Gutenberg vs Page Builders in 2026: Elementor, Divi 5 and Bricks

by Francis Rozange | Oct 2, 2026 | Gutenberg

Two glass construction sets, one of simple open blocks, the other of sealed components

On February 26, 2026, Elegant Themes ended Divi 5's long beta. Ten years of pages saved as shortcodes could now become, in one click, WordPress block markup. Yet the vendor warns in its documentation: once converted, content cannot go back to the Divi 4 format.

That date sums up the question many site owners face in 2026: do you still need a page builder, now that WordPress's native editor can style a block screen by screen, apply CSS block by block and keep a client to the content of patterns?

This guide compares the block editor, often called Gutenberg, with Elementor, Divi 5 and Bricks, on the criteria that matter over time: what each can do, where it stores your pages, what remains if you drop it, what real-world performance data says, the experience of your editors and maintenance. It ends with a decision matrix.

What the native editor can do in 2026

Layout screen by screen

For years, the builders' main argument came down to one word: responsive. WordPress 7.0, released in May 2026, lets you choose which blocks appear on mobile, tablet or desktop. WordPress 7.1, in August, goes further: it sets how a block looks at each screen size directly in the editor, without CSS, with breakpoints configurable in theme.json.

One detail matters: blocks hidden on a screen size are still present in the page's code, and CSS hides them. Hiding a block on mobile therefore does not make the page lighter.

Per-block CSS, hover states and content-only patterns

WordPress 7.0 added custom CSS applied to a specific block, and 7.1 added hover, focus and active states for buttons and navigation links, with no code. Above all, since 7.0, unsynced patterns and template parts open in content-only mode by default: an editor changes text and images first, and has to switch explicitly into pattern editing to touch the layout. That protects the design from a client's accidental changes. To truly prevent a change, you have to lock the blocks.

The theme matters as much as the editor

The native editor's layout features partly depend on the theme. The Site Editor, which lets you edit headers, footers and templates with blocks, is only available with a block theme. WordPress 7.1 breakpoints are set in the theme.json file. A classic theme benefits from the block editor for content, but not from full-site layout.

Comparing the native editor with a builder therefore also means comparing themes: a good block theme provides ready-made patterns and a consistent palette, where a builder brings its own templates.

What is still missing

The native editor has no popups, forms, visitor-facing query filters or animation system. The responsive styles in 7.1 only apply to standard block settings, not to third-party blocks' custom controls: that is a goal for WordPress 7.2, planned for early December 2026, with no guarantee. To fill these gaps, a block library is often still needed, as our selection of Gutenberg block plugins shows.

Elementor 4: the atomic editor, default for new sites

From V3 to V4

Elementor has more than ten million active installs and reached version 4.3.3 at the end of September 2026. Its new editor, called atomic, appeared as an alpha in May 2025, not recommended for production. It moved to beta in February 2026, then became stable and on by default with version 4.0, on March 30, 2026, but only for new sites.

Existing sites do not change when they move to 4.0. The new atomic elements can sit alongside the old widgets on the same page. In practice, an older site that adopts atomic elements therefore combines two styling systems, the V3 widgets' and the V4 classes and variables.

Where your pages live

Elementor saves the layout as JSON in a private metadata field on each page, _elementor_data. V4 does not change that principle. On every save, Elementor also rewrites the page's main content with a stripped-down version: headings, paragraphs, images and links, with no layout or styles. That is what your visitors would see if Elementor were deactivated.

Performance settings reserved for new sites

Elementor has worked hard on the weight of its code in recent years. The Flexbox container became the default layout for new sites in September 2023. The option that removes unnecessary wrapper elements, presented as a way to reduce DOM size, was turned on for new sites in July 2025.

What these improvements have in common: they apply by default to new sites. An older Elementor site keeps its sections, columns and original markup until someone switches the settings, which means checking every page. The score gains Elementor quotes on its directory page remain the results of its own tests.

Pricing in October 2026

Elementor remains free in its basic version. At the time of writing, the Pro version starts at $60 per year for one site, without form submissions or popups, and the Advanced plan for one site costs $84. The One plan, which adds credits for AI and other services, costs $180 the first year, then $228 on renewal.

