – Jonathan Denwood
With Cadence, they They’ve added a lot to the add-on library that adds considerable functionality to WU, haven’t they? But it’s a great solution. Don’t get me wrong, folks. Spectra comes from Asha. Asha, the founder, is a great guy. Adam is his partner. I’m not sure what their business relationship is totally, but I think Adam’s a partner, and both know what highly motivated, highly intelligent, and they know what they’re doing. If you want to use Spectra, I would have no qualms about you utilizing, and we would be fully happy to have you Hosting with WP tonic. We don’t dictate what you got to use. We only suggest and provide. On to the next one. I’ll be interested in what Generate Pro. They’ve got a free version. Most of these products do offer a free version. One or two don’t. But the majority do, especially in the Gutenberg area, they offer a free block library, but then they offer a pro version. This is the same with Generate Block. They offer a free plugin, but they offer a pro version. What do you know about these people? What’s your thoughts about this?
[00:24:34.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
I got to tell you, at first, when I started looking at Generate Blocks, I was really turned off by the minimalist style of marketing and website and the way they portrayed themselves. And so, like most consumers, I tried to read the book by its cover, and I was not very attracted to their product, their pricing or their options. When I looked at what was offered on the home page, it’s like an image block. Well, I can get an image block with WordPress already. Video block. I get a video block. What’s the advantage? But then I dove in a little bit deeper and I started to look at elements of their pattern libraries and things like that, and I was pretty stink and impressed. There’s a lot of really good assets available with their packaging.
[00:25:22.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, this is my take on it. It comes from a small team, but very experienced team. They’ve been active in the WordPress theme area for many years and built up a good business. Then they got into their own solution around Gutenberg. The founder, I forgot the name, though, I apologize, but they are extremely knowledgeable. And this to me, and this is only my take, it’s really aimed at the quasar or fully professional web designer developer RERPA, who’s building semi-custom or full-custom solutions from the ground up for a Pacific clientele. For that particular area niche, Which is a very large niche. I think it’s one of the leading tools. There’s going to be one other in this list. The obvious one, I don’t actually, but I would say there’s three. But the third one, I’m probably going to modify what I say about it, and that’s probably going to put me in hot water because people are very passionate about these page builders. But in my opinion, there’s two really on this list that would really do the job for a truly professional web designer developer doing full custom designs and generate block. You can still utilize it if you’re I don’t think if you’re just looking to get a really good-looking website and being able to edit it and develop it out, I don’t think it’s for you.
[00:27:13.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I think if you’re really got your power user WordPress, and you’ve also design is really important to you, and you feel that you can do good design work, you probably are going to be delighted with Generate Blocks. One of the great things also, it produces really fast loading websites. Cadence is fast. All these Gutenberg solutions generate super fast loading websites. Generate Superfast Loading Websites. Generate blocks on the slide steroids. That’s probably because it doesn’t provide the enormous libraries and patterns solutions that some of these other solutions offer. That’s it, basically. It’s a great solution for, in my opinion, a certain type. They have recently announced about a week ago that It won’t mean much if you’re an entrepreneur or you’re somebody that’s got a corporate membership website. If you are a web designer, you’re going to know what I’m saying. About a week ago, they It’s in beta, but I think it’s going to become part of the full product, a totally class-based system of selecting different elements and blocks And class space is seen as the top level of, if you’re a professional web designer, being able to manipulate and build out websites. But it’s not totally necessary.
[00:29:03.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll probably get hot water by saying that, but that’s my honest opinion. Well, you got anything additional to say about what I’ve just laid out, or do you think I’ve done a reasonable job, Gert?
[00:29:15.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
You’ve done a reasonable job. I just think it’s super interesting that you and I take a look at a product and come away with two different perspectives. You’re like, you could be a really good custom designer, custom developer. It offers all these things. And in my mind, I immediately went to, hey, what’s this library look like? And somebody that needs a crutch to build something quickly, how quickly could a beginner jump in here and slap some stuff together?
[00:29:43.730] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s 80 to 90% of the WordPress market, but there’s 20. Some people would say 30, 20, 10%. Let’s say 70% is what you’ve just outlined. Let’s say 30% on the spectrum are looking more about the code quality, about it being class-based, about it providing all the bells and whistles that a quasar professional would look for.
