Are you stuck at the crossroads between choosing Elementor or Breakdance? I totally understand it. Elementor has long been the go-to option for WordPress users looking to build a website with a page builder plugin. While Breakdance seems to be interesting to try.
In this post, I will try to help you find the best answer to your dilemma by comparing the features offered by both Elementor and Breakdance. To make it easier for you to spot the differences between the two, I will also provide some tables.
Before we continue, you want to read my detailed review which you can read first to learn more about Breakdance and Elementor.
Shortcuts:
🆚 Elementor vs Breakdance: Overall Features Comparison
Elementor is the king of page builder plugin. No one can deny the fact. There are over 10 million websites built with Elementor. No page builder plugin even comes close to Elementor when it comes to this stat.
But when it comes to feature and functionality, Elementor have a number of close competitors, including Breakdance.
In some areas, Breakdance is even better than Elementor, the free version in particular. Breakdance has more native design elements than Elementor. Some of its extra features, including popup builder, are accessible on both versions (free and pro).
I provide the following list to give you a glance look of the differences between Elementor and Breakdance:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of elements (exclude WooCommerce and WP widgets) | 78 | 88 |
| Custom breakpoint | ✅ | ✅ |
| Version history | ✅ | ✅ |
| Theme Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Form Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Popup Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dynamic content | ✅ | ✅ |
| Global settings | ✅ | ✅ |
| Global blocks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Loop builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Client mode | ✅ | ✅ |
| Supports add-ons | ✅ | ❌ |
| Native e-commerce Functionality | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email marketing integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom assets (Fonts and Icons) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Conditional logic | ✅ | ✅ |
| Template library | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom CSS | ✅ | ✅ |
| Action link | ✅ | ✅ |
| Learn More | Learn More |
📚 Elementor vs Breakdance: Design Features Comparison
📱 Responsive Editing
Not all page builder plugins have an adequate responsive editing feature so I put it on the top priority of the feature I will compare.
Responsive editing is a super crucial feature, especially in today’s age where many people access web pages from smartphone than desktop more often. Some web designers even prioritize mobile view by adopting mobile-first approach when designing a web page.
Both Elementor and Breakdance have an excellent responsive editing feature. Be it Elementor or Breakdance allows you to set different settings value on design elements. For instance, when setting the padding of the image element, you can set the different values for desktop, tablet, and smartphone.
Or, you can set different font sizes for each device type for a more convenient view on all screen sizes:
Another option to access the responsive editing feature in Elementor and Breakdance is by clicking the device icon at the top bar within the editor. This option is more recommended for a faster design process.
You can get your desktop design done first. Once done, you can switch to either tablet and smartphone mode to fix unresponsive blocks or elements.
Want to optimize your design for a specific device screen? Both Elementor and Breakdance allow you to set a custom breakpoint to do so.
👁️🗨️ Show or Hide Unnecessary Elements
Another setting option you can utilize to make sure your design super responsive is the ability to show or hide a certain element on specific device. This setting is super useful as not all elements need to be displayed on mobile device when it comes to responsive view.
Take a look at the screenshot of the Stripe homepage below. The smartphone image disappears when you switch to smartphone mode.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Ability to set different setting values on different devices | ✅ | ✅ |
| Ability to show/hide elements on specific device types | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom breakpoint | ✅ | ✅ |
📂 Design Assets (Fonts and Icons)
Nearly all page builder plugins come integrated with Google Fonts and Font Awesome. So do with Elementor and Breakdance. With these integrations, you can effortlessly apply a font family to a text element and icon element.
Especially for Breakdance, it is also integrated with IcoMoon. So technically, you have more icon options in Breakdance than Elementor.
While the integrations look great when it comes design process, the reality is not that great when it comes to performance.
Adding a font or icon from Google Fonts and Font Awesome will add extra HTML requests to third-party servers. More HTML requests mean longer page load time.
Fortunately, be it Elementor or Breakdance allows you to use local fonts and local icons to help reduce HTML requests.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Google Fonts integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Font Awesome integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| IcoMoon integration | ❌ | ✅ |
| Local font | ✅ | ✅ |
| Local icon | ✅ | ✅ |
I have written a post about how to use local fonts in Elementor you might want to read.
