Elementor Pro VS Zion Builder Speed Test & Performance Review!

[@sirhenryhu]

Hi there. Thanks for the comparison. Very useful but it might be better as the others say about heavy-loading pages comparison. Personally, I use Elementor as the main tool to achieve goals in website design since I'm not techy at all. However, loading speed has never been so important at the modern stage so it triggers me thinking switching from Elementor to another. Yes, Elementor has its own advantages, full of kits non-techies need and easy to use for instance, but it really adds up the requests to drag down the loading speed. In fact, this is why I come to see the comparison between Zion and Elementor. I'd like to know what you think of Zion and Elementor. I've built some websites with your tutorials that are incredibly useful to me. Therefore, your opinion is very valuable to me since you've cultivated so much content about Elementor.

[@elementhow691]

Update : Elementor is still working on improving their performance, and with version 3.3, with all optimizations 'alpha' features enabled under Elementor > Settings > Experiments, an 'empty' page (same as in the video) is now down to 174kb.

[@roybatty88]

Congratulations, this comparison test is very interesting.

[@giuseppenobili6072]

Why does Elementor's page have Heading and paragraphs in your test and Zion's only Heading?

[@elementhow691]

Simply because it got added automatically to the Elementor page... from the blocks editor content. You can subtract ~1kb from the Elementor total to compensate!

[@iwbowden]

I've watched comparison videos like this showing the dramatic differences in number of requests and file sizes and such from Oxygen and others and consider tham all to be flawed in one significant aspect: They don't do any heavy-loaded-page comparisons. Doing an empty page comparison is interesting but ultimately useless because nobody in the real world that wants a functional website would ever post an empty one! Running a comparison with a few elements on the page is helpful -- but what about one that has a half dozen sections on the home page with ten different elements (text boxes, accordions, flip boxes, images, slider, etc.)? Isn't that truly more of a real world situation? What if Zion Builder actually gets less efficient with each added element and Elementor doesn't? The end result might not be as significant. I'm not really familiar with Zion and its range of available widgets, but surely there must be enough commonality between it and Elementor to load up a page with the widgets they both have and see what the results are.

[@elementhow691]

It's a valid point Ian, and I actually am working on this. I will create the exact same page in Elementor and Zion, and then we will compare the performance. Having said that, testing an empty page is still a very valid test, as it measures the bloat of the tool. Zion's bloat amounts to a total of 3kb (Total page size 57kb, 54kb of which was from default WordPress stuff, and the theme) whereas Elementor's bloat is 164kb (218kb total, also 54kb from default WP stuff & theme) This means that with Elementor, every single page will start at 218kb, even if they have almost no content. With Zion, it starts at 57kb. You add the exact same content to each one of them, the same difference will be reflected... ie add a 100kb image, Zion becomes 157kb in total, Elementor 318kb.

[@iwbowden]

@@elementhow691 Acknowledging that an empty page is still somewhat valid, please consider the following analogy, which I think does apply here, as different as it is to website-building software! Each of us has an empty toolbox. Yours weighs 1kg and mine weighs 5kg. You laugh at me and say, "Your toolbox weighs five times as much as mine, so you have to work five times as hard just to carry it around!" But an empty toolbox is not very useful. You then add five tools to your toolbox, each of them weighing 1kg. Your box now weighs 6kg. I add the same five tools to my kit, but I've got special tools that weigh half what yours do, so my toolbox now weighs 7.5kg. When you've got 15 tools in your kit - which is what we require to do our jobs - you're hauling around 16kg. My toolkit, with the same (but lighter) tools, weighs only 12.5kg. And you laughed at my heavy toolbox! Oh, and by the way, your toolbox is now broken because it was so light and not built as solidly as mine that it's fallen apart with the weight of your heavy tools! (Well, maybe that last point in my analogy doesn't apply.) If, for example, Zion's accordion widget is significantly more bloated than the comparable Elementor widget, what's the point of stating that Zion has less initial overhead? In summary, comparing real world situations - and that doesn't include empty websites - is the only proper way to run a test like this.

[@EduwareIzekor]

@@iwbowden I understand your analogy. I am an Oxygen users and have converted a few Elementor websites because of the bloat. This means I have first hand experience at this. And in a real situation I still think Zion builder will come out on top because of the light elements and widgets. The same goes for Oxygen.

[@elementhow691]

Zion is back on AppSumo! appsumo.8odi.net/LP4xdo (affiliate link)

[@elementhow691]

Read my complete Zion Builder review here : element.how/zion-builder-review/

[@MelodyPaxton]

This is very disappointing. I went to great lengths to convince the agency where I work to use Elementor as a page builder, and here it is bloated and horribly coded.

[@elementhow691]

I would not go that far. Zion's code is much better, yes, however Elementor's code is acceptable too, and getting better and better. It's rather a tradeoff. In exchange for lower code output quality, you get all the pros of Elementor, such as ease of use, very large library of elements (when considering all the addons available), answer to almost any question through Google thanks to a large user base, etc. I work with agencies making very premium websites, using Elementor. It's a fine choice. The websites convert very well, which is what matters in the end.

[@MelodyPaxton]

@@elementhow691 do you have a tutorial on how to make sure all elementor-built sites are optimized for speed by chance? I ma open to any training videos.

[@elementhow691]

@@MelodyPaxton Here : element.how/elementor-mobile-page-speed-score/

[@MelodyPaxton]

@@elementhow691 tyvm