[00:30:13.910] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I’m with you.
[00:30:16.880] – Jonathan Denwood
On to the next one. We had an interview on my other show yesterday that’s coming out next week on the WP. If you want to listen to that, go to your favorite podcasting player and put in WP Tonic. It was one of the founders of MaxiBlox. And talk about going from one to the other. This is the interesting because it’s the totally opposite in some ways to what generate blocks. We’re going to be talking about maxi blocks, and Kurt knows a lot more about maxi blocks than I do. So would you like to give an outline of what maxi blocks is and what How do you think of it, Kurt?
[00:31:01.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you first start to download and implement maxi blocks, I can give you a quick, don’t confuse yourself, statement in saying that on one hand, it’s a really cool, huge library of blocks and prepattern things. That’s one thing. But it also has the option to use complete page templates, like a page builder, like put in a starter page, and then that page becomes something different. And the reason that I bring that out is because depending on what environment you are in, for instance, if you went to a full site editing theme, you can run into problems with saving a change to the menu and then dropping the formatting of your page, or vice versa.
[00:31:49.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I haven’t used it, but this is what I wanted your advice on because the founder, one of the founders yesterday mentioned that they’re just about to publish their own theme. It’s just providing single-page templates and patterns. But obviously, you can duplicate that page, so you can have the same look. But it’s utilized, first of all, it’s full-site editing. Is that correct? Is it not?
[00:32:20.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would say when I started using it, it was block editing, not full-site editing. Now, according to our interview yesterday, he said that it was full-site editing capable. Right.
[00:32:31.190] – Jonathan Denwood
But I thought, before they say they’re bringing out their own theme folks in the next few days, could you not just take a full site editing theme and then impose pages. But I suppose that theme comes with its own styles. It’s a little bit confusing, isn’t it, that bit? It’s totally clear to him and his team, but that’s probably why they’re just about releasing their own theme, because they probably got this feedback, because it causes a bit of confusion with us, doesn’t it?
[00:33:11.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
When I used it, there was a little bit of a conflict with the theme. And so if I save the page using the full site editor, I would drop the formatting to my starter template page. So then I’d have to go back into the page and save it as a maxi block page that would then save everything. And that comes into play, for instance, when you add something to your menu. So let’s say that you were working on courses in the background and you didn’t have courses in your main menu, but then you go back and you want to add courses to your main menu. You do that in full site editing. And then when you would save that menu, it would drop the formatting from the maxi blocks page. So then you just go back in the maxi blocks and you would save the page. And as I’m talking right now, I realize people might be What’s he talking about?
[00:34:01.030] – Jonathan Denwood
The guy’s talking- Yeah, he’s getting a bit confused, isn’t it?
[00:34:03.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, but it just comes from usage, right? And so what I taught myself was I really like the styling of the blocks. I like the depth of their library. So I just started using the blocks to build out my pages instead of using their page templates. But now that they’re coming out with their own theme and everything, I imagine everything would be much smoother. It’ll be interesting to see how that rolls out.
[00:34:26.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Before we go for our mid break, folks. It’s a very different solution to generate block because they’ve produced over almost 2,000 designs, unique designs with light and dark versions. The Generate Block and the Maxi Block team are small teams, but they’ve both got substantial experience of multiple years. Like the Maxi Block founders have a separate business, a highly successful business, which was built on Divi, which is one of the solutions we’re going to be talking about. And they’ve been working on maxi blocks for over four years, and the same thing applies to generate blocks. They’ve got a successful theme business, and they’ve been building out their own solution for over four years. So I don’t think either of these solutions The four, I would say, Cadence, Spectra, Generate Block, and Maxi blocks are the four main players. In the world of Gutenberg at the present moment. There are a number of other players, but pure Gutenberg full-sight or traditional, as I say, So I feel that these are the main players. So I think we go for our middle break now, folks. And in the second half, we’re going to be talking about non-Gutenberg solution.
