Switching From Elementor to GeneratePress: Performance & UX

Why I Built the Same Site Twice

I recently built a brand-new website for my WordPress management company, ClientAmp. The first version was built entirely with Elementor — a page builder I've used for years and know inside and out. Then, just a day later, I rebuilt the exact same site using GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks.

Why go through all that effort? It had been a long time since I'd built anything meaningful with the Gutenberg block editor, and I wanted to see how the experience stacks up in 2022. GeneratePress has a strong reputation among WordPress professionals for being lightweight and performant, so it felt like the right theme to pair with Gutenberg for this experiment.

This isn't a teardown of Elementor or a love letter to GeneratePress. It's an honest side-by-side comparison across three areas that matter most: performance, appearance, and the actual experience of building pages with each tool.

Performance: Page Speed Scores Compared

Let's start where most people's minds go first — page speed. The Elementor site actually performed really well. It passed Google's Core Web Vitals with a Largest Contentful Paint of 595ms, a Total Blocking Time of 147ms, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of zero. GTmetrix gave it a 97% performance score. By any reasonable standard, this site was fast.

So I definitely didn't need to rebuild in Gutenberg just for performance. But GeneratePress took things even further. I was able to hit a perfect 100% on both GTmetrix and Google's PageSpeed Insights. The biggest gap showed up on mobile, where the PSI score jumped from 59 with Elementor all the way up to 99 with GeneratePress. Mobile performance is historically where Elementor struggles, and it's an area I hope they address.

The clear winner on performance is GeneratePress, but here's the important caveat: Elementor is not going to hurt you. If your Elementor site is built properly, it can load fast and absolutely will not tank your SEO. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Look and Feel: Design Quality and System Fonts

When comparing the visual design of both sites, the biggest difference was my decision to use system fonts on the GeneratePress build. That means the site doesn't load any custom web fonts at all — it simply renders whatever font is the default on the user's device. On iOS you'll get San Francisco, on Windows you'll see Segoe UI, and so on.

The upside is a performance boost and a more native feel. The downside is less brand consistency across devices. For my purposes, I can live with that tradeoff. Anywhere the company logo needs to appear, I can use an SVG, and honestly I prefer how system fonts look — the site feels more at home on whatever device you're using.

Overall, the GeneratePress site just looked better. But I'll be the first to admit that's partly because it was the second version I designed. Going through the process once with Elementor let me refine my ideas, and by the time I was building in GeneratePress, I knew exactly what I wanted. If I built it a third time with a third builder, it would probably look even better. So call this one unscientific if you like — both sites are linked below so you can judge for yourself.

Quality of Life: What It's Actually Like to Build With Each Tool

Here's where things get interesting. If you spend real time with either Elementor or Gutenberg, you'll quickly realize both are full of bugs and could use substantial improvement. But the pain points are different.

My biggest frustration with Gutenberg is moving blocks around the page. GenerateBlocks has an excellent container block that makes Gutenberg far more usable, but when you start nesting blocks inside containers and then try to rearrange them — moving nested items into other containers or repositioning the container itself — it's a nightmare. You end up fighting with a tiny blue indicator bar, trying to drop things in exactly the right spot. I kept wishing for a keyboard shortcut to nest or unnest items. Eventually I just resorted to copy and paste, which shouldn't be necessary.

Elementor has its own bugs, but it's the platform I know. I've learned where to expect the quirks and how to work around them. I was also using Elementor's flexbox containers, which were still in alpha at the time, so it wouldn't be fair to expect flawless behavior from an experimental feature. This category is essentially a draw — it comes down to user preference and familiarity. That said, GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks do feel like a more professional experience. They're clearly targeting serious WordPress developers.

The Verdict: Should You Switch From Elementor?

My biggest concern with this comparison is that people will fixate on the mobile PageSpeed scores and declare that Elementor is garbage — and that's just not the case. The four million websites built on Elementor don't need to panic and migrate tomorrow. PageSpeed scores are a diagnostic tool, not a pass-or-fail grade. They exist to help you provide a better experience for real humans, which is ultimately what Google cares about.

Here's what actually matters: open an incognito window on your phone, type in your URL, and hit enter. Does everything load quickly? Great — you're fine. If things are slow or the layout jumps around, that's when you should dig into PageSpeed tools and diagnose the issue. More often than not, it's something simple — a Loom video embed on the homepage, a custom font file that's 3MB, or unoptimized images. Easy fixes once you know where to look.

Going forward, I'm giving Gutenberg a much bigger role in my workflow. GeneratePress makes the block editor feel capable and professional, and I'm excited to build more with it. But if your Elementor site is fast and your users are happy, there's no reason to tear it all down and start over. Focus on what matters: a great experience for the people visiting your site.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.