Divi 5: WordPress blocks that only speak to Divi

The format, up close

Divi 4 saved pages as nested shortcodes, such as

. Divi 5 adopts WordPress's block grammar, with its own namespace. The developer documentation confirms it: content is saved in the same serialized format as the block editor's. Here, simplified, is what a module looks like.

<!-- wp:divi/section -->
<!-- wp:divi/row -->
<!-- wp:divi/column -->
<!-- wp:divi/cta {"title":{"desktop":{"value":"Title"}},"content":{"desktop":{"value":"\u003cp\u003eText\u003c/p\u003e"}}} /-->
<!-- /wp:divi/column -->
<!-- /wp:divi/row -->
<!-- /wp:divi/section -->

The detail changes everything. A static block, whether from core or a plugin, saves its HTML between its comment delimiters: if the plugin that created it disappears, WordPress can still display it. A Divi 5 module is a self-closing comment whose text and settings live in JSON attributes. Without Divi, there is no HTML left to display. The format is block-based; the content is not portable.

Backward compatibility and migration

After the update, unconverted pages run in compatibility mode, without Divi 5's performance gains. A migration tool converts Divi 4 modules across the whole site, in less than a minute on most sites according to the vendor, and keeps a copy of the original content. Third-party modules without a Divi 5 version stay in compatibility mode, and custom CSS may need touching up.

Pricing

Divi is still sold for an unlimited number of sites: $89 per year, or $249 for a lifetime license, at the time of writing. That model appeals to agencies that build many sites.

The Divi case: ten years of shortcodes, a one-way trip

Divi's move to blocks was documented step by step by the vendor itself, from 2022 to 2026. It shows what leaving a proprietary format costs, even for a major vendor.

A ten-year debt

For a decade, every Divi page was saved as a stack of shortcodes, with each setting carried by an attribute. Deactivate Divi 4, and those shortcodes print as is, as plain text, on the site. Elegant Themes itself described Divi 5 as freeing the product from ten years of technical debt.

A rebuild in the open

Divi 5 developer documentation appeared in June 2022, the first developer builds in spring 2023. In March 2024, the vendor announced that its tests showed server-side rendering twice as fast as Divi 4 and memory use cut in half, figures that remain the vendor's own. In May 2024, it explained that unconverted pages would load the Divi 4 engine on demand, at a performance cost.

The public alpha came out on September 26, 2024, explicitly not for production. After more than a year of alpha, the public beta followed, from October 2025 to February 2026. In January 2026, the vendor set the release date and claimed that 40% of its customers had already chosen Divi 5.

A one-way release

On February 26, 2026, Divi 5 was officially released, as an option. Existing sites stay on Divi 4 until their owner clicks the opt-in button, added the day before. Divi 4 remains maintained for at least twelve months, a commitment revised upward from the six months announced in January.

The documentation is clear on the essential point: once converted, content cannot go back to the Divi 4 format, which Divi 4 cannot read. Rolling back goes through the copy kept by the migration tool, WordPress revisions or a backup, then by rolling the theme back to Divi 4.

Two branches to maintain

Since then, Divi 5 has shipped a release roughly every two weeks, up to 5.14 at the end of September 2026, which still fixes formatting differences that appeared after a migration from Divi 4. In parallel, the Divi 4 branch continues: five security fixes in May, compatibility with the WordPress 7.1 editor on the very day it shipped, in August, then in September a fix for a layout loss in that same editor.

What to take away

Block grammar does not guarantee portability: without Divi, a Divi 5 page has no readable fallback. Leaving your own format takes years, requires two branches and only works in one direction. New WordPress releases keep causing builder-side bugs, even once a builder has adopted blocks. A migration of this kind is prepared on a copy of the site: backup, migration tool, checking third-party modules and custom CSS.

A glass door that opens one way only, with light flowing through it

Bricks: the developers' theme

Storage and a bridge to the block editor

Bricks is not a plugin but a commercial theme with a visual builder. Changing theme therefore means leaving Bricks. It stores each page in three metadata fields, for the header, content and footer. An option can also save the output as native block editor blocks, but only for standard WordPress blocks, and it is off by default.

Bricks mainly attracts developers: global CSS classes, components, custom queries. Its learning curve is the steepest of the four, and its range of third-party add-ons the smallest.

Licensing

Bricks is now sold mainly by subscription, from $79 to $249 per year depending on the number of sites, or $599 for a lifetime license, at the time of writing. If the subscription stops, sites remain editable, without updates or support.