[00:36:14.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Solutions. And there’s about four that I consider to be the main players. And it should be a great discussion. We will be back in a few moments, folks. For Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, a feast about Gutenberg and page builders. In the second half, we’re going to be talking about the non-Gutenberg solutions. But before that, I just want to point out, if you’re looking to build your membership or community website, utilizing either Lifter LMS, LearnDash, or Buddyboss, why don’t you look at hosting with WP tonic? We’re Hosting Plus. What I mean is we offer fantastic hosting, but we’re much more than that. We offer extensive lists of the best plugins, fully licensed, plus integrate all the email functionality for you and provide generous monthly email limits, some of the best in the industry, plus we’re there to give advice. We offer really high support standards because I’ve got a really dedicated small team, and we’re dedicated in doing that. We love you to become part of the family and together build a great solution for you and your family. So if that’s interesting, go over to wptonic. Com. Right to you all.
[00:37:47.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Right to you all. So it’s the page builders. Well, the big elephant, the big gorilla in non-Gutenberg solution is Alimator. So Somebody comes to you and they want to build their website and animator. You got extensive knowledge of it. What would you describe it and how would you advise, Kurt?
[00:38:17.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would say, and I want to say this as gently as possible, and I’ve met people that work there. I understand how passionate they are. But Jonathan, when someone comes to me now and says, I want to elementor on my website, I’m literally like, why do you want Elementor in your website and how important is it to your build? And it’s just gotten to the point, I want to say, again, I want to say it as gently as possible. Their updates lately, and by lately, I mean the last 18 months, have not gone smooth. Multiple sites have broken on me. And so there’s more to having a page builder than just what it does and how cool it is. It’s got to stand the test of time, and it’s got to be reliable. And that said, Elementor is the giant in the room. It is the standard as far as I’m concerned, as far as building custom things, animations, having your negative margins or negative… Help me, help me. What’s the other word? Padding. Negative padding, being able to put things, pop up videos in your hero images, the ability to build the templates and to template out things, the way that it works inside Lifter LMS.
[00:39:35.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can really, really make something custom and awesome. But when you’re talking to a client, you got to get back to Why and what’s your experience level with this? Because you might be asking to play with a gorilla and you don’t need a gorilla. You’re fine with a chimpanzee.
[00:39:54.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think that was a good summary. This is my position, folks. It was one of the first page builders. There’s another one that’s not on this list because I do not feel that it’s a main player anymore. That’s Beaver Builder, and one that we are going to be talking about, Divi. Divi was way before Alimator. But Alimator really brought in the world of modern building websites and WordPress without not having to know an enormous amount of coding knowledge around PHP and Java JavaScript. One of the problems is legacy. And what I mean by that is one of the problems with Alimator is it suffered what is called divotitus. Basically, the code, if you looked at the code that Animator produced, it was extremely bloated code. And this doesn’t just apply to Animator. Almost all I started web design many years ago with Dreamweaver from Macromedia. I’m showing my age here, folks. That’s pretty old. And also I did hand coding as well. Bear Bones editor, who’s always been a Mac person. And Alimator, really powerful powerful, but it produced really trash code. And why does it… If you’re not a coder, why should you care?
[00:41:37.450] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it had a reputation for producing slow websites. It does really depend on your hosting. And at WP Tonic, we provide the hosting resources that overcome that. And also caching and setting it up correctly can overcome some of the blow. In the past 18 months, The animator has moved on, and it might be one of the reasons why these updates have been causing a bit of a problem, is that they’re moving to a technological flex box, which is a modern way of building websites, and it will diminish the amount of divotitus, as I call it, that animator produces. A lot of professional web designers use user animator to build sites. There’s between two and a half a dozen well-known YouTube influencers that have very large audiences that are built their whole influence and their own agencies on building, animating, you can do it. I think at the beginning of 2024, there’s one or two solutions in this list that I think produces much better code and are much better solutions for the professional web designer developer. There would be a lot of people that would disagree with me on that, and fair enough, I’m just giving my opinion.
