Elegant Themes Divi Theme HONEST Review 2023: Is It Worth The Money?
Elegant Themes specializes in high-quality WordPress themes and user-friendly plugins, their world class Divi theme is no exception. Elegant Themes (especially Divi) comes highly recommended for WordPress beginners as well as those keen on developing gorgeous, functional sites without learning a line of code!
Effectiveness
Both the Divi and Extra Magazine theme work exceptionally well across devices, have 800+ pre-made web layouts and encourage easy editing by a ‘drag and drop’ process. Bloom and Monarch marketing plugins are beneficial, with basic features provided.
Price
Fantastic value for money! Easy to understand pricing packages, with a 30-day money-back guaranteed.
User-friendliness
Ideal for beginners and individuals with little to no coding experience.
Service
Help and support options are wide; including live chats, forums and strong community support. Occasional complaints about live chat customer support -but dedicated team to tackle each issue personally.
It’s easy to get stuck in an endless browse of deciding the right theme for your WordPress blog. Worst part yet -most of them can cost a pretty penny for just one measly theme.
Cue Elegant Themes. A well-known name throughout the world of all things WordPress; Elegant Themes designs wildly successful themes, plugins and more.
They’ve even just passed the 600k+ total downloads mark, with no intentions of stopping!
Elegant Themes is an extremely user-friendly theme option to start off with if you’re just a beginner with WordPress. Just so you can be 100% sure of your decision, this Elegant Themes review will break down (in detail!) why you should totally start using it for your website.
What is Elegant Themes for WordPress?
Image via Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes has been put on the map for releasing almost 90 beautifully designed, fully functional themes and about 5 plugins over the span of 11 years.
The brand’s history starts with Nick Roach, its founder. After explosive success, they grew well on its way to become one of the most used theme solutions for WordPress users.
Elegant Themes then went on to build one of the most accomplished WordPress products to date – the Divi WordPress theme. At the moment, this single theme is responsible for powering over 2 million websites!
What to consider before buying Divi from Elegant Themes?
If you’ve got your eyes set on designing your site with Elegant Themes, here are a few things to take a closer look at.
1. User-Friendliness
Firstly, fret not if you’re a total WordPress newbie!
All of Elegant Themes’ products are designed to make life as uncomplicated as possible for you when creating your website from scratch. This makes it the ideal option to go with if you’re a small business owner, or a freelancer just starting with the basics.
2. Code Flexibility
As with some pre-designed themes on the market, it’s safe to say that this probably isn’t something to opt for if you’re a seasoned developer. There is some wiggle room that lets you customize its modules (defining custom CSS fields, including select extensions, etc) -but this too has its limits.
Because Elegant Themes requires you to follow their strict framework, switching back and forth between themes can be a little messy too.
Keep this in mind if you’re still not sure what you want your website to look and feel like!
You might want to start out experimenting with free theme options that are more lightweight. This way – it won’t leave behind chunks of weird code when you want to switch it up.
In the meantime, you could test the waters with free, basic WordPress themes like Neve, Zakra and ShopIsle.
This way -you’re aware of what you want (and what you don’t) when it comes to your website’s interface.
What are you getting with Elegant Themes and Divi?
If you’re ready to leap straight into a forever theme, here’s what Elegant Themes are prepared to offer:
a) The Divi Theme & Visual Page Builder
Image via Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes’ flagship theme,‘Divi’, is unmatched in terms of features, visual website builder, design, and conversion options.
It has been downloaded over 2 million times in total. At the moment, it also single-handedly powers an exact 1,170,426 websites in 2019.
From e-commerce, lifestyle blogs, official company websites, and so much more in between -Divi is built to suit the expectations of all kinds of design needs.
Elegant Themes made the Divi theme its pride and joy back in 2013. Ever since -Divi has quite literally been the dream of web designers and developers everywhere for how comprehensive, seamless, and easy to use on WordPress.
Using the Divi theme comes with its own set of awesome perks. There are hundreds of free design elements, vectors, and other unique options to let you fully customize the interface of your site. Also, imagine 40+ slider templates, call-to-actions (CTA’s), galleries, forms, testimonials and tons more content you can use to amp your site up.
