For the past 7 years, I have utilized WordPress with various visual builders, starting out with Divi and later moving to Elementor. My site is quite expansive, filled with content, vendor listings, and numerous reviews and location pages.
Recently, Elementor has become increasingly frustrating. The backend is sluggish and unresponsive, the code it generates is poorly structured, and customizing elements often feels like a hassle with CSS clashes. While the site speed is decent, there’s room for improvement.
I’m now contemplating a comprehensive rebuild with these three options in mind:
Oxygen Builder - It’s frequently praised for its performance, but the lack of a traditional theme concerns me. I worry about the risk of vendor lock-in.
Bricks Builder - Appears to be an attractive option, providing a visual interface with significantly neater code. It feels like a logical evolution from Elementor.
Headless configuration using Astro or Next.js - This option would likely deliver the fastest performance, but it’s much more complex for someone with my experience. I’m not primarily a developer, which makes this daunting.
My main priorities include backend performance, cleaner coding practices, and the efficient management of my dynamic content, especially since I’m keen to move away from Crocoblock. I’m searching for a solution that remains viable over the next 4-5 years without major troubles.
Has anyone made similar transitions? What was your experience? Which direction would you recommend for a content-heavy website like mine?
honestly oxygen might be worth considering despite the vendor lock-in fears. been using it for 2+ years now and the performance gains are massive compared to elementor. yeah theres no traditional theme but once you get used to it the flexibility is unmatched. backend loads super fast even on content heavy sites and the code output is actually readable. just my 2 cents tho
Just went through this exact decision process last year with a similar content-heavy site. Ended up avoiding the headless route entirely - it sounds appealing but the ongoing maintenance overhead is brutal for non-developers. You’ll spend more time fighting deployment pipelines than actually managing content. Between Oxygen and Bricks, I’d lean toward Bricks based on your specific situation. The learning curve is gentler coming from Elementor, and the dynamic content handling is solid for review sites. That said, don’t underestimate the migration effort regardless of which option you choose. Seven years of Elementor content means you’re looking at significant rebuild time, not just a simple export/import. Test thoroughly with a staging environment first. Also consider your hosting setup - both Oxygen and Bricks perform best with decent server resources. The performance improvements are real but they won’t magically fix underlying hosting issues. One thing I wish I’d done differently was migrating in phases rather than attempting a complete rebuild. Much less stressful that way.
I actually went through something similar about 18 months ago when my Elementor site became unbearable to work with. After testing all three options you mentioned, I ended up choosing Bricks and haven’t looked back. The transition wasn’t as painful as I expected. Bricks handles dynamic content exceptionally well, which was crucial for my review-heavy site. The query builder is intuitive and the code output is genuinely clean compared to Elementor’s bloated mess. Backend editing is night and day faster. I initially considered the headless route but realized the complexity wasn’t worth it for my use case. Unless you have dedicated development resources or enjoy debugging deployment issues, stick with WordPress-based solutions for content-heavy sites. Regarding vendor lock-in concerns with Oxygen or Bricks - honestly, any page builder creates some level of dependency. However, Bricks generates much more semantic HTML that could be styled independently if needed. The real question is whether the productivity gains justify the risk, and in my experience they absolutely do. For a site like yours with extensive content and location pages, Bricks strikes the right balance between performance and usability.