[00:43:15.350] – Jonathan Denwood
I think for the non-professional, I think Gutenberg with Cadence offers a less complicated and a better solution than Elementor. We It’s still Supply Elementor at WP Tonic, but for the specific reason that if you want to customize your Buddy Boss website, it’s still one of the easiest and really the only way you can really customize your Buddy Boss website without utilizing third-party themes, child themes, or doing a lot of custom design modification. And because Buddy Boss is a very powerful but complicated platform, you’ve got to be… It can introduce and does introduce a lot of problems by utilizing a third-party child theme or doing a lot of customisation. The customisation, you’re probably going to have to be on a maintenance contract because periodically that custom coding will have to be updated. So it works with the latest version of Buddy Boss. So to avoid that, it’s easier to do the customization by using some Elementor because Buddy Boss really works with Animator really well. But Buddy Boss is a demanding platform when it comes to web server resources, adding Animator to it. This is why you need really good hosting because you’re adding two elements that are quite demanding when it comes to hosting.
[00:44:58.950] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you What’s your reaction to what I’ve just said?
[00:45:02.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, now take those two giant platforms and add an LMS to it. And having good hosting really does come into play, right? You got three giant things-Your $10 a month hosting, I’m going to With that, not going to cope with that.
[00:45:15.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Not in any shape. We start if you pay yearly at 35, and to give you… It’s a great start. It will support 100 clients, 100 students. Getting your first hundred students is the most demanding part, getting the wheel moving, folks. A lot of people… It’s totally possible, and it will probably cover you for quite a period of time, but then you’re going to have to move up to one of our hosting plans, and they’re staggered because this is a demanding setup. It just is. But I think we’re aimed at being fair, so we offer different levels on your journey, but that’s the reality of it. But I would say there’s people that built whole YouTube channels and They pitch Alimator. And I think it was, compared to the last one we’re going to be talking about, it was a lot superior and enabled designers or people that weren’t totally into to coding with PHP. It offered them the ability to build whole websites, but I think there are better solutions now out there. On to the next one. Bricks and Bricks Pro. What do you think of this one?
[00:46:50.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, this is where you yelled me for not doing my homework, Jonathan. I don’t have too much experience with Bricks, and I don’t know if it was the hype, the hoopla, the whatever, as ‘Bricks’ rolled out and really started to have a couple of strong YouTube channels for it. I think it more turned me off than anything. I was like, I’ve already gone down the road with a little bit with Divi, a lot with Elementor. And then, quite honestly, once, I think it was when WordPress hit like 6.3, 6.4, maybe 6.3, is when I think the block editor made a big turn. And I started focusing more on sticking within and blocks and Gutenberg and looking at those options that I just… I didn’t have the bandwidth to add another page builder to my list of expertise. And I looked at bricks, but I didn’t really dive into bricks. Now, what I have noticed, and correct me if I’m completely wrong. It looks like a blend. If I’m interpreting correctly, when I look at their demo and I look at their site and I look at some of the YouTube channels, to me, I see that element.
[00:47:58.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
When they talk about structure on the the right side, that structure reminds me of the hamburger menu when you’re in blocks, when you’re working in Gutenberg, because that shows you the structure of the page. But then when you look at the left side of the editor, I’m seeing Elementor. It looks like a blend of the Elementor.
[00:48:17.070] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s well-observed, and I think you’re totally spot on. I think it covers both ends. You can be an ambitious or a low intermediate, and you could go into bricks, and you can use it exactly in the way Alimator works. I think one of the other things, Brex is built on Vue. Vue is a competitor to React. They’re both JavaScript libraries, and it’s the technology that actually builds the page builder. The reason why I’m bringing up one of the things that people hate about Alimator is in the back-end, it can be slow to load and utilize. It can be like tree call. That’s legacy code and other factors. When you use bricks in the back-end, when you’re building the website, it’s super quick because it’s built on Vue, and I love Vue. I’ve never I have developed in the act, but I’ve never been a lover of it. I just find I have meddled in view. I’m probably amazing, Kirk here. There’s parts of me that you’re not aware of, Kirk. Thank God. All right, there you go. It’s got a comment there, folks. If you’re watching the show, if you go to the YouTube channel, you’ll be able to see people that are commenting.