Let’s get a little nitty-gritty. Exactly how does downloading the Elegant Themes work in your favor?
1. Customization & Efficiency
Say you’re too short on time needed to build, arrange, and edit everything from scratch. In an instant, Divi shows you hundreds of full, pre-made web layouts that you can import immediately. Just start adding your own text and branding -you’ve got a whole website just like that!
Remember how we mentioned Elegant Themes being a total miracle for beginners?
The Divi interface is meant to be the perfect first-time theme for WordPress newbies. Since it operates on a ‘drag and drop’ basis as with the Divi Builder -there’s zero coding knowledge involved.
Speaking of, the Divi Plugin is a total feat in itself.
If you’re already using another WordPress theme on your site -it’s still an option to utilize the power of the Divi Builder.
The Divi Builder is a plugin that lets you use a ‘drag and drop’ based editing process to add new design elements, templates, and edit other modules with ease. No coding knowledge involved; a total win for WordPress beginners.
So it really doesn’t matter if you’re working with, let’s say an OceanWP or Astra theme at the moment. The Divi Builder isn’t looking to replace your existing theme! It’s rather a standalone, third-party plugin that wants to make your editing much easier.
You can still customize your pages and content without worrying about it messing up your layout.
In fact, editing altogether becomes a much faster experience -with mobile compatibility editing, easy undos & revisions, saving options and much more little things that would streamline your workflow.
Image via Elegant Themes
This also includes really useful tools like quick duplication and a ‘history panel’ that helps you revert back to previous versions of your design if you change your mind.
Everything is customizable with both the Divi theme and its page builder plugin. You’re also presented with awesome animation effects, font text styling, responsiveness editing for mobiles and tablets, etc. so you get the picture-perfect website for your brand.
2. eCommerce Abilities
Divi keeps it simple when it comes to e-commerce. Essentially, if you have an already existing WooCommerce site, Divi just lets you integrate the two and start selling all your products instantly.
There’s really nothing extra about Divi’s eCommerce abilities, though.
The basics of editing product pages, animating listings, and other WooCommerce features are all at play – but Divi doesn’t find the need to add on any other swanky options on top of what’s already included.
3. Managing Your Website
If you’re a freelance web designer or developer – Divi wants to make the entire process of switching permissions and accesses an easier one.
Image via Elegant Themes
The above picture is what’s known as the Divi Role Editor. Once you’ve designed, developed, and handed off a Divi website, you can adjust all user roles and controls from right here.
For instance, you might allow clients to edit texts and font styling -but to limit what they can do with other design aspects on the webpage. You can even completely max the controls out; locking permissions for your clients to edit, delete or add other design elements if you wish.
This all became possible in the brand new Divi 4.0 version – which works well if you don’t want clients accidentally erasing your hard work or messing up an existing layout.
b) The ‘Extra Magazine’ Theme
It’s safe to say that Divi’s 4.0 theme and builder are impressive releases by Elegant Themes. But they’ve got much more to offer -and the Extra Magazine theme is proof of just that!
While Divi is a multipurpose theme that can be used for literally every niche; the Extra gets more specific. This theme was designed to work in favor of online magazines, journalistic blogs, and other styles that require a whole lot of emphasis on writing and text content.
You can access Extra’s live demo right here -but this is what it essentially looks like:
Image via Elegant Themes
As you can tell, lots of grids and columns here. Perfect for the budding online journalist or content writer intent on showcasing their portfolio in a smooth, clean design.
Plus, a lot of their layout styles and design options are centered around a visual-rich rationale. Modules like featured images, carousel posts, article sliders, tabbed posts, etc are all popular with Extra’s users.
The best part? Extra works perfectly in sync with the Divi builder!
So naturally, this also comes with the 800+ page templates that are already packaged in the visual builder.
As a content writer, it’s important to note that your readers don’t want to be bombarded with too much text on your webpages. Attention spans are getting shorter, and you don’t want your readers to be turned off by your clogged up posts.
