Choosing the Right Tool

Last week, I wrote an article stating that I could no longer recommend Avada in its current form for new web projects and, as a result, was removed as a moderator from the Avada Facebook group. While I don’t appreciate the implied censorship (I chose to remove the article), I do understand their point of view — a lot of people use this site for help, and I often link to it, so maybe it is not in the community’s best interest. That article has been removed. Did I change my mind? Not really, but I will add some other information.

Let the Project Dictate the Tools

Avada is stellar if you need a good-looking site with some minor data functionality. The commitment to accessibility and a nice feature set make it the ideal choice for those managing a single site for themselves or turning over a site to a customer that you will continue to support. Speaking of support, the documentation from Avada and especially the video content from a single source are second to none.

If you are new to WordPress, I would not recommend Avada until you have had a chance to learn how the core features work. If you are simply creating a blog, don’t use a builder with all its complexity. The free WordPress themes and blocks are more than enough for many scenarios, especially for a blog.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you are creating data-heavy sites, with numerous custom post types, and need a professional level of management, then Avada is probably not an ideal choice today since it is not a class-first system, doesn’t give you access to all the divs, and requires a lot of specialized custom CSS to target divs within divs. I think future versions of Avada will bring substantial improvements, but without a public roadmap, it is hard to tell when. If you require a data-rich site, you want total control of all the structure, or you want to take advantage of modern browser capabilities natively (CSS Grid, gap, and more), my recommendations are Bricks Builder, Cwicly, GeneratePress and Generate Blocks Pro, or the latest release from Greenshift. The last three in this list are block-based (aka Gutenberg) themes and builders.

If you want to become a professional WordPress website creator, please watch Kevin Geary’s Page Builder 101 course. It will teach you the fundamentals of modern website design and management. If you already use a tool, as you watch it, ask yourself: Does the tool allow you to do these things?

For me, all new projects and all previous projects except for this site are moving to Bricks Builder, but it does come at a cost — literally.

What about Price

The price of Avada is for a single site with a lifetime of updates, which makes it a good option for those who are limited in funds — especially during Black Friday sales. Direct support from the Avada team will cost you extra, making the Facebook community invaluable for long-term support.

Other tools, such as Bricks Builder, will cost you more to get the feature set that Avada has out of the box, so again, the nature of your project and who is paying the bill will dictate the tools you choose. I have spent close to $1000 for my Bricks-related licensing, but that is for unlimited sites for the various add-ons that I needed. Compared to the standard $69 for an Avada license, that may seem extreme, but the amount of time saved by using a class-based system with professional elements and templates allowed me to recoup the costs in a single project.

The Future of this Site

Despite what people might think or speculate, I do not hate Avada and am not trying to prevent others from using it; quite the contrary. This site will be updated as new features are introduced. However, new demos and articles showing how to force Avada to do things it can’t do natively will no longer be created.