[00:50:04.360] – Jonathan Denwood
But yeah, it’s really Thomas, the guy behind it, he’s built successful other WordPress plugin business. It’s a bit It’s been one of the main factors about my choices here is that these are from experience. They’re not all big companies. Alimator is enormous. They’ve got hundreds of developers. Cadence is a much smaller team, but it’s got a very large hosting company behind it. They’ve got enormous resources. Specter has Asha. They have hundreds of developers. The smaller ones, they’re still very experienced and they have the resources. And like maxi blocks, they’ve been at it for over four years. And the same thing applies to bricks. I think Thomas, the founder of bricks, has his own other businesses, and I think they’re in it for the long term, and they’re not going anywhere soon. And you do have to add add-ons to it, but you can produce very custom solutions, and the code that it produces will be super optimized and powerful and easy. If you use well-known web design methodologies, you can produce very accessible all the type of things that the WordPress web designer or developer working for larger organizations or corporations. Their code standard Codes will be expected to be of a certain standard because they will have other professionals looking at the code.
[00:51:53.010] – Jonathan Denwood
And that’s why it’s very important that certain code standards, which if you’re or it’s your own small membership website, this doesn’t matter. But for a certain group of WordPress users, it does matter a lot. If I explain that, recently, coheriently, Kurt?
[00:52:16.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you have. I think you have. Then there’s something else I just want to add to my comments about bricks, and that’s experiential. I’m on LinkedIn a lot, and then I also rely on in X to bring me some insights or inputs from people in the WordPress space. And there’s a lot of people that I would consider my peers on X singing the praises of converting to bricks and using bricks. So just because I didn’t have the bandwidth to add another page builder to my-Yeah, but they don’t…
[00:52:48.080] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt, but they don’t provide a library of starter themes. You can buy for… There are for people producing them, but it’s not the… It’s very similar to generate block, and it’s trying to appeal to, in my opinion, to… The full custom, if you’re building for a small business or a medium-sized business, anything from… I don’t know. It’s hard to define what is a small business and what is a medium business. You’re building a full custom design, they will probably be happy that you’re using the Animator. I think if you’re building to bigger projects and large organizations, I personally would not want to build a website in Animator to provide it to that type of client. They will expect… I would imagine they’re going to have people in their organization that will be able to look at your code, and they will expect a certain standard of code. And Animator, I’m I’m probably going to get a lot of hate twits or whatever. It just doesn’t produce the quality of code that those type of clients in that type of price band would expect, Kurt, in my opinion. Where Generate block and Bricks probably can generate the coding standards that would be expected for that type of clientele.
[00:54:26.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Does that make any sense there?
[00:54:28.610] – Kurt von Ahnen
It does.
[00:54:29.620] – Jonathan Denwood
All Because I can Waffle, can’t I?
[00:54:32.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Just a little.
[00:54:34.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. On to the next one, breakdance. Now, breakdance. Breakdance is impressive. Breakdance is totally different to bricks, and it’s more like elevator. It’s a combination of Bricks and Alimator together because they offer an enormous library of templates and starter themes, and they’re well-designed, and the code that it produces is pretty good. I am not a lover of the founder of this business. He’s never done me any harm, and I wish him well, but his abrasive attitude to customer support and his business positions. His attitude to business is very different to mine, but I wish him well, and he’s highly successful. And he’s built with breakdance. He’s built a really good product, but I personally am never going to use it. But if a client came, I would have no problem in supporting and hosting it, I just wouldn’t choose to use it myself. What’s your thoughts of Breakdance?
[00:56:07.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Breakdance, I found to be an interesting review for me. A, I like the starter themes, the starter templates, the libraries. As you know, Jonathan, I go to that a lot with these products because I’m thinking about who is my client and the use case. And a lot of these people need that crutch to get started. Just like the Elementor has some starter blocks, this has started. Boom. So you know where I’m at with that. And to your point, Bricks didn’t. So it’s like that… Okay, it’s one more reason why I’m not in Bricks. But I really don’t like the interface. I just don’t like looking at it. I I just plain and simple, just don’t like using it. But then when you go into their website and you look at things like all of the different add-ons and tools that you would need to equal the investment with them, like the WU commerce integrations and things like that, it’s like, well, wait a minute. They’re providing you a lot. They’re providing you a lot for what you’re paying for. And so in that regard, I’m like, all right, I got to give them a fair shake.