⚙️ Global Settings
Global settings is a useful feature if you always use a design system on your projects. You can use it to create the patterns of the design before you start to designt the page. The feature is also useful when your design undergo some updates.
Some components you can create the design pattern of are button, image, form, and text.
In Elementor, global settings is accessible by clicking the hamburger icon at the top-left corner of the settings panel.
While in Breakdance, you can access the feature by clicking the three-dot icon at the menu bar and select Global Settings.
🧩 Global Blocks
On a website, a block may need to be added to different pages. Instead of editing the block on every page where you want to add it to, you can create a global block and add it anywhere you want.
In the future, if you want to edit the design of the block — or add a new element — you don’t need to edit all pages where the block is added to. Instead, you can simply edit the global block and the changes will be applied to every page where it is added to. This can speed up your design process.
Here are the components you can create the global setting/pattern of.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Color | ✅ | ✅ |
| Typography | ✅ | ✅ |
| Button | ✅ | ✅ |
| Form | ✅ | ✅ |
| Image | ✅ | ✅ |
| Global blocks | ✅ | ✅ |
📐 Layout Options
I need to mention this as some page builders have poor layout options.
Elementor and Breakdance are two of the best page builders in this area. The two have implemented flexbox very well to their respective tool to allow users to create a more complex layout.
If you have no idea about flexbox yet, you can read this post from CSS-Tricks.
In short, flexbox (flexible box) is a CSS feature designed to make it easy for you to arrange the layout of the content within a container. In the context of page builder, container can be a section or column.
You needed to enable Flexbox Container first to fully use CSS flexbox in Elementor. But since version 3.16, the feature has been set as a default feature so there is no need to change anything.
Same as Elementor, Breakdance also fully supports flexbox. No additional setting required to use flexbox in Breakdance.
In addition to flexbox, both Elementor and Breakdance also supports CSS grid and inline to offer more design flexibility.
Especially for Breakdance, it has a Div element which you can use to wrap multiple elements for even more design flexibility. The same element is not available in Elementor.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Flexbox | ✅ | ✅ |
| Grid | ✅ | ✅ |
| Inline | ✅ | ✅ |
| Div | ❌ | ✅ |
🎨 Setting Options on Visual Elements
One of the nice things when working with Elementor or Breakdance is that you can apply more styling options to visual elements. Be it image or video.
Also, there are some optimization options you can utilize to make your website faster. Lazyload in particular.
Both Elementor and Breakdance allows you to use a video from popular services like YouTube and Vimeo by simply pasting the URL of video. Sure, you can also use a local video. They offer some setting options to control the video behavior.
For instance, you can disable the video sound, set the video to play continously, and so on. Elementor allows you to lazyload a video, while Breakdance doesn’t. Here are the setting options for video on Elementor and Breakdance.
What about image?
In Elementor and Breakdance, you can decorate your image elements by adding CSS effects, apply image masking, and so on.
In Elementor, if you use image as a background on a container, you can also enable lazyload. The setting is not available in Breakdance.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Autoplay (video) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Mute (video) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Loop (video) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Show player control (video) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Start and end time (video) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Lazyload (video) | ✅ | ❌ |
| CSS filters (image) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Blend mode (image) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Lazyload (image) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Image masking (image) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom aspect ratio (image) | ❌ | ✅ |
🌈 Gradient Builder
Breakdance is better than Elementor is this area. First, it allows you to apply multi-color gradient to an element, while Elementor is limited to two colors.
Second, you can directly apply a gradient effect to a text without needing to deal with CSS.
Elementor has no built-in setting to create a gradient text. Instead, you need to add custom CSS to apply a gradient effect to a text.
Third, Breakdance allows you to turn a gradient background into a cool animation.
However, there is an Elementor feature that is not available in Breakdance: dynamic color. The feature, however, requires integration with ACF.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Image masking | ✅ | ✅ |
| Lazyload | ✅ | ✅ |
| Gradient | ✅ (maximum of two colors) | ✅ (supports more than two colors) |
| Gradient animation | ❌ | ✅ |
| CSS filters | ✅ | ✅ |
| Box shadow | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dynamic color | ✅ | ❌ |
✍🏻 Typography
As I previously mentioned, both Elementor and Breakdance come integrated with Google Fonts by default to offer you a massive collection of fonts.