Personally, this is what I think the Extra theme solves better than most. Here are some of my favorites:
Image via Elegant Themes
My personal experience with WordPress themes in the past used to be about choosing one or the other. Going with an attractive design that has more visuals but lacks useful information, vs. opting for a theme that includes all necessary text, but is terribly plain and old-fashioned.
Extra manages to tread the fine line between the two. The layout packs to choose from prove to be much more modern and sleek (a lot of white space, so readers aren’t overwhelmed), yet still organizes the text in a way that’s easy to understand.
Another interesting feature to note is Extra’s product review system. For example, let’s say you’re about to release a write-up on a new product or service. Extra lets you add custom breakdowns to your review – like rating it based on user-friendliness, price, support, etc.
Image via Elegant Themes
In the end – the tallied percentages are then integrated into your post feed for your readers to glance through.
You can even see how different types of posts are performing with Extra’s user reviews, which allow your readers to rate each post with a simple star rating.
Other features worth mentioning about Extra’s theme is its integration with WooCommerce to sell products (much like the Divi!) and 7 different blog post formats that are geared towards Videos, Gallery, Audio, Texts, Map, Links and Quotes, as well.
Note that Elegant Themes have released approximately 87 WordPress themes since they were founded. However, most of their older themes aren’t even promoted on their official website anymore. Both Divi and Extra are the only active, regularly updated ones.
c) Bloom Email Plugin
Image via Elegant Themes
Remember how we mentioned using Divi to bring in more email subscribers? That’s not just a happy coincidence.
The Bloom Email tool is a WordPress-friendly lead generation plugin that wants to grow your following by targeting, converting, and managing user data.
How? Bloom leverages the very important science behind UI/UX to drive more web visitors into real subscribers for your site.
You’re already using opt-in forms to rack up subscribers. But weeks turn into months -and there’s little to no traction happening here.
This is why instead of hiding your opt-in form somewhere on the bottom of your homepage, Bloom lets you have your pick from 6 way more engaging display types.
You can set your opt-in forms to fly in automatically, have it appear below a piece of content, or even have it pop-up to unlock premium content for your site!
All of these prompts can then be controlled through trigger settings. These determine when, where, and how your opt-in is displayed based on various user interactions.
Has someone bought a product on your site? Send them a future purchase discount code when they subscribe to your email list! Or maybe a user’s been inactive on your page for a little too long. Grab their attention back to your content after any amount of desired time!
However, let’s be honest here. Bloom’s email opt-in is by no means a shabby effort by Elegant Themes, but there’s no way it compares to other standalone email plugins.
OptinMonster, for example, is a power-packed plugin that employs its very own exit-intent strategy to reduce cart abandonment, device-based publishing, and smart subscriber recognition by offering various offers to different visitors each time. Other email plugins like the Sumo WordPress plugin also share similar, superior features and has been downloaded over 100,000 times.
So even though Bloom gets the job done – it’s a little more suited for beginners to intermediate websites that are just gearing up for managing email subscriptions.
If you’re an existing user of other standalone plugins (like OptinMonster, Sumo, etc), you’re not missing out on much.
On a side note, Bloom also focuses on the long-term methods of improving conversion rates.
To do this, Elegant Themes set up something they called the ‘Bloom Dashboard’. For reference, it looks something like this:
Image via Elegant Themes
The dashboard does exactly what it claims to do -manage user data gained from impressions, subscribers, etc and totaling the overall conversion percentage.
For this very aspect, anyway -Bloom just covers the absolute basics. Their dashboard system pretty much mirrors what you can get from any other WordPress email marketing plugin like OptinMonster. This includes system A/B testing, integrating your email provider software data (supports 19 major providers like MailChimp, ConvertKit, etc) and compiling real-time email list statistics.
d) Monarch Social Media Plugin
Image via Elegant Themes
We know you want to concentrate on enhancing your website’s presence, but that’s not an excuse to postpone social media growth!
This is why exactly why the Monarch social media plugin matters.
Monarch connects your web visitors to 20 major social networks that you might be on. Much like Bloom, social sharing buttons can be customized according to the template of your choice, color options, buttons, hover effects, and more. Triggers (much like Bloom’s email opt-in forms) can also be activated after certain user interactions.