[00:57:16.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
And my critique is subjective. It’s like, I just don’t like the interface. I just don’t like it.
[00:57:22.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, I’m fine with the interface. I’m just not fine with the founder. I don’t know the founder. But I’m not slandering him. I just feel that some of his business attitudes don’t appeal to me. I’m sure I don’t appeal to him. It’s fair due. I’m not saying he’s a crinimal or anything like that, ridiculous like that, because he definitely isn’t. They have produced a very powerful polish. They have hundreds of thousands of users. I think I can see because the pricing is very good value. And it doesn’t have the lagginess of the back-end that Alimator has because Alimator, you could be doing stuff in the back-end of Alimator, and it can take ages for it. It doesn’t mean the front-end performance is because that can be cached. But it’s one of the other things, especially if you’re having students log in. That’s why we have to give it more server resources because that would be a problem for people logging in to utilize a course. But for the average website, the front-end will be cached. But for the person doing changes in the back end, it can be laggy. You don’t get that with breakdance.
[00:58:50.620] – Jonathan Denwood
It is not laggy, and they offer a ton of templates, and it’s good value. There are strong reasons to look at it, folks. I just have reservations, but it’s not around the product. It’s about the general business attitude of the founder that I have problems with. I just hope he doesn’t sue me, folks, but I don’t think he can because it’s just my personal opinion. On to the next thing. Divi. I I consider Divi is still enormously popular. The founder and the team behind it are very knowledgeable, fantastic marketers. I consider Divi to be a legacy player now. They’ve been talking about going, I think it’s in beta, but it’s been in beta for over two years, their own Gutenberg solution, library editor solution. The problem is they’ve got a lot of legacy websites and hundreds of thousands of legacy users utilizing Divi, which isn’t… Let’s call it Divi Classic, which isn’t based on Gutenberg. So not only do they have to build, they’ve got two choices, and this is probably why it’s been delayed. They’ve got a choice to have a hard break. They keep supporting the classic, and they offer a discounted way to go to the new version of Divi Gutenberg.
[01:00:45.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Or they try and hold the classic users, so it supports the old and the And that is probably a very difficult technical thing to do. And I have no insight here. I might be talking absolute nonsense here, folks. But I think this is the reason why it’s been delayed. But in my own conscience, obviously, we have clients that host with WP Tonic that have built websites on Divi, and we support them, and we’re fine with it. But anybody that came for my advice, I would say run a mile away from Divi because all the solutions that we’ve talked about in this podcast are better than Divi Classic, in my opinion. So What’s your own thoughts about this?
[01:01:48.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
In the last year, I’ve had two customers, specifically through Manana Nomas, that have asked me to customize the user experience in a Lifter LMS using Divi. In both cases, I was able to survive the task and make it happen, but it did not come easily. I don’t find the platform as intuitive as advertised. I find myself struggling with different things or terminologies. And as I run, as I run the front lines for different product lines, when people have a problem with dynamic content platforms, and I start asking more questions, a lot of times it turns up like, oh, I’m on divvy. And then it’s like, okay, well, like in Lifter LMS, they have the lifty that you can add to make Lifter LMS work with Divi. But it’s like, why am I having to leverage a separate tool to make something work with something? So I do struggle in those areas, but I will go. I will go a step further and to the other side, I’m going to contradict myself. You interviewed Melissa Love recently. She’s a genius in the divvy space. We talked to Christian with Maxi Blox, who comes from the divvy space.
[01:03:01.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
Both of those people that we know personally have made phenomenally just awesome products in the divvy space. And so it’s hard to look at the end product and go, I would never use that product. I would never use what they used to make that product.
[01:03:18.730] – Jonathan Denwood
You must have read my mind. It’s unnerved. It’s starting to read my mind now because it’s one of my biggest business regrets. I just couldn’t do it because I I wasn’t a fantastic coder, but I am a bit of a coding snob. I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t get in because I just thought it was awful code. It makes animator look fantastic. The code it It produces, makes animator look great. It’s this awful code that it produces. I just couldn’t do it. It was a mistake because I know quite a few people that built fantastic businesses on Divi.