Fast, but not invulnerable

In February 2024, a Bricks flaw let an anonymous visitor run code on the server, scored 10 out of 10. The vendor released the fix on February 13, and Patchstack saw the first exploitation attempts the very next day. A light page does not guarantee a small attack surface: a builder runs code on every page.

Page weight and Core Web Vitals: what field data says

Lab tests published by vendors are not enough. Chrome field data, compiled by the HTTP Archive, shows the share of sites passing all three Core Web Vitals on mobile, in August 2026.

Group of sites	Sites passing on mobile	Median mobile page weight
Elementor	36.8%	2.9 MB
Divi	41.7%	2.8 MB
All WordPress sites	48.7%	2.7 MB
Block editor	53.1%	2.3 MB
Bricks	55.7%	2.3 MB

These figures call for caution. They measure a correlation, not a cause: hosting, images, plugins and the profile of the people building the sites differ from one group to another. The groups overlap, since a site can use Elementor and the block editor. Bricks sites are few and mostly built by developers. The gap is mainly about the time to display the largest element, less about responsiveness.

A year earlier, in August 2025, all of these groups showed lower rates, by roughly three to five points depending on the case, from 2.7 points for Divi to 4.8 for the block editor. The web as a whole got faster, which rules out crediting progress to a single version of a tool, such as Divi 5.

The 2025 Web Almanac points the same way: builder optimizations help, without completely erasing the gap with more tightly controlled builds. Our guide to Core Web Vitals fixes details the levers, whatever the tool.

What remains when you deactivate

No tool deletes your content when you deactivate it: the data stays in the database. What gets lost is the display, the layout and the ability to edit.

Native editor: nothing to deactivate, core blocks always render.
Elementor: the site shows the stripped-down copy, text, headings, images and links, with no layout; headers, footers and popups created with its theme builder disappear.
Divi 4: shortcodes print as plain text.
Divi 5: Divi blocks carry no saved HTML, so the layout practically stops displaying. That is an inference from the documented format, which we have not tested.
Bricks: WordPress displays the page's main content, often empty, unless the option to save as blocks was turned on.

The result is paradoxical. A native block saves its HTML, and the editor documentation states that WordPress falls back to that HTML if the block is no longer recognized. Elementor, with its stripped-down copy rewritten on every save, leaves a readable fallback. Divi 5, which did adopt block grammar, leaves the least, since its modules carry no HTML.

Apart from Bricks' option, off by default and limited to standard WordPress blocks, no official tool converts a builder's pages to native blocks or to another builder. Switching tools means rebuilding, page by page and template by template. Our comparison of WordPress page builders covers the other options on the market.

The experience of the people who edit the site

For a writer, the native editor has a simple advantage: it is the same tool as for posts. Content-only patterns, locked blocks and, since 7.1, notes with mentions cover most of an editorial site's needs.

Elementor offers a similar approach with its components, a Pro feature: only certain properties can be edited by the client. Divi 5 relies on presets, design variables and classes. Bricks can expose its components in the block editor, a feature that is still experimental, and its documentation describes a common pattern: build pages and templates in Bricks, write posts in the block editor.

Divi 5 also offers seven customizable breakpoints, workspaces and a layers panel, which help designers more than writers. For a client who only updates text, that richness can become a trap: the more settings are within reach, the more ways there are to break a layout.

All four tools also added AI in 2026: WordPress 7.0 connects to AI providers, Divi builds in its own agent, and both Elementor and Bricks let external agents edit the site. For a client site, knowing who has administrator access and application passwords is now part of the choice.

Maintenance over several years

WordPress ships three major releases in 2026, and each forces builders to adapt. Elementor published 39 releases between January and September 2026, 13 of which mention security fixes. Divi maintains two branches in parallel. For version 2.0, in July 2025, Bricks recommended testing the update on a copy of the site before production. That version also fixed a second flaw exploitable without an account, an SQL injection, for which the vendor said it had no evidence of exploitation.

Some changes break customizations: at Elementor, removing unnecessary wrapper elements could invalidate CSS that targeted them, and V4 adds a second styling system. At Divi, the conversion is final. Whatever the tool, keep updates on and limit the accounts that can edit pages.