Let’s get into my favorite interactive feature of the Monarch, which is the social count.
Image via Elegant Themes
It’s a comparatively tiny thing to be excited about -but it really makes all social links look so much more attractive!
We can’t vouch for all of them, but such social counters usually have to be downloaded as a separate plugin to have it displayed in such a way. Monarch does away with all that -giving its buttons a really professional, cool feel.
I wouldn’t consider this a con per se -but Elegant Themes does not employ Divi builder’s ‘drag and drop’ interfaces for both Bloom and Monarch plugins.
This isn’t necessarily something negative.
The settings via a simple backend dashboard give you lots of placement choices. But perhaps this wouldn’t work well for developers/designers who want to decide precisely where to insert the social sharing options or opt-in forms.
Again, a plugin like Sumo would take the cake here, as they let you insert your social media buttons anywhere you’d like.
Of course, Monarch comes with a similar dashboard to Bloom’s. This time, however, it breaks down social media engagement (likes, shares, retweets) via colorful charts!
Yet again, Monarch is an awesome beginner’s tool for racking up your followers. Nonetheless -we’re not so sure about its abilities as a full-fledged social media tracking and management plugin.
Eventually, when your website starts to grow, there might be a need for you to upgrade to a more inclusive social media plugin, which covers more ground!
Social Warfare is hands-down one of the best ones out there (with abilities like link shortening, share recovery when switching domains, is extremely developer-friendly, etc).
Our take? Monarch has everything you could possibly need in a social media tracker. While Social Warfare has everything that you could want when you’re really going all-in with aggressive social media marketing.
e) Transparent, Risk-Free Pricing Plan
Image via Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes’ pricing packages can be broken down into two simple plans.
The $89 package would give you access to all Elegant Themes’ goodies for a year, while the $249 plan is a one-off, lifetime deal.
Note that price and time period (annual vs. lifetime) are the only two differences about both these packages. As long as you’re a paying member of Elegant Themes, you’re getting the same access to each and every one of their products.
You heard me. Full, undisturbed access to:
- The ‘Divi’ All in One Theme
- Divi’s ‘drag and drop’ Builder plugin
- The ‘Extra’ Magazine Theme
- Bloom’s Email Opt-In Plugin
- Monarch’s Social Media Plugin
Say what you want, but that’s one hell of a package deal. You can find WordPress themes online that cost more than 100 bucks for just one theme!
So 2 themes, one visual builder and 2 plugins for less than 90 bucks a year is an absolute steal. Hats off to the Elegant Themes team on this one.
Sadly, it’s not possible to purchase one single product from Elegant Themes as of yet. Their entire pricing model operates on a membership basis, so you’re getting the whole bundle of themes and plugins. Whether or not you end up using is totally up to you.
However, they do have a risk-free guarantee if you’ve changed your mind about the purchase, you get a 100% of your money back within the first 30 days! No questions asked.
If you’ve exhausted the one year trial, renewing prices are also locked at a cool $89, no pesky added fees involved.
I have yet to elaborate on my favorite part of these Elegant Themes’ packages. Did you know that even the $89 package comes with unlimited licenses?
That’s an unlimited amount of times you can use Divi, or Bloom, or any of their products across any number of websites you own. There’s absolutely no need to switch to different plans or top-up licenses each time you create a website!
This also works in favor of freelance web designers, developers, or anyone else that’s working to constantly publish new websites.
You can even import and export Bloom and Monarch’s settings between all of the sites you own -making your social media management efforts that much easier.
f) Help & Support
According to their website, Elegant Themes’ flagship products are updated quite frequently. All updates are to smooth out bugs, carry out improvements for user experience, and to keep up with whatever the latest version of WordPress there is.
However, it’s not fair to assume that you’ll never encounter some variation of a problem using their products. When that happens -who do you reach out to?
Here are some of the ways you can get help from Elegant Themes:
1. Live Chat Support
This live chat is open to all potential and existing users of Elegant Themes, 24/7! What’s really cool about this live chat is that it instantly connects you to an expert on the very product you might have a question on. Here’s what I mean:
Image via Elegant Themes
Pretty useful, huh? This way, there’s less time wasted on a customer rep who has to connect you to someone else anyway.