[01:04:02.970] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and just to go a step further, we’ve been to WordCamp together, Jonathan. We know people that work for Elegant Themes and Divi.
[01:04:11.790] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re fantastic. The founder, nick, they’re really nice people, fabulous people.
[01:04:16.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Here I am, this dichotomy existence, where-They’re the totally opposite.
[01:04:23.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry to interrupt, but they’re the totally opposite to breakdance. But the thing is breakdance is a really fantastic product. It’s just I don’t believe and like the founder. I don’t like his business ethics and his attitudes. When it comes to Divya, I just cannot recommend Divi because I just think it’s a subpar. They know it. That’s why they’re bringing out a Gutenberg solution, but it’s just gone on forever. But as people, the founder and the people, they’re some of the nicest people I know in the WordPress space. So it’s like swings around the bounce. This whole show has been Swings and Roundabouts, hasn’t it?
[01:05:12.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, at the end of the day, it is a swings around the bounce. Horses for course’s example, right? It’s all of these products work, right? But it’s use case. So what’s your level of expertise in WordPress and what end product are you trying to get to? Are you looking for a basic starter site driven thing where you change pictures and headings and publish a website? Or are you looking to build something that you can really put your stamp on and say, this is mine, I built it from scratch? And I think in certain areas, I think Elementor, Bricks may Maybe break dance and divvy make that happen. And to a certain extent, Cadence, too. Cadence, the package you offer through WP tonic is awesome. But I think Elementor is the elephant in the room that really gets me where I want to go on a straight-up custom build for a client?
[01:06:03.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, like I said, my position on that is different because I don’t… But I think for a smaller custom design, yeah, you probably are right. What would be my recommendations? Well, I think for about 70 to 80% of the users that come to WP Tonic, I think Cadence is going to be a great solution for you. I think if If you’re a web designer developer, I think if you want to stay in the Gutenberg area, I think… We got to see how this maxi blocks things goes and that, but they definitely know what they’re doing, so consider it. If you’re the more professional quasar power user, and you want to stay with Gutenberg, look at Generate Block. If you’re looking… I’m going to leave my comments about Alimator alone because I also agree with what Kirk has just said. But if you’re really… I think… If you’re not a power user, but for some reason you don’t want to use Gutenberg, I would look at Breakdance. It’s great. It’s brilliant. Even though I’ve said the things I’ve said, it doesn’t make me blind to a very polish and powerful. If you’re committed not to use Gutenberg, and you’re not a power user, I would look at breakdance.
[01:07:49.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, if you’re a power user or semi or full pro, I would look at bricks rather than an animator. Because like I say, I do think when you get into the full customer at a certain price point, I think your coding has to be up to a certain standard. I just think It just produces junky code, in my opinion. Other people would totally disagree with me, and I’m not saying my way or the highway. I’m not like that. I have my weaknesses, especially if I get a bit tired. But I realize they’re just my opinions. Other people will have different opinions, and it’s not based on scientific fact. They’re just opinions, aren’t they?
[01:08:48.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and we haven’t mentioned it. It’s on your list, but we haven’t mentioned it.
[01:08:53.750] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to phrase it in a different way, Jonathan, if I could.
[01:08:58.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s a You do realize we’re up to one hour, and if you’re up for it, yeah, go on. That’s why- We’re going the distance. We’re in overtime. Because it’s a deep subject, right? There’s so many page builders, so many block libraries, so many options out there. And to the customer or the new developer that comes to this episode and says, well, how do I pick the one I’m going to become the expert in? And then we look at the news this week with quickly being closed down, you go, Well, man, I’m glad I didn’t put all my eggs in that basket. How do you know you’ve signed up for something? Well, you don’t.
[01:09:38.840] – Jonathan Denwood
You don’t, right? I don’t know what to say about it quickly because I don’t know. I’ve watched quite a few of the founders’ videos and the team, and I know people that know that team, and they seem really nice people in that. Who knows? It was a highly competitive area of the smaller teams. And Mexiblox, I think they are one of the smaller teams, but they built up a very reasonably large business in the divvy world, and they’ve been at it for four years. And the same with Thomas when it comes to bricks. One of the problems, the founder seemed to have a background in music, but there wasn’t that much information about his background when it came to web development. He seemed to be self-taught. A lot of people that are professional musicians, I think he was a professional pianist, you get a lot of people that had a successful or semi-successful career in music that get into development. And there’s some of the best developers I’ve known. I think the symbolic element of code and learning music, to read it and write music, has similar… That part, the mind. The brain. The brain to write code and that.