Decision matrix

Criterion	Native editor	Elementor 4	Divi 5	Bricks 2.4
License cost	Free	Free core, Pro from $60 per year	$89 per year or $249 lifetime	$79 to $249 per year or $599 lifetime
Where pages live	Content, as HTML	JSON metadata and a plain copy	Content, Divi blocks without HTML	Metadata
After deactivation	Everything displays	Text and images, no layout	Practically nothing visible	Main content only
Learning curve	Gentlest for writers	Low	Medium	Steepest
Third-party add-ons	Block libraries	The widest range	Large marketplace	The smallest
Theme dependency	Any theme	Any theme	Divi theme (the Divi Builder plugin is still on Divi 4)	Bricks is the theme

By profile

Editorial site, blog, writing team, long lifespan: the native editor, completed if needed by a block library and a solid block theme.
Marketing site edited by non-technical staff, many landing pages and popups: Elementor, accepting the dependency.
Existing Divi 4 site: stay, or migrate to Divi 5 on a copy; do not combine that migration with a move away from Divi.
Agency building many sites: Divi or Bricks on a lifetime license.
Developer-led project with a performance budget: Bricks, or the native editor with a lightweight block library.

Before switching tools: the inventory

Before leaving a builder, or picking one for an existing site, measure what depends on it. These read-only WP-CLI commands list the content built with Elementor or Bricks. Run them on a copy of the site if possible.

wp post list --post_type=any --meta_key=_elementor_edit_mode --meta_value=builder --fields=ID,post_type,post_title
wp post list --post_type=any --meta_key=_bricks_page_content_2 --fields=ID,post_type,post_title

For Divi, a read-only query counts the content still in the Divi 4 format, as shortcodes, by content type.

wp db query "SELECT post_type, COUNT(*) FROM $(wp db prefix)posts WHERE post_content LIKE '%[et_pb_section%' GROUP BY post_type;"

Do not forget templates: the Elementor library, Bricks templates, Divi layouts. Elementor's are missed by --post_type=any, which skips content types excluded from search: list them with wp post list --post_type=elementor_library,bricks_template --fields=ID,post_type,post_title. They are often the headers, footers and post templates that represent the most work to rebuild.

Frequently asked questions

Is Divi 5 compatible with the block editor?

It uses the same storage format, but its blocks can only be read by Divi. Without Divi, a Divi 5 page practically stops displaying, and its blocks cannot be converted into native blocks.

What happens to my site if I stop paying for Elementor Pro?

The site keeps working, but you can no longer update Elementor Pro or add Pro features, and access to the Pro features already in use may become limited, according to Elementor. If you deactivate Elementor itself, pages only show their stripped-down copy, with no layout.

Should I turn on Elementor's atomic editor on an existing site?

Nothing requires it: existing sites keep their configuration, and the old widgets remain supported. If you turn it on, do it on a copy of the site, and expect to manage two styling systems side by side.

Is Bricks really faster?

Bricks sites show the best Core Web Vitals pass rate in this comparison, but the sample is small and mostly made of developer-built sites. Speed depends first on who builds the site and on hosting.

Can you mix the block editor and a builder?

Yes, and it is common: many sites build their pages with a builder and write their posts in the block editor. It is even the pattern Bricks' documentation describes. Just keep in mind that each tool adds its own code to the page.

Can you move from a builder to blocks automatically?

Only Bricks offers an official option, off by default, that also saves its pages as native blocks, and only for standard WordPress blocks. Elementor and Divi offer nothing comparable. Divi's migration tool converts Divi 4 into Divi 5, and Bricks' tool updates its own older data. Third-party converters exist, with no guarantee: plan for a rebuild, at least for templates.

Conclusion

In 2026, WordPress's native editor has closed much of its gap: per-screen layout, per-block CSS, content-only patterns. It remains less rich than builders for marketing features, but it is the only one whose pages survive any change of tool.

The choice comes down to one question: what are you willing to leave behind the day you change tools? If the answer is nothing, the native editor is the obvious pick. If a builder's features save you time every week, choose it knowingly, aware of where it stores your pages and how you would get out.

Sources

LaFactory designs, builds and maintains WordPress and WooCommerce sites, and develops its own plugins. Talk to us about your WordPress project.

Francis Rozange

Former section editor at Libération, he runs LaFactory, an international web agency since 1996.