2. Classic ‘Support’ Forum
Before the introduction of their live chat, Elegant Themes relied heavily on answering questions on their support forum. Although they don’t do that any longer – only interacting via email and chat – you can still find everything from troubleshooting options, frequently asked questions, and other helpful tips from similar users right here!
3. Community Support
Elegant Themes paints the picture that they are home to the ‘World’s #1 WordPress Theme’. I have no trouble believing that, considering just how massive their online community – for Divi users especially – remains. Divi’s official Facebook group houses more than 40k members, posting up to 60 posts/day! Feel free to join this group if you’re serious with developing websites through Divi – as it also serves its purpose as a one-stop update center for everything related to the theme.
Although a little more unconventional, you can also check out Elegant Themes’ official YouTube page right here. They’re surprisingly active -frequently posting up short, step-by-step tutorials on all things related to their products.
What are people saying about Divi & Elegant Themes?
All reviews you see here are taken from Trustpilot. Elegant Themes has an outstanding TrustScore of 4.9/5 with just a little more than 2,300 reviews at the moment of writing.
Image via Elegant Themes
After doing some homework, there are two major things that frequently come up when users rate Elegant Themes.
The above 3 screenshots are just a fraction of it -but users really do love the ultimate simplicity of it all.
A huge chunk of the reviews on Trustpilot involve total WordPress beginners who are particularly fond of its no-coding ‘drag and drop’ interface.
When it comes to help and support, however, it’s sort of a mixed bag. There are hundreds of reviews that swear by Elegant Themes’ amazing, prompt replies. However, there’s also a select few that don’t seem to share the sentiment.
What seems to be the case here is that Elegant Themes’ support is susceptible to having an off day or two. In the sense, they might take more than a couple of hours (worst case scenario, 1-2 days) to respond to a query if they are experiencing a high volume of open tickets.
Despite the possible slow reply times, Elegant Themes does make it a priority to respond to their customers on Trustpilot. Even to the occasional angry, 1-star rant, which is commendable.
Is Elegant Themes or Divi right for you?
Since this is an unbiased Elegant Themes review – let’s break down where it succeeds and fails in honest detail.
PROS
- Affordable, transparent pricing packages. Great value for money! Also has a lifetime deal.
- Unlimited usage for any number of websites.
- The Divi Builder’s ‘drag and drop’ interface makes it ideal for WordPress beginners.
- Easy for beginners. Little to no coding knowledge required to start using products.
- Wide collection of 800+ premade website layouts that are multi-functional and customizable.
CONS
- Monarch and Bloom plugins only cover the basics - lacks more thorough features compared to competitor plugins.
- Possible long wait for official customer service help due to high traffic.
What are some Elegant Themes alternatives?
Thrive Themes works similarly to Elegant Themes -producing quality themes and plugins for WordPress websites. While Divi is the ever-popular golden boy for the former, Thrive Themes also boasts their own ‘drag and drop’ editor called Thrive Architect.
Thrive Themes include an exhaustive arsenal of promotional tools (lead generation, quiz builders, clever widgets, and more) as an effort to appeal to their target audience of mostly marketing whizzes.
However, their prices are a huge leap from Elegant Themes. Thrive’s membership program gives you two options; buy from them quarterly ($30/month) or annually ($19/month) and use on 25 websites. If you’re working on an agency membership -it’s quarterly ($69/month) or annually ($49/month) for a total of 50 websites.
Unlike Elegant Themes, Thrive also lets you purchase licenses for each product if you’re not interested in a membership with all its products.
There’s no way an Elegant Themes review would be complete without comparing it to the infamous Elementor!
Elementor, too brands themselves as the ‘World’s Leading WordPress Page Builder’ and boasts a current download mark of more than 3 million active users. Instead of having specific products, Elementor rather just classifies them as features that come all-included when you purchase one of their Pro plans.