[01:11:17.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know. I’m just surmising that. But there wasn’t too much about his background. I wouldn’t say it was a red flag, but I found it was a little bit I wouldn’t say alarmed, I don’t know what to say there, but… And things do close down. And any of these could close down even the bigger players. One of the problems of Alimator, and I don’t know this, is that they provide their hosting solution. Some people, I’m not one of them because I don’t really know, some people have said, Well, they don’t don’t care about the plugin. They utilize the plugin as a public beta, and they’re only interested in their hosted solution and making sure that it works right. I don’t know if that’s true, Ron, or indirect, but it does. Offering a hosted solution like that, I find a little bit alarming, but that’s just my opinion, It’s an exciting conversation that comes down to businesses and scaling.
[01:12:36.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
For instance, when I was in the power sports industry, Ducati had the number one units ever sold in the year when I was with that company. And Suzuki was literally at 10 % production of what they used to do in 2008 at the same time. And so what one company sees as unbelievable success, another company looks at as, oh, my God, we used to be 90 % bigger, right? And so if Suzuki did 10,000 fewer units a year, could they even stay open, right? But that’d still be a national record for Ducati. You look at those two brands, and they’re both recognizable. I see Elementor as this giant. When I spoke to the people from Elementor, they said that 16 million websites were made on Elementor. And you’re like, oh, my goodness. And then you had a conversation with MaxiBlock yesterday, and he said publicly they had 800 users using Maxiblox so far registered. I thought, Well, that’s amazing. You went from 35 a year ago to 800 now. That’s fantastic.
[01:13:47.860] – Jonathan Denwood
But on what- It does take a lot of effort because you know that I’m doing quite well in WP tonic, but we’re only a small hosting provider, a micro hosting provider. We will always be just a boutique hosting provider, but we are growing. Sometimes, I’m very critical of myself, but I spoke to Jason Komen, the founder of WP Engine. He said it took them over three years before they got a thousand hosting clients with WP Engine. Now, they host hundreds of thousands of websites. It took him over three years before he got to his thousandth client on the WP engine; this takes a lot. Unless you have a lot of initial investment or you have a big audience with another product, This takes a lot of effort and work. I think one of the problems is that people don’t realize the amount of money to build a modern editor. It probably costs between half a million to a million plus dollars to build a competitive Gutenberg or non-Gutenberg page editor or page builder editor. That’s a lot of money.
[01:15:13.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a lot, especially when many users expect to get the plugin for free.
[01:15:18.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly. It doesn’t. Especially if you’re offering free, which is excellent. I’ve taken up a few of them. But when you’re offering lifetime deals or highly discounted, and you have to do this, and new competitors enter the market, you’re not getting the uptake of new clientele. Where does the money come from? It doesn’t. And especially if you’ve not got external finance or other resources, you can quickly get into a pickle. But that’s all. So we’re going to wrap up the show now, folks. What I like to say also is if you’re looking to build a membership website or you’re a developer, why don’t you join the Membership Machine Show Facebook group? We’ve got a great mixture. Suppose you’ve got any questions about what we’ve discussed during this show and other shows. You can join that Facebook group, and if you have any questions, I will personally answer them, or Kurt and other people in the community there. It’s a great mixture of members, entrepreneurs, and WordPress-type people. I love you to sign up. It’s free, and why don’t you join us there? We’re going to wrap up this show. I think it’s been a great discussion.
[01:16:42.760] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Kurt, how can people best learn more about you and what you’re doing?
[01:16:47.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, the agency’s name is Manana Nomas. We’re at manyananomas. Com. And then, if you are on LinkedIn, I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn. I’d love to connect with you.
[01:16:57.250] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. And we’ll see you next week. Soon, folks. Bye.
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