If you want to use your own font instead, the two also allow you to do so. As long as your font is available in either WOFF or TTF format. Elementor has a built setting option to disable Google Fonts, while Breakdance doesn’t have one.
Standard typography settings like size, font weight, and line hight are available in the two page builders. In addition, you can also apply effects like text stroke.
Elementor has no built-in setting option to apply a gradient effect to a text, while Breakdance has one. Breakdance also allows you to instantly add image in the text backround.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Google Fonts integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Local font | ✅ | ✅ |
| Text stroke | ✅ | ✅ |
| Image on text background | ❌ | ✅ |
| Gradient text | ❌ | ✅ |
| Text decoration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Text transform | ✅ | ✅ |
| Text shadow | ✅ | ✅ |
| Word spacing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Letter spacing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Line height | ✅ | ✅ |
| Font weight | ✅ | ✅ |
🪄 Animation
Whichever the page builder you eventually use, you will be able to add animation touch to your design as the two offers built-in animation affects.
The simplest animation effect you can apply to your design is hover effect which you can apply to button, image, and other elements.
Breakdance, as I previously mentioned, allows you to turn a gradient backround into an appealing animation effect. Elementor doesn’t allow you to achieve the same thing, but it supports parallax background, which is not supported by Breakdance.
Want to take your animation to the next level?
You can utilize both scrolling effect and animation effect, which are supported by the two page builders.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Scrolling effects | ✅ | ✅ |
| Mouse effects | ✅ | ❌ |
| Hover animation | ✅ | ✅ |
| CSS transform | ✅ | ✅ |
| Entrance animations | ✅ | ✅ |
| Parallax background | ✅ | ❌ |
| Sticky effect | ✅ | ✅ |
| Animated gradient background | ❌ | ✅ |
👨💻 Custom CSS
Elementor and Breakdance are made by human so they are far from pefect. If you can’t find a certain style option whereas you need it, custom CSS are there to help.
Be it Elementor or Breakdance uses the same approach for custom CSS. You need to define the selector before they can apply a CSS style. In other words, you need to perform an inspect on web browser to figure out the CSS selector of an element you want to apply the custom CSS to.
Breakdance allows you to turn the CSS editor into a full-width mode for a more convenient editing, but it doesn’t support autocomplete yet.
In Elementor, although you can’t turn the CSS editor into a full-width mode, you can minimize typos thanks to its automplete feature.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Syntax highlighting | ✅ | ✅ |
| Autocomplete | ✅ | ❌ |
| Full-width editor | ❌ | ✅ |
Elementor vs Breakdance: General Features Comparison
That was the general design feature available on Elementor and Breakdance. Let’s switch to other supporting features that the two offer.
👕 Theme Builder
Most page builder plugins now have a theme builder feature. So do with Elementor and Breakdance.
Well, Breakdance doesn’t explicitely mention the feature “theme builder” but it certainly has one. You can even use the feature for free although it lacks of dynamic elements until you upgrade to the pro version.
On the other han, theme builder is a feature that Elementor prouds of much. As far as I know, Elementor is the first page builder plugin to offer theme builder feature in the WordPress world.
Not only does theme builder allow you to create a custom header and footer, but it also allows you to create custom templates for archive pages, search results page, single post, and so on.
The theme builder feature of Elementor and Breakdance supports display condition. Meaning that you can assign a certain template for a specific location on your website:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom header | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom footer | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom archive pages | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom search results page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom single post | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom single page | ✅ | ✅ |
| 404 page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Display condition | ✅ | ✅ |
🛍️ WooCommerce Builder
In addition to editing the default site parts of WordPress as I just mentioned, the theme builder feature of Elementor and Breakdance can also be used to create custom templates for WooCommerce.
After installing and activating the WooCommerce plugin on your website, you will see extra elements which you can add to your custom templates for WooCommerce.
Take a look at the following table to figure out which WooCommerce parts you can create the custom template of with Elementor and Breakdance.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Shop page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cart page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Checkout page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Customers’ account page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Single product page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Product archieves | ✅ | ✅ |
🔧 Dynamic Content
Theme builder is a useless feature unless it supports dynamic content. Thankfully, Elementor and Breakdance support dynamic content.