Their pricing plans range from $49 to $199 per year -depending once again on the number of websites you want to work with. Nonetheless, as long as you’re a paid member, rest assured you’ll have access to all of their marketing, widgets, integrations, theme builder, development, and other options in an instant.
Astra believes in letting simple, beautiful template designs do the talking for them.
Conducting a quick search on WordPress.org’s most popular will immediately show you Astra as one of their top 10 items! They also stand at a massive 500,000+ active downloads and soar with 5/5 stars.
Unlike the Divi theme or layouts from Elementor that can stand to get pretty heavy, Astra is super lightweight, with only 50KB being used on the frontend.
Astra is ready to be installed 100% free in their basic version if you want to try them out! Though if you do want to gain access to plugins like the Schema Pro and Convert Pro – you have to choose between plans ranging from $59 to $249.
Elegant Themes
Price/year: $89 (unlimited sites)
Free version: None
Pairing with WooCommerce: Yes
Templates: 800+
Trustpilot rating: 4.9
Price/year:
$228 (25 sites)
$588 (50 sites)
Free version: None
Pairing with WooCommerce: Yes
Templates: 322
Trustpilot rating: 4.1
Elementor
Price:
$49 (1 site)
$99 (3 sites)
$199 (1,000 sites)
Free version: Yes
Pairing with WooCommerce: Yes
Templates: 300+
Trustpilot rating: 4.2
Astra Themes
Price:
$59
$169
$249
**according to features
Free version: Yes
Pairing with WooCommerce: Yes
Templates: 55+ Starter Sites
Trustpilot rating: 4.8
Our Recommendation
Now that you’re all caught up – should Elegant Themes get our ultimate vote of confidence?
We’re comfortable saying yes.
Elegant Themes has all the marks of an awesome, fun website builder package that is optimized for WordPress beginners. User-friendly? Check. Affordable with great value? Check. Customizable and with a wide plethora of designs? Check, check, and check!
You could be starting from scratch with a new Divi theme, or revamping your old theme with Divi’s powerful builder. All of this, while benefiting from two, easy-to-use plugins that grow your leads and social following.
The point of the matter stands – Elegant Themes is a worthwhile investment for your WordPress site! Take the leap right now with an Elegant Themes’ membership, with a 30-day guaranteed money back if you’re not totally in love with it by then.
DISCLOSURE: The HUSTLR goal is to help readers navigate around the digital economy by learning digital skills to achieve their life goals. This blog post may contain affiliate link(s) and any purchase(s) made through such links will result in a small commission to HUSTLR (at no cost to you). However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We try our best to keep things fair in order to help you make the best choice.
Jesslyn has been a senior content strategist and writer for personal finance and side hustles for the past 4 years. She believes in the power of an idea and breaking the rules whenever necessary. Above all, balance is everything. When she’s not writing up a mad scramble, she leans towards wine bars and yoga studios on the weekends.
4 thoughts on “Elegant Themes Divi Theme HONEST Review 2023: Is It Worth The Money?”
I am agreeing with the affordable pricing, 1 license allow to host multiple website. Divi is one of my best choice in WP's journey.
Yeah we have good experiences with Divi but we use Elementor most of the time now.
Have you ever actually reached out to them for support? You must be an affiliate partner of ET...
I've been with Elegant Themes for years but I have to say that over the years the support has been getting progressively worse. There is 1-2 people who actually help but a crowd more that never help. You get passed around from 1 person to another and every time they "take over" for the other person, they give you list of links to articles that you've already tried.
When I saw "lifetime", I thought, "uh oh, support is going to get even worse". I am starting to think that I'm an idiot: I resisted upgrading to lifetime for years and instead have been paying every year in the belief that it's a bad idea for them to switch to lifetime and they need yearly money to continue to support me and everyone else. My money has clearly been going down the drain instead. I think I'll have to jump ship pretty soon but I'll have to migrate my 300+ post website which I'm dreading.
Disclaimer: We are an affiliate partner of ET. However - I've been using Divi on some of my own sites for the longest time and never had an issue with them. It definitely takes a lot of experience but if you're using it to build up a simple website it's pretty damn powerful.