You can add dynamic elements to your custom templates. From site logo, site name, post title, to post content.
Not just the default dynamic content of WordPress, both Elementor and Breakdance also allows you add dynamic content pulled from custom fields. The two support integration with the most popular custom field plugin: ACF.
Here is the list of dynamic content that Elementor and Breakdance support:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Site title | ✅ | ✅ |
| Site logo | ✅ | ✅ |
| Post title | ✅ | ✅ |
| Post excerpt | ✅ | ✅ |
| Post meta | ✅ | ✅ |
| Archive title | ✅ | ✅ |
| Archive description | ✅ | ✅ |
| Featured image | ✅ | ✅ |
| User name | ✅ | ✅ |
| User avatar | ✅ | ✅ |
| User bio | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom fields | ✅ | ✅ |
📩 Form Builder
Form is an element that most websites have. If you use Elementor or Breakdance, installing a dedicated form builder plugin not necessary.
You can use the form builder feature of Elementor and Breakdance whether to create a simple contact form or email opt-in form.
In Breakdance, form builder is available on both versions (free and pro). While in Elementor, you can only use its form builder feature if you use the pro version. Also, not all form builder features can be used even if you have upgraded to the pro version.
For instance, email marketing integration is only accessible if you subscribe to the Essential plan or higher. So is with form submission manager.
The form builder feature of Breakdance is a bit better than Elementor. First, it has a native functionality to create a registration form. In Elementor, you need to add a custom function to create a registration form.
Second, the form builder feature of Breakdance supports conditional logic to allow you to show a form field based on certain criteria.
The form builder feature of Elementor and Breakdance support integration with popular services like ConverKit, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, to Mailchimp.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of supported fields | 16 | 13 |
| Third-party integration | ✅ (not available in the Essential plan) | ✅ |
| Submission manager | ✅ (not available in the Essential plan) | ✅ |
| Multi-step form | ✅ | ✅ |
| Conditional logic | ❌ | ✅ |
| Security | Honeypost, reCAPTCHA | Honeypost, reCAPTCHA |
| Login form | ✅ | ✅ |
| Registration form | ❌ | ✅ |
🫧 Popup Builder
Popup builder is a feature that both Elementor and Breakdance have. In Elementor, the feature is only available on the pro version. While in Breakdance, you can access the feature even if you use the free version. However, you need to upgrade to the pro version to use all of the trigger types. The free version is limited to on-click trigger.
You can actually create a popup in Elementor Free, but it takes extra effort as you need to deal with JavaScript and CSS.
Overall, the popup builder feature of Elementor and Breakdance are not much different. You have a full control over the design. You can also set on which pages within your website the popup should show up.
Regarding trigger type, Elementor and Breakdance allow you to display the popup using one of the following trigger types:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| On page load | ✅ | ✅ |
| On page scroll | ✅ | ✅ |
| On click | ✅ | ✅ |
| After inactivity | ✅ | ✅ |
| Exit intent | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hide for logged users | ✅ | ✅ |
| Show on specific browsers | ✅ | ✅ |
| Show on specific devices | ✅ | ✅ |
| Coming from search engines | ✅ | ✅ |
| Coming from specific URL | ✅ | ✅ |
| By date and time | ✅ | ✅ |
👁️ Display Condition
Display condition is a feature that you can use to display elements only if a certain or two conditions are met. For instance, you can display a text only if a user is loggen in. Or vice versa, you can hide a text from logged in user.
You can implement the feature for a wide range of purposes. From creating a membership website to displaying a promotional banner by users’ behavior or technology they use.
Display condition can be used to show or hide all element types in Elementor and Breakdance. From container to actual design elements.
Here are the conditions that Elementor and Breakdance support:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Page | ✅ | ✅ |
| Page parent | ✅ | ✅ |
| Post ID | ✅ | ✅ |
| Post status | ✅ | ✅ |
| Comments number | ✅ | ✅ |
| Author | ✅ | ✅ |
| Feature image | ✅ | ✅ |
| Login status | ✅ | ✅ |
| Registration date | ✅ | ✅ |
| User role | ✅ | ✅ |
| Web browser | ✅ | ✅ |
| Operating system | ✅ | ✅ |
| Date and time | ✅ | ✅ |
| URL | ✅ | ✅ |
🔗 Action Links
Elementor has a useful feature that rarely mentioned by reviewers. The feature is action link. With the feature, you can set a certain action to a link instead of redirect your visitors to another page.
For instance, you can set a link to start a WhatsApp chat when it is clicked. This feature is particularly useful if you often use Elementor to create landing pages.
The same feature is also available in Breakdance. In Breakdance, you can also set a link to start a WhatsApp chat when it is clicked.
Here are the actions you can set with this feature:
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| Open/close popup | ✅ | ✅ |
| Open lightbox | ✅ | ✅ |
| Send an email | ✅ | ✅ |
| Send text message | ✅ | ✅ |
| Make a phone call | ✅ | ✅ |
| Start a Skype chat | ✅ | ❌ |
| Start a Messanger chat | ✅ | ❌ |
| Start a WhatsApp chat | ✅ | ✅ |
| Start a Viber chat | ✅ | ❌ |
| Send to Google Calendar | ✅ | ❌ |
| Send to Outlook Calendar | ✅ | ❌ |
| Send to Yahoo Calendar | ✅ | ❌ |
💳 Elementor vs Breakdance: Pricing
Elementor and Breakdance adopt the same business model. They offer their plugin for free with an option to upgrade to the pro version to unlock more advanced features.
Be it Elementor or Breakdance accepts subscription-based payment option only. No one-time payment option is accepted.
The pro version of Elementor is available in four plans, with the cheapest plan costs you a $59 per year for a single website. The highest plan costs you a $399 per year for 1,000 websites. Elementor doesn’t offer a plan for unlimited websites.
Breakdance, meanwhile, charges you $99 per year for a single website. Crucial to note that this plan allows you to unlock all the pro versions.
In Elementor, the cheapest plan doesn’t allow access to popup builder, WooCommerce builder, form submission manager and marketing integrations, custom CSS, and several other features. You can visit this page to learn more.
To make this comparison fair, I created the following table to compare how much you need to spend for certain number of websites.
| Elementor | Breakdance | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 website | $59/year * | $99/year |
| 10 websites | $199/year | $199/year |
| 25 websites | $199/year | $299/year |
| 100 websites | $399/year | $299/year |
| 1000 websites | $399/year | $299/year |
| Learn More | Learn More |
* Exlcude popup builder, marketing integrations, custom CSS, WooCommerce builder, form submission manager, custom field, custom post type. Learn more.
📝 Conclusion: So, Which is Better?
It’s not easy to answer the above question. There are some aspects to consider to make the conclusion. From editing experience, features, to usability.
Overall, the editing exeperience of Elementor and Breakance is not too different. They use a centralized panel to host design elements and the settings. They also allow you to adopt a mobile-first methodology thanks to their advanced responsive editing feature.
The features that Elementor and Breakdance offer are also similar. The only different is that Elementor comes with a PayPal Button element and Stripe Button element which you can use to accept payment without installing an extra plugin.
Also, you can enrich your design elements collection thanks to its add-on support. Actually, it is something that Breakdance against. Instead of allowing users to install add-ons, Breakdance wants users to stick to what it offers. That’s why it offers more design elements than Elementor.
Still, not everything can be achieved with the default design elements of Breakdance. And since Breakdance doesn’t support add-on like Elementor, you will be locked out in a situation where you need to add more features to your website.
So, Should You use Elementor or Breakdance?
Once again. It depends.
Elementor is a great option if you are:
- A small business owner looking to create a website by your own
- Wanting to sell digital products without installing extra WordPress plugin
- Looking to create a WooCommerce-based online store with your own design
- A blogger who has a big concern on design and UX
- A freelancer or agency
Meanwhile, Breakdance is a better suited option if you are:
- A freelancer or agency looking for a more affordable solution to create unlimited projects
- Looking for a more affordable solution to create landing page to collect leads
- Looking to create a WooCommerce-based online store with your own design
- A blogger who has a big concern on design and UX
- A small business owner looking to create a website by your own
.
